The Italian Naval War in the Mid-Atlantic: Blockade Runners and Submarines in the Canary Islands (1940–1943)

Abstract

This article studies the real value of the Canary Islands for the Italian navy not only as an area of submarine operations but also as refuge for the Italian merchant fleet. To verify this hypothesis unpublished Italian, German and Spanish primary sources have been consulted. From information gathered from these sources, it can be seen that Italian submarine patrols in the waters of the Canary Islands were largely unfruitful, but that their main ports concentrated most of the Italian vessels that had taken refuge in the eastern Atlantic and that their potential for supplying Italian submarines deployed in the south Atlantic did not go unnoticed.