Ships and wrecks of the
BATTLEof the
CONVOYS
of the Mediterranean Sea
Archeology of a battlefield: the results of the campaigns of the SDSS and the Superintendence of the Sea in the Sicilian channel for the documentation of the wrecks of the 2nd World War
The project, initiated in the early 2000s by SDSS in collaboration with the Museum of the Sea in Palermo and the Superintendent of the Sea of the Sicily region, focuses primarily on the census and documentation of aircraft and naval wrecks connected to the Battle of the Mediterranean Convoys, which took place during the course of the Second World War.
The project aims to use the fascination and interest generated by submerged wrecks as a means to tell their stories and bring these events back to collective memory. Over eighty years after the events, it seeks to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of young men from many nations around the world who were involved, suffered, and lost their lives during this battle.
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Most convoys bound for Libya departed from Naples, a port where materials and supplies from industrial centers throughout German-occupied Europe and Italian territories were brought together and loaded onto merchant ships. Convoys traveling on southern routes then descended towards Sicily, passing off Marettimo and “landing” near Cap Bon, Tunisia. They then followed the African coast, maintaining varying distances from the Tunisian coast and the series of buoys marking the shallows of the Kerennah shoals, before finally reaching Tripoli.
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The Battle of the Mediterranean Convoys was part of the North African Campaign – “the Desert War” – one of the main fronts of the Second World War – fought between the Axis forces and those of the British Empire, Commonwealth, and Allies. The North African campaign lasted for three years, from June 1940 to May 1943. It was fought in the vast deserts of Libya and Egypt and, in its conclusion, in Tunisia, and was a war of great movement, highly mechanized, characterized by battles between armored vehicles and mechanized infantry, massive use of artillery and aviation, and significant changes of fronts, with repeated advances and withdrawals over hundreds of kilometers of the vast battlefield.
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SDSS is an international no profit organization founded in 1999 and based in Italy. Our mission is the study, research, enhancement, dissemination and protection of the historical, cultural, biological and environmental submerged heritage.
Our main activity consists in the documentation, with different systems and methodologies of submerged sites such as historical wrecks, archeological sites, peculiar underwater habitats and sites of concerns for environmental instability, in collaboration with researchers and institutions.
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