Drawing on a lifetime's scholarship, and featuring hundreds of rare photos, this is a new and complete history of the wartime Regia Marina, the least-known of the major World War II navies.
 
In 1940, the Regia Marina was the fourth-largest navy in the world, equipped with a significant battle fleet and one of the largest submarine forces in the world. In the war that followed, Italy would be a major naval player in the Mediterranean and beyond.
 
Yet until now, few books have attempted a comprehensive study of the Italian Navy of World War II, and many of those have relied on limited or biased sources. In this book, Dr Enrico Cernuschi, one of Italy's preeminent naval historians, presents a definitive, superbly illustrated, wide-ranging, and myth-busting history of Italian seapower from Mussolini's ascent until the peace of 1945, drawing upon Italian, British, German, French, and American primary archive sources, as well as on high-level sources unique to Dr Cernuschi's collection. It offers a masterful account of warships, strategy, commanders and battles, as well as being packed with historical revelations, definitive new technical information, and little-known episodes of naval history.
 
Illustrated with hundreds of rare and previously unpublished photos, bringing to life all aspects of Italian warships, naval life and action, this is the essential guide to Italy's great fleet of World War II.