Adriatic lessons hardened into Italian speed doctrine

The Regia Marina drew a narrow lesson from its First World War experience in the Adriatic, where speed could help choose the range and terms of contact. It shaped its Second World War fleet to fight an enlarged version of the same confined-water problem, an approach tied here to the Mare Nostrum outlook. British submarines and surface ships entering through the Strait of Otranto could exploit that institutional memory. Their psychological effect on Italian activity could outweigh the physical action and rival the shock of Taranto. Operational experience can still mislead when a navy prepares to refight its last war instead of asking which lessons remain transferable. Coronel shows the limit of a speed-first reading because the British cruisers were already poorly suited to the long-range engagement they faced.