High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Operation Harpoon was one of two simultaneous Allied convoys sent to supply Malta in the Axis-dominated Mediterranean Sea in mid-June 1942, during World War II. One convoy, Operation Vigorous, left Alexandria. The other, Harpoon, travelled in the opposite direction from Gibraltar. Both convoys met with fierce Axis opposition and only two of Harpoon's six merchant ships completed the journey, at the cost of several Allied warships. Until the French surrender and Italy's declaration of war, the Mediterranean had been an Allied "lake". The French Fleet and the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet dominated the only potential and credible adversary, Italy's Regia Marina.