too expensive and in 1940 the Red Sea Flotilla had seven older fleet destroyers, the 5th Destroyer Division with the Leone-class destroyers , and and the 3rd Destroyer Division with the Sauro-class torpedo boats (a class of ships between the size of small, fast motor torpedo boats and destroyers, not found in the Royal Navy) , , and . There were Orsini and Acerbi two old local defence torpedo boats and a squadron of five first world war (MAS, motor torpedo boats). The Flotilla had eight modern submarines (Archimede, Galileo Ferraris, Galileo Galilei, , , Guglielmotti, Macallé and Perla). The flotilla was based at Massawa in Eritrea on the Red Sea. The port linked Axis-occupied Europe and the naval facilities in the Italian concession zone at Tientsin in China. There were limited port facilities at Assab, in Eritrea and at Mogadishu in Italian Somaliland. When the Mediterranean route was closed to Allied merchant ships in April 1940, the Italian naval bases in East Africa were well placed for attacks on convoys en route to Suez up the east coast of Africa and through the Red Sea. The finite resources in Italian East Africa were intended to last for a war of about six months' duration, the submarines denying the Red Sea route to the British. Mediterranean and Middle East The British had based forces in Egypt since 1882 but these were greatly reduced by the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. A small British and Commonwealth force garrisoned the Suez Canal and the Red Sea route, which was vital to British communications with its Indian Ocean and Far Eastern territories. In mid-1939, General Archibald Wavell was appointed General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the new Middle East Command, over the Mediterranean and Middle East theatres. Wavell was responsible for the defence of Egypt through the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, British Troops Egypt, to train the Egyptian army and co-ordinate military operations with the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, Vice-Admiral Ralph Leatham, the Commander-in-Chief India, General Robert Cassels, the Inspector General, African Colonial Forces, Major-General Douglas Dickinson and the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Middle East, Air Chief Marshal William Mitchell. (French divisions in Tunisia faced the Italian 5th Army on the western Libyan border, until the Franco-Axis Armistice of 22 June 1940.) In Libya, the Regio Esercito Italiana (Royal Italian Army) had about and in Egypt, the British had