The Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11/12 November 1940 during the Second World War between British naval forces (Admiral Andrew Cunningham) and Italian naval forces (Admiral Inigo Campioni). The Royal Navy launched the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship naval attack in history, employing 21 Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea.

The attack struck the battle fleet of the at anchor in the harbour of Taranto, using aerial torpedoes, despite the shallowness of the water. The success of this attack augured the ascendancy of naval aviation over big-gun battleships. According to Cunningham, "Taranto, and the night of 11/12 November 1940, should be remembered forever as having shown once and for all that in the Fleet Air Arm the Navy has its most devastating weapon".

Background

Since long before the First World War, the Italian Regia Marinas First Squadron had been based at Taranto, a port city on Italy's south-east coast. In the inter-war period, the Royal Navy developed plans to counter the in the event of a war in the Mediterranean. Plans for the capture of the port at Taranto were considered as early as the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.

After Italy's entry into the Second World War in 1940, British and Italian forces in North Africa engaged each other in the Western Desert Campaign. Italian troops based in Libya required a supply line from Italy. British troops, based in Egypt, suffered from much greater supply difficulties. Before Italy entered the war, British convoys had travelled across the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar via Malta to Egypt. The threat from the and the made this very difficult. Instead, British ships steamed around the Cape of Good Hope, up the east coast of Africa and then through the Suez Canal to reach Alexandria.

Following the concept of a fleet in being, the Italians usually kept their warships in harbour and were unwilling to seek battle with the Royal Navy on their own, also because any ship lost larger than a destroyer could not be replaced. The Italian fleet at Taranto was powerful: six battleships (of which one was not yet battleworthy, having her crew still in training after her reconstruction) seven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and eight destroyers. This made the threat of a sortie against British shipping a serious problem.

Royal Navy

During the Munich Crisis of 1938, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, was concerned about the survival of the aircraft carrier in the face of Italian opposition in the Mediterranean and ordered his staff to re-examine plans for attacking Taranto. He was advised by Lumley Lyster, the captain of Glorious, that his Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers were capable of a night attack. The Fleet Air Arm was the only naval aviation arm capable of such a feat. Pound took Lyster's advice and ordered training to begin. Security was kept so tight there were no written records. Just a month before the war began, Pound advised his replacement, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, to consider the possibility. This came to be known as Operation Judgment.

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The fall of France and the consequent loss of the French Mediterranean Fleet (even before the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir (Operation Catapult) made redress essential. The older carrier, , on Cunningham's strength, was ideal, possessing an experienced air group consisting entirely of the obsolescent Swordfish aircraft. Three Sea Gladiator fighters were added for the operation. Plans were drawn up after the Italian Army halted at Sidi Barrani, which freed up the British Mediterranean Fleet.

Operation Judgement was part of Operation MB8. It was originally scheduled to take place on 21 October 1940, Trafalgar Day but a fire in an auxiliary fuel tank of one Swordfish led to a delay; auxiliary tanks were being fitted in the observer's position on the torpedo bombers (the observer taking the air gunner's position) to extend the range of the aircraft enough to reach Taranto. The minor fire spread into something more serious that destroyed two Swordfish. Eagle then suffered a breakdown in her fuel system and was removed from the operation. When the new carrier , based at Alexandria, became available in the Mediterranean, she took on board five Swordfish from Eagle and launched the strike alone.

The force was commanded by Rear Admiral Lyster, Flag Officer, Mediterranean Aircraft Carriers, who had written the plan for the attack on Taranto.The flotilla consisted of Illustrious, the heavy cruisers and , the light cruisers and and the destroyers , , and . The 24 Swordfish came from 813 NAS, 815 NAS, 819 NAS and 824 NAS. The small number of aircraft raised concern that Judgement would only alert and enrage the without achieving worthwhile results. Illustrious also had Fairey Fulmar fighters of 806 NAS aboard to provide air cover for the force, with radar and fighter control systems.

Half of the Swordfish were armed with torpedoes and the other half carrying bombs and flares for diversions. The torpedoes were fitted with Duplex magnetic–contact exploders, which were extremely sensitive to rough seas, as the attacks on the battleship later showed. There were also worries the torpedoes would hit the bottom in the harbour. The loss rate for the bombers was expected to be fifty per cent.

Several reconnaissance flights by Marylands of 431 General Reconnaissance Flight RAF flying from Malta confirmed the location of the Italian fleet. These flights produced photos on which the intelligence officer of Illustrious spotted unexpected barrage balloons and changed the plan. To make sure the Italian warships had not sortied, the British also sent over a Short Sunderland flying boat on the night of 11/12 November, just as the carrier task force was forming up off the Greek island of Cephalonia, about from Taranto harbour. This reconnaissance flight alerted the Italian forces in southern Italy but since they were without radar, they could do little but wait. The could have gone to sea in search of British naval forces but this was against the naval philosophy of the Italians between January 1940 and September 1943. The complexity of Operation MB8, with its forces and convoys, deceived the Italians into thinking that only normal convoying was under way.

Taranto

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The base of Taranto was defended by 101 anti-aircraft guns, 193 machine-guns and was usually protected against low-flying aircraft by barrage balloons, of which only 27 were up on 11 November, as strong winds on 6 November had blown away 60 balloons. Capital ships were also supposed to be protected by anti-torpedo nets but of netting was required for full protection and only a third of that was rigged before the attack, due to a scheduled gunnery exercise. The nets did not reach the bottom of the harbour, allowing the British torpedoes to clear them by about .

Attack

thumb|right|Attack directions of the Swordfish

The first wave of 12 aircraft, led by Lieutenant Commander Kenneth "Hooch" Williamson RN of 815 Squadron, left Illustrious just before 21:00 hours on 11 November 1940, followed by a second wave of nine about 90 minutes later. Of the second wave, one aircraft turned back as its auxiliary fuel tank detached from the aircraft ensuring the aircraft would not be able to complete the round trip, so only eight made it to the target. Of those, one launched 20 minutes late, after being repaired after a minor taxiing accident. The first wave consisted of six Swordfish armed with torpedoes, two with flares, four with bombs, and four with six bombs. It split into two sections when three of the bombers and one torpedo bomber strayed from the main force while flying through thin clouds. The smaller group continued to Taranto independently.

The main group arrived at the harbour at Mar Grande at 22:58, about 11 pm. A plane dropped 16 flares east of the harbour, then the flare dropper and another aircraft dive bombed the port to set fire to oil tanks. The next three aircraft, led by Lieutenant Commander K Williamson RN of 815 Squadron, flew over San Pietro Island and struck the battleship with a torpedo, which blasted a hole in her side below the waterline. The Italian battleship's anti-aircraft guns immediately shot down Williamson's plane. The two remaining aircraft in this sub-flight dodged barrage balloons and received heavy anti-aircraft fire from the Italian warships and shore batteries, to press home an attack on the battleship Andrea Doria but missed. The next sub-flight of three attacked from a more northerly direction. It attacked the battleship , hitting it with two torpedoes, and launched a torpedo at the flagship, the battleship , which missed.

The bomber force, led by Captain O. Patch RM, attacked next. They found the targets difficult to identify but attacked and hit two cruisers moored at Mar Piccolo hitting both with a bomb each from . They were followed by another aircraft, whose bombs straddled four destroyers. The second wave of eight aircraft, led by Lieutenant Commander J. D. Hale of 819 Squadron, was now approaching from a northerly direction towards the Mar Grande harbour, with two of the four bombers also carrying flares, the remaining five carrying torpedoes. Flares were dropped shortly before midnight. Two aircraft aimed their torpedoes at Littorio, one of which hit. One aircraft, despite having been hit twice by anti-aircraft fire, aimed a torpedo at Vittorio Veneto but the torpedo missed. Another aircraft hit the battleship with a torpedo, blowing a large hole in her hull and flooding both of her forward magazines. The only aircraft lost from the second wave was the one flown by Lieutenant G. Bayley RN, which was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from the heavy cruiser

The Italian battleships suffered significant damage:

  • Conte di Cavour had a hole in the hull, and permission to ground her was withheld until it was too late, so her keel touched the bottom at a greater depth than intended. 27 of the ship's crew were killed, and over 100 more wounded. In the end, only her superstructure and main armament remained above water. She was subsequently raised, partially repaired and transferred to Trieste for further repairs and upgrades, but a changed situation made this work a low priority. She was still being repaired when Italy surrendered, so she never returned to full service;

Cunningham and Lyster were set on striking Taranto again the next night with Swordfish (six torpedo-bombers, seven bombers and two flare-droppers). There there was not general agreement. One wag in the pilots' room remarked, "They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once!" In the end, bad weather prevented a repeat of the attack. Fuchida led the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941. A group of IJN officers visited Taranto in May 1941 and had lengthy discussions with their Italian Navy opposite numbers. The Japanese had been working on shallow-water torpedo bombing since early 1939, with various shallow ports as the notional targets, including Manila, Singapore, Vladivostok, and Pearl Harbor. In the early 1930s, as their Type 91 aerial torpedo entered service, the Japanese used a breakaway wooden nose to soften its impact with the water. As early as 1936, they perfected breakaway wooden fins for added aerial stability.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a considerably larger operation than Taranto. All six Imperial Japanese fleet carriers, each one equipped with an air wing having over twice the number of planes of any British carrier, took part; seven American battleships were sunk or disabled, and several other warships were destroyed or damaged. The US Navy thereafter designed its fleet operations in the Pacific Ocean around its carriers instead of its battleships as capital ships. Battleships were found to be less useful in the expanses of the Pacific than in the confines of the Mediterranean; the older ships were too slow to escort the carriers and were chiefly used as fire support for amphibious operations.

See also

  • Bombardment of Copenhagen
  • Battle of Port Arthur
  • Samsun–Odessa naval sortie raid

Notes

Footnotes

References

Further reading

  • La notte di Taranto – Plancia di Commando
  • Order of battle
  • IWM Interview with John Wellham, who piloted a Swordfish during the battle
  • Battle of Taranto Diorama