Battle of Taranto

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the night of the 11th of November 1940-21 obsolete biplanes changed the way navies would fight forever. The Battle of Taranto was not won by the biggest guns or the fastest ships. It was won by slow, fabric-covered torpedo bombers launched from a single aircraft carrier into the dark over the Mediterranean Sea. When the sun rose the next morning, three Italian battleships lay crippled or sinking in the harbour they had called home since before the First World War. The Royal Navy had just launched what Admiral Andrew Cunningham called the most devastating weapon in the Fleet Air Arm’s arsenal. What made this attack possible? How did biplane torpedo bombers defeat a heavily defended harbour? And what did a Japanese lieutenant commander find when he flew to Taranto to inspect the wreckage just months later?

• 2. A Harbour Built to Last

  ›

  Taranto sits on Italy’s south-east coast, and the Regia Marina’s First Squadron had been based there since well before the First World War. By 1940 it was a fortress in all but name. The harbour was ringed by 101 anti-aircraft guns and 193 machine guns. Barrage balloons were strung above the anchorage to snare low-flying aircraft, and anti-torpedo nets were meant to shield the hulls of the capital ships below the waterline.

  Yet the fortress had gaps. Strong winds on the 6th of November had blown away 60 of the 87 balloons that normally protected the port, leaving only 27 in place when the attack came. Anti-torpedo netting required 12,800 metres for full coverage; only about a third of that was rigged, partly because a scheduled gunnery exercise had delayed the work. Critically, the nets did not reach the harbour floor, leaving a gap of about 60 centimetres at the bottom through which a British torpedo could pass. Forty-two kilometres of nets would have been needed to seal the harbour properly against what was coming.

  The Italian fleet at anchor was formidable on paper: six battleships, seven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eight destroyers. One battleship was still not fully battleworthy, her crew in training after a reconstruction. Still, the Italians followed the strategic doctrine of a fleet in being. They kept their warships in harbour and avoided engagements on their own, partly because any vessel larger than a destroyer that was lost could not be replaced. That calculation would prove costly on the night of the 11th.

• 3. Planning Operation Judgment

  ›

  The idea of striking Taranto predated the war by years. During the Munich Crisis of 1938, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet, ordered his staff to revisit attack plans for the harbour. Lumley Lyster, then captain of the carrier Glorious, told Pound that his Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers could carry out a night attack. The Fleet Air Arm was, at that time, the only naval aviation arm capable of such a feat. Pound ordered training to begin and kept security so tight that no written records were made.

  Just a month before the war began, Pound briefed his replacement, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, on the possibility. The plan was eventually named Operation Judgment. It was embedded within the larger Operation MB8, originally scheduled for the 21st of October 1940, Trafalgar Day.

  A fire in an auxiliary fuel tank derailed the first attempt. The 60-imperial-gallon auxiliary tanks being fitted in the torpedo bombers’ observer positions, to extend range enough to reach Taranto, caused the blaze; it destroyed two Swordfish before it was contained. The carrier Eagle then suffered a fuel system breakdown and was withdrawn from the operation entirely. The newer carrier Illustrious, operating out of Alexandria, absorbed five of Eagle’s Swordfish from their respective squadrons and prepared to strike alone. The final force drew aircraft from 813 NAS, 815 NAS, 819 NAS, and 824 NAS. Half the Swordfish carried torpedoes; the other half carried bombs and flares to divert the defenders. Concern existed that the 24 aircraft available might be too few to do serious damage, and that the attack might only alert the Regia Marina without achieving worthwhile results.

• 4. The Shallow-Water Problem

  ›

  Taranto harbour sat at a depth of only about 39 feet, far below the 75 feet that most navies believed was the minimum required for a successful aerial torpedo attack. A torpedo dropped from an aircraft naturally dives before levelling off, and in a shallow harbour it would simply bury itself in the mud.

  British engineers devised a mechanical solution. A drum was fitted beneath the nose of each attacking aircraft, with a wire running from the drum to the nose of the torpedo itself. When the torpedo was released and fell, the tension in the wire pulled up its nose, forcing the weapon into a flat, belly-flop entry rather than a steep dive. This technique allowed the torpedoes to run shallow enough to operate in the harbour without hitting the bottom. The 39-foot depth at Taranto was not a barrier but a solved problem.

  The torpedoes were fitted with Duplex magnetic-contact exploders, which were sensitive to rough seas and would later cause difficulties against the Kriegsmarine. For the calm harbour waters of Taranto they were well-suited. Several reconnaissance flights by Maryland aircraft of 431 General Reconnaissance Flight RAF, flying from Malta, confirmed the position of the Italian fleet and produced photographs. An intelligence officer aboard Illustrious spotted barrage balloons in the reconnaissance photos that planners had not expected, and the attack plan was revised to account for them. On the night of the attack, a Short Sunderland flying boat also swept the area to confirm the ships had not sortied. It alerted Italian forces in southern Italy, but with no radar, there was little they could do.

• 5. The Night Attack

  ›

  Lieutenant Commander Kenneth “Hooch” Williamson of 815 Squadron led the first wave of 12 aircraft off Illustrious just before 21:00 hours on the 11th of November 1940. A second wave of nine followed about 90 minutes later. One aircraft in the second wave turned back when its auxiliary fuel tank detached, so only eight reached the target; one of those launched 20 minutes late after a minor taxiing accident was repaired.

  The main group of the first wave reached the Mar Grande section of the harbour at 22:58. A plane dropped 16 flares to the east, and two aircraft dive-bombed port oil tanks to draw attention and start fires. Williamson then led three torpedo bombers over San Pietro Island and struck the battleship Conte di Cavour with a single torpedo, blasting a hole 27 feet across in her hull below the waterline. Italian anti-aircraft guns immediately shot Williamson’s plane down. He and his observer, Lieutenant N. J. “Blood” Scarlett, were taken prisoner. Two other aircraft in that sub-flight pressed through barrage balloons and heavy fire to attack the battleship Andrea Doria but missed. A second sub-flight struck the battleship Littorio twice with torpedoes and launched a torpedo at the Italian flagship that missed. The bomber element, led by Captain O. Patch RM, found identification difficult in the darkness but hit two cruisers moored at Mar Piccolo with a bomb each, attacking from 1,500 feet.

  The second wave, led by Lieutenant Commander J. D. Hale of 819 Squadron, approached from the north. Two aircraft dropped flares just before midnight. Two torpedoes were aimed at Littorio; one hit. Another aircraft, already hit twice by anti-aircraft fire, aimed at Vittorio Veneto and missed. A further torpedo struck the battleship Duilio, blowing a large hole in her hull and flooding both forward magazines. The only aircraft lost from the second wave was flown by Lieutenant G. Bayley, shot down by anti-aircraft fire from an Italian heavy cruiser after a successful torpedo run on Littorio. Bayley and his observer, Lieutenant H. Slaughter, were both killed. The final aircraft arrived 15 minutes after the others and made an unsuccessful dive-bombing attack on an Italian cruiser before landing safely back aboard Illustrious at 02:39.

• 6. The Damage and Its Limits

  ›

  Italian land batteries fired 13,489 shells that night. Thousands more rounds came from the ships themselves. Denis Boyd, commanding officer of Illustrious, noted in his after-action report that the enemy did not use their searchlights at all during either attack wave, a detail that baffled observers on both sides.

  Conte di Cavour suffered a hole measuring 12 by 8 metres in her hull. Permission to ground her was withheld until it was too late; her keel settled at a greater depth than intended and only her superstructure and main armament remained above the waterline. Twenty-seven of her crew were killed and over 100 wounded. She was later raised, partially repaired, and moved to Trieste, but the repairs were never finished. She never returned to full service. Duilio had a slightly smaller hole, 11 by 7 metres, and was saved by being deliberately run aground. Littorio was hit by three torpedoes and holed in three places; one hole on her port side measured 7 by 1.5 metres, and the two on her starboard side measured 15 by 10 metres and 12 by 9 metres. Thirty-two of her crew were killed. She was saved by grounding. Her bows were completely submerged by morning. Littorio was repaired and fully operational again within four months. Duilio took seven months; Conte di Cavour’s repairs were still incomplete when Italy surrendered in 1943.

  Measured against the objective of cutting Axis supply routes to Africa, the results were less decisive. Italian shipping to Libya actually increased after the attack, rising from an average of 37,204 tons per month in the preceding four months to an average of 49,435 tons per month between October 1940 and January 1941. The historian Caravaggio argued that the battle was a missed opportunity: the Royal Navy had failed to deliver what he called the true knockout blow that would have changed the context within which the rest of the war in the Mediterranean was fought.

• 7. Strategic Ripples

  ›

  The morning after the attack, the Regia Marina moved its undamaged ships from Taranto north to Naples for safety. That transfer lasted until the anti-torpedo net defences at Taranto were brought up to adequate levels, a process that took until somewhere between March and May 1941.

  Cunningham wrote in the aftermath that the Taranto action had freed up his hands considerably. Where the British Mediterranean Fleet had previously been forced to operate as a single concentrated unit to match Italian capital ships, it could now split into two battlegroups, each built around one carrier and two battleships. Yet within five days, Cunningham’s confidence in Italian reluctance was tested. On the 16th of November, Admiral Campioni sortied from Naples with two battleships, six cruisers, and 14 destroyers to disrupt a British mission to deliver aircraft to Malta. This led to the Battle of Cape Spartivento on the 27th of November 1940, which ended inconclusively.

  Beyond the naval balance, Taranto was one of three heavy blows to Italian prestige in late 1940. The Greek counter-offensive in the Greco-Italian War began on the 14th of November, and Britain’s Operation Compass in Egypt opened on the 9th of December. According to Gooch, these defeats convinced the German navy that any Italian chance of mastering the Mediterranean had vanished. Berlin’s view hardened: success in the Mediterranean and North Africa would require heavy German involvement, with Italy as a subordinate. The Italian military attache in Berlin, General Luigi Efisio Marras, found that his special treatment as the representative of an ally was now withdrawn. Goeschel recorded that German military and political officials adopted an officious tone in their dealings with Italians, a change made plain to Badoglio at his meeting with Keitel in Innsbruck on the 14th and the 15th of November 1940.

• 8. Pearl Harbor's Blueprint

  ›

  Japanese Lieutenant Commander Takeshi Naito, the assistant naval attaché in Berlin, flew to Taranto after the battle to study the attack firsthand. In October 1941, Naito had a lengthy conversation about his findings with Commander Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida would lead the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941. A group of Imperial Japanese Navy officers also visited Taranto in May 1941 for extended discussions with their Italian counterparts.

  The Japanese had already been working on shallow-water torpedo techniques since early 1939, testing against various notional targets including Manila, Singapore, Vladivostok, and Pearl Harbor. In the early 1930s they had experimented with breakaway wooden nose cones on their Type 91 aerial torpedo to soften its entry into shallow water. By 1936 they had developed breakaway wooden fins for added aerial stability. Taranto gave them operational confirmation that the approach could work against a defended anchorage.

  The Pearl Harbor attack was a vastly larger operation. All six Imperial Japanese fleet carriers participated, each carrying more than twice the aircraft of any British carrier. Seven American battleships were sunk or disabled. The US Navy, like the Royal Navy before it, subsequently reorganized its Pacific operations around carriers rather than battleships as the primary capital ship. One lasting consequence of Taranto, underscored by Pearl Harbor, was that harbours previously thought safe from aerial torpedoes due to shallow water were now understood to be vulnerable. The Royal Navy’s wire-drum technique for controlling torpedo entry depth had erased a protection that harbor planners around the world had taken for granted.