Battles that made History: The Raid on Taranto, November 1940
The first carrier air raid in history.
The Battle of Taranto was a raid by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm on the Regina Marina’s fleet in Taranto. This battle was the first ever carrier assault on a surface fleet. It was a milestone in Naval military history and would herald the ascendancy of the aircraft carrier in maritime operations – a position it retains to this day.
BACKGROUND
With the beginning of hostilities in Africa, the British realised that they would have a hard time supplying their armies in Egypt. British and Allied convoys had to traverse through Gibraltar into Mediterranean, past Malta and then arrive at Alexandria or they would have to go all the way around the Cape of Good Hope and then through the Suez Canal (a rather long and slow route). Both routes had advantages and disadvantages, but the Mediterranean route was the most exposed to German and Italian Navies whose bases flanked the entire route.
The Italian fleet in Taranto was quite powerful and posed a substantial threat to the British Mediterranean fleet and its North African campaign. The fleet consisted of six battleships, seven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and eight destroyers.
As early as 1938, before WWII broke out, the Royal Navy had contemplated plans to attack Taranto and the Italian fleet, taking the capital ships out of commission and securing the Royal Navy’s supremacy in the Mediterranean.
Admiral Sir Dudley Pound had in 1938, (after the Munich Agreement) ordered his staff to examine plans to attack Taranto. Captain Arthur Lyster, CO of HMS Glorious suggested that the Fairey Swordfish torpedo-bombers of the Fleet Air Arm were capable of a night attack on Taranto harbour.
Admiral Pound approved the idea and the plan that evolved from the same was called Operation Judgement.
In August 1939, (barely a month before commencement of the war) Admiral Pound was replaced by Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham (widely known as “ABC”). Pound asked Admiral Cunningham to consider Op Judgement as a possibility.
By June 1940, France had fallen with almost the entirety of the French Mediterranean fleet scuttled and/or sunk. The Glorious had been sunk as well with all hands on 8th June. The situation was truly becoming critical. This sudden loss of Allied Naval power in the Mediterranean meant that it was fast becoming a military prerogative to neutralise the threat posed by the Italian Navy to Allied supply routes to North Africa. Admiral Cunningham ordered training for the attack to begin immediately and in complete secrecy. Such was the secrecy that no written records exist whatsoever.
While Force H under Vice Adm Sir James Somerville took care of the Western Mediterranean, the Mediterranean fleet was tasked with neutralising the Italian fleet.
Firm plans were made after the defeat of Italian armies at Sidi Barrani.
OPERATION JUDGEMENT
Operation Judgement was originally scheduled for the October of 1940, with HMS Eagle replacing the lost Glorious. This was actually preferred by some senior naval officers given the Eagle’s more experienced crew. But sadly this was not to be.
One of the Swordfish aircraft caught fire in its auxiliary tanks (which were vital to reach the harbour). The fire spread and destroyed two aircraft, thus postponing the operation. Later, the Eagle was also damaged by bombs from Italian S.M 79s while escorting a convoy to Malta causing a postponement to November till the brand-new HMS Illustrious was available at Alexandria.
The Illustrious took on five Swordfishes from the Eagle and conducted the strike on her own.
The assembled task force consisted of the Illustrious, the heavy cruisers HMS Berwick and York, the light cruisers HMS Gloucester and Glasgow and the escort destroyers HMS Hyperion, Ilex, Hasty and Havelock. The task force was led by the now Rear Admiral Arthur Lyster, the same man who had come up with the original plan.
The plan involved 24 Swordfish planes attacking Taranto with only 12 aircraft actually carrying torpedoes while the remaining carried bombs and flares. Concerns were raised that the raid would achieve nothing, given the small number of attacking aircraft, except perhaps heighten the level of alertness of the Italian Navy.
One main problem was the shallow waters of the Taranto harbour and the subsequent belief that the torpedoes on release would simply hit the bottom. The Fleet Air Arm solved this by fixing drums below the nose of the Swordfish aircraft. A steel wire drawn from the drum would be wound around the torpedo head and as the torpedo released, the wire would be keep it taut and tilted upwards. This ensured that the torpedo belly flopped into the water instead of a nose dive.
It is interesting to note the difference between the British approach and the Japanese approach to this problem. The Japanese installed detachable wooden fins that provided greater floatation and ensured that the torpedo did not ‘bottom out’.
Operation Judgement was given the green signal by Admiral Cunningham in the first week of November, 1940.
THE RAID
The aircraft took from the Illustrious at 2100 hours on the night of 11th November, 1940 in two batches of twelve. The second batch took off after a gap of 90 minutes. Each batch had six torpedo carrying Swordfish and six bomb/flare carrying Swordfish.
Out of the twenty four aircraft, only twenty actually made it to the operation area.
The raiders managed to hit the Italian battleships Conte di Cavour, Caio Duilio and the Littorio. The bombers badly damaged two cruisers and four destroyers, as well hitting the oil storage tanks.
Two planes of the attacking fleet were shot down, against a predicted fifty percent attrition rate!!
In one night, the Italian Navy lost half of its capital ships and was forced to transfer the remaining vessels to Naples. The Conte di Cavour was put out of service for the duration of the whole war while the Littorio was repaired post haste within four months. A prime target for the Royal Navy, the Vittorio Venetto managed to escaped unscathed, for the time being.
AFTERMATH
The Taranto raid was a major success for the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean theatre. Admiral Cunningham himself wrote, “The Taranto show has freed up our hands considerably & I hope now to shake these damned Itiys up a bit. I don’t think their remaining three battleships will face us and if they do I’m quite prepared to take them on with only two.”
The balance of power immediately swung in the favour of the Allies, but would be redressed soon by the raid on Alexandria by the Italians and increased air raids on Malta by the Luftwaffe.
The battle also showed how aerial torpedoes could be successfully used to attack a shallow water harbour and was likely studied in great detail by the Imperial Japanese Navy for their attack on Pearl Harbor a year later.
The Raid on Taranto will always be remembered as the first ever carrier raid in military history. Students of naval power and sea control will not forget the lessons of Taranto anytime soon.