ecuted” – the Taranto raid 1940


the strappings of their parachute harnesses. In Flyco, a green light flashed. The fitters pulled the chocks away from beneath the Swordfishes’ wheels and the biplanes lumbered into the night.


It took 20 minutes to launch the first wave, a little over ten for the second. One turned back, another was delayed. For the remaining 19 in formation, the sight was intoxicating.


“It was a beautiful picture-postcard evening,” John Wellham remembered. “There were only a few wisps of cloud below us, otherwise the sky was clear and littered with a blaze of stars.” Fellow pilot Lt M R Maund was rather less entranced. “God! How cold it is here!” he recorded in his diary. “The sort of cold that knows nothing of humanism and fills you until all else is drowned save perhaps fear and loneliness.”


It took a good hour, flying at 8,000ft, to reach Taranto. There was no mistaking it. The listening posts forewarned its defences, helped by the arrival of one Swordfish 20 minutes ahead of the rest. “The sky over the harbour looked like it sometimes does over Mount Etna,” Charles Lamb recalled. “The darkness was being torn apart by a firework display which spat flame.” To the light of flak and tracer was now added the light of flare as Lt L J Kiggell flew across the Mar Grande dropping parachute flares. It was the cue for a fresh shower of steel and fire as the battleships, cruisers and destroyers cleared their guns and gave “a full-throated roar” which, wrote Lamb, “made the harbour defences seem like a side-show”. As the shells burst, they lit up the grey- blue Swordfish in brilliant white for an instant. It was all this venomous defensive fire achieved. Aimed at the flares, rather than the aircraft, it accomplished nothing – but it was mesmerising. 815 Naval


Air Squadron’s


Commanding Officer, Lt Cdr K ‘Hooch’ Williamson, was bewitched by the “most magnificent firework display” he had have seen as blue and red flak tracer raced through the Mediterranean night, while observer Lt David Goodwin, carrying bombs intended for warships in the inner harbour, thought the “firework display of shells and searchlights was a lovely sight”.


It proved rather less lovely when the Swordfish dropped from 5,000ft to a mere 50, or even 30, for the attack. Williamson aimed his Swordfish at the battleship Conte di Cavour. The final run-in lasted no more than 20 seconds, but each one of those was filled with a wall of flak thrown at the aircraft. The flak, especially from a destroyer, persisted after the officer had released his torpedo. The Swordfish could only absorb so much lead. It plunged into the harbour.


Maund lined up a Littorio-class battleship. He jinked and swerved to manoeuvre his Swordfish into position, keeping his aircraft so low that the undercarriage almost skipped the waves, then a quick release of the button, the torpedo fell away and the machine jerked. He made for a row of merchantmen in harbour for protection, then banked to escape from Taranto. In doing so he crossed the guns of several cruisers whose fire was so close, he could smell the smoke. “This is the end,” he convinced himself. “We cannot get away from this maelstrom. Yet as a trapped animal will fight like a fury for its life, so we redouble our efforts at evasion.” He pressed his


1st San Pietro


Wave 1st


Wave Mar Grande D E G


Barrage Balloons


L J K


ATTACK ON TARANTO 23:00 11 November 1940


Swordfish low – so low the wing tips all but touched the waves when he turned – and sped at full throttle away from harbour.


dfihi h l l h i i


Charles Lamb, charged with illuminating the harbour and bombing oil tanks shoreside, enjoyed a view of proceedings no other aircraft was afforded that evening. It was a strange sensation. His comrades “were flying into the jaws of hell”, while he was out of range of the Italian guns. So bright was the harbour from the flares, fires and flak that there was no need for him to add to the brightness. Instead, he headed for the oil tanks, dropped his bombs. The first strike at Taranto was over. It had lasted just 14 minutes.


Like most crews this night, Charles Lamb saw nothing of the effect of his attack – no bombs or torpedoes exploding. It was only afterwards, as the aircraft gained height over the Gulf of Taranto that the fliers began to appreciate what they had achieved. M R Maund turned to his observer. “My Christ, Bull! Just look at that bloody awful mess. Look at it! Just look at it!”


The bombs achieved relatively little – several failed to arm in time and never exploded. Not so the torpedoes. ‘Hooch’ Williamson’s detonated beneath the Conte di Cavour. She quickly settled on the bottom of the Mar Grande. The brand new Littorio was hit twice and was beached by her crew as she took on water.


As the first wave of Swordfish checked their homing beacons and made for Illustrious somewhere off Cephalonia, the second wave could see the glow of Taranto from a good 60 miles away which, John Wellham remembered, “seemed to flicker and pulse”. The sight filled observer Lt Alan Sutton with dread. “I gazed down upon a twinkling mass of orange-red lights, which I knew was a solid curtain of bursting shells, through which we had to fly,” he wrote. “It looked absolutely terrifying.”


The second wave flew past the


harbour, then banked right, turning over Punta Rondinella, over the city of Taranto – its streets clearly visible in the three-quarters moonlight. John Wellham watched the attack leader


release his parachute flares which “hung in the sky like a necklace of sparkling diamonds”. The sight of the signals provoked a furious response from the Italian anti-aircraft gunners. “If the tracer was one in five,” thought Wellham, “there must be more metal in the air.” To him the attack seemed to have no more prospect of success than the Charge of the Light Brigade. He pushed the stick forward. The Swordfish plunged towards torpedo- dropping height, gathering speed. 140kts. 150. 160. 170. A barrage balloon suddenly appeared in front of the aircraft. Wellham turned the Swordfish left sharply. A jolt went through all 35ft of the aircraft. The pilot lost control, his machine was now heading almost vertically into the city itself. Somehow Wellham regained control, hauling the stick back until the Swordfish levelled out – almost at the height of Taranto’s factories and houses. With typical understatement, the pilot observed that it had been “a rather hairy dive”.


l hi h fl h hi h


Alan Sutton and his pilot Lt Michael Torrens-Spence aimed at the already- damaged Littorio. “They just fired everything they had except the 15in – I could see the shots from the battleship bursting among the cruisers and merchant ships.” The sky above the harbour was filled with the acrid smell of cordite and “wreathed in smoke”. Torrens-Spence pressed the trigger. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Finally, just 700 yards from the Littorio – when the battleship “just about extended over the whole horizon” – the torpedo came loose.


Neither he nor Sutton saw the weapon impact. Turning steeply low over the harbour, the Swordfish’s wheels struck the water before Torrens-Spence hauled the aircraft up slightly, then weaved it through the floats which supported the barrage balloons, away from “that incredible cauldron of fire”.


Now in control of his Swordfish once more, John Wellham sought to orient himself. There was “a massive black object” behind him, almost filling the horizon. He turned his aircraft sharply through 180˚ and began to aim at his target. Like Sutton and Torrens-Spence before him, Wellham watched as his foe – Vittorio Veneto,


C. San Vito Flare Aircraft f fl


Oil Fuel Depot


hi


Ships A: Trieste B: Bolzano C: Fiume D: Zara E: Gorizia F: Duilio G: Littorio H: Cesare J: V. Veneto K: Doria L: Cavour


flagship of the Regia Marina – bristle with muzzle flashes. After releasing his torpedo, Wellham struggled to stop his machine bucking up into the path of the Veneto’s guns. Then he pressed the stick forward and raced for the “welcoming anonymity of the darkness” in the Gulf of Taranto, scraping the surface of the bay as he fled.


f h R i M i b i l


The second wave was rather more scattered than the initial strike: the first bombs fell before midnight, the last 35 minutes later. Only one aircraft fell victim to the guns, that of Lts Gerry Bayly and Tod Slaughter, brought down by the heavy cruiser Gorizia. As for his comrades, they compounded the damage and chaos caused by the initial strike.


The Littorio was struck a third time, the aged Caio Duilio was beached after shipping several hundred tons of water. A couple of destroyers were damaged by near misses, while the cruiser Trento survived a bomb strike; the explosive failed to detonate.


It took nearly two hours for the two waves of Swordfish – slightly depleted in numbers – to find their way back to Illustrious. The crews made their way to the Air Intelligence Office for debriefing. Charles Lamb was convinced the raid had been a failure and that it would be repeated the following night. John Wellham shared Lamb’s apprehension. He shared his fellow pilot’s ignorance about the outcome of the attack. Every man did. “With the flak, smoke and general chaos over Taranto, no-one could be clear about what had been achieved,” he recalled. The intelligence officers conducted their debriefs before the aircrew made for Illustrious wardroom for a stiff drink – several in some cases – and “masses of grub”, before heading to bed in the small hours.


Dawn in the central Mediterranean on Tuesday November 12 1940 was barely distinguishable from night. Black was replaced by grey. A wall of cloud obscured the sun. The only colour this morning, it seemed, came from the mast of HMS Warspite. As Illustrious rejoined the task force, a signal was hoisted aboard ABC’s flagship: ILLUSTRIOUS


H Mar Piccolo 2nd Wave


Torpedo Nets


C F Taranto A B MANOEUVRE WELL EXECUTED.


Waking up as for the first time as prisoners of war in Taranto, ‘Hooch’ Williamson and his observer ‘Blood’ Scarlett were shown a copy of the local paper by their captors, claiming the attack to be a failure and that no damage had been caused. The aviators were not fooled.


After breakfast, the survivors of Judgment sat numbly in Illustrious’ anteroom. One of the men broke the silence: the raid would have to be repeated that very evening. John Wellham was appalled. “They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once.”


Above the Ionian Sea, three Italian flying boats tried to find the British Fleet so the Regia Aeronautica could inflict its own day of judgment. They found the British ships. They also found an umbrella of Fairey Fulmar fighters. It was an unequal battle. All three flying boats were downed, the last shot down in full view of Cunningham’s force. “A flaming meteor with a long trail of black smoke fell out of the sky and splashed into the sea just ahead of the fleet,” the admiral recalled.


As the pilots and observers contemplated a return to Taranto, a Martin Maryland was already above the harbour recording photographs. It took several hours to return to Malta, more still to develop the images and analyse them. The results were startling: Littorio down by the bow, her decks partly awash; Cavour also partly awash and beached, as was the Duilio. The inner harbour was peppered with debris and oil slicks, the seaplane hangar was a smouldering shell. There was no need for a second attack... not that the worsening Mediterranean weather would allow one anyway. At one stroke, half the Italian battlefleet had been eliminated. The Cavour would never sail again. The Duilio and Littorio were out of action until the spring of 1941. Most of the undamaged Regia Marina raised anchors on November 12 and sailed for Naples.


The morale effect of Taranto was no less important. The autumn of 1940 was bleak. The mother country had parried the threat of invasion but nightly the enemy bombed its cities. That week alone the Luftwaffe had razed the heart of Coventry; Nazi propaganda promised to ‘coventrate’ the rest of Britain’s cities. “Just before news of Taranto, the Cabinet were rather down in the dumps,” First Sea Lord Dudley Pound – the man who had pooh-poohed a carrier strike at the Italian Fleet in harbour when in charge in the Mediterranean – told Cunningham. “Taranto had a most amazing effect upon them.” Illustrious’ Capt Denis Boyd told his ship’s company the attack would “cheer the entire free world”. Listening intently, Charles Lamb nodded. “It was the first good news to reach the bomb-weary British since the war began.” To the men of Taranto, the raid signalled the death knell of the dreadnought. The aircraft carrier had come of age. A


big-gun man like ABC


acknowledged that “in the Fleet Air Arm, the Navy has its most devastating weapon”. Twenty aircraft – and antiquated ones at that – “had inflicted more damage upon the Italian Fleet


than was inflicted upon the German High Seas Fleet in the daylight action at Jutland.”


On Wednesday November 13 1940, the Judgment force sailed into harbour at Alexandria. The British Mediterranean Fleet at anchor was an imposing spectacle: five battleships – Warspite, Malaya, Barham, Valiant, Ramillies; two carriers – Illustrious and Eagle; row upon row of cruisers and destroyers, plus auxiliaries, depot ships, tenders. “It was a hive of activity and a most impressive sight,” John Wellham recalled. “We pilots, however, could not help thinking: what a superb target.”


In Berlin, the German Naval Staff studied the report from their man in Rome. November 11 1940, they decided, had been “a black day for the Italian Navy”. The staff’s diarist continued:


The English [sic] attack must be regarded as the greatest naval victory of the war. At a stroke, it has changed the strategic situation at sea in the entire Mediterranean decisively in England’s favour. Even more than before, the enemy will move throughout the Mediterranean, taking no account of the Italian Fleet.


Also in the capital of the Third Reich, Lt Cdr Takeshi Naito received instructions from his masters in Tokyo: fly down to Taranto. Naito was the first of numerous Japanese officers to visit the Italian base, and probe senior Italian naval officers about the British raid. The Japanese, recalled Ammiraglio di Squadra (Vice Admiral) Angelo Iachino – put in charge of the Fleet in the aftermath of the Taranto débâcle – kept things very close to their chests. The visitors gave their Axis allies “little helpful information,” Iachino remembered, “but they posed many questions about the night air attack of November 11, of which they wanted from the eyewitnesses all possible details.” When the ‘tourists’ returned to Japan, they briefed their comrades in the Imperial Navy, among them Admiral Yamamoto, while Takehi Naito was “interrogated” by his good friend Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida never revealed his reasons for this grilling of Naito.


They only became apparent when Mitsuo Fuchida flashed three codewords back to his masters – Tora Tora Tora – before leading an attack on a Fleet at anchor in port. The date, Sunday December 7 1941. The place, Pearl Harbor.


While the wardrooms of Britain’s warships are filled with stirring speeches (and occasionally raucous antics) each October 21, that of HMS Illustrious is quiet, restrained. The officers of the aircraft carrier, successor to the thorn in the Regia Marina’s side, put celebrations on hold for three weeks until the night of November 11, when the dining room is elaborately decorated with mock- ups of castles of steel and biplanes and the actions of two dozen aviators in obsolete aircraft are recreated. Such is the spell of the night of Taranto.


●♦●


Written by Richard Hargreaves. With thanks to the staff of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton, and the Bundesarchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In addition, the following books, documents and internet sources have been used:


Barnett, Corelli, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War


Baum, Walter and Weichold, Eberhard, Der Krieg der Achsenmächte im Mittelmeer-Raum


Bragadin, Marc, The Italian Navy in World War 2


Churchill, Winston S, The Second World War


Cunningham, Admiral of the Fleet Andrew, A Sailor’s Odyssey


Greene, Jack, and Massignani, Alessandro, The Naval War in the Mediterranean Kriegstagebuch der Seekriegsleitung held by the Bundesarchiv


Lamb, Charles, War in a Stringbag Prange, Gordon, At Dawn We Slept Wellham, John, With Naval Wings: The Autobiography of a Fleet Air Arm Pilot in World War 2


● One Swordfi sh takes off from HMS Illustrious as another prepares to land during operations in the Mediterranean in late 1940


Andy Brady 2010


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