Description
The year 1940 was bad for Britain; German victories in Poland and France left the British fighting alone. On the night of November 11, the Royal Navy’sHMS Illustrious struck back with a daring raid in which 20 Swordfish torpedo bombers inflicted severe losses on the Italian fleet at Taranto. Here is the true story of the raid, an attack which permanently tipped the balance of power in the Mediterranean toward the Allies.
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A British plan to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Italian fleet at anchor in its home base at Taranto had been devised in 1933, when Italy invaded Abyssinia, but fell victim to political veto. In 1938 Admiral Sir Dudley Pound had the plans revised, anticipating an all-out air attack from shore-based aircraft, but his air advisers instead worked up a plan to use carrier borne naval aircraft, which was reluctantly accepted. When war come, and the numerically superior Italian navy threatened the Balkans and the British presence in Malta and North Africa, it fell to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham to put the plan into action. Armed with torpedoes and bombs, twenty-one slow, open-cockpit, obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplanes - the 'Stringbag' - took off from a single carrier, HMS Illustrious, on the night of 11 November 1940 and, for the loss of only two aircraft, despatched or severely damaged three bottleships, three cruisers and a destroyer.
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