The Battle Of Taranto Ends: Stringbags (Episode 3)

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Meiner Lieblingen!

Speaker 6 Alvinesen on Trussitrus.

Speaker 5 I followed the leader as he lost height.

Speaker 5 Suddenly there was a burst of light to the eastward as the first flare ignited, followed by others until they hung in the sky like a necklace of sparkling diamonds.

Speaker 5 Ahead there seemed to be a partial hole in the flak, just where I wanted to be. The slipstream was screaming through the struts and bracing wires and past my ears.

Speaker 5 My nose was filled with the stench of cordite. There was Tracer above us, Tracer below us, and Tracer seemingly passing between the wings.
There was a tremendous jar.

Speaker 5 The whole aircraft juddered, and the stick flew out of my hand. We were completely out of control.
It was no time for finesse. I applied brute force and ignorance.

Speaker 5 It moved most of its travel to the right, but only partially to the left. Buildings, cranes, and factory chimneys were streaking past below us.

Speaker 5 Then we shot over the eastern shore of the harbour and were level over a black mirror speckled with the reflection of flames and bursting shells. A quick glance round.

Speaker 5 To my right and slightly behind me was a massive black object covering most of the horizon.

Speaker 4 A battleship.

Speaker 5 And that was Lieutenant John Wellam in his account with naval wings. And we'll be coming back to John Wellam later as he arrives in Taranto.

Speaker 6 In fact, we'll join John as he as he loiters, waiting for the operation to start. Welcome to We Have Ways and Make You Talk, part two of the raid on Taranto.

Speaker 6 If anyone is of a nervous disposition, right, if you don't like cliffhangers, if you don't like relentless tension, then you've come to the wrong podcast, I'm afraid.

Speaker 5 but but a reminder in that opening quote i think of of of what they're flying you know it's an open cockpit biplane and you know i mean just absolutely amazing the bracing was and struts it's a reminder isn't it that they're not in spitfires they're not in mosquitoes or or even bow fighters they're in fairy swordfish But what they're in, Jim, though, is the right plane for the job.

Speaker 6 As we saw in the last episode, the first wave have completed their attack, their strike on Taranto and only only one of the aircraft has been shot down flown by Lieutenant Commander KNW Williamson who's the who's the commanding officer of 815 Naval Air Squadron with his observer blood scarlet whose banter is of an extremely high quality and they have struck two battleships the littorio and In our introductory episode to this story, we talked about how the Fleet Air Arm are sent to strike the Richelieu in Dakar, which was built in response to the littorio class of Italian battleship by the French Navy.

Speaker 6 So what we're talking about here is absolutely top-line ships.

Speaker 6 And the thing to remember as well, so much of the interwar to and fro, treaty to and fro that goes on is about battleships.

Speaker 6 Battleships, their war-winning potential, what they can do to naval traffic and trade is at the forefront of everyone's minds.

Speaker 6 And while the Royal Navy has come to this idea that actually the next war, this war, is going to be one of increment and attrition and chipping away and buttoning down the opposition rather than great big climactic battles.

Speaker 6 If you can do what Nelson did and strike the enemy's fleet in harbour.

Speaker 5 As he did at Copenhagen.

Speaker 6 And at the Nile, that's the place to get the other guy. That's exactly what they're doing here.

Speaker 6 Rather than the climactic battle, the strike on the fleet, and you knock the other guy out before he can even turn up. And that's what this is all about.

Speaker 5 Equally, they're doing this with the use of aircraft carriers, which are about to usurp the battleship as the premium capital ship of any nation.

Speaker 6 Just as the Germans demonstrated in May 1940 with the use of tactical air, it's air that is going to open up the way this war is fought and won.

Speaker 6 Simply that. Who commands the air controls, not just the airspace, the land space, but the sea space.
What people would call a battle space now.

Speaker 6 The thing that they've done to enable enable the Taranto strike to

Speaker 6 be successful. Because, after all,

Speaker 6 the Italians have shut down their SIGINT. The British aren't inside the Italian naval cipher at all.

Speaker 6 So, they're relying on photo reconnaissance and they're relying on their own fighter cover to chase away spotter planes.

Speaker 6 And they've been incredibly successful in that, which is why this carrier fleet, this carrier force, at the end of the great big diversionary operation that also includes actual operations, this, you know, ABC's genius is he's kept the med running as it should be and slipped into that, this carrier force, into Mike Bravo 8.

Speaker 5 Yes, the deception plan for Taranto is fascinating, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's really clever and complicated, and there's lots of moving parts, there's many levers, and any one of them could go wrong, but it doesn't.

Speaker 6 So to the point, as we said in the last episode, an Italian naval officer after the war said, if the British hadn't explained to us after the war what they're up to, we would never, ever have gleaned it.

Speaker 6 We'd have never worked it out. So,

Speaker 6 I mean, it's incredible.

Speaker 6 Here's the thing, and I think this is a thing that sometimes we circle back round to on the podcast: is yes, the Allies here are being, or the Reneview here is being super organized, they're being dominant and all that, but still some buggers got to get in an open cockpit biplane and fly into a horseshoe-shaped harbor and drop torpedoes with a box barrage to guide him by.

Speaker 6 You know, Williamson uses the box barrage flak as his navigation beacon. He goes, oh, well,

Speaker 6 there's the reception over there. You know,

Speaker 6 when the Japanese strike Pearl Harbor, they do do it by surprise. There isn't a night sky lit up by flak for them to steer towards.

Speaker 6 And you think of these crews strapped into that swordfish, droning along at 80 knots,

Speaker 5 like, dear God.

Speaker 5 Anyway,

Speaker 5 anyway, it's absolutely unbelievable. We've done the first raid.
This is the culmination of the first raid. And on his way back, Charles Lamb, who we met in the last episode, didn't we?

Speaker 5 He was basically just observing. That was his job.
He said, I'd never had a less dangerous, dangerous mission.

Speaker 5 You're still over.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, it sounded pretty dangerous to me anyway. But

Speaker 5 on his way back,

Speaker 5 because he'd been dropping flares, he says to his observer, Greave, he goes, I'm a bit worried. We may be the only survivors.
I should be very surprised if we're not.

Speaker 5 I doubt whether any of the torpedo bombing pilots got away with that. And I saw nothing of Kiggle's aircraft after he dropped that last flare on the far side of the harbour.

Speaker 5 I'm afraid you're right, said Greave, but we can't do anything about it now. God, I mean, they're in the Stark Society, aren't they?

Speaker 6 And this is the first time they've spoken. Well, just before the raid, when he says, Oh, look, they're expecting us.
He says something like that, oh, jolly good.

Speaker 6 Well, and then they don't speak until this point. And they have a discussion about what on earth are the top brass going to say now, because everyone's been killed except us.
And what do we do now?

Speaker 6 I mean, it's just remarkable.

Speaker 5 I love that reply from Greave. Oh, well, you're probably right, but we can't do anything about it now.

Speaker 5 Best foot forward.

Speaker 6 80 knots.

Speaker 6 It's not like he can step on it.

Speaker 6 Exactly.

Speaker 6 It's not like Grieve can say, well, come on, then open the throttle and we'll be home in 10 minutes.

Speaker 6 They fly on through their night. And Grieve, of course, has to navigate because the observer is the navigator as well in the fleet arm.

Speaker 5 And they've got to go back to Y, not X.

Speaker 6 Yes, they've got to, exactly. They've got to go back to position Y.
It's been incredibly nerve-wracking. And Lamb's been throwing the plane around evasively.

Speaker 6 And he says in his memoir, this is yet another one of those times where I was glad to be the pilot and not the observer, because I at least knew what was coming at us.

Speaker 6 I at least, what was going to happen next. Whereas the observer's in the back just being thrown about, right?

Speaker 5 Well, yeah. I mean, clearly being a pilot in this circumstances is vastly superior to being an observer.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. Absolutely.
I mean, either option is not great, is it, right now?

Speaker 6 No, but it's a really short straw being the observer.

Speaker 6 But Greave is now navigating, taking star shots, looking for Cefalonia on...

Speaker 6 Cefalonia is on their starboard wing as they leave.

Speaker 5 That's their waymark, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Kind of, yeah. So they're looking for the dark shape of the island as they return.
Well, near enough, because, of course, Lusty's steamed onto somewhere else. This is needle in a haystack stuff.

Speaker 6 And then they've got to... They've got to put down, land on, as they call it, successfully on the aircraft carrier.
I mean, this is needle in a haystack stuff, isn't it, Jim?

Speaker 5 You know, it really is. And just a reminder, it's at night, people.
I mean,

Speaker 5 and they've got a new location to find in the middle of the Mediterranean, which, trust me, when you're flying over it, is a pretty big place.

Speaker 6 Everything that's asked of these pilots is truly extraordinary.

Speaker 6 And the fact that they think, oh, well, everyone else has been killed, they will deal with that when they get back to the aircraft carrier. I mean, this is extraordinary stuff.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we've got other things to think about right now.

Speaker 5 Let's not blot our minds with morbid thoughts.

Speaker 6 Exactly. But there's the

Speaker 6 second wave.

Speaker 5 Of course. Yes.
That's just the first wave.

Speaker 6 And the Fleet of Air Arms experiences the second wave usually gets the short end of the stick because the enemy have woken up. Now, of course, one of the interesting things about Taranto is

Speaker 6 the fact that the Italians have been alerted to the presence of naval aircraft by their listing devices because the Sunderland is going around looking for Italian ships to make sure that no one's at sea to bugger up the attack.

Speaker 6 So the Italians were alerted in the first place, and now they're really on super alert. So flying with the second wave, which is about to depart,

Speaker 6 well, which is

Speaker 6 obviously by the time Lamb and Greav are flying back, the second wave has already, but let's not, let's not, let's, let's, let's go back to just before the second wave leaves, because this is the problem with these overlapping events, of course, in the telling.

Speaker 6 Is that John Wellam, who we met right then at the start with his account, now, he's with the second wave and he's as experienced as a fleet air-armed swordfish pilot as anybody he's he's part of the strike flown from eagle in the attack on sidi barani on the 22nd of august um it's a wildly successful torpedo strike on italian ships that sunk four vessels with three torpedoes because one of the ship's magazines had gone up and it was well's torpedo that strikes the depot ship the magazine that goes up they destroyed two subs one destroyer and a depot ship god that's a good night at the office isn't it it's a it's pretty good and no one believes it No one believes it.

Speaker 6 They're like, that can't be true. And then, you know,

Speaker 6 the losses confirm it, and the number of torpedoes loosed and all this sort of thing. So he has his ankle nicked by a bullet in that attack, right?

Speaker 6 So that's how up close you've got to get to do this stuff.

Speaker 6 And he's come over from Eagle, because after all, Eagle suffers this fuel problem because she's been damaged in previous fighting and has a fuel issue that they can't fix in time.

Speaker 6 So when he gets to Illustrious, and Eagle, of course, is one of these ships in the First World War that's a converted ship. It's not a purpose-built aircraft carrier.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Hermes is the purpose-built aircraft carrier from the First World War. And he's absolutely boggled by Illustrious.
What?

Speaker 5 Because it's so state-of-the-art.

Speaker 6 State of the art, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What do you say? What does he say, Jim?

Speaker 5 He says, we were in a different world. Illustrious was huge and full of equipment that we'd never seen or even heard of.
We also appreciated the atmosphere on board.

Speaker 5 Every member of the ship's company was dedicated to the operation of the aircraft and proud and enthusiastic about her. I mean, yeah, I guess it is because this has got armoured deck, hasn't it?

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's the armoured deck, the box. Yeah.

Speaker 6 This, I think, is really interesting, is that the Royal Navy, which had been sceptical about the application of air power, is now absolutely, totally into it.

Speaker 6 And obviously, these are air power advocates who want to make this work, who want to prove their worth and to show that they're where the money should be being spent, where the, you know, should be the operational center of gravity of the Royal Navy.

Speaker 6 And, you know, as we said earlier in the episode, this is how it pans out as the war runs.

Speaker 6 So before the attack, he'd watch planes being prepared, torpedoes, 250-pound bombs, four and a half-inch fares being loaded up.

Speaker 6 The bombing planes, because we talked about how for this raid, they need to extend the range of the swordfish. And

Speaker 6 so for the torpedo aircraft, what they do is they put a fuel tank in the observer's seat, and the observer moves to where the telegraphist gunner sits.

Speaker 6 For the bombing planes, they mount the fuel tank on the torpedo mount,

Speaker 6 the cradle for the torpedo.

Speaker 6 So he's watching that go on. So at 21.20,

Speaker 6 the second wave sets off, led by Lieutenant Commander J.W. Hale.
It's 43 minutes after the first wave.

Speaker 6 And they're, just like the first wave, they're under orders to use their initiative in taking on the target, which is what we saw in the last episode.

Speaker 6 It's not everyone's approaching from the same direction. They're

Speaker 6 picking their route in

Speaker 6 so that the Italian gunners, there's one over here, there's one over there.

Speaker 6 Where are they? Where are they coming from? And the first seven planes get away okay, and they're starting to form up, right?

Speaker 6 Then the eighth, LVF, L means it's an illustrious aircraft, E, the E in the tag means it's from Eagle, comes up to the center line. There's a disaster.

Speaker 6 The ninth, L VQ, begins to move forward at the same time into the same part of the deck. Their wingtips strike each other.
Both engines stopped as they're pulled apart. Yep.
They shut down.

Speaker 6 L5Q is thought to be undamaged.

Speaker 6 And after a brief discussion between Captain Boyd, who's the commanding officer on Illustrious and Commander Robinson streamline Robinson who's the guy who's running the aircraft they clear L5Q for takeoff off you go but L5F which is crewed by Clifford and Going and you remember going do yes he's the guy who puts down and begs to be flown by Walrus back to Illustrious because he has to go on the raid yes yes yes yes yes yes I've got a bad feeling about this I always did do right from the beginning reminds me of diver nobody do you remember coming and going

Speaker 6 yeah of course well going

Speaker 6 they've two broken wing ribs. They've torn fabric.
So they're taken down into the hangar for repair. Going goes to the captain.
He goes to Boyd and begs to be allowed to fly.

Speaker 6 This is the second time, right, that he's had to do this, right? Yes.

Speaker 6 When his engine fails and he puts down because of the fungus,

Speaker 6 he goes to Captain Boyd.

Speaker 6 Boyd says, yes, all right. Okay.
So L5F takes off about 24 minutes behind the others.

Speaker 5 I've got a really bad feeling about this. I just want to say that right now.

Speaker 5 Don't spoil it for me, but I'm.

Speaker 5 Anyone who's that keen going on a really dangerous mission is just destined not to make it.

Speaker 6 At five past 10, 22.05, one of the bombing aircraft,

Speaker 6 which is flown by Morford in L5Q, which is the first aircraft in that collision, has to turn back when its external fuel tank detaches. Right? So this is the other plane.

Speaker 5 So they're manned down again.

Speaker 6 And this is the only failure of a fuel tank.

Speaker 6 And it was knocked off its moorings and maybe that happened in the accident maybe you know the shock has has dislodged a fuel tank and it's a thing they didn't spot you could see how that would happen to be fair you can see how that would happen so the rest of the second wave proceeds to taranto basically otherwise without incident but with but with clifford and going trying to catch up at 2355 five to midnight five minutes to midnight hail who's who's running the operation uh running this wave sends off the two flare droppers to illuminate the harbor from a line to the east of the eastern shore and then leads the torpedo planes into attack from the northwest right so here we go again right they don't know anything about the first wave this is the thing we are completely in the dark they don't know they have no idea whether it's been success what they're going to get what the reception even if they got there no idea They know nothing.

Speaker 6 They don't know who's been shot down or if anyone's been shot down or they don't know what damage has been done to the ships. So over the coast at 5,000 feet well north of Cape Rondinella,

Speaker 6 they follow the north shore to a position south of the canal. Oh, this is, well, this is hail.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and we should just say, we should just say, Al, that Taranto, if you think of the boot of Italy, it's the heel, and it's on the western side of the heel.

Speaker 5 So, so, so Cape Rondinella is on the kind of, you know,

Speaker 5 it's the bottom kind of eastern side of

Speaker 5 the heel of the boot of Italy. Yeah.
That's what we're talking about here.

Speaker 6 And if you're the Italian Navy,

Speaker 6 it's the perfect mooring, isn't it? It's absolutely perfect because you can get out nice and quick. You can force project all the way down to Alexandria.

Speaker 6 You could dominate the Adriatic from there. You can

Speaker 6 get to Sicily in no time at all.

Speaker 6 And Malta. So it's an ideal spot for mooring a navy.

Speaker 6 So no wonder they're holed up there.

Speaker 6 Anyway, he's 30 feet above the water.

Speaker 6 He drives, flies straight at the Littorio, drops his torpedo at a range of 700 yards, then banks steeply to starboard and narrowly missing the cable of a barrage balloon, safely makes his escape.

Speaker 5 Hooray!

Speaker 6 This is like a video game, isn't it? But they only have to do it once. You know, in they go.
So then L5K, which is flown by Lieutenant FMA Torrance Spence, Royal Navy, as pilot and Lieutenant A.W.F.

Speaker 6 Sutton as the observer. They follow the other aircraft over Cape Rondonella and they dive steeply through an inferno of flak.
Because this is the thing, you know,

Speaker 6 we had that with Wellem's description at the start there's just flack everywhere the italians are firing into a box barrage um and and and you know in the in the previous episode charles lamb described the problems with this which is that the italians can't depress the guns if you fly low enough they can't depress the guns they're also shooting at each other across the harbour shooting into the town of taranto yep but that so what right

Speaker 6 you know it's like there's enough going on isn't there yeah right

Speaker 6 So he dives down into the harbour and he's aiming for a position five cables, which is 914 metres. So, I mean, look, we've got the thing is with the sea, isn't there, Jim?

Speaker 6 There's miles, nautical miles, knots, miles per hour, cables.

Speaker 5 It's all confusing.

Speaker 6 It's another world.

Speaker 5 Take your pick.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. He's coming in south of the canal entrance, the canal that leads through.

Speaker 5 Into the Mari Piccolo.

Speaker 6 Into the Mari Piccolo. And he nearly collides with E4H, which is flown by Bailey and Slaughter, who we'll come to in a minute.

Speaker 6 Finds himself in the midst of just loads of ships, confusing a madre of ships, you know, because the harbour is packed full.

Speaker 6 And we'll find a graphic to stick up to go with the episode of just how busy the harbour is. Picks Littorio as his target, drops his fish, his torpedo at 700 yards.
His undercarriage hit the water.

Speaker 5 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 5 Amazing that he didn't just flip over, isn't it? It must have been.

Speaker 6 It is absolutely amazing. But that's how stable and solid the sword fish is and slow.

Speaker 5 You know, it can cope with just skimming the water.

Speaker 6 I mean, they're all picking on the littorio what about the other battleships well that's the interesting thing isn't it because they don't know that the first wave have struck the littorio but they don't know about anything about the first wave so you're gonna pick the biggest plumpest target aren't you yeah i guess so you know and this is also one of the issues with in the end quite a reduced force of of swordfish coming in is that in the end they aren't really and we'll talk about we'll talk about this later you know

Speaker 6 have they got mass to actually deliver the body blow they they want to. Anyway, he pulls up between two balloons and he gets out.

Speaker 6 Two floating batteries suddenly loom up in the water ahead, too late to be avoided. He pulls back the joystick.
The aircraft flips up, passes over them as the guns open up.

Speaker 6 They can feel the hot blast of the guns firing.

Speaker 5 Oh my goodness me. And they escape with just one bullet hole.
One bullet hole in the fuselage.

Speaker 5 So the Littorio is hit, isn't it? Yes, right. It's hit by a single torpedo on the starboard bow, which then detonates at one minute past midnight.

Speaker 6 midnight yeah i wonder whose it was it's unknown um that they've the italians afterwards find one undetonated torpedo in the mud and it's been impossible looking through the records and the infantries and everything actually to work out whose torpedo it was team effort there's no iron team al there's no iron team well exactly exactly but e4h which is the the um the plane that um uh torrance spence nearly collided with flown by bailey and slaughter is on a southerly heading from a position halfway between cape rondinel and the town of Toronto and is shot down.

Speaker 6 And so Bailey and Slaughter are both killed. They aren't fortunate in the way that Williamson and Blood Scarlet were.

Speaker 6 They are both lost. And at that moment, goodness.

Speaker 5 I'm still very worried about going.

Speaker 6 Well, join us after the break to find out if the going's good.

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Speaker 6 Welcome back to Wave Ways Awake You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland.

Speaker 6 And we left you with E4H unfortunately being shot down as the second wave go into Taranto harbour, or the harbours in Taranto.

Speaker 6 So Lee in L5H,

Speaker 6 and again, that's another aircraft from Illustrious, he comes over Cape Rondonella and dives along the northern shoreline at a position only two and a half cables south of the canal.

Speaker 6 And I'm guessing, well, if five cables is 914 meters, then two and a half cables is going to be what? Half Half that? 2000s. I mean,

Speaker 5 yeah. Half it, yeah.
All right.

Speaker 6 He's amazingly sanguine that he can say how far it was. He turns south and aims at the Duidio, releasing his torpedo at 800 yards.
And he hits her on the starboard side abreast the B turret.

Speaker 6 And Lee flying L5H gets away to the west.

Speaker 5 Because I guess you'll climb over here, Al.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, when you're flying in, so by the time you're going to Cape Rondonella to the target, what is that, like a couple of minutes, something like that? Yeah. And then you're in.

Speaker 5 And I mean, you know, 80 knots is still quite fast. Quite fast.
I mean, this is all going to be over in about three or four minutes, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. You're not there very long.
And in fact, again, this comes back to the advantage of being of the advantage of

Speaker 6 the swordfish flying slow and stably. You know, you're flying well below the stall speed of, you know, the strike aircraft to come, right?

Speaker 6 So you've got plenty of time to

Speaker 6 line yourself up and point yourself at a big battleship.

Speaker 5 I mean, but still. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yes. So Wellem, John Wellem, who we met at the start of the episode, he's in E5H, so he's from Eagle.

Speaker 6 He, again, he coasts in over Cape Rondonella and then flies furthest to the north, crossing over the Mar Piccolo and the town of Taranto at low level.

Speaker 6 Because in that description earlier, we had chimneys and stuff.

Speaker 5 I can completely picture this, by the way. It's low ground around there.
There's no hills or anything.

Speaker 6 He narrowly misses the northernmost balloon in the eastern barrier before attacking the Vittoria Vineto from the east.

Speaker 5 If you think that Taranto is

Speaker 5 on the western side of the heel and you've got the Mar piccolo on the eastern side of the town you're crossing over that he that he would have then circled around to the from the north he'd have circled eastwards and then come back in we left him where where there was a massive black object covering most of the horizon a battleship yeah because the mate the main bulk of taranto is on this finger between the sea and the mar piccolo yeah so he says i levelled out after turning 180 degrees and pointed towards the great black hulk of the ship height okay, judging for the level of her deck.

Speaker 6 Airspeed dropping nicely, angle of attack not ideal, but the best I could do, aircraft attitude for dropping rotten.

Speaker 6 The only way that I could achieve a straight line was skidding with some left rudder and the right wing slightly down.

Speaker 6 Strings of lights prickled along her decks, and multiple bridges and grew into long coloured pencil lines drawn across the sky above us.

Speaker 6 So, as he described, he temporarily lost the control of the aircraft when a 40mm shell hits the port wing and explodes.

Speaker 6 Shattering some of the ribs and making a large hole in the fabric.

Speaker 6 But he takes control of the plane, launches his torpedo without a steady tracking run from a position of about 500 yards onto the battleship's starboard bow. Unfortunately, it misses.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 6 after all that effort, yeah, he still gets away despite the damage to his swordfish.

Speaker 5 Yes, there's slightly a few hairy moments there.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. Meanwhile,

Speaker 6 and anyway, last time he went out, he sunk two ships for the price of one.

Speaker 5 He's got credit in the bank.

Speaker 6 He's still in credit. So the two flare-dropping aircraft, so this is what they've been doing.

Speaker 6 The two aircraft have been held back and illuminating the scene so that people can make these choices and decisions down in the harbour.

Speaker 6 So this Hamilton in L5B, he drops his line of flares at 5,000 feet, 15-second intervals on a line southwest to northeast, and loitering because the swordfish can loiter. And

Speaker 6 this is what Charles Lamb's description was in the last episode, where they're firing at the flares and not at him, you know, because the flares illuminate after they've dropped a few

Speaker 6 thousand feet. So it's it's okay up there, but they then they are armed with bombs.
So he then goes in and bombs the oil storage depot in the harbor.

Speaker 6 And Skelton, who's in L4F behind him, he follows suit.

Speaker 5 But the last aircraft, Jim, and he hits them, they hit the oil storage depot, don't they?

Speaker 6 But Jim, the last aircraft to attack. It's Clifford.

Speaker 6 And it's going

Speaker 6 in L5F, who, as we all know, departed illustrious 24 minutes after his colleague. And you think of those lads in the hangar patching that plane up so it's airworthy

Speaker 6 in 24 minutes or 20 minutes. I mean,

Speaker 6 that's absolutely remarkable. I mean, and you could do that with a fabric aircraft.

Speaker 6 Can't do that with an F-35, can you? If you bend one of those.

Speaker 6 And they arrive literally as everyone else is leaving. They fly, again, they use the flak as the marker to fly towards, and they see oil street water below, fires burning brightly.

Speaker 6 The flak has actually died down, and Clifford unhurriedly circles.

Speaker 5 He

Speaker 6 drones around the harbour, picking what to bomb. At 500 feet, he levels off and aims his six bombs at two cruisers, but there are no explosions, and he thinks he's missed.

Speaker 6 In fact, one of the semi-armour-piercing bombs has gone through the thin plating of the cruiser Trento, but doesn't go off.

Speaker 6 He then turns north, crosses the Mar Piccolo, turns to starboard, out over the coast, five miles east of the harbour.

Speaker 5 So it's okay.

Speaker 6 You've still got to make it back to the carrier.

Speaker 5 Okay, yeah, but so far, so good. Yeah.
Okay, but if this was Hollywood,

Speaker 5 he would have been killed.

Speaker 6 No, Going would be the guy who would be gone, exactly, if this was Hollywood. But going survives.
Well, thank goodness for that.

Speaker 6 I know. What a relief, right?

Speaker 6 0250 hours on the 12th of November, all of the surviving aircraft landed on, have landed on, as they say in the Fleet Air Arm, have landed on, and Illustrious and her task force.

Speaker 5 Including Clifford at Going.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant.
And she steams away. And goodness.
And she's.

Speaker 5 All that worry, and I needn't have been worrying at all.

Speaker 6 We'll get to how successful they've been in a minute. But Illustrious is then

Speaker 6 greeted with a signal hoist from the flagship that reads, Illustrious maneuver well executed.

Speaker 5 Don't make a fuss.

Speaker 5 It's a marvel of understatement, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Absolutely. Absolutely.
Because

Speaker 6 two aircraft lost.

Speaker 5 That's a light kind of casualty, this, really, though, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And only two crew killed.
So, because Williamson and Scarlett have

Speaker 6 both been picked up.

Speaker 5 Well, you'd have taken that beforehand, wouldn't you?

Speaker 6 You would have taken that beforehand. And for all the light, we're, you know,

Speaker 6 we started this episode with Charles Lamb saying, well, obviously no one's coming back. Obviously, they're all dead.
Yeah. Obviously, everyone's.
I can't see how anyone wasn't shot down.

Speaker 6 I think that's pretty good, isn't isn't it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, amazing. Yeah.
So the ammunition expenditure is extraordinary. So this is from this is the Italian gunners.
Okay, so

Speaker 5 125 millimeter cannons, 1,430 rounds. Yeah.
107 millimeter cannons, 313 rounds. So not many of them.
88 millimeter.

Speaker 5 6,854 rounds. So that's your heavy flak.

Speaker 5 Machine gun, 40 millimeter, 931 rounds. Well, that's not so many.
20 millimeter, 2,635 rounds, 8mm,

Speaker 5 637 rounds. Total, 12,800 rounds.

Speaker 6 It's absolutely extraordinary. When

Speaker 6 you consider that what you're looking at is sort of, I don't know, 10 minutes over target both times. I mean, it's

Speaker 6 something like that.

Speaker 6 It's quite extraordinary.

Speaker 6 And of course, I mean, the other thing, though, is the following day, because Operation Judgment, the idea of Operation Judgment is they're going to go back again.

Speaker 6 They're going to go back again and finish the job is the idea. And this is partly to do with the fact that it's a reduced strike force.

Speaker 6 So, you know, when I was looking at this, I thought, well, this reminds me of the Dam Busters, because people often say, why don't they go back and bomb the dam repairs the next day?

Speaker 6 Why does Bomber Command never attack that target again or not immediately attack it and like further embugger the German war effort or whatever?

Speaker 6 They are preparing further strikes and ABC and Lister's reasoning is that they should get in again before the Italians can improve their defenses.

Speaker 6 And there's tons more targets to strike. You know,

Speaker 6 in a way,

Speaker 6 it's been the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 6 And there are repair efforts to disrupt. But at about 1600 hours, ABC wonders whether it wouldn't be asking too much of the crews to make them go back.

Speaker 6 One of the crews is said to have remarked, after all, they only asked asked the light brigade to do it once. The decision is then left with Lister.

Speaker 6 And remember, it's Lister's plan from before the war to strike the Italian

Speaker 6 fleet in harbour. Right?

Speaker 5 I mean, the point is about this

Speaker 5 is they've got off lightly, haven't they? Let's face it. Yeah.

Speaker 6 They got away with it.

Speaker 5 Yeah. You know,

Speaker 5 when Charles Lambers is saying, you know, I can't see how anyone could possibly get out of this live, or words to that effect. I mean, it's not wrong.
No. I mean, it's just that they do.

Speaker 6 And the crew's appetite for doing it again, I imagine, was pretty slender. And at 1800 hours, they get a bad weather forecast and they call it off.
So, really, relief all round.

Speaker 5 Phew, relief all round. Everyone's a sort of decision made.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next day, you won't be able to do it.
Because after all, the task force has to steam on. You can't stay put.

Speaker 6 You can't be static flying this sort of, you know,

Speaker 5 running this kind of thing. The second strike has got to happen the second day or not at all, hasn't it?

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. Exactly right.
Yeah. So, and the thing is, of course, surprise was not achieved.
The Italians were alert because of because of other aircraft activity, even without radar.

Speaker 6 They've managed to put up a defense. So, it probably would be tempting fate to try it again.
Because some, you know, there's going to be an Italian gunnery officer going, right, okay, lads,

Speaker 6 here where we went wrong, right?

Speaker 6 It's gutsy flying and a modicum of luck mean that the Fleet Air Arm have achieved its first great and decisive victory. So, you can stick that in your swordfisher obsolete pipe and smoke it, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, you absolutely can.

Speaker 6 And the other thing I think this also is in the, it is of a peace with is the Belgrano, when the Belgrano was sunk in the Falklands War, the idea was to say to the Argentinian Navy, go back to your harbour and do not return to our seas.

Speaker 6 And this has kind of got the same message in it. We'll come and find you.
We'll come and get you. And I think

Speaker 6 that's Royal Navy aggression, right? Writ large.

Speaker 5 And to be honest, it works works pretty well.

Speaker 5 It works pretty well. I mean, the Italian fleet is remarkable in the Second World War for completely underperforming.

Speaker 5 And, you know, you have Cape Matapan in March 1941, where they get another trouncing. And that's basically it.

Speaker 6 The threat's the threat's the threat, right? And that's the thing that, that's the thing that Cunningham is concerned about. So Cullingham receives this signal, which is the, which is the...

Speaker 6 from from naval intelligence about looking at the photographs of Taranto and and the signal says have examined Taranto photographs carefully and until enlarged I do not wish unduly to raise your hopes, but it definitely appears that A.

Speaker 6 One Littorio class is down by the bows with forecastle awash and a heavy list to starboard. Numerous auxiliaries alongside.
B.

Speaker 6 One Cavour class breached opposite entrance to graving dock under construction. Stern, including Y turret, is underwater.
Ship is heavily listed to starboard. C, inner harbour.

Speaker 6 Two cruisers are listed to starboard and surrounded by oil fuel. D, two auxiliaries off commercial base and appear to stern underwater.
Hearty congratulations on a great effort.

Speaker 6 So that's the initial assessment from photographic evidence.

Speaker 5 Well, so the Littorio is hit twice on the starboard side and once on the port stern. Starboard one is a

Speaker 5 10 metre by 7.5 metre hole. Another 11 by 5 metre hole near the bow and the port side a 7 metre by 1.5.
So these are big holes. You know, that's not being repaired anytime soon.
Yep.

Speaker 5 The Cavour, the starboard side,

Speaker 5 she's hit on a keel. The Duilo is similarly damaged.

Speaker 5 Repairs do begin immediately, and because they've been struck in such shallow water, the ships are with a, you know, they've got a chance of being saved, a bit like the ones at Pearl Harbor when that happens.

Speaker 5 But by early morning on the 12th of November, Letorio's bow was resting on the bottom.

Speaker 5 Between 0400 and 0627, she had been towed through gaps in the torpedo nets across the Mar Grande to the west and grounded on the mermaid bank in a position with a water depth of about 45 feet.

Speaker 5 But the long and short of it is this.

Speaker 5 Conti de Cavour, subsequently raised, partially repaired and transferred to Trieste for further repairs and upgrades. She was still undergoing repairs when Italy surrendered.

Speaker 5 So never returned to full service. Yeah.
How about that? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the Duilio had only a slightly smaller hole, 11 meters by 7, which is 36 foot by 20. That's a huge hole.

Speaker 5 It was saved by running her aground. Le Littorio was repaired with all available resources and was fully operational again within four months.
Even so.

Speaker 5 And at the same time, there was a cruiser raid into the Strait of Otranto. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And this is HMS Orion, Sydney, and Ajax, together with Nubian, the destroys Nubian and Mohawk, under Vice Admiral Pridham Whipple.

Speaker 6 And they run into an Italian convoy at quarter past one in the morning on the 12th of November. They engage it minutes later.
They sink four merchant ships.

Speaker 6 They drive their escorts off in an action that ABC calls a boldly executed operation into narrow waters. So it's a terrible, terrible night

Speaker 6 for the Regia Marina, right? No, you know, there are those that argue that, you know, it's not a decisive blow and all the sorts.

Speaker 6 It's still

Speaker 6 terrible, right?

Speaker 6 And one of the interesting things here on the Allied side, on the British side, is that credit for Taranto goes to the Fleet Air Arm. Up to this point,

Speaker 6 credit for torpedo strikes has been going to the Royal Air Force because the Royal Air Force are involved in prosecution of this sort of stuff.

Speaker 6 But they've been getting the credit. Because up to this point, it's been decided to keep the news of the success of the carrier force under wraps.
Right? Right. Because

Speaker 6 it's new. And will it work? And what's it actually capable of? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 And you don't want to be hoisted by your own battle, do you?

Speaker 6 Precisely. You don't want to overclaim.
Although the Italians know perfectly well what's gone on, of course. And there are...
There are

Speaker 6 strategic consequences and morale consequences. So, first of all, interestingly, for all the heroics we've written about, I don't think it's a particularly well-garlanded operation for the crews.

Speaker 6 Four DSOs, 16 DSCs.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but it's a success. It's a success.

Speaker 6 Exactly. If half of them had been shot down,

Speaker 6 I think you'd have three crews with Victoria Crosses, right? Going would have got one just for wanting to go, right? If he'd been shot down.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 6 But the crew.

Speaker 5 Yes, I should have realized that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 It was going to be okay.

Speaker 6 It's going to to be okay. But

Speaker 6 the crews were jubilant, you know, because this is the thing.

Speaker 6 And the fleet air arm, don't forget, the fleet air arm is brand new or has only just gone back into Navy control, has been at the back of the queue for kit.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 the air ministry doesn't believe in it. They're fighting the air ministry tooth and nail for every improvement they try and make.

Speaker 6 And the Royal Navy leans right into its history. Charles Lamb, I mean, this is just fantastic.
He reports, doesn't he, Jim?

Speaker 5 As the captain said in a talk to the ship's company, we have achieved our aim.

Speaker 5 He went on to say that in one night, the ship's aircraft achieved a greater amount of damage to the enemy than Nelson achieved in the Battle of Trafalgar, and nearly twice the amount that the entire British fleet achieved in the Battle of Jutland in the First World War.

Speaker 5 What was more important, it was the first good news to reach the bomb-wary British since the war began. It will cheer the entire free world, he said.
I mean,

Speaker 5 he's got a point. I mean, don't forget,

Speaker 5 this is the night of the 11th, 12th of November.

Speaker 5 You know, and what happens a couple of nights later?

Speaker 5 It's Coventry. You know, so all that is going on back home while this

Speaker 5 daring,

Speaker 5 yeah, tenacious raid.

Speaker 6 And we mentioned earlier on the idea of over-promising.

Speaker 6 So Winston Churchill says, The result affects decisively the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean and also carries with it reactions upon a naval situation in every quarter of the globe.

Speaker 6 You know, he's leaning into it.

Speaker 5 Even the Times goes mad, doesn't it? Yeah,

Speaker 6 the Times goes crazy. The Times goes mad.

Speaker 5 The congratulations and gratitude of the nation are due in their fullest measure to the Fleet Air Arm, who have won a great victory in the largest operation in which they have yet been engaged against enemy ships.

Speaker 5 And to Sir Andrew Cunningham, who is the first flag officer to handle the new weapon on such a scale and has used it triumphantly.

Speaker 6 There we go.

Speaker 5 After that, even the king gets involved now.

Speaker 6 The king gets stuck in and writes to Cunningham, sends him a message.

Speaker 5 I know, I've got to do this one, don't I? Because I'm Georgia Safe. The recent successful operations of the fleet under your command have been a source of pride and gratification to all at home.

Speaker 5 Please convey my warm

Speaker 5 congratulations to the Mediterranean Fleet and, in particular, to the Fleet Air Arm on their brilliant exploit against the Italian warships at Taranto. Literally could be in the room.

Speaker 6 Well, it literally could be in the room. And if the Stoic Club is going to have a, what would he be called? King Stoic.

Speaker 5 Totemistic leader.

Speaker 6 The other side of the hill or the other side of the bay, Mussolini is perhaps not so bothered.

Speaker 5 I do not care about my ships.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, Ciano goes to see him, the foreign minister, who's his son-in-law, of course, goes to see him.

Speaker 6 A black day, the British, without warning, have attacked the Italian fleet at Anca in Taranto and have sunk the Dreadnought Cavour and seriously damaged the battleships Littorio and Duilio.

Speaker 6 These ships will remain out of the fight for many months. I thought I would find the Duce downhearted.

Speaker 6 Instead, he took the blow quite well and does not at the moment seem to have fully realised its gravity.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, we just worked out who's going to be Charno from now on.

Speaker 6 I thought it was similarly.

Speaker 5 I'll do King George VI, you do Charno.

Speaker 5 Okay, okay. So I'm King George VI and Goering.

Speaker 6 I'm Hitler and Charno. Okay.
And Churchill.

Speaker 5 You're Hitler and Charno. Churchill.

Speaker 5 And I'm Roosevelt.

Speaker 6 It's quite the portfolio. But,

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 for all this, a fortnight later, on the 27th of November, Admiral Capioni, with his remaining battleships, the Vittoria Veneto, which they kept trying to strike, and the Giulio Cesare, run a fight, fight a running battle with Somerville south of Sardinia around the usual east-west British convoy movements.

Speaker 6 And this is an action sometimes known as Spartavento or

Speaker 6 Capo Teolada or Operation Collard. So it's not like, yes, the Italian fleet does decide to decamp to Naples where it feels less exposed, but it's still prepared to mix it.
And only a fortnight later.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the idea that this is an overwhelming strike that changes everything isn't quite right. And there's bits of the Italian Navy that still have, that still, that are still well up for it, I think

Speaker 6 it's fair to say. And they have their advantages, which is they're fighting

Speaker 6 in their home waters that they they are reading english british ciphers and the navy can't read theirs they've shut them out so

Speaker 5 that they are i just don't i never get the impression at any point in the war that the the italian navy is really up for it though they get hammered at at um cape matapan and we should do a whole episode or series on that because that's a that's a great action you know and and they don't venture out much remember in 1942 in you know they get chased away don't they yeah but their their philosophy is to have a fleet in being.

Speaker 6 The idea is that you're a threat. There's a fleet in being, that the fleet exists, and that's its function is to be like a deterrent, essentially, rather than actually mix it up too much.

Speaker 5 Rather than aggressive.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Rather than necessarily aggressive.
It's the simple fact that it exists as a fleet in being. And so

Speaker 6 if that's your attitude, then going back to Naples, well, it's inconvenient, but it's not the end of the world, which is how that.

Speaker 5 Even so, I think the psychological blow of being hit by carrier-borne aircraft at night out of the blue, I mean, okay,

Speaker 5 they're awake to them coming, but they're not awake until they pick up that

Speaker 5 one reckey plane, but early on in the evening. You know, I think that must have been absolutely devastating for the Italians because they're suddenly thinking, yikes, we don't have any carriers.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, you know, we've missed out on that bit.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they must be thinking, well, we slightly kind of missed the boat on this one.

Speaker 5 It's great that we've got all these cruisers and stuff, but we don't have... This is what carriers can do, and we're kind of

Speaker 5 behind the ball here.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but the clue in it is application of air power means control of sea power. And it's only January

Speaker 6 when the Germans enter the air power war in the Mediterranean, when Illustrious is struck. It's only January.
It's only two months later.

Speaker 6 So this is quite a short air window that the fleet air arm has, actually. I mean,

Speaker 6 one of the questions that's worth asking isn't it a big, why isn't it a bigger strike? Why doesn't ABC insist on more sawfish? They don't do the follow-up raids.

Speaker 5 Well, don't forget, this is the first time they're doing it, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Well, yeah, yeah. Lister really regrets that Eagle wasn't able to join properly.
He thinks a greater weight of attack would have made it actually devastating for the Italian Navy.

Speaker 6 And rather than put the Italians into a fleet in being posture,

Speaker 6 would have actually struck.

Speaker 6 If you hit all the battleships and you sink them properly, or you blow up a magazine, because this is one of the things about this strike is they don't

Speaker 6 blow up a magazine. Like Wellham, like Wellham at Sidi Barani, where he does blow up the magazine on a depot ship and destroys a submarine as well.
They don't blow a magazine, which is also why

Speaker 6 the Italians treat Williamson and Scarlett, the prisoners of war, who are taken in this operation, they treat them well, because basically they haven't killed a thousand people on the Littorio.

Speaker 5 Yes, and it is interesting to think, isn't it, What would have happened if they had really totally destroyed, say, two of the or three of the battleships and a couple of cruisers?

Speaker 5 Then that really, really would be a blow, wouldn't it?

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 But don't forget, it is, you know, this is still, this is still only November 1940, you know, and it's brand new.

Speaker 6 You know, they tried it. They tried it on.
They've done a little bit of this in Dakar, but not so deliberately as they do here at Taranto.

Speaker 6 And the Japanese are watching, of course, and their main lesson that they draw is mass and and surprise.

Speaker 6 And that's why you have six aircraft carriers committed by the Japanese, 353-day aircraft in their strike on the 7th of December the following year.

Speaker 6 But they sink four battleships, right, with all that mass.

Speaker 6 Four damaged, other vessels damaged. Is that worth it in terms of bang for your buck?

Speaker 6 Particularly as at Pearl Harbor, you have the same problem as at Taranto, which is shallow moorings means ships can be pumped out and recovered, which limits the effect of your strike.

Speaker 6 Full surprise.

Speaker 5 Well, and also it launches Japan into a war which ultimately not going to win.

Speaker 6 Well, exactly.

Speaker 6 But if they really wanted to strike a greater blow, they should have struck American ships at sea, which would have been unrecoverable. In a way,

Speaker 6 the thing the Japanese learn is the wrong thing,

Speaker 6 which is that

Speaker 6 striking a fleet in harbor only gets you so far. These aren't would, you know, unless, of course, you hit a magazine and the whole thing goes up, right? But they don't, right? Yeah.

Speaker 6 This is interesting. And how big a window does it give

Speaker 6 Cunningham? How long is the strategic effect? And like I said earlier,

Speaker 6 given the games the Italians are playing, which is keeping the fleet intact, living on the threat rather than too much interdiction, you know, and obviously the thing that's coming, which is the air war, because everything we talked about with Malta is about the effect of air on the sea rather than sea sticking up for itself particularly.

Speaker 6 Is this the window, though, where you populate Malta with Spitfires, Jim, and use it in in an aggressive posture?

Speaker 5 Yes, it is. That's exactly what you do.

Speaker 5 There's missed opportunities, aren't there?

Speaker 5 We're always getting at the Germans for their missed opportunities, but there's definitely some missed opportunities here, aren't there?

Speaker 6 There are. But I think part of that is tangled up in the novelty of this attack.
They're experimenting. They're trying something.

Speaker 6 So the consequences

Speaker 6 aren't strategically factored in. You know, you've tried something novel tactically to try and deliver strategic effect.

Speaker 6 And the strategic effect actually is a thing you're not prepared to follow up on. And once this has succeeded,

Speaker 6 then the italian naval will bugger off for a bit and will will will invest malta properly will will will get invest in malta properly bring in the spitfires and can be aggressive and this is the window i think because i as i said it's january when illustrious is struck and loads of the men who flew in judgment are lost in the uh in in the strike on illustrious yeah so there we are yeah yeah amazing nevertheless wow what a great story though it's i mean it's amazing isn't it i know there's still taranto night and the wrong in the fleet air Armor course.

Speaker 6 November the 11th, where they raise a glass to their predecessors, because I think

Speaker 6 this has got absolutely everything you could possibly want in it.

Speaker 6 It's got pluck, it's got grit, it's got an unlikely hero in the form of the swordfish, it's got all these fabulous stoic fellows flying in. It's got the...

Speaker 6 I'm just, I mean, picture the scene of the Italian effort to drag the Littorio out

Speaker 6 through the, you know, mamma mia.

Speaker 5 I mean, just imagine it. As a story, what's not to like.
And the good news is, is that our great friend of the show, Roland White, is his next book is on Toronto.

Speaker 6 So, everyone, thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this story.

Speaker 6 We will be returning for a little bit more string bag action at the other end of the spectrum with string bags on the Arctic convoy in our next episode.

Speaker 5 Open air cockpits in the Arctic.

Speaker 6 Go to our Patreon, subscribe, or go to our Apple podcast channel and become an officer-class member, a fleet air arm officer-class member, because I'm beginning to think these are the greatest pilots of all time.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we will see you for our next episode in the Arctic. Thanks for listening, everybody.
Cheerio.

Speaker 5 Cheerio.

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