by Lee Jackson
“It’s a cloth-covered biplane.” Cunningham quelled exasperation. “It’s slow, and you need speed for an attack.”
“If I had a metal plane with similar capabilities, I’d use it, but I don’t. One advantage of the cloth skin is that we can repair holes easily. We can do it in the ship’s hangar with a needle and thread. That’s why it’s nicknamed the ‘Stringbag.’ But it’s stable and needs very little distance to take off or land, so it’s perfect for carrier operations. And it’s the only plane we have that can haul a torpedo off the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
Cunningham heaved a sigh. “You’ve got me there.”
“And as you well know,” Lyster pressed on, “not every plane can drop a tube and put it on target. How the missile hits the water is crucial—it can’t be slanted up or down when it immerses. It’s got to hit the trough of a wave, not the crest, and the aircraft must stay over it for a few seconds to ensure its proper orientation via a wire that then drops away. That maneuver dictates slower aircraft speed when it launches the torpedo. The Swordfish’s stall speed is fifty miles per hour. That gives us plenty of room to drop the tubes with the required attitude. We don’t have another aircraft to match that capability.”
Cunningham closed his eyes in thought and then re-opened them. “Suppose we approve this plan. What will our pilots face? What are the Italian defenses at Taranto?”
“They’re tough,” Lyster admitted grimly. “The numbers I provided are estimates, but we think they’re close to accurate. The Italians have thirteen gigantic electronic listening devices that can detect our aircraft out to thirty miles, so surprise will be mitigated. But at top speed, we can close that distance in about twelve minutes.”
“And you’re relying on surprise,” Cunningham interrupted with raised eyebrows. “Go on.”
“As near as we can tell, they have ninety barrage balloons surrounding the ships—”
“You’re going in at night?”
“Yes, sir, under moonlight.”
“The cables that anchor those balloons can shear off a wing.”
“We’ll pick a date with a good moon. We need it to be fairly bright.” Lyster grimaced inwardly at Cunningham’s expression of skepticism. “Shall I go on?”
“Of course. We must consider every option.”
Lyster breathed in deeply. “We estimate that the Italians have twenty batteries of heavy anti-aircraft guns there as well as four automatic canons, and over one hundred machine guns. Our pilots will have to dodge twenty-two search lights intended not only to spot them but also to blind them; and every ship is armed with anti-aircraft guns.”
He paused for breath.
“Anything else?” Cunningham inquired.
Lyster nodded. “Besides what I’ve mentioned, the fleet is surrounded by over four thousand yards of anti-torpedo nets down to twenty-four feet below the water’s surface. We’ve configured the torpedoes to run at thirty-one feet.”
Cunningham sat quietly, deep in thought. “God help our pilots if we do this thing,” he said at last.
“Don’t forget, sir, that we’ve practiced the type of tactics we’d employ, and we took out the French battleship Richelieu back in July with a Swordfish-launched torpedo. So, the question isn’t can we do it, but can we breach those defenses.”
Cunningham shook his head in doubt. “The Richelieu was in Dakar and lightly defended. As you just pointed out, our chaps will run a gauntlet.”
“And if we don’t do this raid, our shipping will most certainly run a continuous gauntlet, one we might not be able to protect against, and that will cost even more lives.” He pointed to a sheaf of documents on the conference table. “You’ll see in there that I intend to confuse the enemy by having every British naval ship in the Mediterranean put out to sea on execution day, and we’ll even have empty merchant convoys steaming through. Those elements of the plan should preserve the surprise a while longer. The listening devices are not like our radar—they won’t know the launch point or intended destination until the planes are nearly on top of them.”
Cunningham nodded and raised his hand in a placating gesture. “I get your point, Arthur. I really do, and I tend to agree. But I must feel confident with the details before I approve the plan. It’s complex despite the simplicity of the objective. Let’s go over it again a few times, shall we?”
Admiral Cunningham had given his approval reluctantly, specifying only that the battleships be hit with torpedoes and the lighter ships with bombs. Since then, the pilots had pored over maps and aerial photographs relentlessly until they pictured in their sleep the Taranto harbor and its ships; and they practiced maneuvers to the same degree.
Now, hearing the roar of the Swordfish engines and watching the planes move into position, Rear Admiral Lyster felt the same reluctance. His stomach churned, his throat grew tight with a lump, and his eyes teared. These are my chaps going into a firestorm, and fifty percent probably won’t return.
Even before plan execution, problems had arisen significant enough to imperil the mission. Lyster had planned for thirty planes to make the attack. However, the HMS Eagle was supposed to have lain nearby to launch fifteen of them. Unfortunately, the carrier had sustained battle damage in previous engagements. Its fuel system completely broke down, so it could play no part in the raid. The Illustrious could accommodate only five of Eagle’s planes, so the number of available Swordfish had reduced to twenty, and the Eagle had limped away with the remainder. As a result, the aerial assault force that lifted off was down a third from its intended firepower, reorganized into two flights with eleven fighters in one and nine in the other.
The pitch of the engine on the lead biplane, tail number L4A, raised to a smooth hum. Looking frail and rickety, the aircraft positioned itself on the deck, and the flight operations officer glanced at the admiral. Lyster nodded, the signal was relayed to the crew, and the Swordfish started down the deck, gained speed, and quickly bounded into the sky. It twisted slightly against the wind, banked right, and began a steady climb.
Lyster glanced at his watch. “That’ll be Hooch and Blood,” he muttered, referring to the pilot, Flight Commander Kenneth Williamson, and his navigator/observer, Lt. Norman Scarlett. “Off at 20:35 hours. God be with them.”
“Sir?” the watch officer standing nearby inquired, thinking the admiral had spoken to him.
Suddenly feeling very old, Lyster half-turned toward the man and shook his head. “It’s nothing.” He turned back and watched eleven more of the tiny, open-cockpit biplanes launch into the cold November sky illuminated by an almost full moon over a glimmering sea. Strung along each of their undercarriages was a torpedo, eleven feet long, eighteen inches in diameter, with three hundred and eighty-eight pounds of TNT.
As they lifted into the night air, Lyster muttered the names of the pilots and wished them Godspeed. When the last one had departed, he made his way to his quarters and closed the door.
An hour later, he returned to the same spot on the aircraft carrier’s island to watch the second flight prepare to take off into the night. Then, as two were raised via a huge elevator from the deck below, their wings became entangled. While repair crews scurried to resolve the situation, the other seven Swordfish flew into the dark sky. One of the two remaining aircraft was quickly fixed and sped after the flight. The other kite would take longer to mend.
Once more, Admiral Lyster watched them go, repeating the names of the crews and commending their lives to good fortune. The ship’s captain approached and stood beside him. “Are you all right, sir?”
Lyster turned to face him with a grim frown. “I am, thanks for asking.” He took a deep breath and peered through the moonlit heavens in the direction the Swordfish had gone. “I’ve never become accustomed to sending good men into harm’s way.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and added, “I hope I never do.”
3
Hooch hunched his shoulders against the wind and scanned to his left and right. They had been in the
air for over an hour. He flew at the center of the formation. By the light of the silvery moon, counting the planes in his squadron was easy: five out to his left and five more to his right. Ahead was a bank of clouds, but it did not appear particularly threatening or large. He saw little reason to divert around it, a maneuver that would use up time and fuel.
Behind him in the cockpit where the navigator/observer normally sat back-to-back with the gunner, Blood scrunched against the fuel tank that had been added for greater range. He scanned the sky and made out the other planes in the squadron, then glanced down, seeing nothing other than the vast, sparkling sea.
They flew through the cloud bank with little turbulence and emerged on the other side to a clear sky. Once more, Hooch checked left and right, and his gut dropped. He pressed the switch on his intercom and called back to Blood, “Are we missing one?”
Blood whirled back and forth, rising in his seat and stretching his neck for a better view. Then he dropped back down and leaned his head against the back of his cockpit. “We are,” he called. “Only four on the left. We’re missing L4M.”
Hooch groaned. Lieutenants Swayne and Buscall. Both good men. He had trained with them since entering flight school and had led them through other engagements. Fingering his radio button momentarily, he shook his head. Can’t break radio silence. I hope they either pressed on or made it back to the ship.
An hour behind Hooch and his squadron, Lieutenant Commander “Ginger” Hale, piloting L5A with Lieutenant Carline in the navigator’s seat, took stock of his undersized squadron. He was supposed to have left the ship with nine kites but saw quickly that only seven had made it into the air. An hour later, L5Q with Lieutenants Morford and Green peeled away, apparently with a mechanical problem, and returned to the Illustrious. That was disappointing, but by then, they were nearing the target area.
Hale grunted and pursed his lips. We’re down to six to do the job of fifteen.
Back on the deck of the Illustrious, Lieutenants Clifford and Going, the pilot and navigator of L5F, the second Swordfish that had been damaged on the elevator, scrambled to complete repairs. Several of the struts between the top and bottom of the right wing had broken. The two lieutenants had assisted the repair crews in lowering the plane back into the hangar, removing the damaged parts, and installing the new ones.
A half hour after their chums had departed, their aircraft trundled toward the end of the ship, gaining speed. Watching it take off, Lyster shook his head in wonder at the courage of the young pilot and navigator as they lifted alone into the moonlit sky.
Lieutenant Swayne, piloting L4M, scanned the coastline anxiously. “Can you confirm that is the right location?” he called over the intercom to Lieutenant Buscall in the observer’s seat.
“I’ve checked the maps and charts,” Buscall replied. “We’re in the right place.”
“Where is everyone?” Swayne circled back out to sea. “Keep your eyes peeled for our mates. Taranto knows we’re here.” Recalling the briefings about the listening devices, he expected that the Italians had heard their approach at least ten minutes earlier and had jumped into immediate battle stations. Already, searchlights probed the night sky, arcing back and forth, and a few anti-aircraft guns had shot flak, evident by their mid-air explosions and distant booms.
Swayne had not expected that L4M would be the only aircraft to have arrived at the Taranto harbor. “Keep the target area in sight,” he told Buscall. “I’ll fly out of range and orbit a while. If we go in alone, we’ll have every gun in the place aimed at us. It’ll be a suicide mission.”
“Roger. I’ll let you know if we’re getting too far out.”
While he flew, Swayne tried to think through how he could have arrived before everyone else. He had seen enough to know that the big battleships lay untouched, and nothing indicated battle damage to the harbor itself. So, he concluded, the rest of the squadron had not arrived.
When the whole unit had flown into the clouds, Swayne had not been concerned. They were wispy and intermittent, barely enough to be called a mist but sufficient to obscure his view of his mate, and for most of the time, the aircraft to his right had been in sight. He had experienced some buffeting, nothing worrisome, but when he emerged from the clouds, no other plane was in sight. Fearful that he might have fallen behind, he had opened the throttle.
“I think we got here early,” he called on the intercom.
Over the coastline in the target area, searchlights continued to sway back and forth across the sky, and mid-air flak explosions had become almost non-stop.
“I think you’re right. Surprise is blown. We’ve awakened the beast. But one good thing I can see is that there aren’t nearly as many barrage balloons as we’d been expecting. I’d say around thirty. That’s a little relief.”
“A little,” Swayne agreed.
Roughly two and a half hours after takeoff, Hooch and Blood in L4A, with the squadron abreast, saw the coastline in the distance. They also saw searchlights beaming into the night sky and puffs of smoke and bursts of flame from flak over the target. While they had expected the listening devices to alert the Italians that something threatening was on the way, they had not expected to find the enemy’s ground defenses wide awake, fully prepared, and already shooting a barrage skyward.
As they closed the distance to less than a mile, Lieutenants Kigell and Janvrin, in L4P, veered off, circled the southern harbor, Mar Grande, from the southeast to the northeast, and dropped magnesium flares that lit up the sky, illuminating the Italian battleships lying at anchor.
Lieutenants Lamb and Grieve followed in L5B; however, seeing that the whole area was already well illuminated, Lamb held back on dropping additional flares. Meanwhile, the other Swordfish swooped low, lined up on their targets, and skimmed the waves. As they closed the distance, the Italians ceased firing for fear of shooting each other.
Hooch and Blood led the way, wheeling over destroyers Lampo and Fulmine, taking aim at battleship Conte di Cavour, and splashing their torpedo. Lieutenants MaCauley and Wray in L4R circled to the north and attacked the same target from the opposite direction. MaCauley’s tube missed but Hooch’s hit, ripping a cavernous hole in the side of the ship.
As he banked away, Hooch’s satisfaction was short-lived. He climbed a bit, and then heard plinking as a barrage of bullets rained on his aircraft. It crashed into the water.
Swayne and Buscall had rejoined the squadron by then and zeroed in on the front of battleship Littorio from the southwest while Lieutenants Kemp and Bailey attacked the same ship in L4K from the northwest. Both Swordfish scored hits, tearing massive gashes in the ship’s hull. Flying low and close to the vessel, Swayne gulped and pulled up fast, barely clearing the ship’s mast.
E4F, one of the Swordfish transferred from the Eagle with Lieutenants Maund and Bull, flying with the last torpedo of the first wave, winged as low as possible from the west into Mar Grande, heading for the Vittorio Veneto. It dropped its torpedo, but to the pilot’s and observer’s disappointment, it ran aground without hitting its target.
The Swordfish carrying bombs fared no better. Lieutenants Murray and Paine in E5Q dropped their load on Libeccio, but none exploded. Lieutenants Sara and Bower in L4L could not get a clear shot at their target, so they dropped their bombs on a seaplane base, but saw no explosions. Forde and Mardell in L4H, after opting not to drop their flares, skirted the harbor and flew back to the southeast corner, where they set a field of fuel tanks ablaze with their bombs before heading home, dropping flares as they went to confuse the Italian gunners.
Just past midnight, the second wave, led by Lieutenant Commander Hale, flew in over the Taranto harbor to add to the destruction and confusion. One Swordfish that left the Illustrious late had caught up, so Hale attacked with seven of his nine aircraft.
Immediately, L4F with Lieutenants Skelton and Perkins, followed by L5B with Lieutenants Hamilton and Weekes, diverted to drop their flares on the near side of the harbor and continued to
strike the fuel-tank field again. To the north of the harbor, Hale and Carline lined up on the Littorio to their south. On their right, Lieutenants Torrens-Spence and Sutton flew abreast in L5K; and on their left, Lieutenants Bayly and Slaughter flew in E4H.
Suddenly, Bayly and Slaughter cut across the flightpath of the other two Swordfish. Then their aircraft exploded in a ball of fire and plummeted into the water.
Steeling themselves against the tragedy they had just witnessed, the pilots of the other two planes pressed on and splashed their tubes almost simultaneously. Moments later, the Littorio was hit for the third time, but by which torpedo, no one could tell.
Behind them, Lieutenants Lea and Jones in L5H bored in on the Caio Duilio, dropped their torpedo from eight hundred yards, and saw it hit its target. To escape, Lea then flew so low between the Zara and Fiuma that the Italians found themselves shooting each other while attempting to kill L5H; but with good fortune favoring the Brits, Lea and Jones escaped over the open sea.
While the other planes were delivering their munitions on their targets, Lieutenants Welham and Humphreys in E5H had circled to the north and descended, heading south. Their kite had been riddled with bullets in its flight but remained aloft and operated without difficulty, so Welham continued his mission. Flying low over the city, then back out over the harbor just above the water, he lined up on the fleet’s flagship, the Vittorio Veneto, and released his torpedo, missing his target. Then he flew through a gauntlet of gunfire on his way out to sea, heading for home.
The guns around the harbor at Taranto had fallen silent and the searchlights had switched off by the time that Lieutenants Clifford and Going, in their repaired and late-departing L5F, arrived at the battle scene. They circled, heading for the cruiser Trento in the northern part of the harbor, Mar Piccolo.
