The Forgotten European Pearl Harbor That Laid the Blueprint for Pearl Habor

Air raid sirens blared and curtains of tracer rounds rose into the sky because the ominous drone of plane engines grew ever nearer. Instantly, a flight of enemy plane swooped low over the sleeping anchorage, unleashing their lethal cargo of torpedoes and bombs onto an unsuspecting fleet. Throughout, geysers of water and flame erupted into the air, lighting up the harbour in infernal shades of yellow and orange. Anti-aircraft gunners desperately crammed the air with a hail of metal and explosives, however nonetheless the plane stored coming. In little greater than an hour, it was throughout. When the smoke lastly cleared, three mighty battleships – the pleasure of the fleet – lay at backside of the harbour.

Whereas this scene may sound acquainted, it did not happen on December 7, 1941 in Hawaii. The ships weren’t American however Italian, and the attacking plane not Japanese however British. On November 11, 1940, greater than a 12 months earlier than America’s Day of Infamy, the Royal Navy launched the first-ever provider airstrike towards an enemy fleet at anchorage, attacking the Italian Navy’s dwelling port of Taranto. The raid perpetually modified naval warfare, heralding the ascendancy of the plane provider and setting the blueprint for a later, extra well-known shock assault. That is the story of Operation Judgement, Italy’s forgotten Pearl Harbor.

Whereas at the moment the armed forces Fascist Italy are remembered as little greater than a punchline, the nation did possess one formidable army asset: its Navy. In 1939, the Regia Marina numbered some 560 ships, together with 60 destroyers, 26 cruisers, and seven battleships like ultra-modern Littorio and Vittorio Veneto. Whereas Italy’s ally Nazi Germany had a strong land military, its floor navy was very small and posed little menace to Britain and its abroad empire. Nonetheless, on June 10, 1940, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared battle on Britain and France. That very same day, Italian forces invaded the south of France, whereas 4 months later Mussolini launched an invasion of Greece. Italy’s entry into the Second World Warfare dramatically upset the stability of energy within the Mediterranean, threatening Britain’s entry to her colonies by way of the Suez Canal and putting provide strains between Egypt, Malta, and Greece inside vary of Italian plane. Not solely did this drive British delivery was to take the lengthy path to India, Asia, and Egypt across the Cape of Good Hope – significantly hampering logistics – however the British Mediterranean fleet was pressured to function as a single unit lest smaller fight teams be picked off by the Italians.

But regardless of its strategic benefit, the Regia Marina was reluctant to sail out and have interaction British naval forces instantly. This hesitance was on account of Italy’s weak industrial base, which was unable to shortly exchange any losses sustained in fight – particularly the massive battleships. In consequence, Italian Fleet largely remained in its important anchorage of Taranto within the “heel” of the Italian peninsula serving as a fleet in being.

This technique had been utilized by navies for greater than 300 years, permitting fleets to exert affect over an space with out risking its destruction by participating in direct battle.

For the British, this state of affairs was untenable. If the Regia Marina wouldn’t sail out and battle, then the Royal Navy must carry the battle to them. Plans to assault the Italian fleet at Taranto dated all the way in which again to Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia – at the moment Ethiopia – in 1935. In the course of the Munich Disaster of 1938, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, grew involved concerning the menace posed by Italian forces within the area, and suggested his workers to overview all current plans for attacking Taranto. Quickly after, Pound was approached by Sir Arthur Lyster, captain of the plane provider HMS Superb, who steered an aerial assault by carrier-borne torpedo bombers as the very best technique of crippling the Italian fleet. Pound agreed with this evaluation, and in August 1939 suggested his alternative, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, to hold on planning the assault, now referred to as Operation Judgement.

The challenges dealing with the Royal Navy had been immense. For one factor, the Royal Navy’s major torpedo bomber in 1940 was the ungainly-looking Fairey Swordfish. Although launched in 1936, the Swordfish was a relic of the earlier battle: an old school, three-seat fabric-covered biplane with a high velocity of barely 230 kilometres per hour. But regardless of this, the Swordfish proved surprisingly sturdy, dependable, and versatile, able to carrying such a seemingly limitless number of ordnance and tools that its crews affectionately nicknamed it the “stringbag.” To maximise shock and aircrew survival, planners determined to assault Taranto below the quilt of darkness. Nonetheless, casualties as excessive as 50% had been predicted.

The plane provider HMS Eagle was chosen for the operation, her 24 Swordfish plane being fitted with 270 litre auxiliary gasoline tanks to permit them to achieve their goal. These tanks had been put in within the centre observer’s place, with the observer being moved to the rear gunner’s place. Half the plane had been armed with torpedoes and the opposite half with 250-pound bombs and flares, with the latter instructed to drop their payloads across the harbour to backlight the ships for the torpedo bombers and distract Italian air defences.

Nonetheless, there was one other, extra sensible drawback. Aerial torpedoes of the interval may solely be utilized in water a minimum of 23 metres deep, in any other case they’d bury themselves within the seafloor earlier than levelling off. Taranto harbour, in the meantime, was solely 12 metres deep. Fortunately, the British developed a sublime resolution to this drawback within the type of a spool of wire related to the nostril of the torpedo. When the torpedo was launched, the wire pulled up on the nostril, inflicting it to hit the water horizontally and stage off at a a lot shallower depth.

Operation Judgement was initially scheduled for October 21, 1940 – the one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Nonetheless, on October 18, a mechanic aboard HMS Eagle was becoming an auxiliary gasoline tank to a Swordfish when he dropped one in all his instruments, placing a spark and setting off an aviation gasoline hearth that destroyed two plane and broken three extra. The operation was thus postponed to November 11 – the date of the subsequent full moon. Extra unhealthy luck got here on November 5 when HMS Eagle’s aviation gasoline system was found to be defective. Her air arm was thus transferred to the extra trendy provider HMS Illustrious. Then, on November 9 and 10, contaminated gasoline in one in all Illustrious’s gasoline tanks induced three of her Swordfish to expertise engine failure and drop into the ocean, leaving 21 plane to hold out the Taranto assault.

However there was some excellent news. Within the weeks main as much as the assault, British Martin Maryland reconnaissance plane based mostly on Malta flew over Taranto to {photograph} the harbour and its defences. These pictures revealed that the majority of the Italian Fleet was current, together with the battleships Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Andrea Doria, Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare, and Caio Duilio; the cruisers Pola, Zara, Goriza, Fiume, Trento, Trieste, and Bolzano; and eight destroyers. The battleships had been moored within the giant outer harbour, whereas many of the cruisers and destroyers had been berthed within the smaller inside harbour, related to the outer harbour by a small canal. Not solely that, however the ships had been far much less well-defended than the British had anticipated. Whereas the harbour was initially protected by 90 barrage balloons, 60 of those had been destroyed in a storm on November 6 and never but changed. And whereas ships at anchor are usually protected by screens of anti-torpedo nets, the Italians had scheduled a gunnery train at sea for November 11 and spent a lot of that morning eradicating the nets. The train was finally cancelled, however many of the nets had not been reinstalled. The British would by no means have a greater likelihood.

To disguise the actions of the raiding drive, Operation Judgement was built-in into the a lot bigger Operation MB8, a sequence escorted convoys carrying 2,000 reinforcements and a whole lot of tons of provides from Alexandria and Gibraltar to the beleaguered island of Malta. The principle strike drive, composed of HMS Illustrious and the battleships HMS Ramillies, Warspite, Valiant, and Malaya, sailed from Alexandria on November 4 and met up with the cruisers HMS York and Gloucester and three destroyers then escorting Convoy MW3. This convoy then linked up with the duty drive for Operation Coat, comprising the battleship HMS Barham, the cruisers HMS Berwick and Glasgow, and three destroyers; whereupon Illustrious, Berwick, York, Gloucester, and Glasgow together with the destroyers HMS Hyperion, Ilex, Hasty, and Havelock cut up off and gathered off the Greek island of Cephalonia, round 270 kilometres from Taranto. As deliberate, the complexity of this operation succeeded in complicated the Italians. Nonetheless, a remaining reconnaissance flight by a Brief Sunderland flying boat on the day of the operation made it clear that some type of assault was imminent. However with the Regia Marina nonetheless reluctant to sail out and face the Royal Navy instantly and Taranto harbour missing radar, the defenders may do little however watch and wait.

The primary wave of 12 Swordfish plane, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Kenneth “Hooch” Williamson, took off from Illustrious simply earlier than 9 P.M. on November 11. Although the flight quickly encountered thick fog, they managed to carry formation – besides, that’s, for the plane flown by Lieutenant Ian Swayne. Discovering himself separated from the flight and believing he had fallen behind, Swayne accelerated in an try to catch up. In actuality, he pulled far forward, reaching Taranto a full quarter-hour forward of the opposite plane. The sound of his plane’s engine was picked up by Italian sonic detectors and alerted the harbour’s defences, whose almost 300 anti-aircraft weapons started lighting up the sky with tracer rounds. However the trailing 11 plane pressed on, as pilot Richard Janvrin later recalled:

“We simply needed to get by means of it and it didn’t do a lot to us. You didn’t suppose you might be hit by it.”

The principle drive reached Taranto at 10:58, whereupon one of many bombers dropped sixteen parachute flares east of the harbour earlier than attacking an oil tank farm. Subsequent, three torpedo bombers led by Commander Williamson attacked the battleship Conte de Cavour, with the lead plane scoring one hit that blasted an 8-metre gap beneath the waterline. However whereas banking away, Williamson’s wingtip struck the water and the plane crashed:

“I fell out of the airplane. We had been six ft above the water, so it wasn’t an extended fall. The anti-aircraft hearth from the shore batteries was so heavy and the water was swirling.”

Williamson and his observer, Lieutenant N.J. ‘Blood’ Scarlett (now how’s that for a badass nickname?) survived by clinging to the wreckage of their plane and had been quickly captured, spending the remainder of the battle as Prisoners of Warfare.

Underneath heavy hearth from Italian shore batteries, the remaining two plane pressed dwelling a torpedo assault towards the battleship Andrea Doria, however had been unsuccessful. Then, three extra Swordfish attacked from the north, hitting the battleship Littorio with two torpedoes and narrowly lacking the Vittorio Veneto. In the meantime, the bomber drive hit two cruisers with one bomb every and straddled 4 destroyers.

Again close to Cephalonia, the second wave, led by Lieutenant Commander J.W. Hale, started launching from Illustrious round 9:20. Whereas lining up for takeoff, the final two plane, flown by Lieutenant W.D. Morford and Lieutenant E.W. Clifford, ran into one another. Whereas Morford was capable of take off, Clifford was held again so restore crews may repair his broken plane. This took round quarter-hour, whereupon Clifford took off and headed for Taranto, assured that he may meet up with the remainder of the flight. In the meantime, the harm to Morford’s plane proved extra critical than initially thought, and shortly after takeoff his auxiliary gasoline tank broke free and plunged into the ocean. Unable to make it to the goal, Morford returned to Illustrious.

The primary seven plane of the second wave arrived at Taranto shortly earlier than midnight. Because the bombers dropped their flares across the harbour, three torpedo bombers descended on the battleships, hitting the Littorio once more and narrowly lacking the Vittorio Veneto. One other plane attacked the Duilio and scored successful, flooding each her ahead magazines. One plane, crewed by Lieutenant G. Baylet and Lieutenant H. Slaughter, was struck by anti-aircraft hearth from the cruiser Goriza and plunged into the harbour. In contrast to Williamson and Scarlett, nevertheless, each airmen perished. quarter-hour later, as the remainder of the plane had been departing, Lieutenant Clifford lastly arrived and made a dive-bombing assault on the cruiser Trento. Sadly, his bomb was faulty, punching a gap within the ship’s deck however failing to blow up. Nonetheless, Clifford managed to flee the harbour in a single piece and, at 2:39 AM, was the final to land aboard Illustrious. The raid on Taranto was over – or so the exhausted airmen thought. To their horror, Admiral Cunningham and Captain Lyster introduced their intention to assault once more the next evening, prompting one airmen to comment: “They solely requested the Gentle Brigade to do it as soon as!” Mercifully, foul climate prevented the remaining plane from launching, and the duty drive returned to Alexandria.

Operation Judgement was a shocking success. In solely 65 minutes, 20 plane and eleven torpedoes sank the Littorio, Conte de Cavour, and Duilio, knocking out half of Italy’s battleship drive at a stroke. The bombers had been much less profitable, destroying a seaplane hangar and evenly damaging an oil tank farm, three cruisers, and two destroyers. And whereas anti-aircraft batteries on shore and aboard the ships had fired almost 13,500 shells, they solely succeeded in taking pictures down two plane and killing two British airmen. In the meantime, 59 Italian personnel had been killed and 600 wounded. Considerably, the Italians did not activate their searchlights or get any fighters into the air, aiding the British success. The assault was a major turning level in naval warfare, demonstrating that the plane provider, not the battleship, was now king of the seas. Now not had been ships secure in dwelling port, rendering the age-old idea of the fleet in being fully out of date. As Admiral Cunningham later remarked:

“In a complete flying time of six and a half hours—provider to provider—twenty plane had inflicted extra harm upon the Italian fleet than was inflicted upon the German Excessive Seas Fleet within the daylight motion on the Battle of Jutland….[the battle] ought to be remembered perpetually as having proven as soon as and for all that within the Fleet Air Arm the Navy has its most devastating weapon.”

The assault additionally demonstrated the stunning effectiveness of the supposedly out of date Fairey Swordfish, which might later play a key position in sinking the German battleship Bismarck and have become a formidable weapon within the battle towards German U-boats within the North Atlantic. Certainly, the venerable “stringbag” even proved superior to the plane designed to switch it, the bigger and extra trendy Fairey Albacore.

But regardless of its historic significance, in strategic phrases Operation Judgement was much less profitable than had been hoped. Cunningham’s intention was to cripple each the Italian fleet and the Regia Marina’s morale, discouraging them from sortieing towards the Royal Navy and permitting the Mediterranean fleet to be extra successfully cut up into two provider battlegroups. As he put it:

“The Taranto present has freed up our fingers significantly & I hope now to shake these damned Eyeties up a bit. I don’t suppose their remaining three battleships will face us and in the event that they do I’m fairly ready to take them on with solely two.”

Initially, a minimum of, this aim appeared to have been achieved. Within the wake of the assault, the Italians moved their undamaged ships to Naples till the defences at Taranto may very well be sufficiently bolstered. In the meantime, salvage and restore work started on the Littorio, which re-entered service 4 months later. Resulting from lack of sources, repairs to the opposite two battleships took significantly longer. Duilio returned to service after seven months, whereas Conte de Cavour was not but prepared when Italy capitulated and switched sides in September 1943.

But when Cunningham hoped to knock the Italian Navy out of the battle and disrupt Axis provide convoys to North Africa, he was to be bitterly dissatisfied. In truth, between October 1940 and January 1941 Italian shipments to Libya elevated by greater than 12,000 tons per 30 days. And whereas the assault on Taranto had made Admiral Inigo Campioni, commander of the Regia Marina, extra cautious, he nonetheless launched quite a few harmful raids towards allied provide convoys within the Mediterranean – the primary such motion going down simply 5 days in a while November 17. However, the Regia Marina would by no means once more be the dominant naval drive within the Mediterranean.

It’s usually claimed that the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was instantly impressed by Operation Judgement. Certainly, within the wake of the assault, Lieutenant Commander Takeshi Naito, assistant Japanese naval attaché to Berlin, flew to Taranto to research the harm first-hand. In October 1941, Naito mentioned his findings with Commander Minoru Genda, who deliberate the Pearl Harbor assault, and Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the air armada. Nonetheless, the connection between the 2 assaults is usually exaggerated, for by this level planning for the Pearl Harbor operation was already properly underway. Moreover, the Imperial Navy had solved the issue of torpedoing ships in shallow harbours lengthy earlier than Taranto, although as an alternative of attaching a wire to the nostril just like the British, they fitted their torpedoes with breakaway picket noses and tail fins to make them run shallower. Certainly, about the one factor Japanese planners gained from Takeshi Naito’s report was affirmation {that a} torpedo assault towards a shallow harbour was possible – a truth confirmed by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida in a 1964 interview.

However whereas the Japanese had little to study from the teachings of Taranto, the US most actually did. However for numerous causes the U.S. Navy did not act on these classes – with tragic outcomes. On November 22, simply ten days after the Taranto raid, Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark wrote to Admiral James O. Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet, requesting the set up of extra torpedo netting round ships at Pearl Harbour. Richardson refused, citing a scarcity of area and sources. Stark continued to specific concern a few Taranto-style assault, and in early December tasked Commander Walter C. Ansel of the Navy’s Warfare Plans Division with getting ready a complete report on the safety of Pearl Harbor. This report, submitted on January 24, painted a tragic image of Pearl Harbor’s defences and included an extended listing of really useful enhancements. In response, Secretary of Warfare Henry L. Stimson authorised the stationing of extra radar units, fighter plane, and antiaircraft weapons across the harbour.

Stark’s considerations had been shared by a number of others within the Navy hierarchy, together with Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, Lieutenant Commander Herbert F. Eckberg, and Lieutenant Commander John Opie, who had been a naval attaché aboard HMS Illustrious throughout Operation Judgement and had submitted an in depth report on the assault to the Navy Division instantly after docking in Alexandria. But regardless of these concerted efforts to jolt the Navy out of its complacency, sensible measures to enhance Pearl Harbor’s defences quickly grew to become mired in a tangle of bureaucratic inertia and outdated pondering. Admiral Richardson downplayed the chance of an aerial assault, citing components such because the steep hills surrounding the harbour, the abundance of antiaircraft weapons and – astoundingly – the shallow depth of the harbour itself. Admiral Husband Kimmel, who changed Richardson on January 7, 1941, repeated these arguments, additional stating that additional torpedo nets had been too costly and inconvenient and sustaining, towards all proof, that aerial torpedoes may solely be dropped in water a minimum of 22 metres deep. He maintained this place all the way in which as much as the morning of December 7, 1941, when he was confirmed fully, catastrophically improper – however that , expensive viewers, is a topic for an additional video.

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