R.N. at Taranto

Paramount in Great Britain's grand war strategy is knocking out Italy first, then coping with Hitler. This program began to show in sharp outline last fortnight when the British Middle East forces reoccupied Gallabat and took Italian prisoners near Kassala on the eastern Sudan front--when they struck by air at Naples, Brindisi, Durazzo and Valona from new air footholds in Crete (see p. 23), causing consternation in Rome and loud stories about the Pope's new air-raid shelter.

The true measure of Britain's determination to knock out Italy was not seen until last week when that taciturn Scot, Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham, took his Eastern Mediterranean Fleet on a thoroughgoing sweep of Mare Nostrum (the R. N. calls it "Cunningham's Pond"). All around the eastern circuit went Sir Andrew, even loitering for a while off Pantelleria (between Sicily and Africa) to try to lure forth the Italian Fleet. When it did not come, Sir Andrew ordered full steam for the Gulf of Taranto, in the Italian instep between the Calabrian toe and the heel on which Brindisi is the spur. In that instep, in the great naval base of Taranto, lay the bulk of Italy's fleet.

Then became apparent the weak point in Italy's naval policy. That country went in for super-fast battleships with thin skins, to raid and run, never stand and fight. And now Sir Andrew caught these greyhounds in kennel. As he plowed with his whole force after dark into the Gulf of Taranto, his advance scouts in the Strait of Otranto caught a convoy going to Porto Edda,* Albania, with supplies. They sank one ship outright, fired and probably sank two others, damaged one of the two escorting destroyers, which ran.

Sir Andrew's main fleet took a stand off Taranto's double harbor (see map). To prick the Italians into an action, he stabbed into the harbors with Fleet Air Arm planes from his carriers Illustrious and Eagle. First through the darkness went some light bombers, to drop flares and incendiaries and light up the scene for the real workmen. These were pilots of Fairey Swordfish torpedo-carrying planes, ancient-looking single-engine contraptions with enough wire between their wings to rig a hen yard. But the Swordfish, like the U. S. Navy's Douglas TBD-1, pack a terrible wallop between their nonretractable wheels. Each carrying an 18-inch torpedo, they came in low over the water, bearing down on a congregation of Fascist ships numbering well over 100.

An unusual thing was that Sir Andrew allowed reporters to be present. One of these wrote: "I could hear heavy explosions inside the bay. Back and forth all night long the planes operated. . . ."

With dawn, the British withdrew from Taranto. Their cruisers patrolled the wide waters until afternoon, then joined the big battlewagons in a return to Alexandria. Not even one Italian airplane came out to challenge their presence. British reconnaissance planes flew in and reported:

>One battleship of the new Littorio class (35,000 tons, 34 knots) down at the bows and heeled over.

>Two battleships of the Conte di Cavour class holed and beached.

>Several sunken "shapes" on the bottom of the inner harbor.

>The bridge between the inner and outer harbor a fiery arc.

If these reports were true, Italy had lost half the battleships of her line.

R. A. F. bombers from Greek bases soon followed up the Fleet Air Arm's work with an attack upon the naval dry-docks of Taranto. For it was not in Sir Andrew's mind to let the Italians repair their ships, in dock or by caisson work, as the Russians did after the Japanese opened the war on them with torpedoes in a snowstorm in 1904. The R. A. F. blasted the repair dock, and might be counted on, from its new bases in Crete, to complicate any and all salvage.

Significance. Britain already outnumbered the Axis in battleships, 19-to-12, allowing for the commissioning of five King George Vs and two German ships and both the Italian battleships abuilding. The stab at Taranto reduced the ratio locally from 6-to-4 in favor of Italy to 4-to-3 in favor of the British. But the action at Taranto meant a great deal more than the British gaining battle-force supremacy in the Mediterranean.

Strategically, it freed six or seven British cruisers from the Mediterranean theatre for convoy work on the high Atlantic, perhaps even for Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham's new commend in the Far East (see p. 26).

Tactically it proved for the first time in history that an airplane could sink a modern battleship under certain war conditions.

Politically the significance was enormous. To British home morale it was a bracer so stiff that even the terrific bombardment of Coventry (see p. 20) could not dull it. It served notice on Germany that the Italian Navy was a dangerously impotent ally. It gave the Greeks, and other interested small nations, profound new respect for the Royal Navy. It convinced many a formerly hopeless U. S. citizen that the British Empire could sufficiently take care of itself to deserve all the help it could get, and by seriously reducing Axis sea power made the seas that much freer for all the democracies.

London newspapers did not exaggerate much when they called the Taranto victory the most significant action of the war.

Italy tried to retrieve her shattered face by claiming, belatedly, that during Sir Andrew's sweep of the Mediterranean, an Italian submarine thrice torpedoed one of his battleships of the Ramillies class. Benito Mussolini blustered that only three ships had been hit at Taranto. only one badly damaged. London laughed. Her agents told her that a military court was sitting in Rome to discover who had let Taranto happen.

*Named for II Duce Mussolini's daughter.

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