Customer Reviews

Attack on Taranto

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the Autumn of 1940, France, Poland and Norway lay under Nazi occupation. Britain's cities were aflame from The Blitz and the RAF was stretched to the breaking point. In the Mediterranean the Suez Canal and Near East oil was endangered by Italy's advance into Egypt and by her modern and numerically superior fleet of battleships and cruisers. Russia was allied with Germany and the USA stood aloof. In this moment of utmost peril, 21 canvas-covered biplanes of the Royal Navy sank half the Italian battleship fleet as it lay in harbor. This success was immediately studied by the Japanese, who, only 13 months later, used its lessons at Pearl Harbor. The co-author of this book, Lt. Cmdr. JWG Wellham, RN, flew one of planes which attacked those Italian battleships.

This short history of the birth of one of the truly significant innovations in modern military tactics and technology is nicely written, very well researched (the co-author was a leading participant), and offers up just the kind of occassional riveting statements that military history buffs love, such as:
-the names of two African American pilots who flew biplane fighters for Haile Salasse against Mussolini (now there's college paper topic for you).
-that Adm. Yamamoto was once banned from casinos in Monaco because he won too much.
-that a German named Schwartzkoff (sp?) stole the plans of the first practical torpedo from a British engineer in the 19th century.

The story itself is short and economically written, but the book is beefed up with divergent historical lines of inquiry, from the overall strategic position of the British Mediteranean
fleet to the British use of of American Martin B-20's, a plane type apparently unknown to other WW-II history writers.

Although the narrative goes a little far afield once or twice, and makes some brisk statements begging for better source notes, it is an overall good read, about the right length, and should be in every 20th century naval historian's collection.

As the authors quite rightly put, this was the prelude to Pearl Harbor. The Italian Navy was stationed at this harbor and posed a threat to British sea routes to Egypt, India, Singapore, and Australia. A daring attack by 21 aircraft from a British aircraft carrier damaged three Italian battleships and put them out of action for six to nine months. Since they were in a heavily protected shallow harbor, it was indeed a daring attack, which the Japanese copied to place the American Pacific fleet out of action. The Japanese attack was on a much larger scale.
One of the authors was a member of the attack group, and he gives his own account in the battle.
This is a nice little read. The book is short and has plenty of photos. A determined reader could finish this book in two to three hours. Taranto was indeed the prelude the Pearl Harbor, but now few people realize this. With Lowry's perspective, this is good book about the Second World War.

The other reviews give a good overview but I will add a little. The 143 page book (including appendix, notes, bibliography and index but not including 16 pages of pictures) includes about nine pages on planning, 15 on the attack, and three pages on the post-attack. The rest of the book is more general with a good bit of coverage on Pearl Harbor and some minor actions. Appendix includes British Naval Aviation, Flight Crews at Taranto, Italian Naval Ships at Taranto and more. Because of the lack of maps and aerial photos, it is interesting to use a web aerial photo program like Google Earth to aid in following the action.

Another book with a major section on Taranto is "To War in a Stringbag," a Bantam War Book that covers many actions involving Swordfish airplanes. To me it was a better read.

Thomas Lowry and John Wellham have written a splendid concise study of one of the great tactical breakthroughs in modern warfare. While many talked about what the capabilities, roles and missions of sea based attack aviation could be in the 1930s and 1940s, Britain simply went out and did it. They identified a significant threat against their ability to project, sustain and protect power in the Mediterranean. They carefully studied the threat, identified key vulnerabilities, made a candid risk assessment, and then attacked.

The authors cover the attack phase of the operation very well. The attack itself was in peril from liftoff of the first heavily laden aircraft, but with good planning and a refusal to give up, the Brits pulled off a stunning surprise attack and victory over much stronger forces. Using speed (relative to the ability of the Italians to react, not necessarily the planes themselves) shock and surprise, the hammered the Italian forces.

The book would benefit from more maps, and more post mortem study of the operational and strategic effects of this defeat. As much as Mersa Matruh, this battle changed and shaped the way that the rest of the campaign in the Med would be fought.

A more detailed study of the weaponeering would also be of interest, on both the land defense side and the naval aviation. Specifically guns, bombs and torpedoes, there differences and different advantages and disadvantages would be of great interest. Further study of the different staff procedures and command structures that enabled the British to induce such chaos and destruction would be of interest. Lastly, a final third of the book could be devoted to comparing the Doolittle Raid, Pearl Harbor and Taranto, and then looking at the differences at Rabul, Coral Sea and Leyte Gulf over the subsequent years in the naval focused war in the Pacific.

This is the story of how a small force of obsolete British Swordfish torpedo planes flew into Taranto harbor, surprised the Italian fleet, and sank three battleships. The attack force consisted of about twenty torpedo bombers which flew from a single British carrier in the Mediterranian sea. Although this book is short, the author does a good job of explaining the events leading up to the attack, and how this small force managed to take the Italians complelely by surprise. Furthermore, the Japanese used this attack as a model for their Pearl Harbor operation. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Pearl Harbor. The similarities between the two attacks are uncanny.

On November 11, 1940, a British aircraft carrier launched its torpedo bombers on a sneak attack on the Italian fleet anchored in the heavily defended port of Taranto. The Italian fleet was heavily damaged, and its morale was shaken. Among those examining the attack was Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had similar plans of his own...

This short book examines the attack on Taranto, all the while showing how that attack influenced the later attack on Pearl Harbor. Along the way, the author treats the reader to a history of aircraft carriers, torpedoes, the Italian and Japanese navies, and just about everything pertinent to a full understanding of the two attacks. After the Taranto chapters, there is another examining the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway. The eight(!) appendices cover such topics as British naval aviation, the raid on Bomba, Libya, the names of the British flight crews at Taranto, and much more.

This book is very well done indeed! The author takes a World War 2 episode that is largely overlooked in many history books, examines it in depth, and makes the whole thing fascinating to read. My one complaint against the book is that it contains only one map, a map of the port of Taranto. However, the book does include a number of great black-and-white pictures that really add to the text. Overall, I would call this a great book, one worth your time to read!

"The Attack on Taranto" describes in tactical and exciting detail the British Royal Navy's dramatic raid on the Italian Naval Base at Taranto in November 1940, using carrier-based Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers. The raid at least temporarily crippled the Italian surface fleet at a crucial moment in the Second World War in the Mediterranean theater.

Authors Lowry and Wellham spend considerable time explaining both the planning and the execution of the mission, including its multi-faceted deception plan. As the authors repeatedly remark, the British fliers courageously made the attack at night in obsolete open-cockpit biplanes into the teeth of a heavily defended target. In fact, the Swordfish biplanes, nicknamed "stringbags", would provide good service at sea throughout the war.

Lowry and Wellham emphasize the parallels to the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, including the intense Japanese interest in Italian and German after-action reports and an inspection of the base at Taranto. Their further speculation on Pearl Harbor is perhaps less well-founded. "The Attack on Taranto" is well-recommended to student of naval aviation, as a solid account of a lesser-known but important event in the development of carrier aviation.

On January 23, 2011, it was announced in the Washington Post that the author, Tom Lowry, had just pleaded guilty to having criminally altered an important Lincoln document in the National Archives in the 1990s in order to pad his reputation. Regrettably, the statute of limitations has run out.