This short book provides an extraordinary detailed look at the British navy's raid with aircraft from the British carrier iIllustrious on the Italian navy in its harbor at Taranto in November 1940. A successful attack that sank or crippled one half of the available Italian battleships. The attack improved British morale both in the Mediterranean and in Britain. It may have provided ideas for the later Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Although there have been several previous books on this single topic, none of them provide the degree of details on background planning and the movement of British task forces in the Mediterranean which greatly confused the Italians, or give as much information about the attacks delivered by individual aircraft.If you want to know how the British were able to launch and recover aircraft from carriers at night this is an excellent source. Colored landing lights visible from only directly behind the carrier and lighted floats dropped overboard to guide landings are part of the answer. If you want to know how British torpedoes were made to work in the relatively shallow water of Taranto harbor this is the book to read.Also emphasized is background on the training of British navy carriers and Fleet Air Arm pilots which was ahead of both the United States and Japan in its capability to attack at night. When I finished this book I was much more impressed with the performance of the Royal Navy early in World War II than I had been. The RN had understood its limitations and turned some of them into strengths, although it took the experience of being bombed off Norway and Crete by the Germans to bring home the weakness of its anti-aircraft artillery and the importance of fighter protection to the fleet at sea.Still this book has disappoints in two ways. First, the editing is poor. For example, on the first page of the first chapter the appeasement at Munich is dated to 1939 instead of 1938. On page 16, the Italian base of Cagliari raided by British naval aircraft just days before Taranto is placed in Sicily, when it actually in Sardinia. Occasionally British leaders and ships are thrown into the narration a few pages before the reader is told what role they play or what type of ships they are. Later in the book the author seems not to know that the carrier Illustrious suffered damage to her interior space when one German bomb exploded in a lowered aircraft hoist. One day of careful editing by a knowledgeable reader would have made this a better book.The second disappoint is that they author wants to tell the story of an American naval officer who was able to break neutrality laws and sail aboard British warships before the US declared war on Germany. This man, then Lt. Commander John Opie, was on Illustrious, during the Taranto attack. His reports of actual combat operations were of great potential value to the US navy before the war, and the author feels that if they had been better used they could have been of almost invaluable. Especially given that Taranto should have provided great doubt about the safety of Pearl Harbor as a protected harbor for the US Pacific Fleet. That the author wanted to tell this story is not the problem.Unfortunately the story of Lt. Commander Opie, is told in the final and mostly independent half of the the book, I would have liked them to be tied together more closely. A few days of editing could have accomplished this task. That being written, the author's insights on the handling - or mishandling - of Opie's reports and those of other US officers familiar with British naval operations early in World War II is not encouraging. They did not lead to much operational learning from our British friends. In fact decisions by everyone from the Admiral Kimmel, Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, to Admiral Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, led to the American disaster at Pearl Harbor, where we learned the hard way from our enemies.The story of Lt, Commander Opie was largely forgotten, until the publication of this book. I am glad that someone has told his story.

The British Royal Navy's hugely daring and successful 1940 strike against the Italian Navy's battleships at their fortified base at Taranto, on the mainland in the instep of the Italian "boot," ranks high among the most sensational feats of arms in modern times. More than that, however, it was epoch-making, the first clear demonstration of the potential of the aircraft carrier to deliver powerful and decisive strikes against major, heavily protected targets.This slim book opens by succinctly and clearly describing the planning and training that permitted just twenty low-powered fabric-covered biplanes, already quite obsolete by 1940 standards, to put three battleships (one quite modern and two extensively modernized) out of action for many months, for the loss of only ten percent of the attackers. The action is followed from preliminaries months before through the raid itself and the successful retirement of the attacking force, all but unscathed. There are photos of one of the Fairey Swordfish aircraft and of HMS Illustrious, the carrier that launched the raid, and two sketch maps give an idea of the complex operations mounted by the British to confuse their foes -- quite successfully.Another, briefer chapter tells the remarkable story of how a 38-year old U.S. Navy surface officer, Lt. Cdr. John Opie, came to be sailing aboard the carrier -- more than a year before America entered the war -- and outlines the reports he made of this and other Royal Navy actions, and what became of them in the U.S. Navy. Also briefly described is Opie's career from his Annapolis graduation in 1924 to his retirement as a "tombstone" rear admiral thirty years later. All this is the fruit of impressive and original research in the U.S. Navy's archives, carefully and fully documented in the end notes.Finally, the various consequences and might-have-beens are explored, with particular emphasis on the impact (and lack of impact) of the raid on Japanese planning for the Pearl Harbor raid, more than a year later, and the impact (and lack of impact) of Opie's reports on U.S. Navy preparations to defend its battleships at Pearl Harbor. This too draws extensively on original research.There isn't a lot of smell of salt air or cordite smoke in this account, but it is a clear, well-thought out, unsensational treatment that introduces important new information. Definitely recommended.This title also is available for Kindle:

Taranto: The Raid, The Observer, The Aftermath

Taranto, The Raid, The Observer, The Aftermath, by Christopher Patrick O'Connor is a well written, easy to read book on the British raid on the Italian Fleet anchored at the harbor of Taranto on November 11, 1940. This raid is often compared to Pearl Harbor and is said to have been deeply studied by the Japanese in planning the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.Mr. O'Connor covers the raid in detail and offers up a little known fact - the Americans had a military observer on the British Aircraft carrier that launched the attack and that observer wrote a detailed account of the raid. Mr. O'Connor points out that the report did not receive proper attention in the US or at Pearl Harbor. The report could have forewarned the Americans that the shallow depth of Pearl Harbor would not hinder aerial launched torpedoes. The observer, Lt Commander John Opie, was also denied a request to brief the officers at Pearl Harbor about the British raid. Such a briefing may have saved the lives of many Americans on December 7, 1941.I think the best part of the book is the Aftermath section that deals with the impact of the attack on various nations after they learned of the attack. This section was most interesting, especially the impact on Japan. It may be that the Italian's use of wooden torpedo fins to lessen the dive of a torpedo after dropping from an aircraft was discovered by the Japanese when then visited the harbor at Taranto to study the attack. Mr. O'Connor covers this almost unknown part of the story well.I would have enjoyed a Table of Contents and an Index but in such a short book (94 pages) they are probably not needed. Mr. O'Connor depends on Fuchida, the leader of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for some details; however, Mr. Fuchida has been shown to be a most unreliable source (The Shattered Sword, and Attack On Pearl Harbor, Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions by Zimm). For reasons hard to fathom, Mr. Fuchida clearly economical with the truth when discussing details of the Pearl Harbor attack and about the rest of the Pacific War.A more through discussion of the Italian Fleet and the philosophy behind its construction would have added to the book. The Italians traded armor for speed and it didn't work out so well for them. Turns out aircraft can outrun ships. Another topic of interest would have been the Italian reliance on listening devices rather than radar to detect the approach of aircraft. While Mr. O'Connor did not spend much time on this it is fascinating to me. Why did the Italians take this route, how did they test these devices, and did they work in any fashion?Overall I enjoyed Taranto and would recommend it to anyone interested in WWII or Naval Warfare.AD2