The British Knock Out the Italian Fleet with Biplanes

The Fairey Swordfish as marked/painted for the Taranto attack

The planning for the attack on the Italian fleet at the harbor of Taranto began in earnest in 1938 during the Munich Crisis when it seemed that Europe was headed for war. Though boasting a force of six battleships, five cruisers and twenty destroyers at the start of the conflict that could have caused significant headaches for the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, Mussolini rarely ordered the fleet to sail far from the home port of Taranto and they would return at the earliest opportunity, failing to engage the British Mediterranean fleet. With the threat of war looming, captain of the HMS Glorious, Capt. Lumley Lyster, was asked to draw up an attack plan to knock out the Italian fleet while it sat in harbor. Essential to any attack given the strength of the defenses of the harbor would be surprise, necessitating a night attack. By the time 1940 had come around and maintaining the sea links with the British forces in North Africa took added importance, the need to proceed with the attack, codenamed "Operation Judgement", the trained Fairey Swordfish aircrews that trained aboard the HMS Glorious were now serving aboard the HMS Illustrious and under strict secrecy, the attack was planned for 12 October 1940 on Trafalgar Day. Unfortunately, a fire in the hangar deck of the Illustrious resulted in the Swordfish aircraft being drenched in saltwater, necessitating their clean up and repair. Also, the original attack plan called for the HMS Eagle to accompany the Illustrious on the attack, but Eagle had suffered damage from an accidental bomb explosion earlier in the year. As a result, some of Eagle's Swordfish and aircrew were transferred to the Illustrious. The attack was rescheduled for the night of 11/12 November 1940. 

Given the nature of the defenses based on the latest British reconnaissance, the first wave to attack Taranto would consist of twelve Swordfish, only six of which would carry torpedoes while the balance of aircraft carried bombs and flares. At the time, the conventional naval wisdom was that torpedoes were only usable in deep water, but the Royal Navy had modified their torpedoes to run in the shallow water of Taranto Harbor. The photos showed that the battleships were protected by torpedo nets, but they were standard keel-depth nets. The torpedoes used were configured to magnetically detonate below the ships' keels. 

Diagram of the attack on the Italian fleet

At 8:30pm the first wave took off from the HMS Illustrious. The gunners weren't carried, their place being taken by a supplemental fuel tank to allow a two-man crew to fly the 340-mile roundtrip mission. By 9:00pm the twelve aircraft were all airborne and they set off for Taranto. Several of the Swordfish became separated from the main formation and had to make their own way to the target- one pilot arrived at Taranto ahead of the main force and had to await the rest of the aircraft- some references indicate that this may have alerted the Italians. Arriving over the harbor at 11:00pm, the strike force immediately came under fire. One of the Swordfish peeled off from the group and dropped a series of flares at 7,500 feet along the eastern perimeter of Mar Grande, the outer harbor. A second Swordfish followed suit, illuminating the area for the rest of the strike force. Lt. Commander K. Williamson, the CO of No. 815 Squadron, made the first torpedo run against the battleship Conte di Cavour, blowing a hole in the side of the ship but getting shot down in the process. Two more Swordfish that accompanied Williamson then pressed their attack against the battleship Andrea Doria, which was unsuccessful. The last group of the first wave attacked two cruisers and four destroyers as well in Mar Piccolo, the inner harbor. The Swordfish's agility paid dividends as the seemingly archaic aircraft managed to weave around the barrage balloons and jink hard to throw off the anti-aircraft fire. 

HMS Illustrious with a Swordfish on the deck

With the first wave turning back for the Illustrious, the only aircraft shot down was that of their CO, Lt. Commander Williamson, who was taken prisoner along with his crewman. The second wave, under the lead of Lt. Commander J.W. Hale, the CO of No. 819 Squadron, had left the Illustrious thirty minutes after the first wave took off. Of the twelve Swordfish in the second wave, only eleven arrived at Taranto due to technical problem with the twelfth aircraft that forced it to return to the carrier. Arriving over the harbor at midnight, again the flare-dropping Swordfish lit up the area while the bomb and torpedo-armed aircraft set to work on the rest of the Italian battle fleet. Two aircraft attacked the battleship Littorio, but only one scored a hit. Another aircraft despite taking damage pressed an unsuccessful attack against the battleship Vittorio Veneto. The battleship Caio Duilio was also hit, and only one aircraft from the second wave was shot down, the two aircrew being killed. By 240am, the last of the Swordfish landed on the Illustrious. A third wave was planned the following night, but bad weather prevented a final blow to the Italian fleet. 

The attack was a stunning success by an aircraft that was older and slower than many of its contemporaries. Just 11 torpedoes and 48 bombs managed to knock out half of the Italian battle fleet at Taranto and while the defenders fired off over 22,000 rounds, only two aircraft were shot down, quite an impressive feat! The attack followed by the Battle of Cape Spartivento two weeks later and the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 consolidated the Royal Navy's control of the Mediterranean, hastening the defeat of the Axis. The planning staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy, at the time putting together the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor, studied the British attack at Taranto carefully and managed on 7 December 1941 to knock out more battleships in the process, but unlike the Mediterranean, the attack failed to shift the balance of power in the Pacific as the US Navy had shifted its fleet emphasis to the aircraft carrier as the new capital ship. 

Source: International Air Power Review, Volume 27, Winter 2010/11. "Warplane Classic- Fairey Swordfish- the Fleet Air Arm's enigmatic warrior" by Allan Laws, p125-129.

Development of the Harrier Ski-Jump

The development of the BAe Sea Harrier FRS.1 and the ski-jump are closely intertwined and the discussion one almost always leads to the discussion of the other. Hawker-Siddeley Aircraft, one of BAe's predecessor companies, had studied a naval Harrier variant as far back as 1969 as the P.1184 Maritime Harrier. When the Royal Navy awarded HSA a contract for naval Harrier variant in 1972, financial austerity was the watch word of the day in the British government and though based in part on the P.1184 Maritime Harrier, what would become the Sea Harrier FRS.1 would be a far less radical departure and minimum-change version of the land-based RAF Harrier GR.1.

In 1973 Royal Navy Lt. Commander David Taylor first formulated the ski-jump concept for V/STOL aircraft in the same class as the Harrier. His work was further developed in cooperation with the Hawker's Kingston division and the Ministry of Defence in sophisticated computer models followed by actual flight testing with an adjustable ski-jump built by HSA at the Royal Aircraft Establishment's main testing facility at Bedford.

One of the ski-jump's biggest proponents was John Farley, HSA's chief test pilot for the Harrier and Sea Harrier programs. During his test flights with early Harrier GR.1s off the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, he found that there were certain moments in the pitching and heaving of a carrier deck in rough seas that could play havoc with a fully-loaded Sea Harrier making an STOL run off the carrier deck. In fact, tests had shown that in some sea conditions, as little as 5 degrees of deck angle up or down either at the stern or bow could shut down flight operations completely.

Farley also noted that in a pitching carrier deck, the most stable point to land in VTOL mode was the center of the deck as the ship virtually pivoted about that point in rough seas. Ideally, a fully-loaded Sea Harrier without a ski-jump would need the full-length of the deck to take off, but this meant that launching and recovery flight operations couldn't be simultaneously undertaken. Testing with the ground-based ski-jump at RAE Bedford showed that a shorter takeoff run would be needed, allowing the forward half of the deck to be used for launching aircraft off the ski-jump and from the midpoint back used for recovery of Sea Harriers.

Farley himself made the first takeoff from the ski-jump at RAE Bedford on 5 August 1977 with the sixth production Harrier GR.1. The first series of tests had the ramp set at 6 degrees, then moved it up to 12 degrees and then finally to 20 degrees. With the ramp at its steepest 20 degree setting, Farley could get a Harrier airborne with as little as 42 knots of airspeed as the ramp provided a significant upward velocity vector that allowed the pilot time to pivot the nozzles back, clean up the aircraft and depart in nearly all but the worst sea conditions. In addition, should an emergency occur on takeoff from a ski-jump, there was valuable time to either jettison the stores or eject.

Testing further showed that the ski-jump reduced required wind-over-deck speed. As the upcoming Invincible class "Harrier carriers" were gas turbine powered, not needing higher speeds to achieve ideal wind-over-deck speeds meant a more inexpensive and less powerful powerplant would be needed for the ship, an added bonus in the atmosphere of financial austerity of the day.

It was also found that as the aircraft reached the ski-jump, there was a rapid increase in loading on the undercarriage and as a result, the design of the Sea Harrier was modified to incorporate structural reinforcement around the aft main undercarriage just below the blast deflectors of the aft nozzles.

The trials at RAE Bedford were tremendously successful and a 7 degree ski-jump was added to the already-completed HMS Invincible and to the HMS Illustrious. The lower-than-ideal angle was due to the presence of the forward Sea Dart SAM launcher on the bow. The last ship of the class, HMS Ark Royal, wasn't finished until 1985 an as such, it got a 40-foot deck extension and a 12 degree ski-jump, allowing it to launch a fully-loaded Sea Harrier. In 1986 the Invincible and Illustrious had their ski-jumps refitted to the same standard as the Ark Royal. In addition, when the HMS Hermes underwent its refit in 1979 from an assault carrier to one compatible with the Sea Harrier, it got a 12 degree ski-jump as well. The ski-jumps were crucial to Harrier GR.3 and Sea Harrier FRS.1 operations in the Falklands campaign in 1982.

The sea trials for the Sea Harrier FRS.1 began in October 1979 aboard the HMS Hermes and the first operational sea deployment took place in May 1980 aboard the HMS Invincible.

Source: BAe Sea Harrier (Warpaint Series No. 75) by Kev Darling. Warpaint Books Ltd, 2010, p1-8.