Night attack makes torpedo-aircrew risk count

Royal Navy planners studied the chance of hitting and whether the trained crews and aircraft were likely to survive. Torpedo-bomber personnel were treated as an elite whose dangerous work should be paired with a weapon system that justified the risk. Night attacks reduced the fighter problem and gave a formation a better chance to reach release position against an enemy fleet. The Taranto crews' uncertainty about who had survived conveys the psychological cost even when the attack succeeded. The Committee of Imperial Defence maintained a harbor-attack subcommittee, showing that striking a fleet in sanctuary was an institutional objective carried forward from the frustration of World War I.