Swordfish, Taranto and carrier-landing culture

David Wragg's Swordfish history of the Taranto raid combines exceptional photographs with lively writing and quotations from both sides of the conflict. A dark Fleet Air Arm joke about whether a pilot can swim captures the fatalism surrounding a bad carrier landing at sea. The selected voices give the book as much to say about service culture as about the raid. Andrew Cunningham's barbed recollection of a lavish pre-war visit with Admiral Riccardi brings personality, professional judgment and retrospective wartime criticism into the story of the later attack on the Italian fleet.