The familiar outline of the raid usually stops with Swordfish aircraft, an Italian harbour, damaged battleships, and a link to Pearl Harbor. That shorthand hides the institutional work behind the result. Royal Navy planners had considered using HMS Furious and Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo aircraft against an enemy fleet in harbour during the First World War. Taranto was the wartime culmination of a mature operational problem, years after aircraft had first been proposed as a way to reach a fleet sheltering in port.
Chapter · 1:30-3:25
Taranto as the product of long preparation
Taranto grew out of decades of naval-air thinking, planning, and practice before elderly biplanes struck the Italian fleet.