The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbor

by Thomas P Lowry, John W.G. Wellham

Overview

On November 11, 1940, 21 slow, canvas-covered British warplanes, launched from the carrier Illustrious, attacked the harbor at the Italian port of Taranto and put most of the Italian navy out of commission. This all-but-forgotten operation, the authors argue, deserves historical recognition as an inspirational precedent for the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor 13 months later. Taranto demonstrated that battleships in a shallow, heavily defended harbor could be sunk by a handful of torpedo-bombers. That lesson Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, learned well-while the American military virtually ignored it.   "By this single stroke the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean was decisively altered." –Winston S. Churchill

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811766784
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/14/2023
Series:	Stackpole Classics
Sold by:	OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	174
File size:	7 MB

Table of Contents

	Foreword	ix
	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xiii
1	The Curtain Rises	1
2	Two Worried Admirals	9
3	The Formidable Stringbag	21
4	Platforms and Weapons	29
5	The Italian Navy and Air Force	41
6	Malta and the Dog Mange Cure	51
7	The Plan	57
8	Murphy's Law and the Final Plan	61
9	Judgment Night	67
10	Volleyed and Thundered	73
11	The Morning After	83
12	ABC Equals Z	87
13	Applying the Hard Lessons	95
14	The Summing Up	101
	Appendixes
A.	British Naval Aviation	111
B.	The Raid on Bomba	115
C.	Flight Crews at Taranto	117
D.	Italian Naval Ships at Taranto	119
E.	Maximum Speeds of Planes in Use in 1940-41	121
F.	Midway	123
G.	Comparative Ranks	125
H.	British Abbreviations	127
	Notes	129
	Bibliography	135
	Index	139

Editorial Reviews

This book portrays, in a most readable form, one of the daring acts of naval power that greatly acted to turn the fortunes of war at a time of grave peril not only for Britain but for all the Western world. The author shows that Taranto was an unmistakable blueprint for the shattering attack on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Attack on Taranto is not only a book for the naval historian, but also for the lay reader. It must be read. –Group Captain J.F.W. Pembridge AFC, RAF (Ret.)

J. F. W. Pembridge

The Attack on Taranto is far more than a ‘prelude.’ If this exciting, convincing book had been published in 1940, it could well have prevented the disaster of Pearl Harbor. As it is, Dr. Lowery and Cdr. Wellham show how America must always be alert to the activities of our enemies and those of our Allies, too, so as to avoid ‘future military surprises.’” –Bruce Lee, coauthor of Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement, and author of Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II.

Bruce Lee