The Whale Has Wings Vol 2 - Taranto to Singapore Read Free

an impressive fire when it hits an oil tank, and 10 minutes after the start of the attack the oil tanks were burning merrily. The results were so good that the raid commander ordered the bombers to target the ships in the harbour instead of the now-blazing oil installations.
    While the first group of dive bombers retired from the oil storage facility, the eighteen bomb-carrying SeaLance engaged the ships in the harbour. By now the defences had been alerted, but seemed rather uncoordinated (the defences had previously only encountered high level raids from the RAF), and only one SeaLance was shot down. In return, two submarines and two merchant ships were left sunk or sinking.
    It had only required 20 of the dive bombers to reduce the oil tanks to an inferno, and so the remaining twelve planes were ordered to target the destroyers lying in the harbour. At anchor, a destroyer is a much easier target than when it is manoeuvring at full speed. One destroyer was hit by two 500lb bombs, and was left sinking; a second was hit by one bomb, and although badly damaged was saved by the prompt actions of its crew. One dive bomber was lost in this attack to the destroyers AA fire.
    The job finished, the strike headed back to the Force H carriers; as soon as they had been struck below deck, the force turned south to head back to Gibraltar, and readied the fighters on deck ready for the morning. Total losses would be two Cormorants and one SeaLance (which failed to return, probably due to fuel loss), although a further five planes were written off due to combat damage.
     
    Taranto, 2300 (first strike)
    Taranto, a major naval base, was rather more awake that Naples. At the first sound of the approaching aircraft, the searchlights lit up, searching the skies for them. It took a while, because they were looking in the wrong place - again, the Italians were expecting a high-altitude bombing attack by RAF planes. This allowed the first waves of attackers to get into position before an alert operator realised what was happening, and the defences started to illuminate the correct areas.
    The first planes to attack was a group of twelve dive bombers carrying 1,000 lb bombs - targets the oil storage tanks overlooking the harbour. The tanks were illuminated by one of the flare aircraft, and the bombers turned into their dives as soon as they could see the target. Oil tanks are big, bulky, and don't manoeuvre out of the way of a bomb nearly as well as a ship. One aircraft was hit by AA fire (it ditched in the harbour), but as the other eleven pulled out of their dives the oil storage depot was rapidly becoming a mass of flames.
    While the noise of exploding bombs (and a number of exploding oil tanks) was distracting the defenders, a torpedo strike was going in against the battleships. The time of the raid had been carefully planned so the rising moon, as well as the flares, helped to silhouette the targets. The netting surrounding the ships limited the angles of approach of the planes, and once they had been spotted it was clear that the Italian AA guns knew this also. Fortunately for the attackers, the chance of hitting a plane at night was still very low. The first attack by nine SeaLance targeted the modern battleship Littorio. While getting into a good attacking position through the barrage balloons ready to avoid the netting was difficult, the ship itself was a lovely big, stationary target. The torpedo bombers attacked straight into the battleships AA fire, which shot down one of the planes - although it dropped its torpedo when hit, no-one knew where it went. The other eight planes were far more successful - three torpedoes hit the battleship (it was not until much later in the war that the Royal Navy found out for certain that the nets were indeed useless against deep-running torpedoes), tearing large holes in her. The Pugliese Torpedo Defence System was probably the least effective of any in use in WW2, especially against the duplex fuse, and