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

two of the holes were very large for aerial torpedoes.
    At the same time, another group of nine planes were aiming their torpedoes at the Vittorio Venetto (the other modern battleship at anchor). Two of the planes were caught in searchlights, and although both escaped without being shot down (although not without damage), this caused them to miss badly with their torpedoes. The other seven planes had more luck. The huge plumes of water showed two torpedo hits, which again caused sizeable holes below the waterline. One plane was shot down by the shore-based AA as it made its escape.
    Next to receive the friendly interest of the FAA was the modernised battleship Cavour. In order to work their way around the defences, and also to help reduce the chance of the torpedoes 'bottoming out' the planes were flying as slowly as practical. While the massed AA fire and the searchlights weren't doing a wonderful job of shooting down the attackers, they were causing some confusion and loss of night vision. One of the pilots, somewhat disorientated and concentrating on his target, asked his observer where the balloon barrage he was supposed to be avoiding was. He was told 'we've flown through the bloody thing once, and we're just about to do it again'.
    Another strike of nine planes swept in at 50 feet towards the Cavour. The Cavour was an old battleship, which had been completely rebuilt before the war, but she was still small and relatively poorly protected compared to a modern design. Only seven of the planes managed to drop their torpedoes. Two were hit on the way in; one dropped into the harbour, the second managed to get away, damaged, by dropping its torpedo, which went somewhere. Nowhere near the ship, unfortunately. However the remaining planes registered two hits on the old ship. The terrible underwater damage caused to her old hull left her sinking into the mud of the harbour (although this was not immediately realised)
    The last of the first four torpedo strikes was aimed at the Cesare, another modernised old ship. Or at least that had been the idea, but the lead crew had got rather confused by all the illumination and pyrotechnics flying about and instead were actually aiming at the Duilio. Again, this old ship had been heavily rebuilt, but was still well below modern standards. By now the defences were beginning to get an idea of what the planes were aiming at, and although the first flight of three planes got their attack off successfully, two of the next flight crashed into the water. The defences also shot down one of the final flight. Despite this, the six surviving planes managed two hits on the ship. Again, the old ship was damaged badly underwater by the hits, although the crew managed to hold the flooding at bay before it got out of control
    While the torpedo attacks had been going in at low level, the dive bombers had been circling high above. This had attracted the attention of some of the AA fire, but hitting a small plane at night without radar was proving difficult - so difficult that so far none of them had been hit, and it helped to reduce the fire being aimed at the vulnerable torpedo planes.
    The first group of twelve planes dove onto the Andrea Doria. She had been chosen because even though modernised, her deck armour was less than 4" thick. She would be the first ship to be attacked by the new 1,600lb AP bomb, as this should penetrate her deck easily (the newer battleships had much thicker deck armour, and it was not certain if even the AP bombs would penetrate). In fact, even some of the 1,000 bombs would penetrate the poor deck armour of the ship. The first six planes were carrying the AP bombs, and the attack caught the defences by surprise - they were still concentrating on the torpedo planes. As a result the first two flights made a textbook attack on the helpless ship, hitting her with three of their six bombs. One of the AP bombs didn't explode (it was later found it had speared straight through the