The Hornet has a gun, the M61 20mm cannon, an electric Gatling gun with a 540-round magazine. It can also carry a combination of very capable weapons including the AIM-9M all-angle heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile, the AGM-88 anti-radar missile, and the 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb. Pilots and maintenance personnel share respect for the F/A-18’s reliability and ease of maintenance, despite the complexity of its systems. In the Gulf War and over Bosnia, the Hornet force had an amazing availability rate of better than 90 pecent, reaching a peak of 95 percent in the Gulf. No other naval fighter has inspired such admiration and high regard from those who fly it.
U.S. Navy aviator jacket patches.
ATTACK ON TARANTO
IN THE NIGHT OF 11 / 12 NOVEMBER 1940, two waves of British Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Fairey Swordfish biplanes launched from the newly operational RN aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious to attack warships of the Italian fleet at anchor in the harbor of Taranto. A major sea port, Taranto lies in the arch of the Italian boot, about 250 miles southeast of Rome. Taranto had been founded in 706 BC as a Spartan Greek trading post called Taras, and was known as Tarantum in the time of the Roman Empire.
The Royal Navy had been attempting to provide cover and protection for Allied convoys of merchant ships from the constant threat of land-based air attack, from U-boats, and from many sorties by the capital ships of the Italian fleet. The convoys were carrying vitally needed supplies to the island of Malta, whose survival was crucial in the effort to defeat German and Italian forces in North Africa during this early phase of the Second World War.
British Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham was the Royal Navy Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean from 1939 to 1943. To ease the pressure on his forces in their role of shepherding the convoys, Cunningham ordered a two-carrier strike in the autumn of 1940 on key Italian warships in the Taranto base. The carriers Eagle and Illustrious were assigned the mission, but various mishaps and a problem with the fuel system of Eagle caused her to be withdrawn from the task. Before her withdrawal, five of her Swordfish aircraft and eight air crews were transferred to Illustrious for the raid.
A reconnaissance flight by an RAF aircraft on 11 November identified six battleships of the Italian fleet in harbor at Taranto, and the raid was scheduled for that evening. In the late afternoon, Illustrious, together with her escort of four cruisers and four destroyers, was steaming toward the launch point for the mission. The first wave of twelve Swordfish, fitted with internal auxiliary fuel tanks to augment their range, was being armed. Six of them were to carry torpedos, four carried bombs, and two were taking flares and bombs. The striking force would have to contend with some twenty-two Italian anti-aircraft gun positions, as well as barrage balloons and torpedo nets guarding the harbor.
The British plan for the operation called for the torpedo-armed Swordfish to launch their missiles at the battleships anchored in the outer harbor. Meanwhile, in a synchronized diversion, the other aircraft would attack cruisers and destroyers moored along the harbor quay. It was thought that the small-warhead eighteen-inch British aircraft torpedos could be launched at low-level into the shallow waters of the harbor to good effect against the Italian capital ships. It was hoped that the bomb and flare-dropping Swordfish would distract the local defenses while the torpedo planes utilized their ultra-low seventy-five knot cruising speed to weave around and between the barrage balloon cables toward their targets.
The strike force of British aircraft formed up several miles from Illustrious and proceeded along the 170-mile route to Taranto harbor by 8:57 pm, with Lieutenant Commander M.W. Williamson in command. At 9:15 pm, however, the flying conditions had deteriorated and the squadron became separated in heavy cloud. The planes were compelled to make their attacks independently.
At 10:56 pm the aircraft carrying flares and bombs laid an illuminating pattern of flares along the eastern edge of the harbor. They then went on to dive-bomb a nearby oil tank farm which they set afire. At about this time, three of the torpedo Swordfish, with Lt. Cdr. Williamson in the lead, had positioned themselves for a diving run on the battleship Cavour. They descended from 4,000 feet to 400 feet where they released their torpedos. One of the three torpedos struck Cavour, causing such substantial damage that the ship was never able to be repaired. Return fire from the battleship hit and downed Williamson’s plane, but he and his observer survived to become prisoners of war.
A Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber of the Royal Navy Historic Flight based at RNAS Yeovilton, Somerset, England.
Royal Navy deck handlers.
Now the second lot of the first wave of Swordfish arrived led by Lt. N. Kemp, and their torpedo aircraft attacked the battleship Littorio. Their bombing aircraft struck at the cruisers and destroyers and the seaplane base in the harbor, severely damaging one hangar.
At 11:23 pm the second wave of Swordfish began taking off from Illustrious, led by Lt. Cdr. J.W. Hale. This force included five torpedo aircraft, two bombers and two planes with flares and bombs. The flare and bomber aircraft made additional strikes on the oil storage facility as the five torpedo-carrying Swordfish assumed a line-astern approach to the battleships. By this time the Italians had begun to put up a fearsome box barrage of anti-aircraft fire from their many shore and ship-based gun positions, and Hale’s planes had to fly through the worst of the flak. One of the aircraft was shot down.
While the British striking force lost two aircraft in the raid, they managed to score four hits on the battleship Littorio, and one each on the battleships Cavour and Duilio. Littorio was left listing heavily, her deck awash. The following day she settled on the bottom of the harbor. Other ships received some damage, including two Trento-class cruisers and two fleet auxiliaries. The oil storage facility and the seaplane base were significantly damaged. The raid was considered to be highly successful. The Italians were left with only two operational battleships. Within six months of the attack, one-third of the Fleet Air Arm air crewmen who had flown it were dead … killed in other actions.
It has often been claimed by historians and others that the Japanese drew the inspiration for their low-level torpedo attack on battleships of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, from the Taranto raid. In fact, the Pearl Harbor attack had been thoroughly planned before the British raid was conducted. Still, the method and results of the Taranto raid certainly served to influence and motivate the Japanese forces when the time came to execute their attack.
John Wellham, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot: “I was serving in HMS Eagle, a very old carrier which had been in the fleet for some years. We came to the Mediterranean at a time when it was obvious that Mussolini was going to come into the war on the side of the Germans. He’d been sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see which side was likely to produce the most glory for him. As the Germans were sweeping through Europe, it was clearly going to be their side that he wanted to join. We, therefore, were sent to join the Mediterranean fleet, which we did but a few weeks before Mussolini came into the war.
“Led by Sir Andrew Cunningham, a wildly enthusiastic chap, we tore around the Med looking for someone with whom to be hostile, and actually only found the Italian fleet at sea once. We attacked them twice in four hours with our Swordfish torpedo bombers. Unfortunately, there were only nine of us making the attacks, quite inadequate against their fast-moving fleet. So it was necessary for us to catch them in harbor. Our admiral did his homework and found that attacking enemy ships in harbor had been quite successful right back to 300 BC.
“The RAF had a squadron of Bristol Blenheims in the area which they were using for reconnaissance of the various North African harbours including Bomba. One day they told us about a submarine depot ship at Bomba with a submarine alongside it. They did a recce for us the next morning and discovered another submarine coming into the harbour, so the three of us went off in our Swordfish and, at Bomba, spotted the large submarine on the surface, obviously recharging its batteries. Our leader put his torpedo into it and the sub blew up and s
ank very satisfactorily. The other chap and I went on and as we got closer we found that, not only was there a depot ship and a submarine, there was a destroyer between the two of them. I let my torpedo go towards the depot ship. My colleague dropped his from the other side and it went underneath the submarine and hit the destroyer. I was very excited and was shouting. Things were going up in the air and we discovered that all four ships had sunk, which was confirmed later by aerial reconnaissance. That night the Italians admitted on the radio that they had lost four ships in the harbour. However, they said that the loss was due to an overwhelming force of motor torpedo boats and torpedo bombers which had attacked them during the night. If I had been commanding officer of that base, I would have reported something along those same lines. I certainly wouldn’t have been prepared to admit that three elderly Swordfish biplanes had sunk four of my ships.
“The attack on the ships in harbour at Bomba had confirmed for us, and for Cunningham, that the best way to attack ships was when they were in harbour. He had then decided that an attack on the main Italian fleet in their base at Taranto was imperative. This was all very well, but we in Eagle had a limited number of aircraft and no long-range fuel tanks to get us there and back. We also needed absolutely up-to-date reconnaissance to do an attack like that. Then the new carrier Illustrious came to join us, bringing us the long-range tanks we needed. The Royal Air Force provided a flight of three Martin Maryland bombers for the reconnaissance work, and they were very good for that. They had the speed, the training, and the ability, and each day at dawn and dusk they gave us reports on the positions of ships in Taranto. We couldn’t have done the job without them.
“The go-ahead was given for the raid because both Illustrious and Eagle were fully prepared to do it—but then complications arose. Illustrious had a fire in the hangar deck which caused a delay. Meanwhile, Eagle, which had been bombed repeatedly by the aircraft of the Reggia Aeronautica, had developed plumbing problems. When we tried to fuel our aircraft we weren’t quite sure what we were fuelling them with, and so Eagle was scrubbed from the operation. We went on with the plan, however, and transferred five aircraft and eight crews over to Illustrious.
“The attack was called Operation Judgement and it was set for 11 November 1940. Diversionary actions involving merchant navy convoys elsewhere in the Med were organised and worked well, disguising the fact that we were going to hit Taranto.
“We went off in two waves, some of us with bombs, some with torpedos. The Martin recce flights had shown us that the Italian battleships were in the Mar Grande, the largest part of Taranto Harbour, while destroyers, cruisers, submarines and various auxiliary vessels were in the inner harbour, Mar Piccolo.
“At Taranto, I had to dodge a barrage balloon and in doing so I was hit by flak which broke the aileron control spar, and I couldn’t move the control column, which is very embarrassing in the middle of a dive. So, using brute force and ignorance, I cleared the column enough to get it fully over to the right. While this was going on and I was trying to get the thing to fly properly, I suddenly appreciated that I was diving right into the middle of Taranto City, which was obviously not a good thing. So I hauled the plane out of the dive, found the target and attacked it. But when you drop 2,000 pounds off an aircraft of that weight, it rises. There is nothing you can do about it, and it rose into the flak from the battleship I was attacking. I was hit again and got a hole about a metre long by at least a half-metre wide. The Swordfish still flew and we got back 200 miles over the sea with the aircraft in that condition. It was very painful because, to fly straight, I had to keep left rudder on all the time, which is bad for your ankle, but we got home.”
The Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber was operational with the Royal Navy from 1934 to 1945. Given the nickname “Stringbag,” the Swordfish was particularly effective against the capital ships of the Italian fleet in Taranto and against the mighty German battleship Bismarck.;
You were throwing the aircraft about like a madman, half the time, and every time I tried to look over the side, the slipstream nearly whipped off my goggles! The harbour was blanked out by ack-ack and I had to check with the compass to see which way we were facing!
—from To War in a Stringbag by Commander Charles Lamb, Royal Navy
Bill Sarra and his observer, Jack Bowker, were flying in the diversionary bombing element of the first strike of Swordfish on the harbor at Taranto. They had been briefed to drop their bombs on the cruisers, destroyers, or oil storage tanks in the inner harbor, the Mar Piccolo. Sarra was unable to discern the specified targets and crossed over the dockyard. It was then that he spotted the hangars of the Italian seaplane base just ahead. He released his bombs from an altitude of 500 feet and watched as one made a direct hit on a hangar, with the others blasting the slipways. The anti-aircraft fire was intense, but Sarra and Bowker returned safely to the carrier Illustrious. The Royal Navy victory at Taranto that night meant that the balance of capital ship power in the Mediterranean had been shifted in favor of the Allies. The first awards made to participants in the Taranto strike were few indeed. And six months later, in a supplementary list, Sarra and Bowker were “mentioned in despatches,” but by then they were both prisoners-of-war.
The Fairey Albacore was developed from the design of the Swordfish;
The crew of a Royal Navy Swordfish.
INFAMY
SPARKED BY HER EXPANSIONIST POLICY in the late 1930s, the armies of the Empire of Japan moved first into Manchuria and then were fighting on the Chinese mainland in pursuit of their conquest of Southeast Asia. They called their plan the Great East Asia Co-Existence Sphere.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before the Japanese surprise attack of 7 December 1941. The bulk of the U.S. Pacific Fleet battleships are shown anchored in pairs near Ford Island at center.
By September 1940 the United States had reacted to Japan’s incursions by imposing an embargo on her which covered war materials, including scrap iron, steel, and aviation spirit, as well as by freezing all Japanese assets in the U.S.
In a country with few natural resources, Japan’s military government knew that they would not survive long without new sources of strategic commodities. They had become persuaded that to win in China they must have the rubber, tin, bauxite, and most importantly, the oil of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya. To get their hands on these resources, Japan’s leaders knew that they would have to go to war with the British Empire as well as the Dutch government in exile. And they concluded that war with the United States would also be inevitable, as the Americans had a significant military presence in the Philippines and were not likely to tolerate such an adventure on the part of the Japanese. To achieve their goal, the Japanese militarists planned attacks that would destroy the U.S. bomber bases in the Philippines, as well as the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They believed that these targets would have to be hit and wiped out to clear the way for Japanese forces to take Malaya, the East Indies and, ultimately, China.
Harvard-educated Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, had once served as a naval attaché in Washington. A brilliant tactician, he knew the military strengths of the United States and had no illusions about America as an adversary. He opposed war with the U.S. but came to accept its inevitability and was quick to warn that when the war came it would be absolutely essential “to give a fatal blow to the enemy fleet at the outset, when it was least expected.” He believed that anything less than the total destruction of the American fleet would “awaken a sleeping giant.”
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned the surprise attack by Japan’s naval air forces on the warships of the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941;
In 1921 a new book called Sea Power in the Pacific by Hector C. Bywater, a British naval authority, was attracting considerable interest, not least in Japan where by 1922 it had become required reading at the Imperial Naval Academy and the Japanese Naval War College. Bywater took the view tha
t the Japanese home islands were fundamentally protected from direct assault by U.S. forces owing to distance and the secondary fuel and supply consumption involved in such an effort. He proposed that the key to American success against Japan (in the Pacific War) would be by means of an island-hopping campaign through the Marianas, to Guam and the Philippines. In 1925, Bywater published a second book, The Great Pacific War. In it his premise was that Japan could develop a virtually invulnerable empire by making a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, invading Guam and the Philippines, and fortifying its mandate islands. During a 1934 trip to London, Yamamoto met and spent an evening with Bywater in the admiral’s hotel suite. He was fascinated by Bywater’s theories and their implications for Japanese and American strategy.
It was Yamamoto who would conceive, plan, and direct the breathtaking surprise attack on the capital ships of the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in the early morning of Sunday 7 December 1941. It was clear to him that it might not be possible to achieve the complete elimination of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in one blow. He knew that many American warships were stationed on the U.S. west coast, were undergoing refit, or were in transit between the west coast and Hawaii. His master plan called for a vital second and final strike on what would remain of the enemy fleet, to be staged six months after the Pearl Harbor attack. With only two U.S. aircraft carriers, Enterprise and Lexington, then operating in the Pacific (Saratoga was in port on the west coast), Yamamoto liked the odds as he was able to field six Japanese carriers for the Pearl Harbor strike.
In May 1941 senior officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy called on their Italian counterparts at the southern port of Taranto where, in a bold raid on 11 November 1940, two waves of Fairey Swordfish bombing and torpedo aircraft from the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious had attacked and done major damage to capital ships of the Italian fleet. Meeting on the deck of the crippled battleship Littorio, the Japanese were fascinated by the methods and achievement of the British in putting half of the Italian fleet out of action in one cleverly planned and executed blow. At a cost to them of only two Swordfish, the RN Fleet Air Arm, it seemed, had solved the problem of how to effectively deliver torpedos against warship targets at anchor in a relatively shallow harbor. While historians often disagree about the extent to which the Japanese, and Yamamoto in particular, were influenced by the techniques and results of the Taranto raid in the planning and execution of their Pearl Harbor attack, it seems certain that they were inspired and highly motivated by the British example. Thus encouraged, Admiral Yamamoto proceeded with his planning of the attack on the important forward base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
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