Raiders (3 page)

The air crews on
Illustrious
had nothing but praise for the small army of riggers, fitters, mechanics and engineers of various description who kept their aircraft in immaculate working order.
And it was thanks to their hard work and efficiency that, with barely an hour or so to spare, the attack was able to take place.
Had they been forced to delay twenty-four hours, the Italians might well have suspected British intentions and moved the fleet to safer waters.
Illustrious
and her escort of four cruisers and four
destroyers split from the main force and headed north.
Admiral Cunningham signalled: ‘Good luck then to your lads in their enterprise.
Their success may well have a most important bearing on the course of the war in the Mediterranean.’

By 2000 hours
Illustrious
had reached Kabbo Point, the flying-off location situated 40 miles off the Greek island of Cephalonia, and 175 from Taranto.
The first wave of Swordfish was ranged on deck poised to launch the most daring air raid in the history of warfare.
The RAF had just given the Luftwaffe a sound thrashing in the skies over southeast England.
Now was the moment for the pilots of the Royal Navy, facing equally daunting odds, to prove their skill and courage.

At 1900, scores of men filed out onto the flight deck to start ranging the twelve aircraft of the first striking force.
One after another, the Swordfish emerged from the lift hangar and were wheeled into position at the aft end of the ship.
The moon, three-quarters full, glowed brightly above a blanket of thick cloud at around 7,000 feet.

There were several reasons why, when the order was given, the deck crews endeavoured to get the aircraft off the ship as quickly as possible.
To provide the heavily laden Swordfish with the necessary lift to get airborne, the carrier had to steam into the wind as fast as she could.
Moving in a straight line made her an easier target for subs and bombers, so the sooner she could resume a zigzagging course, the better.
What’s more, as the deck was crowded with Swordfish, if an aircraft already airborne got
into difficulties, it would be unable to land and would be forced to ditch.
It also meant that, in the event of an air attack, the Fulmar fighters would not be able to take off and defend the ship.
A rapid series of takeoffs also conserved fuel and extended the range of the strike force as less time was spent waiting for the rest of the aircraft to get airborne.
On the night of 11/12 November there was an even more pressing incentive to get a move on: delays and dawdling risked jeopardising the element of surprise that was considered essential to a successful outcome.
It was fortunate that in HMS
Illustrious
, the air crews had a well-drilled ship’s company of the very highest efficiency and skill.
While the men on deck went about securing and checking the aircraft, the forty-two pilots and observers of the two striking forces gathered in the wardroom for the final briefing.
If all went to plan, they’d reconvene in the comfortable club-like surroundings in six hours’ time to swap stories over a strong drink.
It was probably just as well they didn’t know that the planners were preparing for a 50 per cent casualty rate.

Having lost three aircraft to mechanical problems, the final total of aircraft available was just twenty-one, drawn from 813, 815, 819 and 824 Squadrons FAA (Fleet Air Arm).
In order to accommodate the extra fuel tank, the gunner/wireless operator was jettisoned and crews were reduced to pilot and observer.
There was no gun aboard, but that was hardly going to affect their chances of survival.
A misfiring, ancient Vickers against the might of the Italian fleet’s guns and shore defences were no more use than a teaspoon in a knife fight.
W/T (Wireless/Telegraphy) silence was to be
observed throughout and the removal of the heavy W/T equipment was of greater concern to the crews.
Each crew would have to find its own way back to
Illustrious
.
The aircraft carrier might have been over 740 feet long, but in the vast expanse of the Med at night, quite possibly in cloud and with a limited amount of fuel, trying to relocate her could be a nerve-racking challenge.

By 2015, with all twelve Swordfish on the flight deck,
Illustrious
and her escorts immediately began to increase their speed for the takeoff.
As the bows of the ships cut into the calm surface of the sea, great sprays showered the foredecks and the gathering wind tugged hard at the clothes of all on deck.
The wash from
Illustrious
’s giant propellors, or ‘screws’, churned up a seething froth of white foam below the quarterdeck at the stern of the boat.
The pilots and their observers in their bulky flying suits and Mae Wests walked through the darkness to their aircraft, pulled themselves up into the cockpit, settled themselves on their parachutes and strapped themselves in.
The riggers and fitters assigned to each aircraft slapped the backs of the air crew and offered cheery words of encouragement.

The luminous wand of the deck officer made circles in the darkness, telling the pilots to fire up their engines.
The handlers inserted the handle to wind the inertia starter, filling the air with a high-pitched whining sound.
Slowly the revs built, the pilots set the throttle, and twelve Pegasus engines, almost as one, coughed into life as clouds of smoke billowed from the exhausts.
The pilots checked the gauges on the instrument panel and pushed the engine to full throttle, then back to tick-over, awaiting
the summons forward.
The ship was approaching maximum speed of almost thirty knots and the wind was now howling down the flight deck, offering as much lift as possible for the heavily burdened bombers.
The crouching maintainers and handlers, buffeted by the gusts, dodged the whirling propellors as they slipped around the aircraft, ready to unfold and lock down the wings and remove the wooden chocks under the wheels.
It was just before 2030 and some moonlight was visible through a break in the clouds.

A green light gave the signal for the first aircraft to fly off.
The twelve aircraft, ranged on both sides at the rear of the flight deck, were to taxi out to launch their takeoff run, alternately from starboard and port.
The silhouettes of 1,500-lb MkXII torpedoes were clearly visible under the fuselage of six of the aircraft and the 250-lb semi-armour-piercing bombs under the others.
The first aircraft was flown by the leader of the striking force, Lt Commander Kenneth ‘Hooch’ Williamson, CO (Commanding Officer) of 815 Squadron.
His observer was Lt Norman ‘Blood’ Scarlett.
Moving out into the line running down the centre of the deck, Williamson held the brakes while the Swordfish’s double wings were folded out and locked tight.
On the signal, Williamson opened the throttle and released the brakes.
The engine roared as the 3.5-tonne fully loaded biplane gathered speed along the 740-foot-long deck, dropped over the bow and then climbed into the night.
The other eleven followed in rapid succession and, eight miles from
Illustrious
, still climbing and heading in a roughly northwesterly direction, the force
formed up on Williamson’s lead aircraft.
Cruising at around eighty knots, the attack force were on course to reach Taranto shortly before 1100.

At around 7,500 feet, the twelve biplanes disappeared into thick cumulus cloud.
When they emerged into the bright moonlight on the other side, the formation had been reduced to nine.
Colliding in cloud could and did happen, but it was more likely that three other aircraft had become detached and were making their own way to the target area.
All the aircrews later remarked on the extreme cold they suffered in the open cockpits.
On arrival at the target area, the plan was for the twelve aircraft to split up.
The two carrying the parachute flares were to drop them over the battleships as the torpedo-bombers negotiated the barrage balloons at the harbour entrance.
The bombers were to head straight for the inner harbour to attack the cruisers and destroyers.
The hope was that before the majority of the AA gunners had gone to action stations and opened up, the torpedo-bombers would be diving onto their targets.
But, in the event, far from their arrival being a surprise to the defenders, virtually every gun in the Italian Navy was manned, loaded and waiting for the Royal Navy raiders.
One of the aircraft that had become detached in the cloud, crewed by Lt Swayne and Sub-Lt Buscall, reached Taranto fifteen minutes before the others because it had flown at sea level.
On realising they were the first to arrive, they had no choice but to fly around and wait for the rest of the attacking force.
Inevitably, their presence was picked up by Italian listening devices and the alarm was raised.

Williamson and the others knew they were on the right navigational course when they were about ten minutes away.
Hundreds of guns opened up and ‘flaming onion’ tracer shells erupted in the night sky.
From that distance the skies above the harbour resembled a giant fireball.
‘Taranto could be seen from a distance of fifty miles or more, because of the welcome awaiting us,’ wrote Lt Charles Lamb, one of the flare-droppers, in his war memoir.
‘The sky over the harbour looked like it sometimes does over Mount Etna, in Sicily, when the great volcano erupts.
The darkness was being torn apart by a firework display which spat flame into the night to a height of nearly 5,000 feet.’

If the aircrews had been in any doubt about the risks they faced in the attack, they were dispelled in an instant by the scene ahead of them.
Their survival would depend on the skill of each pilot and the famous manoeuvrability of the Swordfish.
The torpedo-bombers’ task of attacking the heavily gunned battleships was the most important and the most challenging.
They would have to dive almost vertically through the wall of fire rising to meet them, straighten up a few feet over the surface of the harbour, line up a target, drop the torpedo and escape in a steep climb back through the barrage.

The formation reached Taranto at around 8,000 feet just before 11 o’clock.
At 2256 the first flare-droppers, crewed by Kiggell and Janvrin, dropped their line of sixteen flares in rapid succession along the eastern side of the harbour.
The flares, which would burn for three minutes, had delayed fuses, allowing the droppers to escape before they were lit up for the AA gunners.
The harbour, already illuminated by the defenders’ fire, was soon bathed in a bright light, but there was so much smoke from the flak drifting through the air that some of the targets remained obscured.
The barrage of the Italian gunners reached a feverish pitch as they concentrated their fire on the tiny flares slowly floating down from the heavens.
In hindsight, they would have been better off focusing on the Swordfish.
Kiggell’s flares were burning so brightly and the ships were now so clearly visible that Lamb decided not to drop his, fearing they would be more help to the defenders than the attackers.

Sitting 5,000 feet above the harbour, Lamb had the best seat in the house from which to observe the unfolding drama below.
‘For the last six months, almost without a break, we had attracted the enemy’s fire for an average of at least an hour a week; but I had never imagined anything like this to be possible.
Before the first Swordfish had dived to the attack, the full-throated roar from the guns of six battleships and the blast from the cruisers and destroyers made the harbour defences seem like a sideshow .
.
.
into that inferno, one hour apart, two waves, of six and then five Swordfish .
.
.
danced weaving arabesques of death and destruction with their torpedoes, flying into the harbour only a few feet above sea level – so low one or two of them touched the water with their wheels.’

The torpedo-bombers split into two subflights of three and launched their attack simultaneously.
The first subflight attacked the northernmost battleships, while the second, led by Kemp, made for the southernmost.
All six biplanes dived straight into
the storm of fire.
The first, led by Williamson and Scarlett, with the
Conte di Cavour
as their designated target, arrived on the scene bang on time, just as the first flares were adding their glare to the illuminations.
Straightening up out of the dive, they passed unscathed through the barrage-balloon cables as they roared through the harbour entrance towards the line of battleships.
Pointing straight at the massive silhouette of the
Cavour
, Williamson flicked the release button on his throttle lever.
They were so low at this point that they felt the splash as the lethal ‘fish’ slapped into the water.
The torpedo sunk below the surface and moments later an almighty explosion thundered across the harbour.