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Taranto: The Royal Navy's WW2 Masterpiece

WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

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What happened in the Battle Of Taranto? Did the raid on Taranto catch the Italian defenders by surprise? How many Swordfish attacked the Italian fleet stationed at Taranto?

Join James Holland and Al Murray for the second part of this mini-series exploring the Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber, and the brave crews of the Fleet Air Arm who achieved incredible victories in an 'obsolete' airframe.

WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
Listen: linktr.ee/wehaveways

00:00 Opening eyewitness account: Swordfish over Taranto
01:17 Charles Lamb and War in a String Bag
02:08 Why the Swordfish was the right aircraft for the job
04:48 Life in the Fleet Air Arm and carrier warfare realities
05:00 Strategic context: Taranto, MB8, and British intentions
06:49 The Italian fleet and why Taranto mattered
07:12 Defences, intelligence, and torpedo depth problem
08:32 Planning the raid: waves, weapons, and roles
10:46 Operation Judgement begins: launch from Illustrious
12:40 En route to Taranto: separation, navigation, and risk
15:14 Italian early warning and loss of surprise
16:22 Approaching the target under heavy fire
18:10 Flares over the harbour and distraction tactics
20:08 The first torpedo runs at sea level
22:01 Aircraft losses, survival, and Italian reactions
24:05 Successful hits on Italian battleships
26:32 The psychology of flying into near-certain death
27:52 Results of the first wave
28:26 Cliffhanger: the second wave still to come

20 Comments

@SteveGallard 9 months ago

As someone who is a little deaf I use the auto-generated subtitles. It's fortunate that my hearing has not gone completely or I might wonder why we were bombing Toronto.

@micheleheddane3804 8 months ago

I’m a 70 yo Irish woman and following your stupendous journey, I don’t know why it should be but yesterday I saw that the Prince of Wales was sunk in the pacific I was very upset by this , why , perhaps it’s your wonderful story of ww2

@louishiggins8881 9 months ago

My father, now gone, told me a story about someone he knew at school.
They flew aircraft off carriers, managed somehow to survive the war (WWII), but was killed not long after, when his plane crashed off the carrier into the Indian ocean ☹️.
Flying off carriers has always been very dangerous !!!

@chibbyranjo 9 months ago

You get the impression that these are the men’s men of fighting flying men. No regard for their own safety, flying possibly the slowest thing they could find into withering anti-aircraft fire, all the while trying to do precision work. Bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. It’s crazy to think, the observer/navigators alone in these planes flying to almost certain death, they are all boffins in their own right, doing complex maths on their laps on paper in an open-cockpit. Madness. And only two planes were lost!

@jacnah63 9 months ago (edited)

This series on the Taranto raid was top notch chaps. Bravo!

@davidreid8075 9 months ago

I met a man in Wimbledon.
He was in a Swordfish in the attack. This was in the mid 70's - Shot up and in a wheelchair ever since that raid.

@AaronBr00mfie7d 1 month ago

On the online video game War Thunder, the Swordfish is the first plane you are given to fly if you choose the British side to fight on.

Yes, it is a very maneuverable plane. It's surprisingly powerful and I really enjoy using the rockets against anti-aircraft positions.

@JohnSadler-f4z 9 months ago

Good old Royal Navy. Showing the world how its done.

@benlechter 9 months ago

The inadvertent inspiration for Pearl Harbor

@kevins6764 1 month ago

Great stuff. You put so much into these pods and it really pays off in the excitement and intensity of these events. Many thanks.

@PaulR6544 5 months ago

We live about 2 miles from the Shuttleworth Collection and they had a Swordfish visit last year so we managed to get a close up view in the morning while over there for a coffee plus it then flew over the house in the afternoon. Tamiya 1/48 Swordfish now waiting to be built!

@ronaldweir712 4 months ago

Another informative pod cast that describes what it was like to attack Taranto

@cgross82 9 months ago

One of my instructors in OCS who gave our aviation classes had been a Cobra attack helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He described tracer rounds as “flaming beer cans”, so “flaming onions” seems on the mark as well.

@alexthomson3001 7 months ago

Imagine being a U-Boat, on the surface, hatches open, to Try to get some air in to the stifling, choking interior, and seeing a biplane in the far distance gracefully turn towards you...
...hatches rapidly shut through long practice, and preparing to dive...
...when suddenly tank busting rockets come screaming towards you! Even the ones that Miss, detonating with enough force to buckle plate, and shear rivets!
.
That must have been Terrifying.

@Mr456sb 9 months ago

Wonderful , as an ex pat living in NZ , my heart swells with pride if only there were such men today or are they , we may soon find out . 😊

@Hussmannog 9 months ago

My Grandad was on HMS Illustrious as a gunner and was there for Taranto and Malta - a lovely old fella and yep, he never wanted to talk about any of it. Who can blame him....

@Badgersj 9 months ago

Can I also recommend "Bring Back My Stringbag" by John Godley, Lord Kilbracken (I think the credit on that book is "John Kilbracken" but it might also be found under "John Godley") who flew from merchant convoys on the Atlantic, not quite as nice weather as in Taranto. It's out of print but there are copies floating around on eBay an Amazon. If I can get my creaking scanner to work I'll try and PDF the whole thing.