Raiders by Ross Kemp Read Free Book Online Page B

been hit by three torpedoes, two to starboard and one to port, each one tearing huge chunks out of her thick armoured hull. Kemp’s strike had blown a hole forty-nine by thirty-two feet in the first strike, but it was the follow-up blow delivered in the second strike by either Hale or Torrens-Spence that completed the job. It was a credit to her designers and builders that the damage suffered did not prove fatal. She was left to rest on the bottom of the harbour shallows while repairs took place. The work was complicated by the danger of the unexploded torpedo beneath her keel which, it transpired, had hit her but failed to explode. It was six months before she was refloated and made seaworthy again.
    The
Conte di Cavour
suffered the heaviest damage. Williamson’s torpedo had blown a hole roughly forty feet by twenty-five feet close to the forward ammunition magazine, and she was on the bottom with water over her main decks by the morning. She never returned to service.
    The
Caio Duilio
suffered damage from Lt Lea’s torpedo which ripped a hole of about thirty-five by twenty-five feet in the starboard, right between two ammunition magazines. She was immediately beached to prevent sinking. Two months later she was refloated and sent to the dry dock at Genoa for repairs. It was six months before she was able to return to service. Had Lea’s warhead struck a yard or two to the left or right and hit a store of explosive shells, she would have been blown to smithereens.
    According to the Italians, a mere handful of the forty or so bombs dropped by the Swordfish exploded. The crews of the bombers who braved the storm of flak were especially annoyed to hear that their courageous efforts had brought no reward. With the destroyers and cruisers moored so closely together in the Mar Piccolo inner harbour, there would surely have been destruction on a terrifying scale had just half a dozen of the bombs managed to detonate. Had the first striking force managed to retain the element of surprise and arrive unannounced, before the gunners had taken their stations, then the damage might have been that much greater again.
    It took almost two days for an accurate assessment of the damage to be constructed from intelligence reports and images from the RAF’s Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. After month upon month of announcing setback after setback, defeat after defeat, Churchill could barely hide his smile when he stood up to address the House of Commons on 13 November. ‘I have some news for the House. It is good news. The Royal Navy has struck a crippling blow at the Italian Fleet.’ When the cheering had died down, he continued: ‘The total strength of the Italian Battle Fleet was six battleships, two of them of the “
Littorio
” class, which have just been put into service and are, of course, among the most powerful vessels in the world, and four of the recently reconstructed “
Cavour
” class. This fleet was, to be sure, considerably more powerful on paper than our Mediterranean Fleet, but it had consistently refused to accept battle. On the night of the 11/12 November, when the main units of the Italian fleet were lying behind their shore defences in their naval base at Taranto, our aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm attacked them in their stronghold . . . I felt it my duty to bring this glorious episode to the immediate notice of the House. As the result of a determined and highly successful attack, which reflects the greatest honour on the Fleet Air Arm, only three Italian battleships remain effective.’
    To a layman listening to the Prime Minister, the crippling of three battleships might not have sounded such a mighty blow, but a navy man would have instantly understood the significance. Although carriers would soon overtake them as the capital ships of a fleet, battleships were the heavy brigade of the sea, and no navy in the world could hope to compete with the Royal Navy if they didn’t possess a superior complement.