WI No Battle of Taranto

The Battle of Taranto, in which the Royal Navy launched Swordfish torpedo bombers against the Italian navy, was the first all-air attack in history. Furthermore, it foreshadowed the end of big-gun navies and it has been posited on this board that the attack influenced Japanese planning for Pearl Harbor.

WI the Battle of Taranto never happened, or at least ended up being a massive headache with the Brits with numerous Swordfishes shot down and minimal damage to the Italian warships? Could the Italians manage to be more effective in WWII if they still had a viable navy, and what of the Japanese thinking of Pearl Harbor?
 
This has been discussed often. In general I will direct your attention to the Japanese attack on Port Arthur at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. That was a surprise attack by destroyers. There were simulated 'war problems' carried out by the US Navy that included aerial attacks upon Pearl Harbor and/or the Panama Canal. Also the British had planned a carrier based airstrike against the High Seas Fleet in the closing days of the war and had attempted a similar attack, by seaplanes, at the outbreak in 1914.

Taranto gave credence to the general trend in naval aviation.
 
The Battle of Taranto, in which the Royal Navy launched Swordfish torpedo bombers against the Italian navy, was the first all-air attack in history. Furthermore, it foreshadowed the end of big-gun navies and it has been posited on this board that the attack influenced Japanese planning for Pearl Harbor.

WI the Battle of Taranto never happened, or at least ended up being a massive headache with the Brits with numerous Swordfishes shot down and minimal damage to the Italian warships? Could the Italians manage to be more effective in WWII if they still had a viable navy, and what of the Japanese thinking of Pearl Harbor?


The only problem is that it was inevitable that Naval air power would overcome big gun battlewagons. The better question is what would happen to Italy if it were more competent. It was pretty hard to defend against air attacks against ships.

It just happens to be one of those things that is inevitable. once the cat was out of the bag and someone dropped an explosive device from a agile plane with any kind of accuracy and torpedoes were engineered to be launched from them. Italy just didn't have the means to counter, nor a fleet large enough or dispersed enough to deal with the problem. same thing held true for Germany. With out U-boats the german Navy was simply a token force that was taken seriously but was never so great a threat as to be effective in my opinion
 
Taranto without the lone ranger

I have read that it was a myth that Japan copied its attack on Pearl Harbour from Taranto. If Taranto had been largely a failure Japan may have still gone ahead as they had modern aircraft. For the failure to have occurred there would have had to have been fighter aircraft in the air. Cooperation between the navy and the Regia Aeronautica was zero. Had there been more cooperation things may have been different. Fear of aircraft had restricted the Italian fleets operations i.e Matapan where again Swordfish delivered a lethal as the Italian navy had no defensive air screen. The Swordfish was virtually useless where there were combat air patrols as in the case of the channel dash.

Assuming the Italian navy survived more or less intact it was not noted for its combative spirit, a defending force of destroyers and anti-aircraft cruisers managed to defend a Malta Convoy at Sirte although the luftwaffe were able to do the job for them.

Certainly Admiral such as Cunnigham and Somerville had 15" battleships albeit older the the most modern Italian vessels but a lot of the Italian battleships had only 12" guns and were driven off at Calabria and Sparviato. Probably Cunningham would have routed them at some time in a more decisive manner than at Matapan. However the Italian navy didn't always avoid combat a lone destroyer defended a convoy of German troops off Crete in 1941 against hopeless odds and charioteers sank Cunnignham's battleships at Alexandria at there moorings and the threat of Italian battleships resulted in one Malta convoy turning back.

No Taranto in itself would not have changed much but if the cause was the Regia Aeronautica accting in close support of the navy and there was more air cover then things might have been different. Germany would also not needed to divert the Luiftwaffe to the Mediterranean as it was the Luftwaffe that changed the odds particularly at Crete
 
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