The twenty-five-year-old Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio had been similarly rebuilt in 1939, but sailed one knot slower than the Cavour Class battleships. Their main armament was greater, however, and they carried an additional ten 33cm. guns supplemented by fifty-three pieces of naval artillery ranging in fire-power from 13cm. cannons to anti-aircraft guns.

Joining the battleships were six heavy cruisers, including the 13,000-ton Trento and Trieste. With their high speed of thirty-six knots and 21cm. guns, they gave Admiral Cunningham special cause for concern. Only two knots slower for their additional thousand tons were the equally well-armed Fiume, Gorizia, Pola and Zara. These impressive capital ships were supported by dozens of destroyer escorts, minelayers, frigates, seaplane tenders, and torpedo-boats. They were supplemented by a particularly large destroyer fleet of 120 ships, greater numbers than either the French or American Navies possessed, and comparable to the British Royal Navy. Mediterranean fleet-carriers were not deemed necessary, since the peninsula, together with numerous Italian islands, supposedly allowed Regia Aeronautica warplanes to range across the entire Mediterranean. Italian officers were skilled, crews well-trained, and noted for their high espirit d’corps.

The Regia Marina was not without problems, however. To achieve their speed advantage, its warships were relatively lightly armored. 14,000 tons of armour protecting the Littorio and Vittorio Veneto seemed sufficient, but were not impervious to British shells. Italian cruisers and destroyers were narrower at the beam, allowing for faster performance. But there were fundamental trade-offs in stability and proper space for gun platforms, to say nothing of general sea-worthiness. During fleet action on 22 March 1942, a pair of Italian destroyers, the Lanciere and Scirocco, were lost off Sicily, not to enemy action, but in a gale.

The Regia Marina’s premiere clash with its British counterparts demonstrated that diligence, skill and élan could sometimes overcome technological deficiency, while at the same time misconceptions regarding the conduct of aerial warfare at sea were debunked. On 6 July 1940, five heavily laden merchant vessels left Naples and Catania for Benghazi under the protection of sixteen torpedo boats, sixteen destroyers, eight light cruisers, and six heavy cruisers, plus the battleships Giulio Casare and Conti di Cavour. While the primary purpose of this formidable fleet was to ensure safe passage of the freighters to Libya, Supermarina commanders were actually spoiling for a decisive confrontation. In fact, a British convoy escorted by fifteen destroyers, the battleships Malaya, Royal Sovereign, and Warspite, together with the aircraft-carrier Eagle, was simultaneously under way from Alexandria to Malta.

Alerted to their position and direction by intercepts of Royal Navy radio messages, Chief of Staff Domenico Cavagnari instructed his forces to veer north toward Calabria in the hope of drawing them within striking distance of Regia Aeronautica aircraft. A few hours before his order was received, their squadrons boded well for the immediate future when bombers scored a hit on HMS Gloucester, instantly killing eleven ratings and six officers, including two Lieutenant Commanders and the Captain. The bridge was knocked out and damage so extensive that the light cruiser could only be controlled from her aft steering position. Nevertheless, ‘the Fighting G’, as she had been nicknamed, did not return to Alexandria for repairs, but stayed with the fleet, and participated in the coming battle.

Vice Admiral Inigo Campioni aboard the Giulio Cesare signaled Cavagnari for immediate aerial reconnaissance to locate the British ships, plus bombers to interdict them, but none appeared. Meanwhile, Vice Admiral Cunningham and his fleet were closing in south east of Punta Stilo, the so-called ‘toe’ of the Italian peninsula.

On the morning of 9 July, when the opposing forces were about 140 kilometers from each other, HMS Eagle launched flights of Fairey Swordfish against the Italian heavy cruisers, whose maneuvers and defensive fire were so effective, no torpedo-bombers found their mark–luckily for Campioni, whose repeated pleas for fighters still sitting at their bases just 100 kilometers away went unanswered. Lacking spotter planes to provide him with his opponents’ location, he had to depend on the naked eye of his look-out, who did indeed find the enemy vessels just in time for the Italian battleships’ superior range-finding equipment to direct firing from 21,500 meters, supposedly beyond the ability of Cunnigham’s guns, a myth soon to be shattered.

Incoming bombardment came closer with each round, so Vice Admiral John Tovey withdrew his cruisers after Neptune received a hit from the Giuseppe Garibaldi. Closing the range, Warspite fired at the Alberico da Barbia and Alberto di Giussano. But her rounds fell short, so she divided her main guns between the Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare. A broadside from the latter missed Warspite, but straddled a pair of protecting destroyers, Hereward and Decoy, damaging them both. Immediately after Warspite narrowly escaped two near-misses, one of her 381mm shells struck the Giulio Cesare’s after deck from a distance of more than 24,000 meters, still a world record for naval gunnery against a moving target.

Aboard the Italian battleship, crews hurriedly evacuated her engine room after it filled with fumes from a fire started by exploding 37mm ammunition. Two seamen had been killed and several others wounded, but with half the boilers shut down, Giulio Cesare’s speed fell to eighteen knots. Conte di Cavour defended her from Warspite, which turned away, while the Alberico da Barbia and Alberto di Giussano intervened with other destroyers to cloak the stricken Giulio Cesare behind a smokescreen.

Cruiser groups of the opposing fleets fired volleys at each other without effect, save for three hits on the Bolzano that temporarily locked her rudder and killed two seamen. Equally inconclusive were torpedo attacks engaged in by destroyers on both sides, until both sides turned away from each other. Just then, Regia Aeronautica aircraft made their belated appearance, scoring hits on Eagle, Malaya and Warspite without sinking them.

Mutual collateral damage was traded the next day when an Italian destroyer on patrol in the area, Leone Pancaldo, was torpedoed by one of Eagle’s Fairey Swordfish, and another destroyer–this time, HMS Escort–was sunk by the submarine Marconi.

The Battle of Punta Stilo (or Battle of Calabria, as it was known to the British) was a draw, because both convoys reached their destinations intact. While it demonstrated that the Regia Marina could match the Royal Navy, the Regia Aeronautica proved to be a lingering disappointment.

The next month, Supermarina commanders were promised air cover for the transfer of the Bande Nere and Colleoni to the Dodecanese island of Leros, where the Italian base seemed menaced by a build-up of enemy naval forces. Untypically, Regia Aeronautica planes were in the sky overhead, reporting clear sailing. At the same moment, a British Walrus Mk I shadowed both vessels. Just off Crete, on the morning of 19 July, they were confronted by a quartet of Royal Navy destroyers, which turned and fled eastward at high speed after Admiral Casardi in command of the light cruisers ordered them to commence firing, but accuracy was hampered by very poor visibility conditions.

Eventually, the pursuit drew parallel with Cape Spada and a thick fog to the north, out of which an unexpected eruption of gunfire straddled the Italian warships. They could only respond by shooting back in the general direction of flashes punctuating the mist. Gradually, an armored cruiser, the Sydney, accompanied by HMS Havock, a destroyer, emerged from the ghostly curtain, behind which their guns had scored their first hits on the surprised enemy. Suddenly outnumbered by more than two-to-one odds, Admiral Casardi would have been justified in making a break for Leros. Instead, he radioed the island airfield, only a thirty-minute-flight away, for help, and swung around to join battle.

Both sides hammered away at each other for an hour without inflicting any serious damage, until the Colleoni’s engine-room exploded, and she came to full-stop. The Havock and another destroyer rushed at her, firing torpedoes and 13cm. shells, until the immobile cruiser capsized amid a series of devastating explosions. Alone now, the Bande Nere foiled all attacks, finally scoring a direct hit on the Sydney, which broke off action in the company of her destroyer escorts. Admiral Casardi made for Bengazi while the going was still good. Only now did Italian warplanes put in their ill-timed appearance by ineffectually bombing the Havock, which was busy trying to pick up Colleoni survivors. The rescue operation had to be called off, resulting in the abandonment of many Italian sailors at sea.

In sharp contrast, British torpedo-bombers achieved an important success at Tobruk. Unopposed by a single interceptor, they sank the Zeffiro, Ostro and Nembo, then blew off the bow of the Euro, which was towed back to Taranto for lengthy repairs. In two separate attacks on 5 and 20 July, the entire Italian destroyer squadron guarding Tobruk had been wiped out. Its annihilation was important to the British, whose coastal flanks had been menaced by the warships.

The Italian destroyers’ most valuable contribution came in the form of regular convoys ferrying arms, men and supplies to Axis armies in Libya. When, in late July, Marshal Graziani requested additional materiel to fuel his offensive, the Regia Marina responded by launching the first large-scale formation of its kind. Each of its eleven freighters was protected by a cruiser together with twenty-three destroyers and another fourteen escort vessels. The British chose not to interfere with this show of strength, regardless of its importance to the ground fighting, and the convoy arrived intact.

In August, extensive mine-laying operations were methodically undertaken by the Regia Marina. It took mine-laying more seriously than any other navy, and with far better results. Immense secret spaces of floating death carpeting vast stretches of the Mediterranean were carefully chartered and used with dramatic effectiveness in connection with surface actions. Only a few weeks after mine-laying began, the fields claimed their first victim on the night of 20 August, when the British destroyer Hostile blew up and sank near Cape Bon.

From late July until the end of November, Italian convoys sailed to Libya virtually unhindered. Admiral Cunningham refused to challenge them with his older battleships, and Royal Navy submarines failed to make any impression on the fast enemy freighters. Instead, the Regia Marina stepped up its undersea interdiction, sinking the British submarines Orpheus and Rainbow in quick succession. Attrition among Italian submarines was also high, with thirteen sunk in the Mediterranean, plus four more in the Red Sea. Most were destroyed by enemy aircraft.

Regia Marina commanders learned from these losses, and routed their convoys beyond the range of RAF warplanes. All the Bristol Blenheim medium-bombers could do was to raid Bardia, Tobruk, Derna and Bengazi, where the Italian destroyers Borea and Aquilone were sunk, and heavy damage was incurred by the destroyer escorts Cigno and Cosenz, plus a trio of merchant vessels. But these were small prices to pay for the 148,817 tons of supplies and equipment successfully delivered to Marshal Graziani before the end of September.

Early next month, however, a particularly disturbing confrontation took place. During a night patrol north of Malta, the destroyer Alcione sighted what appeared to be a large ship and fired a pair of torpedoes from 1,830 meters. Surprisingly, the target easily steered out of harm’s way, so the destroyer escort came about for another, closer run, while broadcasting the alarm. She was soon after joined by the Airone, which launched her own pair of torpedoes at the elusive enemy, hardly more than a blacker silhouette against the night sky, and missed.

Frustrated, the Airone captain fired two more from just 365 meters. When these, too, failed to strike home, he continued to close the range, firing his three 100mm deck-guns. They, at least, landed about seven hits on the mystery vessel, which, except for some fancy maneuvers, refused to defend itself. At just 275 meters, the Airone was suddenly blasted by 152mm shells erupting from a fiery broadside that momentarily transformed night into day and stunned the attacking vessel into immobility. Another destroyer escort, the Ariel, ran all ahead full at the enemy, simultaneously firing deck-guns and torpedoes, but was almost immediately stopped dead in the water by a direct hit.

A few minutes later, she rolled over and plunged to the bottom of the Mediterranean with most of her crew. By the time Alcione had completed her turn for another run, the enigmatic shadow was gone. It had belonged to HMS Ajax, a cruiser whose radar-directed guns played havoc with her less electronically endowed attackers. She went on to intercept three more destroyers steaming obliviously at full speed into the battle zone, set the Artigliere ablaze, and was in the process of tearing apart the Aviere, when, running low on ammunition, the cruiser disengaged from action.

The Italian operation was transformed into a rescue mission of survivors from the Airone and Ariel. Her devastating fire extinguished, the smoldering, badly wounded Artigliere was taken in tow by the Camicia Nera. In the early morning, however, they were subjected to a ferocious series of RAF attacks. Emergency calls went out for assistance from the Regia Aeronautica, which never responded, as British warplanes came down on the tied up ships, strafing their decks, dropping bombs and torpedoes.

The handicapped destroyers’ anti-aircraft was so intense and effective, however, the attackers were driven off without sinking either vessel. Only when the Camicia Nera spotted two enemy cruisers approaching with a quartet of destroyers did she cut the doomed Artigliere adrift. After evacuating her surviving crew members, she made for home port. When the British force arrived in the area, the helpless destroyer exploded and sank under the pounding of HMS York, which used her for target practice. The day would come, however, when the Italians would wreak terrible revenge on this same heavy cruiser.

Until then, the confrontation with Ajax was history’s first naval action in which radar played a part. Even now, Supermarina commanders could not believe the enemy was actually equipping his warships with such a combat-ready instrument, and falsely attributed the loss of their destroyers and destroyer escorts to conventional night-time operational skills acquired by the Royal Navy. Britain’s early victories at sea were certainly spectacular and heralded yet greater things to come. But they had little impact on the steady flow of arms, equipment and men streaming to the shores of Libya.

Churchill’s patience was at an end, and he shot a rankling telegram at Cunningham, excoriating him for his reluctance to interfere with the busy enemy convoys, which were fueling Graziani’s advance toward Egypt. The Prime Minister fumed that his Admiral “had been rather backward in offensive operations against the Italian Fleet”, and demanded that he “should do more”.³ Stung by the Prime Minister’s insinuations, Cunningham envisioned a bold strike that would radically alter the course of the entire war and go down in history as one of the most influential military operations of all time.

Despite recent set-backs, the Regia Marina could still call the Mediterranean Mare nostrum, ‘our sea’. The mere presence of its capital ships at Taranto, the fleet anchorage, prevented Britain from sufficiently supplying Crete and Malta, the Royal Navy’s most crucial bases in this theater. Convoys for British armies fighting in the Libyan Desert had to travel the long way around most of Africa, navigating the Cape of Good Hope, then sailing northward along the entire length of the eastern continent in extended voyages fraught with danger and delay. Cunningham was particularly distressed by the addition of two new vessels to the Italian Fleet. The Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were among the finest battleships afloat, faster than anything comparable at his disposal. Since 2 August, they rode menacingly at anchor, laying in wait for the next available opportunity to pounce on anything that dared venture forth from either Alexandria or Gibraltar.

Because of Taranto, the life-line of convoys empowering Graziani’s offensive could not be interdicted. In a conclusion born of desperation, Cunningham decided that Italy’s major naval base would have to be reduced. All too aware of his warships’ limitations, he assigned the task to an aircraft its crews referred to with tongue in cheek as the ‘String-bag’. The plan was extremely innovative and bold, apparently suicidal. Never before had aircraft unsupported by naval units attempted to knock out an enemy fleet in its own home port.

Already renowned as the war’s grand masters of ack-ack, the Italians had fortified Taranto with anti-aircraft defense-in-depth. It comprised twenty-one batteries of 10cm. guns and eighty-four 20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft cannons, plus 109 heavy calibre machine guns. They were joined by the combined firepower of six battleships, seven cruisers and twenty-eight destroyers in Taranto’s inner and outer harbors, numbering more than 600 anti-aircraft weapons. These were directed by twenty two large search-lights designed to illuminate enemy planes and blind their pilots.

Barrage balloons tethered in three rows across the anchorage would be sent aloft at the first sign of a raid. Their draping, almost invisible steel cables, were hung to sheer off the wings of low-flying aircraft. While ninety such balloons were on hand, there was only enough hydrogen available to send a third of them aloft. If in the unlikely event that the enemy attacked with an overwhelming armada of bombers, a heavy blanket of smoke could spread over the facility, obscuring the entire port, which was almost completely ringed by 4,600 meters of heavy steel-mesh anti-torpedo netting. Although Taranto was without radar, it did have highly sensitive sound detection devices able to pick up the noisy flight of slow-moving biplanes long before they arrived, thereby providing sufficient warning.

The entire harbor was a concentric arrangement of truly awesome defenses manned by the best shots in the world. They longed for the chance to show what they could do to an enemy aerial attack. So confident were the anti-aircraft gunners in their weapons and skill, they refused any cover from the Regia Aeronautica, arguing that its fighters would probably be mistakenly brought down by friendly fire in the thick curtain of shells sent skyward. Nothing, they were certain, would be able to penetrate their defenses. They were, in any case, deemed necessary only as a last resort, because the Italian fleet was ordered to leave its base the moment any sufficiently powerful enemy force came within 300 kilometers of Taranto.

Aware of the Supermarina’s contingency plans, thanks to code intercepts, Admiral Cunningham dispatched the aircraft-carrier Illustrious in the company of four cruisers and as many destroyers on the afternoon of 10 November, then broke the formation into two directions near the Greek island of Cephalonia. Three additional cruisers simultaneously steamed on a northerly heading to create diversionary maneuvers in the seas between Italy and Albania. There they stumbled upon a World War One vintage destroyer escort, the Fabrizi, and an auxiliary cruiser, Ramb III, guarding a convoy of four empty freighters returning to Brindisi after having discharged their supplies in Valona. Ramb III kept the overwhelming enemy force at bay with nineteen salvos, and made good her escape without damage.

The old Farbrizi, however, rushed, guns blazing, at the three cruisers, and was almost immediately disabled by a fusillade of 21cm. shells. In a riddled condition and no longer able to defend herself, she tried to lure the British into a nearby mine-field. But they suspected the ruse, and sank the entire convoy of four ships between themselves. That done, they streamed out of the Adriatic at high speed. Supermarina commanders following these maneuvers were duly mystified, and failed to notice that the following day Illustrious was 370 kilometers from Taranto. On deck, a flight of Fairey Swordfish were unfolding their fifteen-meter wings.

In service since early 1934, the three-seat open-cockpit biplane was, in late 1940, obsolete by all standards, defended by just two 7.7mm Vickers machine-guns; one fixed forward, the other mounted on a swiveling ring aft in an arrangement out of World War One. For tonight’s mission, even this inadequate armament would be reduced by half with removal of the rear gunner’s position to allow for the installation of extra fuel tanks. These extended the aircraft’s range, but increased its risk of catching fire, while reducing an already unimpressive top speed from 222 km/hr. The long, slow approaches made by Swordfish when on a torpedo run rendered them especially vulnerable to enemy ground-fire, against which their fabric-covered metal frames crumpled and burned like dried parchment.

Despite these formidable drawbacks, it could carry 680 kg of bombs or a single 726-kg torpedo over 1,600 kilometers. Its 750-hp Bristol Pegasus 9-cylinder radial piston engine performed with steadfast reliability under a variety of extreme conditions, from freezing to boiling temperatures, including ice and salt-water spray. The airplane was very stable, forgiving on the controls, and a delight to fly.

“You could pull a Swordfish off the deck and put her in a climbing turn at fifty-five knots,” according to veteran pilot, Terrence Horsley. “She would maneuver in a vertical plane as easily as she would straight and level, and even when diving from 3,000 meters, her indicated air-speed never rose much about 200 knots. The controls were not frozen rigid by the force of the slipstream, and it was possible to dive within sixty meters of the water. The approach to the carrier deck could be made at a staggeringly slow speed, yet response to the controls remained firm and insistent. Consider what such qualities meant on a dark night when the carrier deck was pitching the height of a house.”⁴

At 2100, Illustrious turned into the wind off the northwestern point of Cephalonia, and a dozen airplanes lifted slowly from the deck. Led by Lieutenant Commander K. Williamson, his and five other Swordfish were armed with torpedoes, followed by four more with a mix of flares and bombs. Another two were armed with torpedoes. Over-burdened with these munitions and auxiliary fuel tanks, the first wave launched without incident, but struggled for altitude. Somewhat more than an hour later, the second wave of another nine ‘String-bags’ rose into the night air. For the first thirty minutes of flight, Williamson’s group navigated by instruments alone through thick cloud. Concerned the pilots might lose their bearings, he ordered them to climb above the overcast at 2,200 meters, where they found clear skies illuminated by a crescent moon.

One of the airmen, Lieutenant H. Swayne, had indeed lost contact with the first wave of Swordfish, and found himself heading toward the target alone. The Italians’ acoustic early warning system detected his approach, and all available barrage balloons dangling lethal steel cables ascended in the glare of the harbor’s combined search-lights. Realizing he was early, Swayne circled just out of ground-fire range until the rest of his comrades appeared. Still far from Taranto, they could see it already spouting fire like a monstrous volcano. Into this inferno, Commander Williamson led the first attack wave.

After the first two Swordfish illuminated the harbor with flares, he dove from the west, then turned southeast over San Pietro Island. His port wing-tip almost brushed against a balloon cable, as he bore down on a battleship, dropping his torpedo a mere ten meters above the water. It raced toward the target, narrowly missing a destroyer, and exploded half-way between the B-turret and bridge of the Conti di Cavour. The attacking aircraft banked away, was shredded by machine-gun fire and spun into the sea, but both Williamson and his observer were captured alive.

Two more Swordfish followed the Lieutenant Commander’s example, but their torpedoes missed the already sinking Cavour, because the pilots had been dazzled by blinding searchlights. They flew through the hellish ground-fire unscathed. But Taranto’s defenders also had difficulty seeing their opponents. Burning magnesium parachute-flares dropped by the enemy airplanes created false images and dancing shadows, making target identification extremely difficult. Every gun capable of firing a shot was nonetheless blasting away at the intruders. They could not, however, protect the Italian Fleet’s newest battleship. A torpedo strike on the Littorio tore a 15- by 10-meter-wide hole in her bow, followed a few minutes later by a hit at the port quarter. Water rushed into its 8- by 2-meter cavity, and the vessel began to go down. At the same time, Lieutenant M. Maund dropped his torpedo toward the Vittorio Veneto at 1,300 meters, but a searchlight spoiled his aim, and he missed. The bomb-laden Swordfish unloosed their missiles on several warships. They, too, went wide of their targets, save for a lucky destroyer, which escaped the consequences of a direct hit when a British bomb failed to explode.

Taranto’s seaplane base, the eyes of the fleet, was far less fortunate. It was utterly demolished, all its hydroplanes destroyed and invaluable repair shops plus spare parts depot wrecked. As the first wave of attackers turned out to sea, the second one, back on Illustrious, got under way with some difficulty. Its last two planes were taxiing to starting positions when they accidentally locked wings, reducing Lieutenant Commander Ginger Hale’s flight to just seven aircraft. Undaunted, they took off from the pitching deck to arrive over Taranto for a final, midnight raid.

Numerous targets were brilliantly illuminated by twenty four magnesium flares, and Hale came in at ten meters above the surface of the sea, his torpedo going away at 700 meters toward the already stricken Littorio. She shuddered with a direct hit that tore yet another gaping wound in her side. Close behind Hale, Lieutenant G. Bayley dove on the listing battleship to deliver her coup de gröce. But before he could release his torpedo, he was caught in the crossfire of perhaps a dozen guns, which literally vaporized his aircraft in mid-air. Lieutenant Bayley’s body was never found.

Other Swordfish bombed the harbor’s precious oil storage facilities, which erupted into a conflagration turning night into day. Clearly illuminated by the ferociously burning depot was another large battleship singled out by Lieutenant Lea. He dove on it, and the Caio Duilio lurched with a hit that tore an eleven-by-thirteen-meter hole one meter below her water-line. Lea came in so low his run took him straight over the target’s foredeck and between the Fiume and Zara, two cruisers which, in their eagerness to shoot him down, fired on each other. Lea threaded their cross-fire, then banked for Illustrious. He left the Caio Duilio in a sinking condition, but she was saved by the frantic efforts of her crew, who ran her aground just in time. Torpedoes dropped by two more Swordfish missed the Vittorio Veneto, and an unexploded bomb-hit on the cruiser Trento nonetheless ruptured her oil tanks. These last attackers escaped without a scratch.

The Taranto they left behind was a tangle of badly wounded ships illuminated by the glare of burning harbor works. Against the loss of two British planes and four men, forty Italians perished–twenty-three aboard the Littorio, sixteen with the Conti di Cavour and one on the Caio Duilio. Had the defenders operated their smoke-screens, the raid might have been put off. Steel-mesh netting surrounding the ships was sufficient to protect against conventional torpedoes exploding on impact, but at Taranto the British introduced magnetic torpedoes traveling at depths greater than the nets, which only went down to a vessel’s maximum draught, to detonate directly beneath a target’s keel.

Trying to shoot down even slow-moving aerial targets at night against the shifting glare of drifting magnesium flares spoiled the aim of anti-aircraft gunners. However, they were not entirely to blame for the disaster, because the audacious operation was the first of its kind. Until Taranto, no one would have believed that a handful of ‘String-bags’ could have single-handedly displaced the balance of power in an entire theater of war. That, in fact, was the result of the attack. Surviving vessels were moved to Naples, too far away from enemy convoys now able to supply Malta and Greece.

Implications were still more far-reaching. For those who understood Taranto as an example of things to come, the era of the battleship had ended. No one learned this lesson better than the Axis leaders. Hitler was so impressed, he wanted to scrap all his capital ships to build more long-range bombers. Mussolini was hardly less disenchanted with the costly, vulnerable battleships, and ordered his naval architects to create a new fleet of more numerous, smaller attack craft, particularly torpedo-boats. To the Japanese, however, Taranto was their inspiration for Pearl Harbor. The success of that raid was possible because the Americans did not learn from the lessons of November 11. They continued to surround the USS Arizona and other doomed vessels with the same kind of steel mesh netting used by the Italians with such disastrous effect in 1940.