Illustrious being escorted by an Arethusa class light cruiser.

By 8:00 PM in the evening, the Illustrious and her escorts were in position, about 270 kilometers (170 miles) from the port.  Twelve Swordfish were fitted up for the attack:  six carried torpedoes, four carried bombs, and two carried a combination of bombs and flares.  The rear gunners were left behind, since their position was taken up by an additional fuel tank.

The first Swordfish took off at 8:35, and by 9:00, they were all in the air and on the way.  Just before 11:00 PM, the two flare-droppers split off from the formation; one put a line of flares over the harbor from 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) and then bombed an oil storage depot.  The strike aircraft attacked in two groups; the flight leader's plane was hit by flak and went down, but multiple hits were scored on several of the battleships.



In the meantime, a second wave had taken to the air about a half hour after the first left; it consisted of five aircraft armed with torpedoes, two armed with bombs, and two armed with flares and bombs.  One had to turn back because of a technical failure, but the other eight arrived at about midnight and repeated the performance of the first wave, slamming torpedoes into the sitting battleships under the glare of the flares.  Another Swordfish was lost to flak.

All the aircraft, except the two that had been shot down, were back on board the Illustrious before 3:00 AM that morning.  Aerial reconnaissance conducted two days later indicated that one Cavour and one Dulio-class battleship were heavily damaged and beached; one Littorio battleship badly damaged; two cruisers and two destroyers badly damaged; and two auxiliary vessels sunk.

It was a brilliant attack, inflicting massive damage on the Italian fleet with minimal losses to the British.  The Italians withdrew their fleet to the north, effectively removing it from the game board.  The successful raid on Taranto suggested to Japanese planners that they might be able to imitate the same tactics for their own purposes.

One of the many historical battles you will fight in MAW.