Battle of Taranto - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Italian fleet lost half of its capital ships in one night; the next day the Regia Marina transferred its undamaged ships from Taranto to Naples to protect them from similar attacks. Repairs to the Littorio took about five months, to the Caio Duilio six months; Conte di Cavour required extensive salvage work and her repairs were incomplete when Italy switched sides in 1943. She was subsequently sunk by a German glider bomb. Cunningham wrote after the attack: "The Taranto show has freed up our hands considerably & I hope now to shake these damned Itiys up a bit. I don't think their remaining three battleships will face us and if they do I'm quite prepared to take them on with only two." Indeed, the balance of power had swung to the British Mediterranean Fleet which now enjoyed more operational freedom: when previously forced to operate as one unit to match Italian capital ships, they could now split into two battlegroups; each built around one aircraft carrier and two battleships.

Nevertheless, Cunningham's estimate that Italians would be unwilling to risk their remaining heavy units was quickly proven wrong. Only five days after Taranto, Campioni sortied with two battleships, six cruisers and 14 destroyers to disrupt a supply convoy to Malta. The follow-up to this operation led to the Battle of Cape Spartivento on 27 November 1940. Two of the three damaged battleships were repaired by mid-1941 and control of the Mediterranean continued to swing back and forth until the Italian armistice in 1943.

Aerial torpedo experts in all modern navies had previously thought that torpedo attacks against ships must be in water at least 30 ft (9.1 m) deep. Taranto harbour had a depth of only about 39 ft (12 m). However, the Royal Navy developed a new method of preventing torpedoes from diving too deep. A drum was attached beneath the nose of the aircraft, from which a roll of wire led to the nose of the torpedo. As it dropped, the tension from the wire pulled up the nose of the torpedo, producing a belly-flop rather than a nose dive. The British used wooden fins to break the dive of the torpedo, and it is likely the Imperial Japanese Navy's planning staff, in its careful study of Taranto during planning for the attack on Pearl Harbor copied this idea. (It would be especially important in the shallow harbour there, which averaged only 42 ft (13 m).)