The raid on Taranto
1940 · Event
Twenty-one obsolete Swordfish biplanes off HMS Illustrious cripple half the Italian battle fleet in its own harbour by night — the first all-aircraft naval attack in history. Among those who study it closely: the planners of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with Pearl Harbor a year away.
On these timelines: 1940: Britain's Darkest Hour, World War II, England, Master, Italy (post-476 CE)
More from 1940: Britain's Darkest Hour
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- Churchill becomes Prime Minister (1940)
- Battle of Britain Day breaks the daylight assault (1940)
- France signs the armistice at Compiègne (1940)
- 'We shall fight on the beaches' (1940)
- The panzers cross the Meuse at Sedan (1940)
- Eagle Day opens the Luftwaffe's main assault (1940)
- The Coventry Blitz (1940)
Around 1940
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Manhattan Project (1942)
- Korean War (1950)
- Spanish Civil War (1936)
- Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)
- World War II (1939)