Taranto: The American Connection

The British attack on the Italian Fleet at anchor in Taranto harbor in November, 1940 is well known to WWII students. Not so well known is the fact that an American Naval Officer - Lt Comm. John N. Opie, III, USN - was aboard HMS Illustrious and sent back long reports to ONI in Washington. Sadly, Opie's intelligence reports were put to little use. His timing was bad. His Taranto report arrived at the Office of the CNO in mid-January, 1941. While Admiral Stark was hot about Taranto in November, - the attack was front page news in the NY Times! - he had cooled off by January. Opie himself returned to Washington in April, but by then, CNO's concern has switched to the Atlantic, with ships being moved from Pearl Harbor to the East Coast. Opie's request to go to Hawaii, and "share lessons learned with the boys out there" was rejected. My book has all the details: www.tarantobook.com.

 

Welcome to the group.

Your book sounds interesting. Thank you for writing it and bringing it to our attention. I am curious, what put you on the presence of a serving USN officer aboard the RN ships? I know there was an American, Cecile Brown, aboard the RN BB RENOUND when she was sunk with the PRINCE of WALES, but this is the first I have heard of the Yank near Taranto.

 

It was mentioned briefly in Schofield's book on the Taranto attack. I tried to learn more, and ended up at the National Archives, reading Opie's reports. From 9/39 thru 5/40, military and political leaders in the US and Britain held back on information sharing and joint staff work, although lower ranked officers were begging for it. Each side thought its own material and knowledge was way ahead of the other. Hitler's smashing of France woke them up. Opie was the first of many officers to go over to England; they were called "neutral observers."

 

In a way this seems to parallel the Ultra/Magic story. In the field of Cryptography both the Americans and the Brits had had some success in the breaking of hostile coded messages. Though America had the luxury of being still at peace the considered observers could tell the clouds of war were gathering, so an arraignment was worked out that the two English-speaking nations should split the efforts for the sake of efficiency: England/Germany America/Japan. While this may have been in violation of any number of international laws, such as the law of neutrality, it was a pragmatic decision.

I read the book by Cecil Brown in which he relates how he, as an international correspondent, he happened to be on the RENOWN. But he was not a serving naval officer of a neutral nation. I had never before learned of such a thing as a neutral nation's serving naval office being invited aboard warships going in harms way. My point is how did you learn of this? Was it in that footnote of Mr. Prage's, or some other way?

 

Mea culpa. I admit I was wrong in my details. Thank you for your assistance.

 

Prange, in At Dawn We Slept, mentions Taranto but not Opie. The book that did mention Opie was The Attack on Taranto, by B. B. Schofield, Naval Institute Press, 1973. No details, just a mention of the name. When I went to the National Archives, Opie's reports had to be de-classified for my use; meaning that no one had seen them since the end of the war.

 

Thank you for the information. It was exactly what I wished to know.