The Italian main battle fleet, comprising six battleships, 16 cruisers, and 13 destroyers, was anchored at the Italian Naval base at Taranto. The British dispatched a task force led by Admiral Andrew Cunningham to assault the base. The task force possessed one aircraft carrier, the HMS Illustrious, from which it launched 21 obsolete biplane torpedo bombers against the fleet.

On the night of November 11th, two groups of aircraft departed the Illustrious at 21:00. The first group arrived at the harbor at 22:58. The initial wave attacked the oil tanks in the base and subsequently struck the battleship Conte di Cavour, sinking it below the waterline. By the end of the night, three Italian battleships had been damaged, effectively halving the size of their capital fleet.

The British attack on Taranto marked the first instance in history where carrier-based aircraft had successfully sunk an opposing fleet of warships. This event drew the attention of the Japanese, who subsequently carried out a larger-scale attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a direct response to the British attack on Taranto. Regrettably, the United States Navy did not draw the same lessons from this incident and ultimately paid the price on December 7, 1941.