-4- 7. Lessons: a) AA fire is not effective. Even with RDF instru- ments it is questionable whether a gun can be kept on the rapidly changing bearing of a fast, low flying aircraft. b) Apparently the best night attack on ships in a harbor is to fly so low between ships that if the ships fire they will hit each other. c) The Taranto attack was about as near an approach to the one man torpedo as will be obtained. Seldom will such a determined attack be made. I attended all the conferences of the pilots before and after the attack and saw them personally be- fore and after they made the attack. It is doubt- ful in my mind whether if the second attack had been carried out the pilots could have stood up under the strain and gone through AA fire again. d) The difficulties of defending ships on moonlight nights in a harbor are numerous and some believe it is better to keep the Fleet at sea on such occasions. e) I talked to British pilots some days before the attack and they expected about 90 percent of the pilots to return and to make about 75 percent of torpedo hits. The British believe that the tor- pedo plane attack made at dawn or dusk or under moonlight conditions is the best form of plane attack. The British Navy has definitely given up high level bombing and its second choice to the torpedo attack is dive bombing attack. They do not advocate steep dive bombing attacks because they do not want to lose control of the plane and experience loss of correction of aim during the dive. John N. Opie, 3rd. JNO/sm