Damned Hunchbacks, Italy's forgotten torpedo bomber units of the Second World War by Paolo Morisi

Length, 312 pages, including bibliography

Mr. Morisi's latest effort goes into the efforts of the Italian Air Force's torpedo bomber groups. He goes to the beginning in World War I, when in 1917 Italy tried torpedoing from the air, an Austro-Hungarian ship in Pola harbor, but didn't make a hit. In the interwar years, the Italian Air Force tried to form torpedo squadrons, but had to cope with the fact they were at the bottom of the list in the military budget. They contracted with Whitehead Company in Fiume for an aerial torpedo, but tried to get the Navy to pay for it since they didn't have the money.

The plane referred to in the title was the SM-79, a trimotor converted from an airliner to a bomber. It was fitted in the late 1930s with torpedo racks and a crude aiming sight. Italy's unpreparedness for war in 1940 is shown by the fact that Italy's air force had to rely on civilian contractors to service the torpedoes until enough ordnance men could be trained to do so.

Morisi goes into the tactics the SM-79 squadrons used, mostly trying to attack at dusk or dawn, against warships and later merchant ships. He talks about the operations against major Mediterranean convoys such as Tiger and Halberd.

His biggest chapter deals with the torpedo units' part in the effort against the Pedestal convoy to Malta in 1942. He breaks down day-by-day actions in that important battle.

Morisi also goes into, to me, an "apples to oranges" comparison of the SM-79 to the Swordfish, Avenger, and "Kate" torpedo planes of the other powers. There was also a rare instance of Italy teaching Germany something, as the Luftwaffe learned from Italy how to use HE-111s and JU-88s are torpedo planes and had their torpedo school in Italy for a time until 1943.

At the end, we get a list of Allied warships and merchant ships that were hit and damaged or sunk by the SM-79s. The last two on the warship list are in the table as American LSTs, but in the text, and in looking online I confirmed, that they were under the British White Ensign. The pictures in the middle of the book are kind of thin, and don't show the other torpedo plane Italy tried to use, the SM-84, though Morisi does talk about them a lot in the text.

This is a good effort though and gives us the insight into the Italian air effort against Britain on the "Med". I give it 4 stars out of five.