Within the space of one night, Malta had gone from peace to war. The island was once again an outpost, but this time of freedom in a world threatened by aggressive dictatorships.
During 1939 and the long months of the so-called ‘phoney war’, Malta was lightly garrisoned. Despite the substantial Italian forces present in Libya, the priority for both the British and French was to protect the Suez Canal. The collapse of France presented a major problem, for suddenly almost the whole of the North African coastline from the Egyptian border to Morocco was potentially available for Axis use. Even in Egypt, there were strong French naval and ground forces that had to be neutralized, while further east Syria was another outpost of Vichy. The full responsibility for defending the Suez Canal now fell on British shoulders.
The significance of this cannot be underestimated. The French Army in Egypt outnumbered that of the United Kingdom. The situation was resolved as French troops were repatriated from Egypt, while the French naval vessels in their North African ports were ordered to surrender to the Royal Navy or be attacked. They refused to surrender and at Oran and Dakar the Royal Navy found itself in the unfortunate position of having to strike at what had been so recently an ally, but even so, some ships escaped to Vichy France. At Alexandria, a stand-off was narrowly averted by the diplomatic skill of Cunningham and his senior officers, but it could have resulted in a naval gun duel in the harbour had not his wiser counsel prevailed, since the Admiralty was insisting on immediate surrender. In the end, some seventy per cent of the French naval personnel were repatriated, leaving the rest to maintain their ships ready for the day of liberation; meanwhile their guns were put ‘beyond use’. No attempt was made by the Royal Navy to impress these ships into its service, as had happened in centuries past, partly because of a lack of manpower and partly because the two fleets had guns of different calibres. Soon, the Mediterranean Fleet was to find itself short of sufficient ammunition for its own weapons, so the logistics of having completely alien shells supplied would have been more trouble than they were worth.
For those in Malta, the defeat of France came as a shock, or as Mrs Norman put it, ‘our really shattering thunderclap was the news of the fall of France. A Fleet and Air Force were at once lost to our aid. The sea, which was our lifeline became at once a narrow channel, infested with mines and submarines and within the range now of enemy airfields all the way from Gibraltar to Malta . . . ’14
After the first attack, Malta moved almost immediately on to a war footing. There was resignation on the part of the British present on the island, for whom yet another theatre of war had opened up at the worst possible time, with 6 million French service personnel no longer in the conflict. Amongst the Maltese, there was anger and resentment that their larger neighbour had seen fit to attack them. There was also fear. The fear of the bombing, or of gas attacks, that had been widely predicted as the future of warfare between the wars, and whose consequences on the Western Front in the previous world war had become so widely known. There was also concern about invasion.
Everyone looked to the new Governor of Malta for a lead. Dobbie’s first act was to cancel the six hours’ notice for army wives. He had brought his own wife with him. Even so, those naval wives whose husbands were ‘afloat’ were ordered to leave, while those whose husbands had shore appointments could stay or leave as they wished. Many naval wives accepted the ‘offer’ of accommodation in St George’s barracks, even though this meant leaving their homes on the island.
‘We were feeling very disgruntled at leaving our comfortable homes,’ Mrs Norman remembers. ‘But glad to see other families had not left in the exodus.’
Strewn about the barrack grounds were funny little long shaped mounds – the slit trenches that were to be our shelter. I had an almost irresistible temptation to decorate each one of them with one of those large glass bulbs full of white artificial flowers and R.I.P. The whole place looked discouragingly like a cemetery.15
Given that the Maltese are almost 100 per cent Roman Catholic, it seems strange that the first wartime Governor of Malta was a devout Methodist. On the other hand, since Lieutenant General Sir William Dobbie had spent his military career in the Royal Engineers, the ‘Sappers’, whose members were supposedly all ‘Mad, Married and Methodist’, he was probably just conforming to type. Dobbie was a strict Methodist, austere and spartan in his tastes, and just perhaps that was one characteristic that endeared him to the Maltese, whose Roman Catholicism was devout and also puritanical, in contrast to the more liberal ways of many of the Continental countries. The best comparison with Maltese Roman Catholicism was probably that of the Spanish Basques.
Dobbie’s first action was to send an Order of the Day to service personnel in Malta:
The decision of HMG to fight on until our enemies are defeated will be heard with the greatest satisfaction by all ranks of the Garrison of Malta.
It may be that hard times lie ahead of us, but I know that however hard they may be the courage and determination of all ranks will not falter, and that with God’s help we will maintain the security of this fortress.
I call upon all officers and other ranks humbly to seek God’s help, and then in reliance on Him to do their duty unflinchingly.
During his time as Governor, Dobbie was also to make frequent broadcasts to those on the island, making them feel that he was taking them into his confidence and reinforcing his message with frequent invocations of the help of the Almighty.
Although well past the British Army’s retirement age of sixty years, Dobbie had a dual role, acting as both Commander-in-Chief of Malta and as its Governor. This meant that he had the responsibility of defending Malta, and mounting operations against the enemy from the islands, while also being responsible for the health, safety and general well-being of the civilian population.
The threat of war had not envisaged such an early French capitulation, rather many had expected that the entire war would see intensive fighting in France, in effect a repeat of the experiences of the First World War. Even though Italian involvement had been regarded as possible, Germany’s other potential ally, Spain, was weak and still struggling to recover from the effects of the Spanish Civil War. The Mediterranean, it was thought, could be kept secure by British forces at Cyprus, Gibraltar and Malta, an Anglo-French presence at Alexandria, and French forces at Oran, Tunis and Toulon.
Casualties on that first day were light. One bomb killed six Maltese artillerymen at St Elmo, all of whom were bandsmen from 1 Coast Regiment posted to act as observers for the Harbour Fire Controls. There were seven civilian casualties, and inevitably during what must be regarded as ‘total war’, three of them were young children, little girls of five, six and seven.
The Italians did not seem to be working to a definite plan. The airfields and the dockyard seemed to be the primary targets, but bombing lacked precision. This could have simply been a reflection of the problems of high level bombing, or it could be that the heavy AA barrage was working well. In addition to the AA gunners of the Royal Artillery and the Royal Malta Artillery, there were also improvised AA defences in the dockyard, where the admiral superintendent had asked for volunteers, hoping for 400, and received 5,000 applications!
One of the early plans was for the evacuation of as many people as possible away from the areas most at risk, meaning effectively the three cities on one side of the Grand Harbour, and the capital Valletta, with its suburb Floriana, on the other. At the time of Italy entering the war, Valletta’s population was around 24,000, that of Floriana, 7,000, and Cospicua had 13,000, Vittoriosa, 8,500, Senglea, 8,000, and Kalkara, 2,500. The numbers were not huge, but these were some of the largest towns. Many stayed put for the first night, and only started to leave in the morning, but the real spur to the mass exodus that followed was the start of the air raids.
‘The road leading from Cospicua to Zabbar Gate presented a pitiful sight,’ recalls J. Storace.
Women with bundles on their heads or with bundles hanging from their arms, carrying babies, with one or two children holding on to their skirts, with a boy or girl pushing a pram loaded with the most essential belongings, crowded the road, walking without a destination in view, but leaving their beloved homes, abandoning their City, going anywhere as far away as possible from this target area. Buses, touring cars, cabs and other horse-drawn vehicles carrying the more fortunate families who either owned a vehicle or could afford to hire one, moved in this crowd of walking and less fortunate humanity in the direction of Zabbar.
Some of the Cottonara ARP staff were detailed to control the walking refugees by making them keep to the left side of the road leaving the right side clear for traffic. As each vehicle leaving Cospicua approached Silver Jubilee Gate, it was stopped and the driver ordered to load as many refugees as he could possibly carry, especially women with babies in their arms and without the escort of their menfolk. By also using for this purpose the ARP ambulances and trucks as soon as they returned from hospital, the congestion was gradually relieved so that by 11pm this vital main road was completely cleared.16
Matching pedestrians with motor vehicles, seemingly regardless of the destinations of either, seems a rough and ready method of evacuation, especially for those with a clear destination in mind, possibly returning to the country or coastal village of their younger years. People in small islands tend to commute far less and over far shorter distances than those living in larger countries. Small villages such as Dingli, by Maltese standards relatively isolated, suffered a large influx of refugees. A slightly larger village, Siggiewi, saw its population grow by more than 5,000, more than trebling its pre-war population. After the initial exodus, many stayed put, but on 26 June at Marsa, a bus crowded with passengers suffered a direct hit by a bomb, killing twenty-eight outright. Almost immediately, more than 8,000 fled the town in panic, leaving little more than 1,000 behind.
Strangely, the second day of war saw nothing more than a solitary Italian reconnaissance aircraft approach Malta, and this was shot down. On 13 June, there were four warnings, but only two air raids actually hit the island, the first striking at Kalafrana, killing two people and wounding another four. The second raid was attacked by the three Gloster Sea Gladiator biplanes, Faith, Hope and Charity, who forced the bombers to drop their bombs around the northernmost mainland village of Mellieha, with most falling in fields and some into the sea.
One farmer working in his fields as the bombs dropped knew what to do, throwing himself flat on his face. Neither he nor his donkey were injured, but when the air raid wardens reached him they found that he was furious, having spent the morning watering a crop of tomatoes, only to have it destroyed by the bombs!
On 14 June, air raids started around Valletta and Floriana, with some bombs falling on Pieta on the main road from the capital to Sliema. There were no less than eight separate raids that day. They ended at 19.25 with a raid that fell mainly on Cospicua, close to the dockyard, and in which incendiaries were mixed with the high-explosive bombs. A total of twenty-five aircraft came across on this raid in five waves. Cospicua was one of the most crowded areas, and casualties were heavy. Survivors struggled from the devastation, seeking safety, and many seeking shelter having lost everything except the clothes they were wearing. One man, who had been having a breakfast of fried fish when the first bombers had arrived that morning, sent his wife and three daughters to stay with relatives in Mellieha, in the north of the island.
‘There was excitement in the Island that June, as you’d expect,’ recalled Queenie Lee.
All the families seemed to think that movement was the solution to all problems. Hundreds and hundreds of them packed up a few possessions and went to seek safety in the centre of the Island, and the squares near the coast and harbour were dead except for battalions of hungry cats. I remember going along the seafront between raids, and seeing no one but a solitary old man sitting on the edge of a bomb crater, serene in the belief that two bombs never fall in the same place. But our three planes worked miracles and must have frightened the Italians with their sheer impudence. In a few weeks, raiders were treated with contempt and returned to their homes and life became normal except for the inactivity in the creeks and harbour.17
Once hostilities started, the Governor moved quickly to remove those with strong Italian sympathies from prominent positions, and there really was only one, the Chief Justice, Sir Arturo Mercieca. He joined other pro-Italian Maltese in internment, initially in Malta, but later in East Africa.
Despite the fact that many refugees soon returned to their homes, by early August, the official estimate was of 81,540 refugees, more than a quarter of the population, with an incredible 16,939 billeted on Birkikara, while the much smaller towns of Qormi had 8,656, Rabat, 8,008, Mosta, 5,375, Zejtun, 6,312, and Zebbug, 6,317. Even little Safi, whose peacetime population was around 500, had 345 refugees, while Lija, with a population of 1,800, had more than 3,000 refugees. Many villagers welcomed strangers into their homes, while the wealthier landed gentry and Maltese nobility placed property at the disposal of the authorities, churches, convents and monasteries, and the band clubs opened themselves up to refugees, while local schools were often commandeered.
The Governor had spoken to the people of Malta on 15 June, announcing that each village would have an official, later described as the Protection Officer, who would work with the District Committee, the Police and the Special Constabulary, to ensure the welfare of the refugees, including food and accommodation. A Refugee Central Office was established at Birkirkara, usually known as B’Kara.
The importance of the church in Maltese life, and its strength, was to prove a blessing. In many places, the local church would attend to the feeding of the refugees, but if the church did not, or its resources were swamped by the sheer numbers involved, the Protection Officer had to open a community kitchen if there were more than fifty refugees. Archbishop Maurus Caruana had already ordered the churches to open ‘Economical Kitchens’ for those without food, and by 17 June, seven of these were in operation. Congregations pledged donations towards the cost of the kitchens, with at least one parish priest exhorting his congregation to give for this cause rather than for the repainting of the dome! The kitchens provided by the Protection Officers were known as the Communal Feeding Service, and while the Economical Kitchens closed down in September, the Communal Feeding Service continued. A mood of austerity gripped the island, with sales of ice cream banned after 15 August: Malta’s largest producer, the Wembley Ice Cream Factory, donated all of that day’s proceeds to the Malta Relief Fund.
Eligibility for the Communal Feeding Service was by application to the Protection Officer, and successful applicants were given coupons for a fortnight at a time for hot meals from the kitchens and for other basic items that could be purchased through grocery shops. Those using a communal soup kitchen were given half a rotolo, about 400 grams, of bread and one hot meal a day. For children between three and eight years, this ration was halved, but supplemented by a pint of milk and an egg a day. For those without a kitchen meal, three pence (1.25p) of food was provided daily, including half a rotolo of bread and a rotolo of paste weekly, with children between three and eight years given a quarter rotolo of bread daily and half a rotolo of paste weekly . Children under three received a pint of milk and an egg daily. Any money not spent on these necessities could be used to buy up to half a gallon per head of paraffin each week, or could also be spent on oil, coffee or tea, sugar, fish, goats cheese or potatoes. All very well, but the increased demand in the smaller villages and towns meant that supplies in the shops quickly dwindled.
Unemployment soared in many of the villages invaded by the refugees, and many local evacuation committees looked hard to find work for these idle hands, but there was only so much demand for dressmakers or washerwomen. Yet, money was desperately needed, for those refugees fortunate enough to find accommodation, often at a very high price, still had to pay the rent on the property that had been abandoned.
Anticipating war, the Maltese authorities had spent £350,000 creating a reserve of essential commodities, and as soon as war broke out in September 1939, the government and the armed forces became the sole importers of such items.
After the first day’s bombing, two things were clear. The threat of a gas attack had been wildly exaggerated but there was a pressing need for purpose-built air raid shelters. Even the large stretch of railway tunnel was not adequate for the population of Floriana, but those elsewhere on the island had nowhere, except in the dockyard where there was one of the largest shelters, with accommodation for more than 1,000 labourers, as well as the resident naval personnel.
Not surprisingly, many of Malta’s reactions were based on the British model. This included a Home Defence Force and a Special Constabulary, for which 5,000 volunteers came forward, many of them reporting with their own weapons, mainly sporting guns for shooting wildlife. The Home Guard soon took over the anti-parachute duties of the police. The Maltese units in the British Army also expanded rapidly, with the King’s Own Malta Regiment at one time enlisting two companies all of whom were former Boy Scouts.
The role of the Special Constabulary was no easy one. During one air raid, a bomb fell on to the Benedictine convent in Mdina, demolishing the top storey and sending two nuns, one of whom died immediately, crashing through to the floor of the storey below. The convent was a closed order with little contact with the outside world, and at first refused admittance to anyone, but eventually relented when faced with a forced entry. The rescuers were preceded down the corridors by a nun ringing a bell to warn the rest of the nuns to go to their cells, after which they were able to take the corpse of the bomb victim to the convent chapel.
At first, much of the island was without adequate warning of an air raid, and even in Valletta, the capital, the lower end of Kingsway could not hear the public Rediffusion speakers. Even in the dock area, often the first warning was when the AA defences opened up. In some places, maroons were fired, but at night these risked drawing the attention of enemy aircraft.
Realizing the urgent need for air raid shelters, the population set to with a will, helped by the fact that the limestone on which Malta sits, and which is the ubiquitous local building material, is soft and easy to cut, but once exposed to the sea air it hardens. The local population was also encouraged to build their own shelters, even in the bastion walls, and in the large public shelters they could ask permission from the District Commissioner to excavate a private cubicle of their own. Permission for this was seldom refused provided that the work was completed within three months and that the tunnelling was level with the rest of the shelter. Cubicles were restricted to a width of six feet and could not have fixed doors. A right of way would also exist through these ‘private’ areas of the shelter and a fee of one shilling (5p) had to be paid annually. In the genuinely private shelters, it was not unusual for several neighbouring shelters to be inter-connected to allow for escape in an emergency, when one or more exits might be blocked. Attempts to create additional shelters in the cellars of the larger houses proved unsuccessful, however.
At first, a system of voluntary shelter supervisors was instituted, but this seems to have rarely worked well, with one or two exceptions, notable amongst them being the Very Revd Canon Publius Farrugia, Dean of the Chapter of St Paul’s Shipwreck Church in Valletta.
Living in an air raid shelter, many families brought food with them, while some shelter supervisors managed to acquire small stocks for emergency use. Thefts did occur from time to time, especially as rationing became tighter during 1942. One of the worst cases arose when the entire emergency stock was removed from the food store in the air raid shelter under the Argotti. The food was removed through a ventilation hole that was large enough for cases of food to be lifted out.
‘I know of three large public shelters in Floriana which were mostly excavated by voluntary labour,’ recalls Emmanuel Tonna, who was in charge of the air raid wardens in Floriana. ‘The one under the London Confectionery extending to the Lion Fountain in St Anne’s Square; the one beneath the Seminary which was connected with the one in the Argotti and the one in Gunlayer Square . . . Volunteers also offered their services in the installation of electric light.’18 A special prayer was written for those sheltering from air raids, entitled Our Hope in The Lord.
Quarrymen were ordered to register with the authorities, while water standpipes were quickly set up in those areas most likely to have large numbers of refugees.
Those who did not go immediately to an air raid shelter could be fined up to £2, but increasingly, people wanted to see the enemy being shot down.
Conditions inside many of the shelters were far from comfortable, and not always safe. Limestone is easy to cut and after exposure to sea air develops a hard skin, but until this happens, it crumbles easily. It became commonplace to have roof falls in newly cut tunnels, especially as the shelters shook under exploding bombs. In the wet seasons, mainly the spring and autumn, the walls would become moist and run with damp, even without rain as the scirocco blew across the islands. In heavy rainfall, the porous rock resulted in the tunnels flooding. Ventilation was often poor, and in many tunnels, clothing could start to grow mould in as little as a day.
It was bad enough trying to live like that, especially for those poor souls who had lost their homes and for whom the shelter was more than just a convenient temporary escape from the bombing. It was worse still for those who had to work in the shelters. These included those in the underground workshops in the dockyard, as well as those in the underground listening post at Lascaris, on the outskirts of Valletta, collecting signals intelligence of Axis moves both in Sicily and in North Africa. This was important work, stressful too, with so much depending on the ability of those involved to pick up clues to enemy intentions. Obviously, the listeners were waiting for signs that an Italian or German aerial attack was on the way, but such communication, at high frequency and en clair was not confined to the airmen, as it was also used by fast motor launches, including the German E-boats. Coded messages were indications that larger fleet units were at sea, or that important moves were afoot in the desert war. The position of Axis units, on the land or at sea, could also be found as in addition to intercepting messages, direction finding was also used. In so many ways, Lascaris was an offshoot of Bletchley Park.
Everyone attempted to continue as normal an existence as possible. The polo ground and golf course were turned over to food production, but otherwise a full social calendar was attempted. In order to economize on fuel, cinemas could still show films, but only the projection room had power, and filmgoers had to find their own way in and out in the dark. Bars continued to ply their trade, but as stocks ran low, prices rose.
The curfew was extended on the outbreak of hostilities from 20.30 to 05.00, on penalty of fifteen days imprisonment, but this was soon modified to allow people to move up to five yards from their doorstep. At the end of August, the morning end of the curfew was put back to 06.00, but with the concession that movement within a town or village was permitted up to 22.00. Then, after complaints that people could not attend early Mass before starting work, the restrictions were removed altogether within towns and villages, and shops, which at first had to close an hour before curfew time, eventually resumed their old opening hours.
Malta had the relatively high level of 585 buses for its population in 1940, although many had been commandeered by the military. There were 816 lorries and 170 vans, apart from those used by the military or by the government, and 1,875 private cars and 671 hire cars, as well as 341 motor cycles. From midnight on 13 July, hire cars, other than taxis, and private cars were banned unless with a special permit, so that immediately, almost 1,600 private cars and almost 300 hire cars were off the road. As the fuel shortages began to bite, taxis and other hire cars were banned on 13 October, while buses could only run between 05.30 and 09.00, 11.30 to 14.00, and 16.00 to 18.30. These changes caused serious inconvenience to those forced to commute due to their evacuation. Later, on 9 June, 1941, buses operating between 11.30 and 14.00 were withdrawn except at weekends, followed a month later by a warning that these too could also be withdrawn because of the large numbers of people using them! One man introduced a horse-drawn bus service between the Castile terminus in Valletta and Birkekara. The traditional horse drawn carriages, karozzin, reappeared, but were very expensive, and their drivers were noticeably more enthusiastic in the custom of service personnel who could both afford the higher fares and were more generous with their tips.
Most schools were closed on the outbreak of hostilities, and then re-opened in locations with quick and convenient access to shelters, but of course in many areas, the schools had been taken over as accommodation for evacuees, or by the military, or in two cases as hospitals.
There were to be 210 air raids over Malta between 11 June and the end of 1940. What was surprising was the low level of casualties during this first year of war, with few military casualties and less than 100 civilians. Part of this was due to the speedy preparation of deep underground shelters, and part also to poor accuracy by the Italians, faced with an increasingly well-coordinated AA barrage over the island.
Despite the critical situation in the UK, on 12 August, a squadron of twelve Hurricanes had been flown to Malta off the elderly aircraft carrier HMS Argus. Malta had already become a base for offensive operations due to the presence of 830 Squadron of the Fleet Air Arm, although their aircraft, originally intended for training, lacked blind flying panels and long-range fuel tanks, the absence of which limited their offensive role and also made them more vulnerable.
September saw a more determined push to enhance the island’s defences. On 1 September, the first convoy reached Malta, with three cargo ships and a tanker, cheered in, as so many were to be in the years ahead, by the delighted Maltese lining the battlements surrounding the Grand Harbour. Naval vessels brought another 2,000 troops to Malta by the end of the month. The RAF’s strength in the island was boosted further by the arrival of 431 Flight, whose four Martin Baltimore bombers flew reconnaissance missions and whose operations greatly boosted the potential of the Mediterranean Fleet. The Baltimore was fast, and had a good range, and was soon to be the eyes of the Fleet as well as of Malta.
The state of the Mediterranean Fleet improved too, with the arrival of the brand new fast armoured aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious accompanied by the recently refitted and modernized battleship Valiant, a sister ship of Warspite, and the two anti-aircraft cruisers Calcutta and Coventry. The arrival of these ships provided Cunningham with two other big advantages. The first of these was that he now had, for the first time, radar, which eased the amount of time his AA gunners had to stand to by providing early warning of an attack. The second was the arrival of the Fairey Fulmar fighter which, while slower than the Hurricane, largely due to its having a longer range and a two-man crew, then regarded as essential for naval operations, was still a big improvement over the Eagle’s three Sea Gladiators. The elderly biplanes had, however, acquitted themselves well, eventually accounting for eleven Italian aircraft – a tribute to the skill of their pilots.
Illustrious had also brought replacement aircraft for some of the losses suffered by Malta’s 830 Naval Air Squadron and, at last, blind flying instrument panels and long-range fuel tanks to improve the capability of the Swordfish.
Attention had been paid to the defences of the Grand Harbour over and above anti-aircraft defences. For the protection of ships in the Grand Harbour, a form of boom defence had been created with a number of chains and nets positioned in the entrance. These included a double chain of cylindrical buoys and nets transferred from Alexandria after the Abyssinian crisis had passed; a guard ship, HMS Westgate; a second double chain linking St Elmo with the mainland; and a number of spiked rafts and underwater obstructions. Attention had also been paid to improving the anti-aircraft defences around the Grand Harbour and at the airfields, with additional guns including the new 4.5-inch calibre weapons capable of shooting higher than 40,000 feet and intended to provide a box barrage to defend the port and dockyard facilities.
At first, the Italians had concentrated on high level bombing, but as summer turned to autumn, they introduced a new weapon, when on 5 September, five Junkers Ju87 dive-bombers appeared in Italian markings. This was the famous Stuka, but known to the Italians as the Picchiatelli. Their first raid was on Kalafrana. Further raids followed, with that on 12 September using twelve Ju87s to bomb Hal Far, and after dropping their bombs, the aircraft returned to making a strafing run across the airfield, which gave the gunners of the Royal Malta Artillery’s 22nd Light AA Battery the opportunity of shooting down one of the aircraft.
An early tragedy occurred on 4 November, when a crippled British Wellington bomber crashed on to the roof of a house, trapping the occupants, parents with five children, and then splitting in two, with one portion falling down a forty-feet shaft with a surviving member of the crew. Prompt action saved the children, for which Captain Anthony Flint and Second Lieutenant Richard Lavington of the Royal West Kent Regiment were both awarded MBEs, and Constable Carmel Camilleri of the Malta Police received the George Medal for entering the shaft to save the trapped airman.
As the year-end approached, there were many reasons for being cheerful. Another convoy arrived early in October, and two convoys of six ships arrived on the night of 27 and 28th, and one more, with four ships escorted by the battleship Malaya and four destroyers, during December. While Eagle was by this time hors de combat, with her aviation fuel system damaged by too many near misses by Italian bombs, the night of 11 – 12 November saw the spectacular attack by Swordfish from Illustrious, augmented by six aircraft from Eagle, on the Italian naval base at Taranto. In little more than an hour, half of the Italian Navy’s six battleships were lying on the harbour bed. The seaplane base and oil storage depot were destroyed, and several smaller warships badly damaged. All this, for the loss of just two out of the twenty-one aircraft that reached the target, and the crew of one of those was saved. This was the first time that an enemy fleet had been crippled by aircraft flying from an aircraft carrier, and marked the end of the age of the battleship. The lessons were not lost on another navy, far away in the east, for although the Imperial Japanese Navy had war-gamed its attack on Pearl Harbor, it now had confirmation that such an attack was indeed possible.
The attack on Taranto had been such a success partly because of poor reconnaissance by the Regia Aeronautica, and because of assumptions by the Italian Admiralty, Supermarina, that any British naval forces in the Mediterranean were trailing their cloaks in a desperate hope of drawing the Italian Navy into a major naval engagement. No one seemed to have been unduly concerned about the high attrition rate amongst Italian reconnaissance aircraft as they were shot down by the Fleet Air Arm’s Fairey Fulmar fighters.
While the aircraft from Illustrious had been carrying out their exacting task, the Italians had also suffered an attack by the Mediterranean Fleet’s cruisers, in part to distract the Italians from the developing attack on Taranto. Force H had also been involved, approaching the Italian coastline, and it was this force that the Italian Admiralty, Supermarina, had known about. Again they had assumed that the Royal Navy was ‘trailing its cloak’, once again hoping to tempt the Italian battle fleet out to sea. Force H had included the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, but could not give additional weight to the raid on Taranto because its aircraft would have been vulnerable, with a long flight over Sicily and the toe of Italy to the target. There was another problem with Ark Royal; she had been built to provide the maximum size of ship within the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, and in doing so, armour protection had been sacrificed. Her flight deck was so thin that on one occasion two 20-lb practice bombs fell off an aircraft as it landed and punched holes in the flight deck! The First Sea Lord in London, Dudley Pound, was fully aware of this weakness. Indeed, at the time of the Munich crisis, Pound had believed that any attack on Taranto would be best provided by shore-based aircraft, and that if a carrier’s aircraft were used, it would be the ship’s one blow at the enemy before she was either withdrawn for her own safety, or sunk by the enemy.
At this time, the situation in the Mediterranean was even beginning to look hopeful, and in stark contrast to the defeats elsewhere that had left the British Empire facing the combined might of Germany and Italy on its own. Malta had already become an offensive base for the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force; it now became a base for submarines. This was not without its difficulties, since most of the necessary supplies had been taken to Alexandria, but submarines operated from Gibraltar to Malta overloaded with torpedoes and other equipment until stocks were built up.
While the Italian Army in North Africa had invaded Egypt on 13 September, its advance had been held by General Wavell’s forces, despite being the weaker in numbers. As the year ended, it was Wavell who was advancing.
In Malta, food seemed to be relatively plentiful as the year neared its close, and bars that had been closed were re-opened. In the areas most at risk from air raids, schools even re-opened.
Finally, as if to set the seal on the whole business, Cunningham dared take his flagship, Warspite, to Malta, where she steamed into the Grand Harbour during the early afternoon of 20 December, band playing, and crowds of Maltese cheering wildly. It had been the first visit of the ship since May.
‘Our reception was touchingly overwhelming,’ Cunningham wrote later. ‘It was good to know that they realized that though the fleet could not use Malta for the time being, we had them well in mind . . .
‘I went all over the dockyard next morning with the Vice-Admiral and was mobbed by crowds of excited workmen singing ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’. I had difficulty in preventing myself from being carried around . . . ’19