At the start of 1941, the outlook was hopeful. Four convoys had got through the previous year, and the island’s fighting capability had been enhanced, not only by the reconnaissance activities of the Martin Baltimores, but also by sixteen Vickers Wellington bombers and two squadrons of Blenheims. Fighter defences were still inadequate, at just sixteen Hurricanes, but the bombers and 830 Squadron’s Swordfish had bombed Bari, Brindisi and Taranto. The presence of the Wellingtons meant that the Italian Navy, having deserted Taranto for Naples, was still at the mercy of British air power. Damage to a battleship and a cruiser at Naples was proof enough, although, given the size of bombs at the time, conventional bombers could only damage, but not sink, a battleship as the bombs bounced off the armour plating on the decks and the large calibre gun turrets.
Not only was Malta becoming a base for offensive operations against the enemy, as the Admiralty had believed it would, it had also become a listening post, intercepting enemy communications and a link in the Ultra network, feeding information through Bletchley Park now that the German Enigma codes had been broken.
The dockyard was back in working order, although there were few warships in such an exposed position. The Italians had not even attempted an invasion. The much feared gas attacks had not materialized.
The feeling of surprise that the Italians had not invaded was shared by Berlin. The assumption by the Germans when Mussolini had belatedly rushed to join them was that he had a secret plan, a master stroke, to give him domination of the Mediterranean, including the invasion of Malta and possibly the French territories in North Africa as well. When nothing happened, a sense of anti-climax and missed opportunity had set in. It soon transpired that Mussolini’s strategy was based on the assumption that following the fall of France, the British Government would sue for peace, and in the negotiations that would certainly follow, Mussolini wanted a seat at the conference table where he could extract the maximum territorial benefit from the situation for Italy’s benefit. When the British continued fighting, and indeed showed every intention of intensifying the fighting, Mussolini found himself without a coherent strategy. When Italy’s invasion of Egypt failed miserably, and his forces failed in Yugoslavia and Greece, Mussolini needed the Germans to help him out.
The Germans had watched with amazement and scorn at the destruction inflicted on the Italian fleet at Taranto. Losing half a country’s battleships in a single night without a major fleet action taking place was unthinkable!
An appreciation of the strategic situation by the Regia Navale early in 1941, found that they had effectively lost control of the Sicily Channel and were barely able to use ports in Sicily, while they could not safely put warships into Taranto or Naples. Their forces in North Africa were under pressure from Wavell, while their main supply port at Tripoli was under attack and convoys between Italy and North Africa were subjected to repeated attacks by air and by sea. The coastal shipping routes off North Africa and the approaches to Tripoli were dangerous due to magnetic mines.
Now Mussolini wanted German help.
Hitler and his generals could see that the Italian position was far weaker than they could have imagined. Having expended so much effort for so little cost in northern Europe, and having achieved so much, Hitler did not want his plans to be undermined by Italian failure, which would leave southern Europe as a soft underbelly. Staying at the Berghof in January, Hitler decided that he could not let Mussolini throw away the prestige of the Axis and the all-conquering German forces. Admiral Raeder pressed for an invasion of Malta, Hitler consented, but only after the Soviet Union had been invaded and defeated.
It was clear that if the Balkans were to be secured, German forces would have to do it. It was equally clear that if the British Army in North Africa was to be defeated, ultimately taking the Suez Canal, German forces would have to do that as well. The delay caused to the invasion of the Soviet Union by having to take Yugoslavia and Greece was to lead directly to the complete failure of German ambitions in the East.
First, however, Malta must be neutralized. Before that, the Mediterranean Fleet would have to be crippled, and to do this, the priority had to be the destruction of its most valuable asset, the aircraft carrier Illustrious.
The Germans wasted little time. Over the New Year, the Luftwaffe moved General Geissler’s Tenth Air Corps, Fliegerkorps X, from Poland to Sicily. This was a battle-hardened force, numerically far smaller than the Regia Aeronautica’s 2,000 or more aircraft, but it had considerable experience in anti-shipping operations earlier during the Norwegian campaign. The Luftwaffe had its weaknesses. These included the absence until late in the war of heavy bombers, and although an autonomous air force, it was also committed, like the Russians, to close support of ground forces rather than true strategic air power as understood by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force. Nevertheless, the Luftwaffe, with its professional and experienced commanders, understood and believed in the concentration of power: the Tenth Air Corps, situated in Sicily, just sixty miles from Malta, was more powerful than the combined RAF and Fleet Air Arm strength in the Mediterranean, scattered over more than 2,000 miles from Gibraltar to Alexandria.
Geissler had 150 Heinkel He111 and Junkers Ju88 twin-engined medium bombers and the same number of Junkers Ju87 Stuka dive-bombers, as well as fifty Messerschmitt Bf109 fighters. Many have suggested that it was moved primarily to attack Malta, but its first priority, agreed with the Regia Aeronautica, would be British shipping, and especially the Mediterranean Fleet, with Illustrious as the prime target. Malta was second on the list, followed by the base at Alexandria. In addition, both air forces would sow mines in the Suez Canal and the Grand Harbour as well as in the approaches to both.
These plans had been decided with typical German thoroughness and a clear understanding of the order of priorities. It was understood that the raids on Alexandria and the mining of the Suez Canal would probably need to await the occupation of Crete. Most Luftwaffe aircraft were short in range and there were limits to the trade-off between fuel and the warload of bombs or mines if an effective punch was to be landed on the enemy.
It was this force that was to do so much to make the British presence in the Mediterranean barely tenable. It was also to show that Pound had been remarkably prescient in his predictions for the lifespan of an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean once hostilities had started. For Malta, it was to be the start of a difficult year, and one in which those living on the island would come to understand the true force of modern air power.
Nevertheless, the next instalment in the war around and over Malta owed as much to British bad luck as it did to German thoroughness.
The autumn and early winter of 1940 had seen convoys brought through to Malta at a reasonable frequency. At the end of December, another convoy was prepared. The usual practice was for Mediterranean convoys to sail from the UK through the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar.
The convoy known as Operation Excess was no exception, steaming from the UK to Gibraltar in company with a far larger convoy for the Cape. There were five fast cargo ships, of which one, the Essex, carried 4,000 tons of ammunition, twelve Hawker Hurricane fighters disassembled and in crates, and 3,000 tons of seed potatoes for Malta. The other four were intended for Alexandria. The convoy sailed from the UK in December. On Christmas Day, while the convoy was still on its first stage, the passage to Gibraltar, the German heavy cruiser Hipper was sighted, and the convoy scattered. Force H left Gibraltar to provide support. Meanwhile, one of the heavy escorts, the elderly battleship Renown, was damaged by the heavy seas and was delayed in Gibraltar for repairs. The convoy reached the safety of Gibraltar without any further interference from the Germans, but one of the ships for Alexandria had been driven ashore in the bad weather, and had to be abandoned.
It was not until 6 January 1941, that the small convoy was finally able to steam eastwards from Gibraltar. The delay was to have serious consequences. As with the arrangements made for the arrival of Illustrious, Operation Excess was to involve both Force H and the Mediterranean Fleet, with Force H covering the convoy as far as Sicily, after which protection would pass to the Mediterranean Fleet.
On 7 January 1941, the Mediterranean Fleet sailed from Alexandria to meet the convoy.
Convoy protection was at its best when enemy ships could be kept well away, and to discourage the Regia Navale, Malta-based Wellington medium bombers raided Naples on 8 January, finding two battleships, the Cesare and the Vittorio Veneto there, and managed to damage the former, persuading the Italians to withdraw both ships northwards.
Once again, the Italians relied on air power to carry the war to their enemy. They sent ten Savoia Marchetti SM79s to bomb the convoy, although with little success and lost two aircraft to the Ark Royal’s Fulmar fighters.
The handover date was fixed for dawn on 10 January 1941, although in reality this meant most of Force H leaving the convoy at dusk on 9 January, with the exception of the cruisers Gloucester and Southampton and two destroyers, which were detached from the main force and sent with the convoy through the Sicilian Narrows in brilliant moonlight. They were challenged by a signal station on the Italian island of Pantellaria, and in changing course, they cut mine cables with their paravanes, being lucky not to explode any of them.
Had the convoy been able to keep to its original schedule, all might have been well, with a safe handover a couple of days before the end of the year. The arrival of Fliegerkorps X in Sicily was known to British intelligence, largely due to the signals monitoring station at Lascaris in Malta. What was not immediately apparent was that the Fliegerkorps X’s prime target was not Malta, for that unsinkable aircraft carrier could wait, but Illustrious. It was clear to the Germans that the ship and her aircraft would be a menace to Axis shipping in the Mediterranean, but with her out of the way, they could take their time over Malta.
Fliegerkorps X included many of the Luftwaffe’s most experienced anti-shipping aircrew. On the broad reaches of the North Atlantic, such work was left to flying boats and the long-range Focke-Wulf Fw200 Condors and Junkers Ju290s, for which the Fulmar could prove a match, but over the ‘Med’, this was for the more manoeuvrable medium-bombers and dive-bombers.
As the Mediterranean Fleet steamed west, all seemed to be going well. One of 806’s Fulmars shot down an Italian reconnaissance aircraft. The evening before the rendezvous, Italian bombers escorted by fighters had failed to find them. As usual, Italian air attacks had been poorly coordinated and sporadic.
Many had felt concern that Illustrious would be taking a risk operating within range of such a powerful force of enemy aircraft, and no doubt it had been made clear that the ship’s aircraft could cover the convoy from a distance. They were all painfully aware that the handover would take place in broad daylight, and that on her last excursion into the area, Illustrious had enjoyed the benefit of darkness. Cunningham, nevertheless, was insistent that the carrier should be with the main body of the Fleet, mainly because of the beneficial effect her presence always had on morale aboard the rest of the ships. He had also concluded that aircraft carriers were at their safest when able to benefit from the protection of other ships, something that was to be proven during the war in the Pacific.
The morning of 10 January dawned clear and bright. It was not without incident, as a destroyer was seen by those aboard Illustrious to strike a mine that blew off her bows. The routine of flying off aircraft continued throughout the morning, with Swordfish on reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols while Fulmars flew on CAP, combat air patrols.
Around 12.30, two Italian torpedo bombers made an unsuccessful attack on the carrier, missing her as her Commanding Officer, Captain Denis Boyd, successfully ‘combed’ the torpedoes, manoeuvring his ship so that they raced past. The attack had the effect of drawing the patrolling Fulmars down to low level. Relief Fulmars were being readied for take-off on the carrier’s flight deck, so that the earlier patrol could return to the ship, when the carrier’s radar spotted two large formations of aircraft flying from the direction of Sicily. Even as the Fulmars struggled to get off the flight deck, the Germans attacked, with forty-three Junkers Ju87 dive-bombers, the dreaded Stuka, giving the Mediterranean Fleet its first taste of the deadly accuracy of dive-bombing. One of the Fulmars was shot down as it took off, its pilot escaping but the observer, or navigator, behind him was killed outright.
The first bomb narrowly missed the ship, one of three near-misses that day, but over the next ten minutes, no less than six 1,000-lb bombs struck Illustrious. Of all the aircraft carriers operational during the Second World War, only Illustrious and her five sisters could take such punishment with their armoured flight decks and hangar decks, but the armour plating was meant to resist 500-lb bombs, and the lifts that moved the aircraft between flight deck and hangar deck were not armoured, and bombs fell through these. The hangar deck contained aircraft, many armed and with fuel in their tanks. It was also the action station for all off-duty aircrew, and many of them had assembled there. The bombs exploded in this space, the effect enhanced by the armoured top, sides and bottom of the hangar deflecting the blast through the aircraft and the naval airmen. Within seconds of the first bomb entering the hangar, it was a blazing inferno. What one naval officer described as the ‘vagaries of blast’ meant that often those close to an exploding bomb survived, those further away were killed. One of two men in conversation had his head blown off, the other had to push him so that the corpse would lie down. An innovation in Illustrious was the fire-proof screens designed to divide the hangar in case of a fire. The screens shattered and their shrapnel added to that of the exploding bombs and ruptured aircraft. The ship’s Master at Arms plunged into the hangar intending to drag at least one person to safety. They found his charred corpse the following day. The wardroom, the name for a warship’s officers’ mess, was no safer. A bomb crashed through into it, leaving barely a handful of survivors. Many of those who died in the wardroom had been wounded, then drowned as it was flooded by the water being used to fight the fires.
One of the ship’s AA batteries had been put out of action by a bomb that had dropped through it without exploding, killing the gun crew, and plunging into the sea before exploding. All of the remaining guns continued firing. Aboard, everyone was doing what they could. Boyd manoeuvred the ship to avoid bombs before her steering was crippled, others led firefighting and damage control teams, while down in the boiler and engine rooms, temperatures soared to 140 degrees Fahrenheit while men struggled to keep the ship fully operational.
The ship was a blazing, crippled wreck. Boyd refused permission to flood her magazines while the threat of bombing remained. Had a bomb exploded in the magazines, or had one penetrated her aviation fuel system with its high octane gasoline, or had the pipelines carrying aviation fuel been damaged by the mining effect of near misses, the ship could have been blown apart, as happened to more than one carrier later in the war.
It took three hours before Illustrious was able to head for Malta, proceeding at just 17 knots, a little more than half her usual speed. Those of her aircraft in the air either headed for Malta or ditched. The fighters were welcome additions to those based ashore on the island, and their arrival was the first clue that something had gone wrong. Naval headquarters in Malta knew of the carrier’s desperate plight, but could do nothing to help other than alert the dockyard to her arrival.
Meanwhile, the crippled carrier was attacked again by another twenty-five dive-bombers, and here Boyd’s refusal to flood the magazines was fully vindicated, as her AA guns flashed into life. Her Fulmar fighters had refuelled at Hal Far, and returned to provide air cover, shooting down at least six Stukas.
It was not until 21.45 that evening that Illustrious finally limped into a darkened Grand Harbour.
Immediately, dockyard workers and naval personnel swarmed aboard to see what they could do, helping to douse the remaining fires, taking the wounded to hospital ashore. The grim hunt for the bodies of those who had not survived started the following morning. Many were missing, presumed dead, and at least one wounded man was believed to have been blown overboard by an explosion and lost while awaiting emergency treatment. The hangar deck was a blackened pit, reeking of cordite, burnt fuel and burnt flesh, with charred corpses plastered against the bulkheads. Identification was difficult.
For the living, life aboard the carrier was grim. Apart from the smell of cordite, burnt fuel and charred flesh, much of the accommodation had been destroyed, and most had lost their clothing and other personal items. They were exhausted.
The operation had not been completely in vain. The cargo ship Essex had reached her destination. Malta would be fed and reinforced. The three ships for Alexandria were also on their way.
Many have since questioned the wisdom of exposing Illustrious to such heavy aerial attack. Cunningham believed her presence was good for the morale of the Mediterranean Fleet, which still carried memories of being exposed to aerial attack without fighter cover, even the fighter cover that could be offered by the relatively slow Fairey Fulmar. Others maintain that she could have provided the fighter cover from a distance, and would have been far less exposed had she done so. Yet, there was another strand to Cunningham’s argument for having the ship where she was on that fateful morning. The convoy had to be passed through, and so his major fleet units had to be there. Cunningham was probably one of the few naval commanders to appreciate so early in the war the value of having major fleet units operating with an aircraft carrier, so that she could benefit from the collective force of their AA fire. The truth may be either that the aerial attack really was so overwhelming that nothing could be done, or that tactics were still evolving and that the major fleet units were not close enough to provide the necessary cover. There is the inescapable feeling that aircraft carrier deck layouts of the day meant that two capable carriers would have been needed to provide the required level of fighter cover, something that was beyond the resources available to the Royal Navy so early in the war.
The aircraft carrier Illustrious had survived, but was still in deadly danger. Now, so too was everyone anywhere near her as she lay alongside the Parlatorio Wharf in French Creek.
At daybreak on a dull, overcast morning, with the threat of rain, hundreds of Maltese dockyard workers swarmed aboard, ready to do all that was necessary to get the ship seaworthy. There would be no time for the thorough repair and refit that she desperately needed, and for which she would have to leave for safer waters. Meanwhile, her officers and senior ratings set about compiling a list of those who had been killed. After breakfast, the ship’s company was mustered on the flight deck by divisions for a roll call. Amidst the noise and bustle of a busy shipyard, names were called out, and whenever no one answered, there was a moment’s pause, then a chief petty officer (the naval equivalent of a staff sergeant) would ask if anyone knew anything. Sometimes, someone would answer that the person concerned was on watch, or killed or wounded.
No one needed to be told that the Luftwaffe would want to finish the job. It was a race against time as a ship in harbour was a sitting duck, virtually out of her element.
Illustrious was to spend two weeks in Malta. The first two days were overcast with low cloud that kept the Axis aircraft away. The raids started on 13 January, and became a daily occurrence after that, with the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica operating jointly to provide what became known in Malta as ‘the Illustrious blitz’. At first, once the air raid sirens sounded ashore, the ship’s company uncovered the guns, while the dockyard workers, and those of the ship’s company not needed, scrambled from their working place to the caves in nearby Senglea being used as air raid shelters. Getting from deep in the bowels of a large warship to safety ashore was no easy task.
The air raids reached a new peak for Malta on 16 January, described by many as the first really heavy bombing raid. The Luftwaffe sent forty-four Stukas, seventeen Ju88s and ten Messerschmitt Me110s, escorted by ten Regia Aeronautica Fiat CR42 and some Macchi 200 fighters. The Stuka pilots dived through intense anti-aircraft fire, with many flying below the high fortress walls of Valletta to deliver their bombs accurately. This first attack took just a few minutes, but was followed within fifteen minutes by a second wave. Illustrious suffered yet another hit during the first attack, but near misses left the dockyard around her burning and cratered.
A bomb hit the engine room of the cargo ship Essex, leaving fifteen dead and twenty-three wounded. Had it hit her cargo, the 4,000 tons of ammunition would have exploded and destroyed Valletta, the dockyard, the celebrated Three Cities, including the town of Senglea on the opposite side of the Grand Harbour, and, of course, Illustrious as well.
Aboard the carrier, the blasts of exploding bombs swept away the ladders, scaffolding and tarpaulins shrouding the ship. It was not just the intensity of the attack; the bombs were heavier too, with the Stukas struggling to lift 2, 500-lb bombs, taking ninety minutes to reach 10,000 feet. The bomb that hit the ship caused further damage, and three near-misses fell into French Creek, flinging her against the Parlatorio Wharf.
Ashore, fifty-three Maltese civilians were killed, partly because of the intensity of the attacks, and partly because the poor performance of the Italian bombers had caused a false sense of security. In Valletta’s Old Mint Street, bombs hit a tall block of flats, bringing it crashing to the ground. On the other side of the Grand Harbour, there was more serious damage, with the peninsula city of Senglea suffering the loss of no less than 300 houses. Rescue attempts were hampered as streets were filled with rubble, often more than ten feet high.
The attack was not without losses for the Luftwaffe, with ten aircraft shot down, with honours equally divided between the AA defences and the fighters.
With the arrival of the Luftwaffe, everything had changed. There was also some excitement about an attack. The full energy of the attack reached beyond the dockyard gates to the ancient city of Vittoriosa, as buildings, including the old auberges of the Knights of Malta, were reduced to rubble. In one especially tragic case, some forty people, sheltering in the sacristy of the Convental Parish Church of St Lawrence, were killed as a large bomb collapsed the building. The cost to the Maltese was great. In Vittoriosa, both churches had been destroyed, the second on 19 January, and the priest was forced to use a small chapel at the police station
‘Only dire necessity forced us to use the shelters,’ said Mrs Queenie Lee. ‘Attacks were too exciting to miss. We groaned when our Hurricanes couldn’t overtake the Messerschmitt 109; we cheered ourselves hoarse when gunners or fighters found their target, and blazing machines hurtled to earth followed by swaying parachutists.’20
Mrs Queenie Lee was the wife of a naval officer who lived in Malta for four years, two-and-a-half of them under wartime conditions. She was involved with war work, but her main job was as a teacher at the Royal Naval Dockyard School.
‘The Germans set up a steady timetable of raids, dawn, midday and dusk, sometimes with a few extras thrown in . . . .’21
After the raid, it was decided to take all non-essential personnel, about 1,000 men, off the ship, leaving a skeleton crew aboard. Even the AA gunners went to the temporary accommodation at RAF Hal Far as the Army wanted to test a new box barrage system, and found that the ship’s AA fire got in the way.
There was some consolation that some ten aircraft had been shot down, without any corresponding losses amongst the Malta-based Hurricanes and Fulmars.
On 17 January, the Germans sent reconnaissance aircraft, and the next day, attacked the airfields, hoping to crush the troublesome fighter defences that rose to meet every air raid. On 19 January, the bombers returned to the carrier again. Another near miss exploded on the bottom of the creek damaging the hull and making more work before she could sail.
Remaining aboard, the engineering commander, Lieutenant Commander ‘Pincher’ Martin, worked unceasingly to repair the steering and get her ready for sea, for which he was later awarded the DSC. The engineers working on her were confident that they could get her back to sea since the engines were in reasonable shape, despite the battering that Illustrious had suffered.
She had not been abandoned by the Mediterranean Fleet, as the Australian light cruiser, HMS Perth, had stayed behind to provide extra AA firepower. They say in the Royal Navy that ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. Perth was punished for her loyalty when a near-miss caused damage below her waterline during the raid of 16 January.
‘Her officers and men came in and out of the tunnel (the dockyard air raid shelter) and the surgery,’ recalled Mrs Norman, a navy wife, one of the few British civilians left behind in Malta.
Their faces looked lined and grimy. They were dressed in old boiler overalls, in grey flannel trousers and sweaters – any odd garment they had managed to save from the wrecks of the cabins . . . It seemed impossible that Illustrious would put to sea again, but she was in Malta dockyard – the dockyard that just could not be defeated . . .22
The raids cost the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica dearly. Malta’s Hurricanes, reinforced with 806’s surviving Fulmars, and the island’s heavy AA defences, exacted a heavy price. Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Werner Hozzel, at that time a major in the Luftwaffe, later recalled that each day he expected to lose five or six of his best crews. One of his two squadrons lost all of its original aircrew during this period.
During the raid of 18 January, almost 100 enemy aircraft raided Hal Far and the village of Birzebugia nearby, killing and injuring many civilians.
Sunday, 19 January was another heavy raid, but it was another costly day for the Axis, with the Germans admitting losing ten aircraft while the Italians lost four, but the British claimed thirty-nine lost, another five probables and nine damaged. Seventeen of the Axis losses were attributed to the RAF’s Hurricanes and the Fleet Air Arm’s Fulmars, while just two British fighters were lost. The confirmed losses were not the total, as the Regia Aeronautica sent a Cant Z506 with Red Cross markings to patrol the sea between Malta and Sicily, looking for ditched aircrew.
Away from the ship, those ashore had no idea of the progress being made in getting Illustrious seaworthy. It was not until they were recalled during the afternoon of 23 January, that they realized that she was ready. Under cover of darkness, with the ship darkened and some repair stages still hanging over her sides, she left the Grand Harbour quietly and secretly. The Governor, Sir William Dobbie, was holding a session of the Council of Malta, the island’s governing body, when a servant entered and drew the black out curtains before switching on the lights. Someone said: ‘She’s off – and safe.’
Illustrious reached Alexandria on 26 January, on the first stage in her journey to the still neutral United States and a complete refit at Norfolk, Virginia.
In London, a grateful War Cabinet sent a message of thanks to General Dobbie, who responded in his customary manner, ‘By God’s help, Malta will not weaken.’ He didn’t forget to broadcast his own appreciation to the people of Malta.
‘The Dockyard is continuing, and will continue to carry on giving their best work,’ signalled Vice Admiral Sir Wilbraham Ford in response to the thanks and congratulations of the Admiralty. ‘Let them All Come!’23
Meanwhile, the following month, February 1941, one of Hitler’s brightest generals, Erwin Rommel, was warning Berlin that ‘without Malta, the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa’. The noose was tightening.
After the Illustrious blitz had caused a further exodus from the towns in early 1941, and had also resulted in further great loss to the housing stock, people were asked to accommodate the refugees and the homeless. Initially, this was on a voluntary basis, but by the spring, those householders reckoned by the authorities to be using less than twenty-five per cent of the space available for habitation were required to set aside a room for a proportionate number of refugees. Then small families were encouraged to amalgamate with friends or relatives, sparing a house for the needy and avoiding having strangers billeted on them. The Communal Feeding Service was reactivated under the renewed pressures and a mobile canteen introduced.
There was some easing of the air raids from February 1941, with half of Fliegerkorps X moved from Sicily to North Africa to provide Rommel’s Afrika Korps with the air cover it so desperately needed if it was to make an impact in the desert war and reverse the Italian losses. In March 1941, a convoy of four merchant ships managed to reach Malta, although two were badly damaged in subsequent bombing. The Hurricanes managed to shoot down nine dive-bombers during these aerial attacks, with another four being accounted for by the Grand Harbour’s AA defences.
Meanwhile, the authorities, in reality the Governor’s Advisory Council, introduced conscription in February 1941, with all males required to register for national service between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five, while within this broad band, there was military service for those aged between eighteen and forty-five years. This move stressed the importance of the direction of labour to those industries and areas of activity that required it most. It also ensured that labour was in the right place at the right time, with gangs of stevedores ready to unload the supply ships as they arrived, and in between convoy arrivals, working elsewhere, filling in bomb craters on runways and roads, helping to demolish damaged buildings, and, of course, helping to build and then extend air raid shelters cut out of the soft limestone rock that was everywhere in Malta, and which was never more than a few inches beneath the thin soil in the fields. There were the inevitable, and necessary exceptions, including dockyard workers and farmers, quarry men and stonecutters, and government employees but, by the year-end, almost 4,000 men had been conscripted
During March 1941, the air raid precautions were eased, so that those not immediately in a danger area could continue with their work or their journey if they judged it safe during an alert, but in giving greater freedom with one hand, the authorities contrived to take away freedom with the other, with a much stricter curfew between 21.00 and 06.30 even within towns and villages other than to go to and from an air raid shelter. These changes provoked much public protest, especially since many judged that the police and ARP personnel were keeping them confined to air raid shelters for far longer than was necessary. This eventually became another factor in reduced use of air raid shelters as people preferred the comfort of their own homes and, most importantly, the chance to eat.