Within days, 1941, the year that had seemed to start so well, had turned into what one present described as a living hell. The worst of the raids disappeared with the departure of the Illustrious, but the Luftwaffe was to be an ever present menace, and this time marked the start of the darkest twenty months in the history of Malta. The necessary and successful raid on Taranto, coupled with Italian failings in Yugoslavia, Greece and in North Africa had forced the Germans to take an active interest in the Mediterranean. It was no longer ‘Mare Nostrum’, ‘Our Sea’, to the Italians, as they held it only by courtesy of the Führer.
The Germans and Italians together had killed fifty-three Maltese civilians on 16 January. The Germans sometimes showed exceptional honour in their approach to the civilian population, but at other times did attack targets which they must have known were predominantly, if not entirely, civilian. They had after all inflicted heavy losses by bombing Rotterdam after the Dutch had declared it an open city in order to avoid civilian casualties. They had also bombed Guernsey and Jersey even though British forces had departed and surrender signs were displayed.
One indication of noble conduct by the Luftwaffe, or at least by a single German pilot, was seen on Gozo, which presented few worthwhile targets other than the ferry to Marfa on Malta. On one passage northwards to Gozo, the crowded ferry was spotted by a Luftwaffe aircraft, which remained in the area until it arrived at Mgarr. The aircraft remained around while the passengers disembarked, then the pilot pulled back his canopy and swooped low over the ship, waving his arm to show that everyone was to stay well clear, before returning to sink it. There were no casualties.
Of course, there is another side to this tale. Just how could an enemy aircraft take such a relaxed approach to its work? Quite simply, Malta’s defences against air attack were overstretched. Just six Hurricanes and three Fulmars remained by this time, although some believe that there was still one remaining Gladiator. At least Grand Harbour had worthwhile AA defences. Sixteen Axis aircraft were shot down during the first three months of the year, while the air raids were at their worst.
‘That was when the struggle for existence began,’ recalled Mrs Queenie Lee.
Not at first in the food sense – but in the problem of finding the time to eat. The Germans kept up a steady timetable of raids – dawn – midday – dusk and an occasional extra thrown in. When the day’s work and meals had to be fitted in, these raids didn’t leave much time to spare, but we’ve all discovered that bombs go down better when one is well fed. So we got up at dawn, and made sure of our breakfast before they came.24
Fortunately, the air raid shelter programme was advancing well by this time.
‘By now we began to learn that two and more bombs can and do fall in the same place, and most people began to seek shelters under sixty feet of rock,’ Queenie Lee continued.
Many of the bigger ones had private cubicles. While the evening raid was going on, the mother and family would sit in the main shelter, while father chipped and chipped until a small alcove was cut out. Then mother and family moved into this and a shrine was placed in a niche. From that time, the family continued underground during the raids, whatever had been interrupted above ground. Mother brought vegetables to prepare, while father continued to chip and chip.
Finally a comfortable room was ready and a few necessities were brought in. When night raids came in addition to daytime raids these underground homes were almost permanent dwellings. Even when paraffin was severely rationed the light at the shrine in the main shelter was kept burning by very small contributions from each family. Not everybody had these cubicles – much depended on types of rock and the numbers accommodated. As more and more homes were destroyed, hundreds of people had to live permanently in a hole in the rock.25
The soft yellow Maltese limestone was easy to work, and once exposed to the sea air its surface became hard. Even so, when hit by large bombs, it trembled and vibrated alarmingly, even though it didn’t give way. One dockyard foreman described the feeling of the rock trembling as like ‘a thousand snakes running around my stomach’. In the end, more than thirteen miles of shelter were dug.
On one occasion, fifty dive-bombers attacked a civilian evacuation camp. A surprise attack was followed by two more, the last coming as a number of people had left the air raid shelter and were helping to clear up the debris from the first two raids. There were about ten people caught in the open. There was no time to return to the safety of the air raid shelter, so they immediately split into twos and jumped into trenches, lying face downwards.
‘Just as the familiar whistles and dives began, a small dog leapt into the trench, flew over the top of us and fixed himself between us and the walls of earth,’ remembers Queenie.
I was afraid he would go mad with fright and bite us so I tried to calm him by patting him and speaking to him. His fur was literally standing on end and as stiff as hedgehog’s quills. I can feel it now. But I think his fear helped me to forget my own and saved me from abject terror as about 100 to 150 high explosives rained down around us. We all came out alive, although one trench was lost in a thirty foot crater.26
The heavy air raids continued by day and by night. The main targets remained around the Grand Harbour and the airfields, with an especially heavy raid on the runways on 5 March 1941. Attention was also paid to Marsamxett between Valletta and Sliema, with further damage to both, while magnetic mines were laid in the approaches to the Grand Harbour and Marsaxlokk. Unused bombs were often jettisoned over residential areas. Now careful to seek shelter from the air raids, there was little loss of life amongst the Maltese civilian population, but the damage was immense. Between raids, volunteers searched for unexploded bombs. The arrival of the Luftwaffe meant more than just more accurate bombing, and more frequent raids. It also meant that a new weapon of terror was used against Malta for the first time; the parachute mine, fused to explode some time after being dropped, but of course, no one knew for just how long that time would be!
Typically, when it exploded a mine could open a crater twenty-five feet across, but just five feet deep. In several cases, mines blew the roofs off houses, leaving the walls intact. There were other dangers, for the more commercially minded were anxious to catch hold of the parachute, since at a time of growing shortages, a skilful seamstress could turn one of these into bed sheets. Often, local people did not recognize a mine for what it was, since magnetic mines intended for the harbours, often fell on the land and these often looked like some form of water tank, and it became a priority to keep the inquisitive, and the acquisitive, away! At night, observers could mistake a parachute mine for an airman from an aircraft that had been shot down, and would rush to the scene. The fact was that Malta was now being plagued by mines from the air, on both the land and on the sea, with Grand Harbour and its approaches being steadily mined.
Even under these extreme pressures there could be examples of slow thinking and reluctance in adapting to changing times, and even changing needs and opportunities.
Reginald Townson recalls that the efficiency of the radar system was compromised by a still rank conscious RAF. The controller had to be a senior officer, as no one below the rank of wing commander was regarded as being experienced enough to control aircraft. Yet, it simply was not done for a wing commander to speak into a microphone to an aircraft, so this was left to a signals officer. Thus the situation was that the wing commander would pass his instruction to the signals officer, who would pass them on to an aircraft, and then the signals officer would pass the reply to the wing commander!
This charade continued even after war broke out. In Malta, the original transportable radar station was soon joined by three more with a much improved capability for catching aircraft flying at lower altitudes, although it was not until many years later and the introduction of airborne early-warning radar that the menace of very low-flying aircraft could be effectively countered. At operations control, the controllers and their staff worked on an ops table marked off with a map of the island with range rings and bearing lines, Townson believed at every ten degrees. Townson’s station worked on range bearings. When the next stations were introduced, control didn’t wish to change their table and replace it with one with a grid on it. This meant that the new stations had to pass their plots to the original station, that would convert them to its range and bearing and then, after this had been done, wasting precious time, pass them down to the ops room. This process would have taken minutes for every plot, and it was some time before control could be persuaded to have a grid.
The interception of incoming bomber waves while they were still over the sea some way off Malta, later in the war would not have been possible using this system of passing plots through a central point for bearings to be allocated, before passing these on to control.
This story puts the lie to anyone who believes that the RAF, as the most junior of the three services and the one most involved with the newest means of warfare, was the least bureaucratic and most flexible!
The Axis air forces did not intend to show any respect for Easter. They celebrated Easter, 1941, by bombing for the first time the ancient capital of Mdina, the ‘silent city’, and completely without any military installations whatever. Some argued that it could have been hit due to its proximity to the new airfield at Ta’Qali, but the distance was sufficiently large for this to be untrue, and there was no way in which Mdina, standing on its hill overlooking the airfield, and with its walls, domed cathedral and very narrow streets, could be mistaken for anything like a military, or even an industrial or commercial, target. Easter that year saw the Germans victorious in Yugoslavia. Would Malta be next was the question? German invincibility seemed undiminished.
After Easter, there was a lull in the bombing that lasted until 27 April 1941, when a heavy daylight raid occurred. The night of 28 – 29 April saw another heavy raid, falling mainly on Valletta using bombs and mines. St John’s Cathedral was very heavily damaged. A further raid on 29 April again struck at the capital, destroying a church, a theatre and a cinema.
On 28 April, the Dockyard Defence Battery was disbanded having given a year and 283 days of faithful service, with its role, and its guns, taken over by the now, much expanded, Royal Malta Artillery. Many of the Battery’s members took up the option of joining the Royal Malta Artillery.
The death toll amongst civilians throughout that grim year varied. The total figure for January was sixty-five; February saw fifteen deaths; March, thirty; April, forty-seven; May, twenty-eight; June, five; July, forty; August, ten; September, one; October, ten; November, seven; and December, thirty-one; making a total of 289.
One raid in February had destroyed 200 houses in Valletta alone, although just three people were killed and eight injured. The homeless were given food and temporary accommodation in a Franciscan monastery until permanent accommodation could be prepared.
Many people left Valletta and the three cities to seek shelter amongst friends and relatives in the country, so that many families were grossly over-extended, with thirty or forty not unknown.
The fall in the death toll was due to more than improved defences and improved air raid shelters and better discipline in their use. Relief also came from other pressures on the Germans. Anxious to stop the British advance westward in North Africa, on 6 February, Hitler had ordered one of his best generals, Erwin Rommel, to North Africa, taking the 5th Light Division and the 15th Panzer Division, creating the famous Afrika Korps to confront Wavell’s army. Modern warfare demands that armies need air cover, and half of Fliegerkorps X had been sent to North Africa. Unfortunately Wavell had been ordered to send substantial forces to Greece, weakening his grip on North Africa at a crucial stage.
A more effective move would have been to invade Malta first, but this idea was abandoned. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy had established a submarine base in Malta. The Regia Navale was desperate that Malta should be neutralized.
In Malta, Dobbie was anxious that the island should move to the offensive, and he ordered the Royal Navy to cut the Italian and German supply lines to Tripoli. The situation now arose where the British were attempting to attack the Axis convoys sailing north-south, while the Axis were determined to destroy British convoys sailing west-east to supply Malta. Increasingly, British forces in North Africa were receiving their supplies via the Cape and Suez Canal. The Canal that was meant to cut the time and miles spent on voyages between Western Europe and the Gulf, India, Malaya, Singapore and Australia, was now a means of supporting North Africa, with the Mediterranean closed. The use of Malta as an offensive base was helped by the introduction of the new ‘U’ class of submarines, smaller than most of the other classes, but ideal for the clear waters of the Mediterranean in which, all too often, sonar is not needed to spot a submerged submarine.
The enemy air attacks intensified as winter turned to spring, and clear skies returned. The Bf109s would conduct sweeps over Malta several times a day, hoping to wear out the defending Hurricanes whom they outnumbered, or, better still, destroy the aircraft on the ground. Rather than looking for invading enemy paratroops, the parachutes seen by the Maltese were those of the Hurricane pilots after baling out. On occasion, farmers working in the fields would be machine-gunned by the Messerschmitt pilots. Air raids finally saw most of the RAF’s Wellington bombers destroyed or damaged on the ground. The raids also spread beyond the communities surrounding the Grand Harbour, and in March struck at Sliema, across the Marsamxett from Valletta, in peacetime an elegant and prosperous seaside resort and dormitory town for the capital. In one raid, twenty-two inhabitants of Sliema were killed and another thirty-six injured.
Even at this difficult period, there was something over which to rejoice. On 28 March, the Battle of Cape Matapan was fought and won by the British, sinking three Italian cruisers and two destroyers. A new aircraft carrier, HMS Formidable, had been ordered to the Mediterranean within two days of the attack on her sister, HMS Illustrious, and she had eventually arrived despite the mining of the Suez Canal, with the two ships passing at Alexandria. Convoys were fought through to Malta in both February and March, with additional troops, while fighter aircraft were also flown in to replace those lost. This continued into April, with twelve Hurricanes delivered on 3 April and another twenty-three on 27 April, so that during April and May, no less than 224 Hurricanes were flown to the island. These were rare moments of success in what was probably the grimmest year of the war.
In spring 1941, twenty Hawker Hurricane MkIIAs were ferried to Gibraltar aboard HMS Argus, and there transferred to Force H’s carrier, HMS Ark Royal. They were flown off to Malta during the lull in the air raids on Saturday, 12 April 1941.
The arrival of the twenty Hurricanes, plus many more delivered on 8 May in crates for local assembly, meant that the RAF could now field three squadrons for the defence of Malta. The valiant 261 Squadron was disbanded into three new squadrons, with 185 at Hal Far and the other two, 126 and 249, stationed at Ta’Qali, where the officers’ mess was in a hotel overlooking the airfield high up in the ramparts of Mdina. Luqa remained as the home for the bomber squadrons, with the surviving Wellingtons joined by 82 Squadron equipped with Bristol Blenheims, an aircraft that had not had a good war so far, with high loss rates in operations over enemy territory.
In May 1941, Air Vice Marshal Maynard was replaced by Air Vice Marshal Hugh Lloyd as Air Officer Commanding Malta.
By early summer 1941, there were sometimes two squadrons of Wellington bombers for night sorties against Italian and German forces, and especially against Italian ports. The Fleet Air Arm had also managed to move a second squadron of Swordfish to Malta. During one fourteen day period, between 30 June and 13 July, 1941, 122 bomber sorties were made from Malta.
Meanwhile, the Germans entered Athens on 27 April, and the invasion of Greece was completed by the end of the month, putting the Mediterranean Fleet under heavy pressure as it moved British and Greek troops in a smaller version of the Dunkirk evacuation from mainland Greece over the much longer sea distance to the island of Crete. While the Royal Navy was successful in rescuing more than 50,000 troops, once again the soldiers had lost most of their equipment. What was worse, to fulfil his pledge to defend Greece, as we have seen Churchill had ordered the necessary troops to be transferred from North Africa just as the Germans had entered this campaign. So, attacking on 31 March, a combined German and Italian army had been able to take Benghazi by 3 April and force Wavell’s troops into another retreat.
Force H and the Mediterranean Fleet were to sail eastwards from Gibraltar and westwards from Alexandria respectively on 6 May. Departure from Alexandria proved to be difficult as the larger ships had to be preceded by minesweepers because the approaches had been mined the previous day. The problems were compounded by poor visibility from a sand storm that kept Formidable’s aircraft struck down in her hangar deck. On 7 May, the Vice Admiral, Malta, signalled that Grand Harbour had also been mined, which meant that his destroyers could not leave Malta to bring the convoys into port. By this time, those of Malta’s minesweepers able to deal with magnetic mines had all been lost or seriously damaged. Cunningham ordered that a passage through the minefield be blasted with depth charges. This crude but effective method of minesweeping had already proved successful in clearing the Suez Canal. Even so, as the convoy’s minesweeper entered the Grand Harbour on 8 May, she set off nearly a dozen mines!
Late spring in the Mediterranean usually means clear blue skies, but for once the ships arrived off Malta to find very low cloud, ‘almost down to our mast-heads’. The enemy aircraft seen on the radar screens failed to see the convoys or the warships, although one Ju88 patrolling above the clouds was found by a Fulmar from Formidable, which shot it down, an act of some considerable skill given the German aircraft’s superior performance.
Two of the ships bound for Malta were badly damaged, with one mined and another torpedoed, but managed to make it into Grand Harbour with their vital supplies. The rest of the convoy suffered relatively lightly.
On the return to Alexandria, having picked up the reinforcements and the military convoy, the Mediterranean Fleet came under heavy aerial attack, but again little damage was done as the attackers were driven off by heavy AA fire. Against the odds, Operation Tiger was a great success, prompting the warm congratulations of the Admiralty.
Typical of poor British planning, however, the tanks and aircraft on unloading in Egypt had to spend fourteen days being fitted with sand filters for desert conditions, during which time they were vulnerable to enemy air attack! Had the equipment been fitted before dispatch from the UK, they would have been ready for immediate use.
Many believe that Crete should simply have been used as a stepping stone, a holding position, before moving the rescued troops on to Egypt, but it was decided to defend Crete ‘at all costs’. This was nonsense inasmuch as the British and Greek forces on the island were very badly equipped, and movement of troops around the mountainous terrain was difficult. The whole campaign in Greece, and now the defence of Crete, was being fought by forces that were being supplied from Egypt, putting demands on scarce merchant shipping and stretching the Mediterranean Fleet yet again, while detracting from its ability to fight an aggressive campaign against the enemy. Worse still, Operation Tiger apart, these supplies and any reinforcements were by now having to come from the UK not through the Mediterranean, literally a ‘bomb alley’, but round the Cape of Good Hope and through the Suez Canal. There was little air cover for the evacuation from Greece. There was also a strategic blunder by the defenders of Crete, who amassed most of their troops awaiting a seaborne invasion. What transpired was at once a disaster for, and although it was not appreciated at the time, a relief for Malta.
The invasion of Crete was given to the Luftwaffe, which included Germany’s paratroops, without consultation with the other two services. A plan had been drawn up by General Kurt Student, commander of the German paratroop division, for the island to be invaded by paratroops and air-landed troops, with the latter using gliders. Occupation of Crete would give the Germans a forward base, making attacks on the Suez Canal easier, while it would become increasingly difficult and dangerous to send convoys from Alexandria to Malta.
Had the Germans depended on a seaborne invasion, the chance is that the invasion could have been defeated, for although the Mediterranean Fleet’s mastery of the seas was increasingly challenged by Axis mastery of the air, the seaborne element of the invasion suffered greatly at the hands of Cunningham’s ships. The Germans did not have specialized landing craft, but used invasion barges, basically captured Greek caiques, which were unwieldy and vulnerable.
Nevertheless, the airborne assault caught the defenders on the coast. Even so, the battle for the airfields was fiercely fought, and some analysts believe that had the British and Greek forces retained most of their equipment, and especially their communications equipment, the day might have been won. The invasion began on 20 May, with 500 transport aircraft and seventy-two gliders, supported by 500 fighters and bombers, an overwhelming level of air power. The airborne element of the assault took two days with 15,000 troops landed on the first day, a further 3,000 on 21 May. In fierce fighting around the airfield at Maleme, the British commander withdrew his forces to regroup so as to counter-attack the Germans, but the counter-attack failed and allowed the Germans to start to air-land troops on the runway even while it was still being swept by British fire, while the gliders landed on the beach nearby. On the night of 21 – 22 May, a German convoy with troops and heavy equipment was attacked by the Royal Navy, with the loss of many German ships and barges and much loss of life. Nevertheless, during continued heavy fighting, it was decided to withdraw on 28 May, but despite the best efforts of Cunningham, who continued to order ships to evacuate troops until 1 June, well past the deadline set by the Admiralty, almost half the British personnel in Crete were captured. The cost to the Mediterranean Fleet of defending Crete and evacuating troops had been heavy, with three cruisers and six destroyers sunk, two battleships and the sole aircraft carrier, HMS Formidable, another two cruisers and two destroyers all damaged so badly that they could only receive temporary repairs at Alexandria and would have to be sent away. When Illustrious had been crippled in the heavy air attack off Malta, within two days Formidable was ordered to the Mediterranean as a replacement. Such were the pressures on the Royal Navy by this time that no such relief was forthcoming.
At once, Malta’s supply lines were still less secure than previously. Yet, the heavy losses of German paratroops so shocked Hitler that he forbade any further airborne operations. This saved Malta from the threat of invasion, but not from that of starvation.
As already mentioned, efforts to supply Malta were redoubled, and there was an attempt to push reinforcements through the Mediterranean, saving time and merchant shipping. This was code-named Operation Tiger, with five large cargo ships through the Mediterranean, carrying tanks for the British Army in Egypt and Hawker Hurricane fighters for the RAF. The escort for the convoy had also included reinforcements for Cunningham, with the battleship Queen Elizabeth and the cruisers Naiad and Fiji adopting what was by now the usual practice of sailing with Force H as far as the Sicilian Narrows, where they were handed over with the convoy to the Mediterranean Fleet. Cunningham’s outward voyage on this occasion had also to provide cover for two convoys from Alexandria to Malta, one having four large merchant ships carrying supplies, and the other two tankers. The usual diversion had been mounted with an attack on Benghazi by cruisers.
Summer 1941, brought heat and a welcome relief from the dampness of the shelters, as these began to dry out. This was when the closure of the beaches hit hardest, since there were few ways of keeping the body sweet in the heat, with little water and little soap for those still fortunate enough to have a bathroom. While the water needs of the growing population and of a large fleet, had been kept in mind, at the time no one knew just how much was available, and an emergency programme of drilling was put in hand to see if underground supplies could be discovered. Later, a substantial underground supply was to be discovered, safe from the threat of evaporation in the summer sun, but at the time the damage to the reservoirs and underground water cisterns could not be fully assessed. Another pressing problem was the damage to water mains that meant that often supplies were interrupted for several hours, or that water pressure could suddenly drop. One could often be caught in the bath when the alarm went, announcing yet another air raid. Even so, there was some black humour in these circumstances, with the story going the rounds of one man who was even less fortunate, being found in the ruins of his house by an ARP party still sitting on the toilet seat. When asked what happened, the dazed man replied: ‘I don’t know. I just pulled the chain and the whole building went down!’
Further supplies reached Malta intermittently. On one occasion, the ships which fought through so valiantly were sunk in Grand Harbour before they could be unloaded.
One essential feature of efficient convoy operation is the return of the ‘empties’, and by July 1941, Malta was holding seven empty merchantmen, including the armed tanker Breconshire. Apart from being desperately needed elsewhere, with the use of the Cape route demanding extra ships, every day these ships stayed in Malta was another day at risk of being damaged or sunk in an air raid. Once again, the plan was to fight through a convoy to Malta, Operation Substance, and remove the empties. Cunningham’s forces sailed west while Force H escorted a convoy eastwards, so that the Axis would be fooled into believing that the Mediterranean Fleet had sailed in order to collect a convoy for Alexandria. Passing through the Straits of Gibraltar on the night of 21 – 22 July, the convoy immediately suffered a significant loss in heavy fog as the troopship Leinster ran aground, carrying RAF personnel to help maintain the aircraft in Malta. Nevertheless, the other six merchantmen were able to continue, with a heavy escort including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the battleship Nelson, with her nine powerful 16-inch guns, arranged unusually in three turrets forward. A diversionary tactic was provided by two submarines deployed west of Crete making fleet signals to indicate that the Mediterranean Fleet was operating in the area, while the Fleet itself maintained radio silence. At the cost of a destroyer sunk and a cruiser, a destroyer and a merchantman damaged, six ships reached Malta on 24 July and the ships already in Malta were able to make their escape. The damaged merchantman, Sydney Star, was crippled by Italian E-boats as she passed through the confines of the narrow Skerki Channel, but still managed to reach Malta, straggling alone behind the main convoy which arrived in Grand Harbour on 24 July.
Had the Italians sent their major fleet units to intercept the convoy, it could have been a disaster. The outcome might also have been less successful had the Luftwaffe still been around in force, but the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was as much a relief to the people of Malta as it was to those in the United Kingdom where it was a major factor in the lifting of the blitz.
Having failed to destroy the convoy whilst on passage to Malta, the Italians now decided to ensure its destruction whilst in the Grand Harbour. That they decided to use naval forces rather than airpower must be both a reflection of the efficiency of the AA defences surrounding the port, and of the poor accuracy of Italian bombing, contrary to Cunningham’s views, which were not, in any case, shared by many of his officers.
Shortly after 04.00 on 26 July 1941, the people living in the communities around the Grand Harbour, having heard the all-clear after a nuisance raid, were shaken by intense fire, but this time it was not heavy AA fire with which they were, by now, all too familiar. Hurrying to vantage points, they saw searchlights pointing out to sea, beyond the entrance to the harbour, and caught in the searchlight glare was a small boat, weaving and trying to avoid the heavy barrage directed its way. The coastal artillery at Fort St Elmo and Fort Ricasoli fired with dreadful accuracy, and first one boat exploded, and then another as it too was caught in the searchlight glare and the 6-pounders from both forts concentrated their fire on it. The battle continued until first light, when RAF Hurricanes appeared on the scene and added their efforts to those of the shore batteries.
The attack had been made by small craft known as a barchina, effectively boat bombs with a single crew member who ejected from the boat as it raced towards its target. Like the human torpedo, that other Italian invention, these small craft were carried most of the way to the target by a larger craft, in the case of the barchini this was a fast tender. These craft were part of La Decima Flottiglia Mas, The Tenth Light Flotilla, commanded by Valerio Borghese. The actual operation was commanded by Commander Moccagatta, using the fast tender Diana with eleven small craft, with two MAS boats, MAS 451 and MAS 452, to provide cover for the small craft and also pick up any of the pilots of the barchini who happened to survive. Moccagatta had to persist in persuading the authorities that the operation was viable, and in an attempt to persuade his superiors, he made two dummy runs with two barchini on two occasions, getting to within half a mile of Malta undetected. A human torpedo mother ship was also included in the operation. Known officially as the Siluro a Lenta Corsa, or ‘slow running torpedo’, but to their two-man crews as the Maiale, or ‘pig’, the human torpedoes were another rebuttal to anyone who doubted that the Italians were incapable of bravery. Ridden by their operators who sat on top dressed in frogmen’s outfits, once inside an enemy harbour and under the target ship, the warhead could be detached from the torpedo and fastened to the hull. The idea was that the crew would then make their escape on the torpedo. Apart from the obvious dangers and difficulties of penetrating an enemy harbour at night, getting clear was important since the percussive effects of underwater blast meant that the crew were greatly at risk while close to the target. The two human torpedoes had specific tasks of their own to complete. One, ridden by Major Teseo Tesei and Chief Diver Pedretti, was to approach the viaduct on the breakwater by St Elmo and use its explosive charge to blow open the boom defence at this point. The second, ridden by Lieutenant Francesco Costa and Sergeant Luigi Barla, was to enter the Marsamxett Harbour and proceed to the Lazaretto, where it would attach its explosive charge to a submarine.
Top cover of Macchi 200 fighters was also provided.
Fortunately for the defenders, the whole operation was an hour late in arriving off Grand Harbour. The air raid that had just ended had been intended to provide cover for the seaborne attack, but of course, it was over by the time they approached. Those ashore in Malta realized that something was likely to happen when their radar picked up the Diana while she was still more than twenty miles off Malta, but the radar operators then saw her stop for about fifteen minutes, before moving off in the direction of Sicily. Having alerted the defences, they assumed that the ship was simply playing games, trying to see if the Royal Navy could send ships from Malta, not appreciating that the Diana had stopped to launch her motorboats into the sea. When she moved off, the defences were stood down, but in the darkness, an alert machine-gun crew from the Cheshire Regiment spotted something out at sea moving across their sights. As the barchini approached Grand Harbour just before dawn was breaking, searchlights were switched on and the coastal batteries opened up, fighters were scrambled. The shore batteries had been waiting since the outbreak of war for just this opportunity, and did not let it pass. There was a combination of tracer and coastal artillery fire. The explosive-filled motorboats raced for the entrance to the Grand Harbour, like ‘another mad charge of the light brigade’ according to one witness. One after another, the small craft were hit, blowing up with little hope for those aboard. One at least blew up on hitting the viaduct, but whether it was this or Tesei’s torpedo that brought down the span of the viaduct was not clear, but instead of opening up the boom into Grand Harbour, the collapsed span made penetration still more difficult. Four barchini that tried to escape were machine-gunned by fighters once outside the range of the coastal guns. The fighters also engaged the Macchi 200s, bringing down three of them for the cost of one Hurricane. The fighter pilot was shot down, but baled out, landing in the water. He saw one of the MAS boats and swam towards it, wondering why there was no response from those on board, and discovered why as he climbed aboard to find eight corpses! He raised a white flag, and the only Italian vessel left afloat was captured by an armed trawler.
Costa and Barla’s human torpedo broke down, allegedly on the approach to the Marsamxett Harbour and was abandoned, with the two men captured a little later as they swam in St George’s Bay. The torpedo was never recovered, and the distance between St George’s Bay and the Marsamxett suggests that the crew may have entered the wrong harbour by mistake.
Only the Diana survived. The Italians lost sixteen boats, including the human torpedoes, with fifteen dead and eighteen taken prisoner.
The stranglehold that the Axis had on Malta’s supplies had its counterpart in the stranglehold being applied to the Axis’ own supply line between Italy and North Africa. Axis losses mounted during the second half of 1941. In June, according to the French Revue de Defense Nationale in 1954, the North African supply routes had 118,000 tons of merchant shipping available, of which just 8,500 tons were sunk or badly damaged, a loss rate of seven per cent. The tonnage available climbed to 153,000 tons in July, but losses more than tripled to 27,000 tons, or seventeen per cent. In August, 156,000 tons were available, but 39,000 tons were sunk or badly damaged, a loss rate of twenty-five per cent. By September, when no less than 163,000 tons of shipping was available, losses reached 63,000 tons, or forty per cent. Tonnage slumped dramatically in October to 50,000 tons, but losses reached sixty-three per cent, or 32,000 tons. In November, out of an available 37,000 tons, no less than 28,000 tons were lost, a staggering seventy-seven per cent.
This stranglehold on the Axis’ arms flow was achieved by units based in Malta. The RAF bombed targets in Sicily and mainland Italy from Malta, while the Royal Navy maintained an assault on enemy shipping, including attacks by the Swordfish of 830 Squadron.
Italy’s Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano who, no doubt, held his position by virtue of being Mussolini’s son-in-law, chronicled the changing situation in November 1941.
Since 15 September, we had given up trying to get convoys through to Libya; every attempt had been very costly, and the losses suffered by our merchant marine had reached such proportions as to discourage any further experiments. Tonight we tried it again; Libya needs materials, arms, fuel, more and more every day. And a convoy of ships left, accompanied by two ten-thousand ton cruisers and ten destroyers, because it was known that at Malta the British had two battleships intended to act as wolves among the sheep. An engagement occurred the results of which are inexplicable. All, I mean all our ships were sunk and one or maybe two or three destroyers . . . Under the circumstances we have no right to complain if Hitler sends us Kesselring as commander in the south.27
Foiled in their attempt to penetrate the Grand Harbour, and unwilling to risk a major fleet engagement, in December 1941, the Italian Navy tried again. This time the target was the British Mediterranean Fleet in its base at Alexandria. This was a less blatant attack, but it was also more successful. Several Italian submarines had been modified to carry the human torpedoes. On the night of 18 December, an Italian submarine surfaced in the darkness just over a mile from the entrance to the harbour at Alexandria, and released three 2-man human torpedoes into the water. This time the attackers were in luck, as the harbour defences were opened to let in Rear Admiral Vian’s destroyers. The targets were the battleships. With some difficulty, one of the Italians, Luigi de la Penne, fixed his warhead to the bottom of the battleship Valiant, but he and his companion lost their human torpedo in doing this and had to swim to a buoy, from which they were rescued and taken prisoner by the British. Another pair, including Martellotta, managed to blow the stern off the tanker Sagona and also damage the destroyer Jervis lying alongside. Unable to escape through the closed dock entrance, they went ashore, but were soon spotted and arrested. The third duo, Marceglia and his companion, fixed their charge to the bottom of the elderly battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, and also attempted to escape, hoping to be picked up by the submarine. They were also spotted and arrested trying to spend English £5 notes which were no longer legal tender in Egypt. Even though he was detained aboard the Valiant, de la Penne kept silence until the explosion ripped open her hull and she settled on the bottom. The Queen Elizabeth suffered a similar fate.
It was simply the good fortune of the Royal Navy that both ships were in shallow water, and aerial reconnaissance showed them as if they were still lying undamaged at Alexandria. The crews of the two-men human torpedoes had failed to return, so there was little to show that they had been successful. The discovery of one of the torpedoes also caused the Royal Navy to embark on its own programme of torpedo development, although their crews used the far politer term of ‘chariot’ for their disposable craft. This was an instance of good fortune in misfortune.
As the year drew to an end with the Mediterranean Fleet having suffered heavy losses, despite its successes against the Italian Navy, for Malta, the one problem was that, as the German advance across the Soviet Union faltered and stopped under the crushing cold of the Russian winter, many of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft were redeployed westwards where they could still operate. As winter closed in, the Luftwaffe returned to Sicily. Malta could not be allowed to continue to strangle Rommel’s campaign in North Africa.
With Fliegerkorps X heavily committed in the North African campaign, and the Luftwaffe now heavily involved in the desperate dash to reach Hitler’s objectives in the east, the burden of bombing fell once again on the Italians
The convoy of 25 July had brought, in theory, sufficient to keep Malta going for a further three months, but fuel and ammunition were being used at a higher rate than anticipated due to heavy operational demands. The harvest was collected, but in addition to the problems of land use mentioned earlier, increasingly farmland had been scorched and poisoned by high explosives. To eke out the grain, on 1 August, 1941 it was decided to knead potatoes with the dough for the bread, spoiling the usual crispness and lightness of the traditional Maltese loaf, often eaten with olive oil and tomato paste or puree. Worse, in the summer heat, the utility bread became stale within a couple of hours. A few days later, both olive oil and kerosene were rationed.
Other changes were also happening. The language was becoming Anglicized. People used the word ‘fighter’ rather than ajruplan tal-glied, ‘bomber’ instead of ajruplan tal-bumbardament, all of which was understandable in that the simple English terms rolled off the tongue more quickly and easily. Less easy to understand was the use of the word ‘shelter’ rather than the simple Maltese kenn.
In September, it was decided to run through another convoy to Malta, designated GM2. This was the largest so far with nine merchantmen with no less than 85,000 tons of supplies and 2,600 troops. The escort consisted, as usual, of Force H, with three battleships, Prince of Wales, Nelson and the flagship Rodney, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and five cruisers, as well as eight destroyers. Yet again, the Royal Navy was hoping that, in addition to protecting the convoy, they would be able to draw the Italian Navy into a battle.
Passing through the Straits of Gibraltar on the night of 24 – 25 September, the convoy and the escort split into two groups to try to convince the enemy that it was smaller, with the heavy ships steaming to the northwards of the main body of the convoy, which sneaked along the coast of North Africa. This worked, convincing the Italians that there was just one battleship, and provoked Admiral Iachino to leave Naples with the two Littorio-class battleships, Littorio and Vittorio Veneto, and four heavy cruisers, Trento, Trieste, Gorizia and Duca degli Abruzzi, and fourteen destroyers, while sixteen submarines were also directed to the route of the convoy. The plan was that the Regia Aeronautica would attack the convoy and the escorts, which would be forced to scatter leaving ripe pickings for the surface fleet.
On the night of 26 September, Wellingtons from Malta raided the Italian air base at Cagliari in Sardinia, inflicting considerable damage to aircraft and the base itself, and severely cutting the Regia Aeronautica’s planned operation against the convoy. The Italians managed to launch a number of attacks from Sicily, but the only damage inflicted was to the battleship Nelson, flagship of Vice Admiral Somerville, which was hit on the stem by a torpedo and was operating at reduced speed as a result. On 27 September, at 14.30, aerial reconnaissance from Malta spotted Iachino’s fleet, and reported two battleships, four cruisers and sixteen destroyers approaching the convoy and at a distance of less than eighty miles. Somerville sent his other two battleships to intercept and ordered Ark Royal to launch a torpedo strike. Flying in steadily worsening visibility and with the Italians making a change of course that was not immediately picked up, coupled with some confusion over communications, the Swordfish missed the Italians. Iachino had heard from the Regia Aeronautica that there was more than a single battleship sailing with the convoy – a rare instance of these two Italian services communicating well – and was under strict orders not to risk any major action unless he enjoyed overwhelming strength. He turned and took his fleet back to Naples.
The convoy’s fighter cover and intense AA fire accounted for thirteen Italian aircraft, but another ten were lost out of fifteen Macchi fighters, which ran out of fuel when they failed to find the convoy, over which they were supposed to provide cover against the Fleet Air Arm’s fighters.
As darkness approached, the weather cleared up. Somerville took his heavy units back to Gibraltar while the cruisers and destroyers escorted the convoy through the Skerki Channel towards Malta. The convoy sailed onwards on a clear moonlit night, to be attacked by Italian torpedo-bombers, attacking not in force but in ones and twos. The only casualty was a torpedo strike which sunk the merchantmen Imperial Star. The ship’s cargo was typical of cargo for the Malta run, where cargoes were by this time always mixed, which was inefficient in loading and unloading, but reduced the consequences of losing a ship. The Imperial Star carried 12,000 tons, including several hundred crates of bombs, 500 tons of kerosene, as well as 500 tons of refrigerated meat, grain, flour and small arms ammunition. Given this dangerous cargo, it is incredible to learn that she also carried 300 passengers, since such cargo would not be regarded as safe for a passenger ship in peacetime! It was a miracle that she didn’t blow up, but she remained afloat long enough for her passengers and crew to be taken off.
The remaining ships reached Grand Harbour the following morning to the usual tumultuous welcome from the crowds along the shore and thronging the battlements, with the cruisers’ bands playing. Once again, Malta found herself with seven months’ supplies, although kerosene and coal remained scarce.
In the euphoria, no one could have realized that it would be many months before the next convoy would reach Malta.