While the imminent entry of Italy into the Second World War had taken the Mediterranean Fleet away to Alexandria, the changing fortunes of war meant that not all of the movement around Malta was away from the islands. Sheer chance meant that Malta gained an offensive capability early on in the form of a Fleet Air Arm Squadron.
In November, 1939, the Fleet Air Arm’s 767 Squadron had started using Hyeres de la Palyvestre in the South of France for advanced flying training with its Fairey Swordfish, making the most of the better Mediterranean weather and accompanied by the elderly aircraft carrier Argus for deck landings. Training continued as the Battle of France developed, but the squadron found itself in an impossible position once Italy entered the war. Argus was immediately recalled home for her own safety, but the squadron was left behind. In the Fleet Air Arm, squadrons with a number in the 700 series are non-combatant second line squadrons, including training units such as 767, with numbers in the 800 series reserved for combat squadrons. Its lowly number didn’t stop nine of the squadron’s instructors taking their aircraft to bomb the port of Genoa on 13 June.
This daring blow, flown without any fighter escort, was in spite of 767 Squadron finding itself in a difficult position. It was clear that their slow and vulnerable Swordfish couldn’t fly home over occupied French territory and without a carrier they were faced with the bleak prospect of internment. Lieutenant Commander Drummond, the squadron’s CO, took his men and their aircraft to Bone in North Africa, from where the less experienced student pilots were sent home via Casablanca and Gibraltar. Whilst at the western end of the Mediterranean, the opportunity was taken to use six of the squadron’s aircraft to top up the numbers aboard Ark Royal. The remainder of 767’s aircraft, twelve in all, then flew to RAF Hal Far in Malta, to be redesignated as a new squadron, 830, with a new CO, Lieutenant Commander F. D. Howie. There was little delay in taking on an offensive role, although the squadron’s aircraft lacked blind flying panels and long-range fuel tanks, the absence of which limited their offensive role and also made them more vulnerable. The early operations included bombing raids against both Sicily, starting with an attack on Augusta on 30 June, and Libya, while on 19 July, the squadron sank a U-boat.
Malta had already a limited air defence capability by this time. Four Gloster Sea Gladiators in a crate were discovered, left behind as spares for a carrier’s squadrons. The senior RAF officer on the island asked Cunningham if he could use the four aircraft, and Cunningham readily gave his permission, realizing that without air cover Malta’s role as a fortress and a base for offensive operations was doomed. All four aircraft were quickly assembled, but the first was lost on its first day of operations, Thursday, 13 June, leaving the famous trio named informally by the locals as Faith, Hope and Charity, to handle Malta’s fighter defences. Flown by flying-boat pilots, these obsolete biplanes gave a good account of themselves as the air war developed over the island, but within a month or so, someone at the Admiralty, ignoring what was being done to protect their base and naval assets, demanded to know who had permitted Fleet Air Arm spares to be handed over to the Royal Air Force.
‘I wondered where the official responsible had been spending his war,’ Cunningham remarked.35
The Fleet Air Arm’s Swordfish were not the only refugees from the fall of France to reach Malta. William Collins had been with a Hurricane squadron covering the British Expeditionary Force in France. Escaping south to Marseille, they were joined by the remnants of two other units, so that eventually there were two Bristol Blenheim bombers and ten Hawker Hurricanes. The French in Marseille cautioned them against their original plan to fly out via Ajaccio in Corsica, where the local forces had thrown in their lot with Vichy, and suggested instead that they flew from Marseille to Tunis, a distance of 980 miles.
‘We had overload tanks and we had approximately five hours thirty minutes flying time,’ Collins recalls.‘We set off and six of us made it and one of the Blenheims.’36
On arrival in Tunis, they had been interned, although they were put up in some comfort in a good hotel. Eventually they were released, told to refuel at a point in the desert, which they did, and then continued to Malta.
‘But anyhow we went into Luqa in Malta on the day the Italians were bombing it. That’s six Hurricanes and one Blenheim. And then for some unknown reason it was decided that the six Hurricanes would go on – should carry on with getting out to the Middle East.’37
The six Hurricanes would have been invaluable in the air defence of Malta at this early stage, within a fortnight of the start of the Italian air raids. It is not surprising that a later AOC Malta was to become notorious for hijacking aircraft and aircrew that caught his eye as they tried to use Malta as a transit point! Nevertheless, before leaving Malta on 24 June, William Collins had time to experience an Italian air raid.
‘I’d just landed and was having a bath when there was a terrible crunch,’ he recalls.
And the bath left the floor. And I was rolled out. But Malta was a marvellous place. You know, stone buildings and they had air raid shelters which were perfectly safe because the Italians only used at the maximum 250 or 500 pound bombs. So basically other than to the runway the damage was very small until, of course, the Germans came in . . . later. And then Malta had trouble . . . Had we left those six Hurricanes there instead of just the three Gladiators the defence of Malta would have been more secure I think. You see they were never short of pilots in Malta. But they were short of aircraft.38
While the absence of substantial fighter defences for Malta was a serious weakness in British planning, the pressure on the United Kingdom itself was growing at this time, as the fall of France led immediately to the start of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe’s concerted effort to destroy the Royal Air Force and its aircraft. It was fortunate that the Italians never mastered the art of the massed bombing raid, overwhelming the defences, while the Macchi C200, despite the manufacturer’s experience in the Schneider Trophy races, was one of the poorest fighters of the Second World War, worse even than the Curtiss P-40, and probably only just superior to the Brewster Buffalo.
Despite the critical situation in the United Kingdom, on 12 August, a squadron of twelve Hurricanes had been flown to Malta off the elderly aircraft carrier HMS Argus. 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 were soon to be the eyes of the Fleet as well as of Malta.
There was another, far less unorthodox, set of eyes based on Malta, however. This was Wing Commander A. Warburton, who also arrived in Malta towards the end of 1940, bringing with him a Bristol Beaufighter which he had ‘borrowed’ in Egypt, stripping the aircraft of armament and armour and fitting vertical cameras for aerial reconnaissance. Warburton dismissed the Baltimore as being ‘No bloody good’, and staunchly maintained that his ‘Beau’ was the fastest aircraft in the Mediterranean, able to reconnoitre ‘any place at any time at any height’, according to his friend, A. J. Spooner, who flew one of the Malta-based Wellingtons.39 Certainly, Warburton was the stuff of boys’ comic books, wearing unorthodox clothing such as sheepskin leggings acquired in Crete, and probably ideal for high altitude flying in an unpressurized aircraft. He did not have regular aircrew, but instead took two airmen whose job it was to change the film spools in the cameras, presumably taking just one of these at a time since the ‘Beau’ was a two seater, and a third person would not only have been uncomfortable, but would have offset some of the weight savings achieved in stripping the aircraft. Either way, he was never shot down even though he often returned to Malta chased by enemy fighters.
A few additional Hurricanes reached Malta on 17 November, when fourteen of these fighters were flown off HMS Argus, but only four reached Malta as the rest were lost, probably due to insufficient fuel since those that did make it to Hal Far arrived with very little in their tanks. Before the end of the year, a squadron of Hawker Hurricanes, No. 261, had been flown into Hal Far. Meanwhile, the offensive capability had also been boosted in November with the arrival of 37 Squadron operating Vickers Wellington bombers, the best that the RAF could provide at this early stage of the war, and augmented by some radar-equipped Wellingtons that were especially useful for guiding Swordfish on to their targets at night, although much later radar-equipped Swordfish did arrive. The Wellingtons were soon joined by two squadrons of Bristol Blenheim bombers.
Airfields were essential. Hal Far was in good condition, as was the new airfield at Ta’Qali. Luqa was newly completed. Kalafrana continued as a base for flying boats. None of these airfields had any protection against enemy bombing at the outset, showing that the impact that bombing would have on Malta was completely discounted. There were no protected dispersal bays for aircraft, no hardened hangars. At first, all that could be done in the way of AA protection of these airfields was to detail Lewis gun crews to each of them. Only later would they receive significant AA batteries.
The Royal Engineers and the Pioneer Corps were given the task of improving the airfields, often with drafts of manpower from the infantry battalions, so that at times as many as 3,000 men could be at work. During the next two years they were to construct 300 aircraft pens to provide some protection from bombing, saving aircraft from all but a direct hit. Between Hal Far and Luqa, an incredible twenty-seven miles of dispersal area was provided, known as the Safi strip from the nearby village, and later this was developed into a new airfield.
For most of the siege, the RAF had few ground staff in Malta, so the Manchester Regiment provided the manpower to keep Ta’Qali operational, while the Royal West Kents did the same for Luqa and the Cheshire Regiment, the ‘Buffs’, looked after Hal Far. The Cheshires’ 2nd Battalion of 1,000 men, more than fifty per cent more than the usual battalion strength, had arrived in February, 1941, with the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. Given the confined space of Malta, and the barrier afforded by the sea, there would, in all probability, have been little for these infantrymen to do otherwise.
For Malta, there was some relief at Easter 1941, when on Holy Saturday, 12 April, twenty Hurricane MkIIs were flown off the aircraft carrier Ark Royal to boost the depleted strength of 261 Squadron.
On 21 July 1941, the RAF’s Blenheims were alerted to the passage of a convoy of five ships, three of them Italian merchantmen and one German, as well as a tanker. The Blenheims went in at mast-top height, blowing up an ammunition ship and setting the tanker on fire, so that she was abandoned and drifted on to the Kerkenah Bank.
The attacks from the air, from the sea and from beneath it, meant that by October 1941, the Axis were losing more than sixty per cent of their supplies sent to North Africa, and the following month, this rose to an incredible seventy-seven per cent. Rommel was prompted to make nightly signals complaining about the shortage of supplies, blaming this on the Italians and also criticizing them for sending his supplies through Tripoli rather than Benghazi, and in so doing adding 500 miles to his already lengthy supply chain.
Throughout the summer and early autumn of 1941, more Hurricanes were delivered to Malta, so that by early autumn, there were about seventy aircraft. These were day and night fighters and fighter bombers, making offensive sweeps against Italian aircraft at their bases in Sicily, especially important as convoys approached Malta. Later, the Swordfish would be equipped with radar. Between May and November, 1941, mines laid by the Swordfish accounted for around 250,000 tons of enemy shipping, while the Blenheims accounted for another 50,000 tons, but suffered heavy losses in their very low level attacks.
Getting aircraft to Malta was hardly easy, especially for aircraft too large to be flown off an aircraft carrier. At Portreath in Cornwall, the RAF had a unit tasked with dispatching aircraft to the Middle East. Late in 1941, Air Marshal Sir Ivor Broom, then a sergeant pilot, found that with 230 hours total flying time he was the most experienced pilot in a group of six, which he was asked to lead. They couldn’t fly over occupied France, and so their journey started with a seven hour flight from Cornwall to Gibraltar, where the runway built on the old racecourse was still quite short, and for the still inexperienced pilots there was the unnerving sight of wrecked aircraft which had failed to make a safe landing. The next stage of the journey from Gibraltar to Malta took seven hours, forty minutes. Flying a twin-engined Blenheim with a navigator was bad enough, since they hardly saw land between Gibraltar and Malta, so it is easy to understand the problems facing the solitary fighter pilots flying off from aircraft carriers, with limited navigational training and accustomed to fighting air battles within a radius of fifty miles or so from their home air station.
Broom recalls that, whilst maintaining radio silence, one crew decided that the absence of any landfall meant that the whole flight was lost, and decided to try their luck, peeling off from the formation, and eventually becoming prisoners of war. On landing at Malta, en route to Cairo, Broom’s aircraft was the Blenheim hijacked by Lloyd to fill the gaps in the resident Blenheim squadron, No. 105. At this stage, Blenheim squadrons were detached to Malta from the UK for a three week tour of duty, before being repatriated. Broom spent a week with 105, before being transferred to 107, but found that the squadron had drawn the short straw, and spent more than four months in Malta before being relieved by 21 Squadron in January 1942. 21 Squadron was especially unlucky, spending just a couple of weeks in the island before being completely wiped out. The other Blenheim squadron in Malta during Broom’s period there was No. 18.
‘Our main role was to attack shipping taking supplies to Rommel in North Africa,’ Ivor Broom explains. ‘All daylight. And we’d go out searching for shipping and if we couldn’t find any ships, and we were down by the North African coast, then we would go inland to find a target of opportunity, on the Tripoli-Benghazi road area. And we’d attack the target of opportunity and then back to Malta ....all at low level . . . fifty feet . . . ’40
Not all of the attacks were in broad daylight, however.
The squadron was asked to attack some very important big ship in a Sicilian harbour . . . the harbour was so defended, that it was decided it had to be done at night. A moonlight night. And so they picked the two most experienced crews in the squadron to do it, and I was one of them. Now my total night flying was seven and a half hours. That included my training on Airspeed Oxfords, training on Blenheims . . . I hadn’t flown at night since my training conversion six months earlier . . . in low level again . . . All this bombing at low level was done at pilot release, not a navigator or bomb aimer . . . I remember the CO of the squadron said to me whilst at the briefing ‘Would you like to do a couple of circuits and landings?’ or circuits and bumps as we called them in those days, ‘before you set course, so that you’ve had a look at what Malta looks like at night, with virtually no lighting’. And before I could answer my air gunner said, ‘Not ruddy likely, let’s do the op between the circuit and the bumps’. And so off we went. And it was a very successful trip.41
Promotion could be rapid, and because of Malta’s isolation, what might be described as battlefield promotions were a necessity. Broom explains:
Now I was a sergeant pilot when I went to Malta, and we lost virtually all the officers, and we were left with a squadron leader who was due to go home, his tour expired. He was made acting wing commander until the new one came out. And I was commissioned in Malta. And one night I moved from the sergeants’ mess to the officers’ mess and that was my commission. I . . . bought myself a forage cap from Gieves . . . and a few inches of pilot officer braid, and took the sergeant stripes off my uniform. Pinned on, sewed on, the pilot officer braid, and that was commissioning in moving into the officers’ mess.42
The squadron wasn’t accommodated at Luqa because of the shortage of space. Instead, they lived in some barracks at Marsaxlokk. Nevertheless, the officers were accommodated at Luqa. On arrival in the officers’ mess, Broom shared a room with a Canadian, who joked that he was his third room mate that week!
The big thing we noticed . . . we didn’t get one ship come into Malta with supplies in the four and a half months I was there . . . we lived on Maconochies, which was meat and vegetables tinned, and we had it in every guise and form you can have it. The food was dull, and repetitive. We had this meat and vegetables fried, stewed, in pies, we had it curried, all sorts of ways . . .43
The risk of being shot down by Malta’s Hurricanes, and the heavy AA fire now amassed around the Grand Harbour and other key objectives, meant that most of the raids were now at night. A Malta Night Fighter Unit was established during the summer of 1941, initially using Hurricanes, although these aircraft were not at all well suited for their new role. The aircraft were guided onto their targets by searchlights and Malta’s air defence radar. It was not until later that radar-equipped aircraft, initially Bristol Beaufighters and then de Havilland Mosquitoes, were to reach Malta, arriving in November 1942, after the real need for them had passed. The operation of the air defences over Malta at this time has been described as a ‘three dimensional chess game’. It was not just a question of attackers and defenders, since as often as possible, the RAF and Fleet Air Arm would mount operational sorties against targets in Italy, Sicily and North Africa, and at sea, and often these aircraft would return badly damaged and unable to make the necessary manoeuvres expected of them. Added to this, there were night flights from both Gibraltar and Alexandria, flown usually by either BOAC or the RAF, and usually these pilots were complete strangers to the Mediterranean air war, and even those who were familiar with the situation, could find that changes had been made in the light of operational demands. Communication with incoming aircraft was difficult, since it could only be made en clair, and therefore could reveal too much to the enemy.
To make use of the Hurricanes, the island was divided into two air defence zones, with a Hurricane patrolling each, and with Valletta as the dividing line. The two Hurricanes were kept informed of the course, speed and altitude of the bombers as they approached, until the attackers were some fifteen miles off Malta, when the Hurricanes would take a converging course to approach the targets on either side. The objective was to have the Hurricanes ready and waiting just as the bombers entered the searchlight zone. Experience showed that the defences had to be layered, with the Hurricanes responsible for aircraft above a certain height, and the AA gunners for all aircraft below that height. The system was ramshackle, but it worked, with subsequent analysis showing that out of every seven raiders flying over Malta, five were picked up by the searchlights, and of these, three would be attacked, of which two would be shot down. This meant that the Regia Aeronautica was suffering a far higher attrition rate than the RAF on its raids over Germany by this time. It was good, but not good enough, as a proportion of raiders continued to reach the airfields and the Grand Harbour, including one that sank the destroyer Maori with a direct hit.
Petty Officer Francis Smith of 828 Squadron remembers that the big air raids had started in December 1941, and that the number of aircraft destroyed on the ground soared from this time.
But the real shock of Malta came over the Easter weekend, 1942. The Germans and the Italians hammered hell out of us. And by this time, because of the raids between Christmas and Easter, what few fighters Malta had left had either been shot down or been shot up on the deck (naval slang for the ground). And every month or so, the carriers used to come and fly off Hurricanes and Spitfires, from six hundred miles away. Well those that got to the island got shot down when they got to the island, because the Mes were always waiting, all the time.
So come Easter-time, 1942, we had practically no fighters left, not many Swordfish or Albacores – because there was another squadron there, 830 – they were Swordfish, but they’d lost most of them as well.
. . . and there was practically no ack-ack ammunition left – that had all gone, because the convoys were no getting through. There was practically no food, there was no lights, there was no beer . . . there wasn’t no anything. The island was really in an absolute desperate state, in May, 1942 . . .44
Queenie Lee also remembers those dark days.
Our red letter day was Sunday, 10th May, 1942: Spitfires had arrived . . . 36 enemy machines were brought down in an hour.
During these months fuel had become very scarce, and gas and electricity was cut off for five months.
During this time, I was teaching at the Royal Naval Dockyard School . . . one boy sometimes took 1½ to 2 hours to come to school, but come he did, and alone. They took the Oxford School Certificate and it took some time for the examination papers to arrive, but eventually they did, and they all passed.45
One of the RAF’s leading fighter aces, ‘Laddie’ Lucas, a former journalist with the Daily Express, was amongst those based at Ta’Qali. Like the others, he had reached Malta having flown off an aircraft carrier.
‘We were then flying the Spitfires off the carriers, and we had some disasters with that,’ Lucas recalled some years after the war.
Mainly because they were sending pilots out who really weren’t particularly well trained. If two pilots were asked to be sent out from a squadron, well, then, they sent people they didn’t want, naturally. If you were a squadron commander and wanted to get rid of a couple of guys, send them out to Malta, so it was very rough on the people who were out there and surviving.
But any way, when the American aircraft carrier Wasp, was brought into play, which turned the battle in the middle of May, 9th and 10th May, for about ten days. It did two runs and it was fixed up by Churchill with Roosevelt, special concession, it could take forty-eight Spitfires, whereas the Eagle could only take sixteen.
And the first run, I mean, it went off very well, but within forty-eight hours, of the forty-seven aircraft, there was one which didn’t go...they took off from a point about sixty miles north of Algiers, which was about 650 miles from the island, you couldn’t get any closer, the Mediterranean Fleet wouldn’t allow it. If the commander-in-chief said, ‘That’s quite close enough, you’ll fly off from here with these 90 gallon tanks on’, which we did, it was a fairly rough assignment. We did our own navigation and all that. And when this first forty-eight were flown off the Wasp, loaded up in Glasgow and just sent through the Straits, after forty-eight hours of course the Germans had been monitoring this all the way, and these raids came in one after another. And of course they beat these planes up on the ground, and I think there were seven serviceable aircraft after forty-eight hours . . .46
What had happened was that the USS Wasp had sailed from Glasgow with no less than forty-eight Spitfires for Malta, escorted by the battleship Renown, the anti-aircraft cruisers Cairo and Charybdis and a number of destroyers. Passing Gibraltar on 19 April, the ship launched her Spitfires towards Malta the following day. She had not entered port at Gibraltar to avoid any delay and hoping to give no clue to the Germans about her intentions, but the Germans also used radio intercepts, could track the course of the convoy by its signals, and guessed that the Wasp was ferrying aircraft to Malta. They also managed to ascertain just when the aircraft were launched. Just one aircraft failed to reach Malta, but after the remaining forty-seven landed, roughly half each at Ta’Qali and Hal Far, a large air raid was mounted by Ju88s and Bf109s, catching the Spitfires on the ground, just twenty minutes after landing. Twenty of the aircraft were destroyed, and another twelve damaged.
Churchill managed to persuade Roosevelt to allow the Wasp a second run, this time in partnership with the Eagle, so that sixty-four aircraft were sent to Malta. This was still not enough to satisfy the AOC, Air Vice Marshal Hugh Lloyd. Lucas was amongst those who remembered Lloyd ‘hijacking’ aircraft intended for the Middle East.
Lloyd may have been something of a buccaneer, but he was also very practical. He ensured that a number of experienced fighter pilots were sent to Gibraltar so that they could lead in the aircraft from the carriers, keeping losses to the minimum. As for Lucas, he was so annoyed at the inaccurate coverage being given to the situation in Malta in his old newspaper, that he managed to send a story to them, circumventing wartime censorship by sending it via a friend during a visit to Gibraltar. Perhaps Lucas held such a high opinion of Lloyd for when the AOC heard about the story, he correctly guessed the identity of the culprit, and contented himself with telling Lucas: ‘Well, it’s a good story, isn’t it, but you know you’re not allowed to do that.’47
More important to anyone who has earned his living by writing, the newspaper sent Lucas a cheque for £50, which came in useful for a party in the officers’ mess, and when the newspaper’s proprietor heard about how much, or in his view, how little, had been sent, a further £50 followed!
Lucas had originally flown into Malta as a passenger in February 1942, aboard a flying-boat from Gibraltar, landing at Kalafrana, alighting from the Short Sunderland just after dawn, and in time for the first air raid of the day. Lucas commented:
And suddenly one heard the throb of sort of Rolls Royce engines, Merlin engines, and they sounded very rough I may say, and there were five old Hurricane IIs in an old fashioned vic formation which they’d given up in the Battle of Britain, just beginning to clamber up to gain height. And then about . . . nothing more than a minute or a couple of minutes later, high up, and you could just see it as the dawn was breaking on the haze, a lovely spring morning, February, there were these, probably a Staffel I suppose of 109s flying in that beautiful wide open nine abreast formation that they used to fly their Schwarms in. The rot (Rotte) the two aircraft was the . . . basis of their flying. But then they used to put them together in fours. And they were flying high up, high and fast.48
Lucas found flying the Hurricane was a great experience before the Spitfires arrived, and made him realize what the Hurricane pilots had suffered in the Battle of France, whereas the Spitfire V and the Bf109 were fairly evenly matched, with many pilots feeling that perhaps the Spitfire had a slight edge on the Bf109, although the Fw190 when it arrived was a far more potent aircraft. The Hurricanes had been cannibalised just to keep a few aircraft airworthy. He came to admire those who had been battling against the Germans in the Hurricanes for five or six months, and was glad when his own time with the aircraft lasted just a fortnight.
Lucas considered the real architect of the fighter defence of Malta to be his commanding officer, the then Squadron Leader, later Group Captain, Stanley Turner, a Canadian in the RAF. During the Battle of Britain, Turner had flown with Bader in the Tangmere fighter wing. He scrapped the outdated vic formations, and taught the fighter pilots the technique known as ‘finger fours’. The success of this technique was that the aircraft flew in line abreast, with the pilot on the right looking left and the one on the left looking right, covering the whole sky. It took Turner about a week to change 249 Squadron. Once the first Spitfires did arrive, Turner was rested from active flying, something that was long overdue as he had been flying in combat continuously from the start of the Battle of France in spring 1940.
The other great contributor to the fighter defence of Malta was ‘Woody’ Woodhall, credited by Lucas as being the best fighter controller that the Royal Air Force had in the Second World War. Post-war chief of the Italian Air Staff, Francesco Cavallera, who had been a fighter pilot based in Sicily during 1942, remarked to Lucas that, ‘Your great advantage was that you had the radar and we didn’t in Sicily and this made it very difficult’.
The role of the fighter controller was crucial to success. Watching the enemy aircraft assemble over their airfields in Sicily was simply the easy part of the job, the real skill lay in knowing when to order the fighters to take-off. Too early, and they could run short of fuel during prolonged combat. Too late, and they would not have time to get into position. It was also important to note the direction of any attack, as sometimes the attackers would try to work around the island and approach from a different direction hoping to catch the defenders off guard. It was important that the fighters should try to position themselves between the sun and the attacking force to maintain an element of surprise.
‘These German raids used to come in like a railway timetable,’ Lucas explained.
They used to come in at breakfast, lunch and dinner, just before dinner, sort of high tea time. And just occasionally they’d put in four but normally it was three (raids per day). And so if it was a morning raid old Woody’d get us up very high, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven thousand feet, south of the island. And then he’d start to bring us in and he would say, ‘Now, the big jobs with a lot of little jobs about and it’s about eighty plus, approaching St Paul’s Bay now. Suggest you come in now and come in fast. 49
The fighters would dive down through the Messerschmitt Bf109s and straight into the bombers, but the shortage of fighters in Malta meant that these successes in breaking up the bombers had to be offset by the losses amongst the fighter squadrons after they had landed to refuel, when the Bf109s would come in fast and low in a strafing attack.
Much of the anti-shipping work continued to fall to the Fleet Air Arm’s 830 Squadron with its Swordfish, later joined by the Albacores of 828 Squadron, stationed at what was then RAF Hal Far. Lucas recalls socializing with the Fleet Air Arm, and once again, food entered into the equation. The RAF had to make do with the uninteresting Maconochie’s stew or bully beef, but the Fleet Air Arm seemed to be looking after themselves very well by comparison, and in the opinion of Lucas they probably had the best table on the island, better than that of the Governor, which was almost certainly true as he used the same rations as everyone else.
Many attacks by aircraft based in Malta were beyond the range at which fighter protection could be provided, but whenever fighters were available and an attack was within range, an escort would be provided. On one occasion, Lucas led a fighter escort for the Swordfish on a strike against two Italian cruisers off the coast of Tunisia near Cape Bon. Three Swordfish were flying very low. Staying high himself, Lucas sent a section of four aircraft down lower, as he watched the Swordfish start their attack. He saw two of the Swordfish hit by AA fire before they could release their torpedoes, but the third aircraft managed to torpedo an Italian cruiser.
On one occasion a Beaufort, believed to have been from 217 Squadron, flown by a South African, Ted Strever, was shot down, but the crew were rescued by the Italians and taken to one of the Greek islands, where they were given a good dinner with wine. The next morning, they were loaded into an Italian flying boat to be taken to Taranto, guarded by an Italian corporal who had never flown before and who became very airsick. The hapless corporal was overpowered, and the Italian pilot forced to fly to Sicily where the Beaufort crew could plot a course to Malta. As they approached the island, they saw Spitfires coming to intercept the flying boat, at which point Strever ordered the Italian pilot to land the aircraft in the sea, some ten miles off Malta, although before this could happen the first Spitfire had made an attacking run. They were soon rescued. Before the Italians were sent off to a prison camp, Strever insisted that they be given dinner in the mess to repay them for their hospitality the previous evening, at the same time warning the Italians that they didn’t have any decent wine. The Italians immediately offered the wine in their suitcases: they had been going on leave! Maconochie’s stew or not, dinner that night was a decidedly jolly affair!
One point at which relations between the British and the Maltese came under some strain was when the Maltese found RAF pilots off duty in Valletta during air raids – they didn’t realize that there weren’t enough aircraft to go round!
When Lucas crash-landed in a field where Maltese women were packing potatoes into sacks, the three elderly ladies promptly emptied the sacks and filled them with earth before climbing onto the wing of his Spitfire and spreading the sacks on top of the smoking engine cowling.
‘I have no doubt at all that the women had the most remarkable courage there.’50
The arrival of the Spitfires had been cloaked in secrecy, or so Sir William Dobbie had thought. He always made a point of visiting areas most seriously affected by the bombing raids. On 7 March, he visited a small village close to Luqa. Despite the heavy damage to the village, most of the population had escaped, taking cover in the shelters. The nine fatalities had all come from the same family, who had their own private shelter beneath their house, but when this received a direct hit, the shelter collapsed into the cistern under the building, leaving those present to drown.
On this occasion, the Governor was in for a shock. Chatting with an elderly and very loyal Maltese, a veteran of the ill-starred Gallipoli campaign, he learnt that the man was expecting ‘Speedfires’ to be sent to the island soon: Dobbie had thought that only four or five people knew about the impending arrival of the Spitfires.
The man assured him that he had been told about the aircraft coming by the airmen at Luqa! Everyone knew about the aircraft, but no one knew when they would arrive.
Dobbie’s next call that day was to Floriana. The old church of St Publius was still standing, although badly pockmarked by shrapnel and splinters, but the area around it had suffered grievously. He entered the main shelter, the old railway tunnel, and found those present in the vastly overcrowded tunnel, intent on their devotions.
As he moved on to his next visit, he was relieved not to hear the word Spitfire. He was soon to hear something else. As he left the shelter, shortly after 13.30, he heard the noise of aircraft engines, as aircraft raced in low, causing those around him to fear a German raid approaching beneath the radar coverage. People outside began to disperse and seek shelter, shouting warnings about the impending German attack. Suddenly, impervious to what seemed like imminent danger, a small boy shouted ‘Hurrah . . . Spitfires’. Everyone turned, stared and started clapping, shouting hysterically, and offering prayers of thanks to the Almighty, Santa Marija and to the many favourite saints.
Fifteen Spitfires had been flown in from the deck of the veteran aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, some miles to the west, while south of the Balearic Islands.
That night, the fighter base at RAF Ta’Qali was bombed, something that was all too painfully obvious to those sheltering under the towns of Rabat and Mosta close to the airfield.
Several aircraft carriers played a part in these operations, including the veterans Furious, Argus and Eagle, the first two having been commissioned before the end of the First World War, and the modern Ark Royal, but the most significant contribution came with two deliveries by the USS Wasp, able to send forty-eight Spitfires at a time to the island.
On 10 March, the Spitfires saw action for the first time, climbing high before diving on to a small formation of three Ju88s escorted by Bf109s. Malta’s AA gunners shot down one Ju88, before the Spitfires shot down a Bf109 and sent two others flying away trailing smoke. Once the score was tallied up later, it was found that the guns had accounted for one Junkers, with two definite and four probably Bf109s for the Spitfires, with another two probables for the Hurricanes.
On 20 April, forty-seven Spitfires were flown in off the USS Wasp. These aircraft never had a chance, as the new German air unit in Sicily, Fliegerkorps II, caught most of the aircraft on the ground, often as soon as they landed and before they could be refuelled and rearmed. The most any of them lasted was three days, due to the lack of protected accommodation. Kesselring was able to report to Goering that Malta was neutralized. On 9 May, sixty-one more aircraft were flown in from the Wasp and Eagle, and this time, the ground-crews had been rehearsed in what to do, turning the aircraft round so that many were back in the air in less than thirty-five minutes.
It was not surprising that Rommel was so enthusiastic over the idea of invading Malta in early 1941, but by June, 1941, the opportunity had gone following the debacle on Crete, and, the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. It was Barbarossa that eased the Luftwaffe’s pressure on Malta, just as it brought the blitz on British cities to a premature end. One of the objectives of Barbarossa was to secure oil supplies for the Axis; as it faltered and finally failed, the growing shortage of oil was to be felt most severely by Hitler’s ally, Mussolini.
On 9 May, when HMS Eagle and USS Wasp between them had flown off a total of sixty-four Spitfire MkVs to Malta, three were lost en route. On arrival in Malta, some of the Spitfires were without their usual armament, carrying spares in their place. Meanwhile, the fast minelaying cruiser HMS Welshman was racing along the Algerian coast at her full 40 knots.
Francis Smith was with the Fleet Air Arm’s 828 Squadron that had been sent to Malta ahead of its Fairey Albacore aircraft, pilots and observers, and found himself working with others to prepare for the safe arrival of the Spitfires. He recalled:
. . . we knew they were coming, so what we did, we built pens of empty two-gallon petrol cans, filled up with sand, we built pens, and we organised everybody on the island – civilians, sailors, soldiers, everybody – into working parties, so many to an aircraft. All these aircraft came in, and I think about a third of them were left to use up their petrol in fighting the Mes, and the other two thirds landed.
Well as these aircraft landed they were grabbed by a duty crew of eight or nine people, they were refuelled and rearmed, and they got airborne. And it worked – they got airborne in time to let the others come down, those that stopped up in the air. And this shook the Germans something wicked, it did. Because they knew that week before we hadn’t got any fighters . . . so they got a nasty shock.51
The improvised aircraft shelters built in this way were sometimes known as sangers. The ready availability of so many empty fuel cans was the result of having fuel brought in small quantities aboard submarines and the Manxman and Welshman, the two fast minelaying cruisers. Ordinary merchantmen bound for Malta would also include some fuel amongst their cargo, although naturally this was nowhere near as efficient as using a tanker, but it did mean that some proportion of supplies got through if the tanker was sunk.
Good fortune accompanied the Maltese at this moment, since there was time to re-install the armament of the newly arrived Spitfires, who went into battle on 9 May when there were ten air raids and between them, the fighters and the gunners accounted for thirty enemy aircraft.
No one could argue that the British were not trying. It was also clear that a cold calculation had been made. Malta could not unload so many big ships at once, so it was plain that not all were expected to reach the Grand Harbour.
Malta must have been a frustrating posting for Smith, since he was a TAG, telegraphist/air-gunner, and most of the operations from Malta dispensed with the TAGs, the flying being left to the pilots and observers since most of it was at night. Smith and his comrades had been told that they were going to the Mediterranean aboard two cruisers, but had assumed that their destination was Alexandria and were surprised to be put ashore at Malta, where no one seemed to be expecting them. He had to telephone the RAF to get transport to Hal Far. From October, with its aircraft and aircrew all together again, 828 operated with the resident 830 Squadron as the Naval Air Squadron Malta. Their arrival was not an unalloyed blessing. The Albacore had been intended as a replacement for the Swordfish, and although still a biplane with a fixed undercarriage, it did at least have a canopy. In fact, its Taurus engine was unreliable and the Albacore’s successor, the monoplane Fairey Barracuda, was a maintenance nightmare, so Swordfish with its reliable Pegasus engine remained in service throughout the war in Europe. The Fleet Air Arm Songbook had something to say, or sing, about it:
The Swordfish relies on her Peggy,
The modified Taurus ain’t sound.
So the Swordfish flies off on her missions
And the Albacore stays on the ground.
Later we will see how the safe arrival of the tanker Ohio on 15 August 1942, saw Malta-based aircraft return to an all-out offensive, with the need for defensive sorties very much reduced as the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica came under pressure. This was in complete contrast to the situation just a few months earlier, in the spring, when a final all-out attempt had been made by the Germans and the Italians to neutralize Malta in the run up to the planned invasion, and at times the island’s defences were once more almost completely in the hands of the AA batteries, themselves running short of ammunition. This renewed blitz ended when the Axis bombers were withdrawn in May, but were renewed in July as soon as the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm resumed their attacks on shipping. The July bombing raids were less severe than those earlier. The priority throughout this period was to keep the airfields in Malta operational, filling craters and continuing to work, even when unexploded bombs or landmines made this hazardous.
The plight of Rommel’s forces in North Africa because of the success of the aircraft based in Malta provoked another attempt to neutralize the island’s airfields and squadrons in October, with Malta’s Spitfires being scrambled up to six times a day. This final attempt was short-lived as the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica losses were too heavy to be sustained. Finally, the Eighth Army’s victory at El Alamein, followed soon after by the Allied landings in North Africa, marked the turning of the tide.