With just sufficient supplies for another thirteen days, the arrival of the convoy Operation Pedestal was a close run thing, and all the closer if one remembers that almost two-thirds of the merchant ships were lost, and that the fate of the tanker Ohio with her vital cargo hung so precariously in the balance. The cost of Pedestal also has to be borne in mind, for this was the most heavily escorted convoy ever, yet one aircraft carrier was lost and another two badly damaged, while two cruisers were also lost.
Nor should we forget the cost to those ashore. The sum total of deaths and injuries in Malta are one thing, and while the official death toll might not seem unduly high compared with the other great sieges of the Second World War, and especially that at Stalingrad, it is surely only right to take into account the high mortality rate amongst infants and the increased death rate amongst the elderly, the two most vulnerable age groups in any society. No doubt the polio outbreak after the siege had ended had its origins in the hardships of the siege and the breakdown of the utilities.
The Maltese never doubted the British resolve, but the trouble was that the resolve came far too late. As with Singapore, we had these strong fortresses but sadly lacked the means of defending them.
The policy of successive British governments between the two world wars was one of neglect of the armed forces. Some suggest that this was largely because of the effect of the Great Depression, although it is strange that the country was supposed to work its way out of the Depression years by the application of Keynesian economics, which should at least have meant that the armed forces received their share of public expenditure! The real culprit was the ‘Ten Year Rule’, that stipulated that the country would have ten years between a threat emerging and war breaking out. Looked at in hindsight, we can see how Hitler achieved absolute power in 1933, and war broke out in 1939. Had Britain started to rearm in 1933, it would have been less costly and far more successful than waiting until it was almost too late.
Another culprit was the defeatist attitude of ‘the bomber will always get through’. Bombers often did get through, but usually only when there were insufficient fighters and anti-aircraft defences.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. Britain’s neglect of her defences between the wars meant that there were no fighters assigned to Malta because they were all desperately needed elsewhere. The way in which naval aviation had been handed over to the newly-formed Royal Air Force in April 1918, had also meant that no one had bothered to equip the Royal Navy with fighter aircraft capable of holding their own against the enemy. Had the Mediterranean Fleet had Sea Hurricanes or, even better, Seafires in 1940, rather than Fairey Fulmars, the initial balance of power would not have been so overwhelmingly in favour of the Italians. It would have been better still if there had been two modern aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean rather than just one plus the ailing HMS Eagle. The Maltese appreciated the dispatch of twelve Hurricanes in August 1940, at a time when the RAF was under great pressure at home, but there should have been levels of expenditure during the 1930s that would have guaranteed adequate fighters in Malta in June 1940.
The absence of barrage balloons around the Grand Harbour was another omission.
Procurement also comes into this. Why did the Fleet Air Arm have to work with the Fairey Swordfish when the Germans, Japanese and the United States all had far better aircraft for tactical strike operations? Why did we build Gloster Gladiators and Sea Gladiators, biplane fighters, when for a decade earlier, the monoplane had shown that it was the way forward? Hurricanes would have entered service in greater numbers if the decision had been taken to concentrate on these aircraft while the Spitfire was awaited. Why, again, was the Mosquito ignored when it first flew, losing a year at least in its introduction to service?
Given the high cliffs running from the south-west of Malta to the north-west, why didn’t proposals to cut a submarine base into these cliffs go ahead? Ta’Qali was well placed to have an aircraft hangar cut under the rock on which the twin cities of Mdina and Rabat stand – the Germans were convinced that this must have been done, and indeed a start was made, but why didn’t the work go ahead? For both these projects, skilled local labour was available, at a reasonably low rate by British standards. No doubt, this was due to the defeatist attitude that Malta couldn’t be defended. In this case, they were nearly right, but not because Malta couldn’t be defended, but because many in London had decided that it wouldn’t be defended! It was thanks to the Royal Navy that Malta survived at all. Yet, no hidden submarine base, and no attempt to get hold of the Surcouf to augment the submarine supply shuttle.
Nevertheless, there were also some poor decisions at the local level in Malta, for which the pre-war Governor must take some of the blame. Lord Strickland urged a programme of building public air raid shelters, but this wasn’t done. Smokescreens for the Grand Harbour, and perhaps also for the submarine base and the dockyard, should have been introduced much earlier, but these were left to Lord Gort. Given the lack of substantial public shelters, other than the famous railway tunnel, at first, one wonders just how much of the precious supplies were lost in air raids. Goods already in the shops were inevitably lost when these were bombed, but what else was lost? Photographs show supplies being unloaded in the open, in the countryside away from the main target areas, but the Axis airmen didn’t confine all of their attacks to the convoys, the Grand Harbour, the main towns, the dockyard and the airfields – those in the countryside were not immune to aerial attack.
It also became clear that holding a stock of supplies for seven months was insufficient to prevent starvation, or to allow the defenders free use of their weapons, let alone mount offensive raids against the enemy. Indeed, the shortage of fuel also threatened the survival of those on Malta as fuel was needed to pump water, despite the high number of wind-powered pumps on the farms. The lack of fuel also made it difficult to transport workers to where they were needed.
For the authorities to take over the import of supplies was understandable, since these needed to be pooled. It would have been wrong for one importer to have lost his goods in a convoy while another found that his got through, and more difficult for the authorities to have a clear picture of the supply position at a critical time. Yet, why was rationing introduced so late, and in such a piecemeal manner?
Without Malta, the Second World War would have taken much longer, certainly in Europe. Indeed, so much longer that it would have strengthened the argument of those in the United States who believed that they should finish Japan off first, and then turn their attention to Europe. Without the disruption of the Axis supply lines to North Africa inflicted by forces based in Malta, the Axis armies would almost certainly have had all of the material necessary to sweep eastwards to the Suez Canal. Without the defeat suffered by the Axis forces in North Africa, squeezed between the advancing Eighth Army and the Torch landings further west, with their supplies hindered by Malta-based forces, the invasion of Sicily would have been immeasurably more difficult, and possibly the landings on mainland Italy and then in the South of France might not have taken place, leaving the soft underbelly of Axis power untouched and meaning that everything would have depended on the Normandy landings. Without German preoccupation with the situation in Italy, and the loss of so much in North Africa, resistance in Normandy could have been much stronger. If Germany had gained the Suez Canal, the way would have been open to the oilfields of the Middle East, and especially those of Persia. It has been argued, rightly in my view, that the RAF and USAAF bombing campaign was the second front that Stalin constantly demanded, but without British and American armies engaged with the Germans in North Africa and then in Italy, would Stalin have been so inclined to mount his own campaigns against Germany, and perhaps instead have looked to some sort of armistice? This threat, after all, was the justification in providing so much material for the Soviet Union at such great cost in the Arctic convoys, material that could have been used by the RAF in the Far East, where the Japanese assault on Malaya was faced by obsolete aircraft while more modern equipment was shipped to Russia.
Yet, given all of this, it is incredible to think that there were those who would not have bothered to defend Malta. The consequences of defending Malta were grim indeed, and costly, but the consequences of not defending Malta would have been far worse.
While there were those Maltese who favoured Italy, although more usually it was Italian culture and language, most were resistant. Had Italy taken over Malta, the likelihood is that it would have been seen as a poor colony, strategically important in that it was denied to the enemy, but economically unimportant, especially given the limited agricultural output and the fact that Italy already had a great naval base not far away at Taranto. It is certainly hard to believe that the Italians would have held the Maltese in the same high regard and affection accorded them by the British.