Bowing to Hitler’s Realpolitik was not difficult. Few military analysts believed the war could last very long, a reasonable supposition, given the era of the Blitzkrieg. Poland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and France had each fallen in a matter of weeks. Britain, its forces already driven from the Continent, seemed next in line. To be sure, the Maltese sword was a dull weapon during the summer and early fall of 1940, when strong Italian convoys delivered troops and supplies to Libya with virtual impunity. But as the North African Campaign dragged on, the small island was heavily re-fortified, becoming a terrible menace to Italian fortunes in the Central Mediterranean. From late 1940, air and naval units operating out of Malta began to inflict evermore crippling losses on the Regia Marina, already handicapped by ULTRA code intercepts and its ignorance of radar.

However, the appearance of General Rommel’s German Afrika Korps, together with the Italian Ariete and Trento Divisions in the Libyan Desert during February 1941, postponed the imminent collapse of Marshal Graziani’s forces there. Something of a respite from Italy’s long season of defeat afforded Commando Supremo strategists an opportunity to devise serious plans for the capture of Malta. The Duce’s early emphasis on pulverizing air assaults against the island could be seriously reconsidered, now that increased bomber production made such large-scale raids possible, although both he and his commanders knew that Malta could not be subdued entirely by the Regia Aeronautica. Instead, concentrated air power was intended to stun the defenders long enough for naval units to land their troops.

Planners from supreme military headquarters in Rome and Berlin outlined all the details in Operation Hercules, for which they delegated three Italian parachute battalions, four Italian infantry divisions, and one German Fallschirmjaeger division. Their jump would be preceded by combined Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe raids carried out by 1,300 evenly divided Italian and German aircraft.

Soon after the first version of Operation Hercules was finalized, Kriegsmarine troop barges left over from Operation Seeloewe, or ‘Sealion’, 1940’s aborted invasion of southern England, were to join an additional eighty Italian landing-craft, sixty-four smaller ferries, 725 launches and 225 motor-boats. These would be covered by virtually every warship in the Regia Marina to put ashore 32,000 German and Italian troops, plus an armored unit of captured Russian T-34 tanks. Wehrmacht and Commando Supremo strategists concurred that such a large-scale effort was dependent upon the Italian Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain an acceptable measure of domination in the Central Mediterranean. Admirals at the Regia Marina agreed they needed more than a year to at least partially regain Italy’s former ascendency at sea following the debacle at Taranto. Accordingly, Operation Hercules was set to begin on 10 July 1942.

A prelude to the bi-national attempt began auspiciously enough on 8 March 1941 when a flying armada of CANTs, Cigognas, Sparvieros, and Junkers Ju-88 medium-bombers blasted Malta as it had never been hit before, winning it the luckless sobriquet, “the most bombed real estate on earth”. The island’s infrastructure was shattered. Water and electricity were no longer available; most of its warships and all its aircraft were destroyed; the harbors badly damaged, and port facilities ruined. Barely able to provide for the survival of its inhabitants, let alone offer further resistance, Malta teetered on the brink of surrender.

And yet, the raid had only been a test. While it unquestionably caused widespread damage and chaos, Commando Supremo learned that the bombs dropped on Malta during this single attack were still insufficient to compel its capitulation. Reconnaissance photographs made after the aerial offensive convinced Axis planners that renewed air strikes combined with heavy mining operations in Maltese waters should make the enemy keep his head down long enough for the Regia Marina to pave the way for Operation Hercules in 1942. And, of course, it was essential to keep the island from being fortified.

The first step in separating Malta from the outside world had been taken the day after Italy’s declaration of war. Beginning on the night of 11 June 1940, specialists aboard several small vessels of the Orata Group found and cut the first of seven deep-sea telegraph and telephone cables linking the island’s military command with its Royal Navy headquarters at Gibraltar. These perilous operations were invariably conducted under cover of darkness, the unarmed group members’ only protection. Their nerve-wracking work went on for more than two months without being detected before the last line was severed, plunging Malta into a communications black-out. So successful were the Orata men, they hauled up from the sea-bottom literally thousands of meters of enemy cable which were brought back to base for use by the frugal Italians then experiencing shortages, along with most other things, of such high-grade telegraph wire.

Meanwhile, mine production had gone into high gear, finally allowing the silent siege of Malta to begin on the night of 5 September. A destroyer squadrilla, the Altair, cautiously spread its first minefield over the roadstead to Valletta, the British naval base at Malta. During the next thirty months, Altair laid down just as many of the deadly carpets, which accounted for numerous Allied freighters and auxiliary vessels of all kinds, from tugs to mine-sweepers. Joining them on the bottom of the sea were three destroyers–Jersey, Kujawjak and Southwold – plus a submarine, the Olympus. More importantly, the far-flung minefields ham-strung all enemy traffic in Maltese waters throughout the Mediterranean Campaign.

Despite the formidable dangers presented by enemy mines, the British were desperate to reinforce Malta. On 21 July 1941, Admiral Cunningham dispatched six merchant ships and a troop transport to the vitally strategic island from Gibraltar. They were screened by the battleship Nelson, accompanied by heavy cruisers Arethusa, Edinburgh and Manchester in an operation appropriately known as ‘Substance’. The crew of a CANT ‘Heron’ long-range reconnaissance plane spotted the convoy, but too late for its interception by Italian surface forces, so the British position was radioed to Regia Aeronautica headquarters. A flight of Sparviero bombers was scrambled, and they pressed their attack against the combined firepower of a dozen warships. H.M.S Fearless blazed up and sank, while another destroyer, Firedrake, holed beyond salvage, had to be scuttled, as the Manchester, severely damaged by torpedo hits, limped back to Gibraltar for lengthy repairs that kept her out of the fighting for months.

Although the ‘Sparrowhawk’s bloodied Cunningham’s warships without loss to themselves, these targets were far less important than the freighters which arrived safely at Malta with enough supplies to fortify island resistance for the next few months. In the Regia Marina’s last-ditch effort, a MAS torpedo-boat scored on the Sydney Star, but the Australian cargo vessel, despite being badly damaged, made Maltese port. The convoy’s only non-warship loss had been the troopship Leinster, when she grounded early in the operation, and returned to Gibraltar for repairs. The success of ‘Substance’ was simultaneously enhanced by the escape from Malta of seven empty merchant vessels, which found their way back to Gibraltar without incident. Another such British operation would render Malta impregnable, and provide it with enough strength to initiate bolder offensive assaults by air and sea against Axis convoys and Sicily itself.

The Italians’ continued failure to prevent the island from being so lavishly supplied forced them to undertake a radically unconventional operation. It aimed at nothing short of destroying the same convoy that had just arrived virtually intact at Valletta’s Grand Harbour. After sundown, 25 July 1941, elite members of the X Flottiglia MAS left the Sicilian port of Augusta aboard an auxiliary ship, accompanied by a pair of torpedo-boats, MAS 451 and 452, for a surprise raid on the island-fortress. The Diana steamed into the night, while they readied their attack-craft: eight explosive motor-boats and a pair of Maiale ‘Pig’ human-torpedoes. As one of them attacked any enemy submarine it could find docked at Port Manoel, the other was supposed to blast a breech in Grand Harbour’s defensive perimeter. Through it the explosive motor-boats and torpedo-boats would race to strike the anchored convoy. These maneuvers were to be preceded and covered by a diversionary air raid promised by the Regia Aeronautica.

Unfortunately for the operation, the squadron of Sparvieros arrived over Malta and concluded their bomb-run long before the X Flottiglia MAS was near enough to attack, leaving the defenders in a heightened sense of alert. But the crucial element of surprise was lost when enemy radar detected the Diana still twelve kilometers from Malta. Even so, she able to lower all her vessels into the water, while the British wondered precisely what the lone, stopped ship was doing out at sea in the middle of the night, beyond the reach of coastal batteries. They missed spotting the small, low-silhouetted attack-craft then quietly proceeding toward Grand Harbour, but knew something ominous was afoot in the inky darkness.

As planned, Chief Diver Pedretti steered his Maiale to the port’s underwater barrier at Saint Elmo. Meanwhile, the other ‘Pig’ commanded by Major Tesseo Tesei placed its warhead at the harbor viaduct itself. Both detonated almost simultaneously, causing the entire port defenses to respond with machine-gun fire. The X Flottiglia MAS pressed the attack nonetheless. Its explosive motor-boats and torpedo-boats, brilliantly illuminated now in the blinding glare of searchlights, sped across the harbor at the immobile convoy. But before they could reach it, every one was knocked out by gunners of the Royal Malta Artillery. The torpedo-boats turned to escape, but were strafed by pursuing aircraft after first light. MAS 451 sank in flames with all hands, while all but two men aboard MAS 452 were killed. Pedretti, Tesei and their comrades all perished in the failed attempt.

They were revenged by their comrades in the 36th Stormo operating out of Deciomannu on 27 September, when the 12,427-ton freighter, Imperial Star, succumbed to a determined torpedo attack that also severely damaged the battleship Nelson. They were followed by the redoubtable Aerosiluranti anti-shipping specialists, who sank the 6,463-ton Empire Pelican and, near the Tunisian coast, the 5,649-ton Empire Defender in mid-November. Regia Aeronautica good luck rubbed off on the Regia Marina with less dramatic, more laborious efforts at sealing off Malta through the deployment of broad-spreading carpets of floating mines that decimated Force K.

This was Admiral Cunningham’s flotilla assigned to protect the island and keep its supply routes open. On 18 December, Force K fell afoul of a minefield twelve kilometers east of Tripoli. As a heavy cruiser, the Neptune, slid beneath the waves, she was joined on the bottom by her own escort, the destroyer Kandahar. Two more cruisers were damaged, particularly the Aurora, which required extensive, lengthy repairs. Her ruined appearance beside the listing Penelope as they limped into Grand Harbour was a shock to Maltese morale.

All relief convoys to the island under siege were suspended, because they were now totally bereft of warship protection. Desperate to keep Malta alive, the British Admiralty tried sending single freighters to slip into Grand Harbour unescorted. But Commando Supremo kept a wary eye out for these lone vessels. Even before the destruction of Force K, too many big cargo carriers like the Empire Guillemot, Empire Pelikan and Empire Defender had been picked off by Sparviero torpedo-planes, transforming runs by individual merchant ships into suicidal voyages.

Now Malta was really in for a bad time. Almost isolated at sea, practically all that remained for its conquest was the destruction of remaining warplanes, land-based defenses and supplies. Meanwhile, the noose around its shipping routes grew ever tighter, as ships found passage through the Central Mediterranean increasingly hazardous. Still confident that air power was the deciding factor in modern warfare, Mussolini ordered prolonged aerial operations that would compel Malta’s surrender or, at the very least, severely weaken its resistance to invasion. His iron ring had virtually cut off the beleaguered island from outside assistance by 17 November, when ten of the fourteen supply vessels dispatched from Gibraltar were sunk.

Regia Aeronautica crews had done much to keep Maltese heads down from Mussolini’s June declaration of war to the end of 1940, dropping 550 tons of explosives on the island in 7,410 sorties for the loss of thirty-five aircraft against sixty-six of the defenders destroyed in combat. From January through May the following year, the Germans’ X Fliegerkorps largely took over from their allies, losing fifty-nine Junkers bombers and Messerschmitt fighters. From June onward, however, the burden of attacking Malta was shared more equally by the Axis airmen. Commencing on 7 February 1942, combined squadrons of the Italian Air Force and Luftwaffe staged seventeen raids in twenty-four hours. Over the next week, they delivered 236 attacks. Worse was to come for Malta in the months that followed.

When numbers of Spitfires were hastily flown in to bolster the besieged island’s defense, Italo-German bombers switched over to night-time raids, completing the last ninety of their 275 missions for March after dark. April was higher yet, with 6,782 tons of explosives dropped in 283 raids. Low-level sorties by Macchi Saetta fighters and Stuka dive-bombers against defensive positions were carried out in a methodical program to annihilate every manifestation of resistance, now that most Allied planes had been swept from the sky. On the 20th, as a special gift to Hitler for the Führer’s 54th birthday, Mussolini’s correctly reported that Malta’s five RAF squadrons had only seven aircraft left between them. To help make up for these losses, on that same day a new American aircraft-carrier streamed to within flight range of Malta, then launched a spread of Spitfires toward the island. Inside a week, every one was destroyed or rendered unserviceable. USS Wasp returned to the Pacific Theater, where she was promptly sunk by Japanese torpedo-bombers.

These were indeed evil times for the Allies. By spring, only a pair of surface warships–the destroyers Kingston and Lance – were left afloat at Malta. Now, they too rolled over on their moorings and sank, together with the submarines Glafkos, P-36 and P-39. Their loss was the final blow to Britain’s undersea flotilla in the Central Mediterranean. Thereafter, surviving boats had to proceed individually toward Egypt, where they were absorbed by the Royal Navy at Alexandria. Meanwhile, Malta began to resemble the multi-cratered face of the moon in reconnaissance photographs. Intercepted transmissions from Valletta to the British Admiralty confessed that the situation was “almost desperate. Enemy operations might prove disastrous unless immediate steps are taken to counter them”. Another month of similar punishment could force the island to run up the white flag.

For all its success, Mussolini’s air offensive inadvertently sabotaged Operation Hercules. General Erwin Rommel, its early and enthusiastic supporter, now had his doubts. He wondered aloud to his Italian opposite, Ugo Cavallero, if a costly invasion that must drain resources from their own Libyan Desert campaign might be avoided, since the Regia Marina and Axis air forces appeared to have already won a de facto victory over Malta. But General Cavallero was seconded by Rommel’s own Luftwaffe commander, Albert Kesselring, in demanding that the time-table for Operation Hercules be maintained at all costs. No one was sure Italian supremacy in the Central Mediterranean could be indefinitely maintained, they argued, especially now that America’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ was beginning to make itself felt on North African battlefields and even at sea, where growing numbers of merchant ships attempting to supply Malta flew the Stars and Stripes.

“While we still control the area,” Cavallero insisted, “we must take advantage of our favorable situation before the fortunes of war turn against us, as they did earlier. Such an opportunity may not come our way a second time.”² Kesselring chimed in, “should things go badly for us here, we must be able to fall back on Malta. But if the enemy is still in possession of it, we’ll be trapped in the desert with no way out.”³ Although Rommel was not deaf to their concerns, he was a gambler by nature, and somewhat under the spell of an elusive Egypt beckoning just over the eastern horizon. He had, after all, made his stellar reputation in combat across France and North Africa by taking chances. “There’s no big victory without big risks,” he was fond of repeating to others less confident in his future. “Stick with me! I’m bullet-proof!”⁴

It was precisely that kind of attitude which most endeared him to Adolf Hitler, who, above all human qualities, most admired, as Belgian SS General Leon Degrelle put it, ‘guts’, especially when majority opinion cautioned something less daring.⁵ When the two extremist personalities met during late February 1942, at the Führer’s headquarters in East Prussia, the Desert Fox enthusiastically depicted the effect of Mussolini’s air offensive by claiming that Malta would soon become militarily insignificant. He conjured a verbal panorama of Panzers parading past the pyramids about the same time Operation Hercules, made redundant by the capture of Cairo, was supposed to take place in early July.

Hitler was easy to convince, chiefly because he was still stung by the fearsome sacrifice made by his Fallschirmjaeger less than a year earlier, when some 7,700 elite paratroopers had become casualties in their conquest of Crete. An airborne assault against heavier defenses at Malta would incur even greater losses the Wehrmacht could ill afford in its two-front war. Rommel dutifully repeated the warnings sounded by Cavallero (they both pegged him accurately as a self-serving mediocrity) and Kesselring, a highly regarded commander who was nonetheless “mistaken this time”.⁶

The Maltese dilemma was a result of Hitler’s failed Mediterranean strategy. In summer 1940, fresh from his stunning victories in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and France, his next objective had been Gibraltar. Its seizure would have allowed the Regia Marina access to the Atlantic Ocean, while limiting supplies to Malta to fewer, far more easily intercepted convoys from Suez, thereby helping to ensure Mussolini’s victory in North Africa. Ideally, France, which was already close to declaring war on ‘perfidious Albion’ for attacks on its warships at Oran, would join with Germany and Italy in the Atlantic, thereby decidedly shifting the balance of power at sea against England. It was chiefly this hope that induced Hitler to keep hands off the French Fleet.

Accordingly, together with his chiefs-of-staff, he designed Operation Felix for the capture of Gibraltar. It called for two corps under the overall command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau to move into Spain during mid-January 1941. Protecting the flank of his assault against anticipated British intervention would be General Rudolf Schmidt’s XXXIX Corps, including the 16th Motorized Division, 26th Panzer Division, and SS Totenkopf Division. The main invasion of Gibraltar was supposed to have been carried out by the XLIX Corps of General Ludwig Kuebler.

It comprised the Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment, the 98th Regiment of the 1st Gebirgsjaeger, or ‘Mountain’ Division plus twenty-six medium and heavy artillery battalions, three observation battalions, three engineer battalions, two smoke battalions, and about 150 ‘Goliaths’. These were radio-controlled midget tanks armed with high explosives for the demolition of otherwise inaccessible enemy emplacements, such as pill-boxes. Junkers JU-88 medium-bombers, Stuka dive-bombers, Messerschmitt ME-110 ground-attack planes, and ME-109 fighters would cover Field Marshal von Reichenau’s operation, while U-boats attacked Allied ships expected to flee the Rock.

His forces would have faced the 2nd King’s and 2nd Somerset Light Infantry Regiments, together with the 4th Devonshire and 4th Black Watch. The 3rd Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, controlled 4th, 26th, and 27th Batteries, together with a pair of anti-aircraft batteries, the 9th and 19th, beside the 82nd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment commanding three batteries–the 156th, 193rd, and 256th. Although these were aided by the 3rd Searchlight Battery and radar, Gibraltar had no fighters or bombers of its own, guaranteeing air supremacy for the Luftwaffe.

Wehrmacht planners were unanimous in their conviction that an assault on Gibraltar would result in a quick victory with far-reaching implications for the future conduct of the war. All that was lacking in 1940 was French and Spanish cooperation, which appeared imminent. But while Adolf Hitler was entrained for his meetings with Vichy President Philipe Pétain and Generalissimo Francisco Franco, his own military intelligence chief was busy sabotaging plans for Operation Felix. In preparation of these high-level meetings, Abwehr head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, a dedicated anti-Nazi, convinced both leaders that Hitler intended to use the German operation as cover for seizing both Spain and Vichy France, and urged them to resist any request for co-ordinated activity with the duplicitous Führer.⁷

Previously disposed to joining the fight against Britain, Pétain now rebuffed Hitler’s invitation to send the French Fleet into the Atlantic. Worse was to come at Hendaye, on Spain’s frontier, where Franco refused to allow German forces on Iberian soil for the assault against Gibraltar, because its conquest by a foreign power would humiliate the Spanish people, who wanted to take the Rock by themselves. Unfortunately, they presently lacked sufficient materiel to undertake such an invasion. Hitler then offered to cancel Operation Felix, and supply Franco with all the aid he needed to carry out the attack himself. Again, the Generalissimo balked, arguing that Spain was still too weak from the ravages of its civil war to properly defend itself against British retribution.

Embittered by his lack of diplomatic success, Hitler returned to Berlin, confessing to his closest colleagues that he would have rather had his teeth pulled than endure such a frustrating meeting.⁸ The Führer declared he should have never sent aid to such an ingrate as Franco, who begged for German help just five years earlier when Spain needed it most. Thanks to the behind-the-scenes’ intrigue of Admiral Canaris, Operation Felix was canceled, and the Axis found itself increasingly bottled up inside the Mediterranean Sea between Gibraltar on the western end, Suez in the east, and Malta in the middle.

In 1942, there were very serious concerns about the strategically located island. Previously, the Allies had been virtually cut off from outside help. But now nothing stopped an abundance of supplies, arms, troops and equipment flowing from the American cornucopia into General Montgomery’s Desert Army. The convoys which continued to bring this largesse steamed around the Horn of Africa, far beyond the reach of Axis planes or ships. Soon, the defenders of Malta would have enough reinforcements to resist any offensive thrown at them.

A window of opportunity for attack was still open, but it was closing with every U.S. freighter unloading supplies at Britain’s Red Sea ports. Operation Hercules would divert forces, particularly much-needed aircraft, away from the seizure of Egypt, which would close the North African Campaign. Rommel’s international prestige, even among Germany’s enemies, combined with his persuasive arguments and risk-taking personality, prevailed upon Hitler to change his mind about invading Malta. “In any case,” he said, “the island would be useless to Britain if the fighting in North Africa were to end.”⁹

For obvious political, as well as less certain military considerations, the final decision had to lie with Mussolini and his Commando Supremo. The Führer concluded: “Make your case to them. I’ll back you up, but we must abide by their decision.”¹⁰ Returning to Libya, Rommel asked the Italians to put off Operation Hercules until Tobruk had been captured and the Egyptian frontier crossed. To carry out his Nile Valley offensive he needed every Italian and German aircraft in the Mediterranean Theater, but only for a few weeks. After pushing the British back toward Alexandria, he would return the warplanes for the planned invasion of Malta.

More familiar with seasonal conditions in Mare Nostro than his German ally, Mussolini told him that a specific date had been carefully chosen by meteorologists, because late summer storms with high winds would seriously jeopardize the landings and interfere with air operations. Intrigued nevertheless by the bold plan to seize Tobruk and then storm into Egypt, the Duce wanted the best of both worlds, and was willing to risk rescheduling Hercules until the last week in July, if his own generals could be made to agree. They refused to consider any postponement. Malta was already almost on her knees, and the invasion build-up was nearing completion after nearly a year of preparations. Axis supremacy in the waters surrounding the island and the skies over it held firm, but American strength was building daily and might eventually tip the scales back into the Allies’ favor if given enough time.

Rommel concurred with their argument, was conciliatory, and proposed a watered-down version of his demands. Now he wanted Italo-German air cover for just fifteen days, sufficient time to threaten Egypt’s western frontier. That achieved, the warplanes would be returned in time for the invasion of Malta before the end of July. To this less radical proposal, Commando Supremo, after some hesitation, conceded a twenty-one-day extension of Operation Hercules, but only if Rommel endorsed a written statement to abide by his promise. His signature was small comfort to the Italian generals, who knew they were gambling with the future by granting even a few weeks grace to the dangerous little island. The invasion was nevertheless locked in for 30 July.

In fact, it had been compromised as early as 27 April, when Hitler reassigned most of his planes stationed in Sicily to the fighting in Russia. While the move was not at all the turning-point some historians describe, it did give Malta a breathing-space at a time when more than a few observers on both sides believed that the island could have been forced to surrender through air power alone, if the same large-scale raids had continued throughout spring. Be that as it may, the island was by no means saved by the departure of too many Stukas to the Eastern Front. The Regia Aeronautica with its diminished German contingent continued, albeit on a smaller scale, to bomb the island’s dwindling resources and prevented all but a bare minimum of essentials from getting to Valletta. These arrived almost entirely on aircraft dashing in by night and leaving before dawn, or aboard a few submarines acting as freighters.

But the quantities they carried were hardly sufficient to keep Malta alive, so five destroyers sailed at top speed on 11 May 1942 with goods for the besieged island. Confronted by superior Italian naval units south of Crete, the British warships doing double duty as merchant men turned about and raced for the sanctuary of Alexandria. The alert was out, however, and German Junkers 88 bombers flew out of Cyrenaica, sinking HMS Kipling, Lively and Jackal. Not only was the noose notched a bit closer around Malta, but the British could scarcely afford to loose any more surface vessels. Self-conscious of their shrinking presence in the Mediterranean, the cruiser Charybdis escorted by two destroyers on a supply mission from Gibraltar a week later returned without firing a shot when opposed by the Regia Marina’s 7th Cruiser Division.

A measure of the Royal Navy’s low ebb in its history appeared during a pathetic attempt to disguise a target-ship with wooden gun turrets, fake barrels and canvas superstructure. Thus camouflaged, the ancient Centurion was supposed to fool the Italians into believing she was a new battleship. As Bragadin observed, “this stratagem revealed the seriousness of the period through which the British Navy was passing.”¹¹ The transparent ruse elicited more derision than dread, however, and failed to save the convoy the phoney battleship was supposed to protect with her stage-prop armament.

On 15 May, the Italians showed they had come a long way from their years of uncoordinated operations. Regia Aeronautica bombers fended off air and naval attacks on Regia Marina cruisers and destroyers, enabling them to get on with the business of savaging a convoy. Of the five Malta-bound freighters, three went to the bottom, and another was severely damaged. The merchant vessels had been heavily protected by nine destroyers, two of them sunk, and five damaged by combined shells and aerial torpedoes. Other than a fire quickly extinguished on the veteran destroyer Vivaldi, the Italians suffered no damage.

Next month, a challenge arose that would determine Malta’s ultimate fate in ways neither side could have anticipated. Determined to save the island at all costs, the Allies launched two powerful convoys simultaneously from east and west. They dredged up the last ounce of air and naval weaponry to ensure safe passage for at least a few merchant ships in the combined Operations Harpoon and Vigorous, the largest relief efforts of their kind ever mounted. Their sixteen freighters and single tanker were guarded by two aircraft-carriers, ten heavy cruisers, one mine-layer, assorted corvettes and torpedo-boats, with no less than thirty-six destroyers, most of them pulled from outside duty in the Atlantic and as far away as the Indian Ocean. These were among the last surface warships at the time remaining in service with the Royal Navy, all others still laid up for repairs or resting at the bottom of the sea.

On 14 June, the east-bound convoy from Gibraltar, Harpoon, was identified by Fiat RS-fourteen long-distance reconnaissance planes far from Malta, and its position radioed in time for interception to Commando Supremo. Admiral da Zara was notified aboard his flagship, the Eugenio di Savoia, which led the 7th Cruiser Division from its Sicilian harbor at Palermo screened by a flight of torpedo-bombers and several submarines. In well-coordinated attacks with the Regia Aeronautica, da Zara’s force engaged the numerically superior warships, while Sparviero bombers went after the convoy.

Observing from the bridge of his flagship, the heavy cruiser Kenya, Admiral A.T.B. Curteis launched his carrier planes to break up the enemy. But concentrated anti-aircraft fire from the Italian warships was so intense no Fairey Swordfish could get near them. Focused entirely on annihilating his outnumbered opponents, Curteis neglected to dispatch any Spitfires for protection of the convoy, then being mauled by torpedo-bombers. Meanwhile, Admiral da Zara’s skillful maneuvering of the 7th Division prevented the British from scoring any important hits on his cruisers, but he got in close enough to fire an accurate broadside at the destroyer Bedouin. As she slipped beneath the waves, he broke off action, satisfied that Operation Harpoon had been sufficiently diverted to allow for the convoy’s destruction.

He was not far wrong. Surviving ships from the Regia Aeronautica onslaught struggled to reach port. In so doing, they strayed into one of Italy’s numerous minefields, where another destroyer, HMS Kujawiak, was sunk, and a badly damaged freighter, the Orari, spilled most of her cargo into the sea. A lone mine-sweeper, the Welshman, and one merchant vessel, the Troilus, were the only ships to arrive at Grand Harbour in sound condition. Their few supplies did little, however, to relieve starvation beginning to spread throughout the long-suffering population of the island.

While the charred debris of Operation Harpoon drifted across the Western Mediterranean amid a vast oil slick, the other half of Britain’s best attempt to save Malta approached from the east. Regia Marina commanders were no less determined to stop it. Their finest battleships, Littorio and Vittorio Veneto, repaired after surviving the Taranto raid, steamed out of Salerno at high speed, trailed by a pair of heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and a dozen destroyers under an aerial umbrella of torpedo-planes. Intimidated by this rapidly deployed show of strength, the heavily armed convoy turned back toward Alexandria with the Littorio and her company in hot pursuit. By the time they caught up with the fleeing enemy force, torpedo-planes had already slowed it down by damaging a number of units. During the fierce exchange of gun-fire that resulted, an Italian heavy cruiser was severely damaged and forced to withdraw. Later, she was scuttled by her own crew, who mostly survived to be rescued and brought back to Sicily.

But the men and ships of Operation Vigorous were not as fortunate. Between the attacking bombers and surface units, the British convoy lost eight freighters, four destroyers, and a torpedo-boat. Five more cruisers, three merchant vessels, another destroyer, plus two corvettes suffered serious damage. Appalling casualties aboard these ships sharply contrasted Italian losses, which, even including the scuttled cruiser, were minimal.

The Regia Marina emerged from its victory into undisputed, if temporary domination of the Central Mediterranean. So complete was the destruction of enemy opposition, the planned take-over of Malta seemed hardly more than an after-thought. With the sea-lanes wide open, supplies poured unhindered to the Axis armies in the Libyan Desert. Ten days after the defeat of the Allied convoys, Rommel captured Tobruk on 21 June, thanks also to the Italian and German planes diverted from attacking Malta. Its raison d’être appeared to have been rendered obsolete by air and naval actions that isolated the island and deprived it of any military value. Sealing it off was almost as effective and less costly than a full-fledged invasion, whose resources were obviously better employed in the ongoing conquest of North Africa.

Operation Hercules, deemed no longer necessary, was canceled. This decision seemed borne out over the following weeks, as Axis aircraft and ships came and went between Italy and Libya minus any interference from Malta, which fell into a dark silence. Doubtless, the island could have been occupied with relatively little effort from mid-June to mid-August 1942, but every man and weapon were needed for conquering the North African desert before the Americans arrived in force.

With a venerable reputation for stubbornness, the British had not given up on Malta, their only hope for cutting Rommel’s supply-line. On 10 August, their ambitious attempt to relieve the island bastion passed into the Mediterranean as Operation Pedestal. This maximum effort mounted by the Royal Navy consisted of fourteen transports under the protection of battleships Nelson and Rodney, plus aircraft-carriers Eagle, Indomitable and Victorious, fielding a combined compliment of forty six Hawker Hurricane fighters, ten Martlet bombers, and sixteen Fulmar torpedo-planes. These powerful units sailed in tandem with anti-aircraft cruisers Charybdis, Phoebe and Sirius, together with fourteen destroyers. After the battleships escorted the convoy into the Western Mediterranean, they were relieved by a trio of heavy cruisers–Kenya, Manchester and Nigeria – the anti-aircraft cruiser, Cairo, and eleven more destroyers.

Laying in wait were 312 Regia Aeronautica warplanes at Sardinia and Sicily joined by Luftwaffe Stukas and JU-88s, while the approaches to Malta crawled with Italian submarines and German U-boats.

A day after setting out from Gibraltar, Operation Pedestal’s formidable assembly of warships and transports was sighted by the Uarsciek, which sounded the alert after her torpedoes failed to find their targets. Another submarine, this time a German U-boat, came in closer to the convoy, skillfully dodging depth-charges thrown at her by numerous destroyers, to attack the lead aircraft-carrier. HMS Eagle shuddered under the blows of a torpedo salvo that left her dead in the water. Her crew tried desperately to save the ship’s compliment of warplanes, but only four were launched in time to land a few minutes later on Indomitable and Victorious, before the other Hurricanes and Fulmars began sliding off her listing deck into the sea. The captain of U-73 peered through his periscope to watch the stricken aircraft-carrier haul over and disappear beneath the surface, taking more than 200 sailors with her.

At dusk, the British ships came within range of a Luftwaffe squadron stationed at Sardinia. Junkers 88 medium-bombers and Heinkel 111 torpedo-planes pressed their attack, but were unable to penetrate the heavy curtains of flak put up by Charybdis, Phoebe and Sirius, and returned, minus some of their comrades, without scoring a single hit.

The following day, Operation Pedestal afforded the Italians an opportunity to deploy two new weapons for the first time. During an afternoon engagement on 12 August, Sparviero torpedo-planes attacked with several Motobombas. At more than 1,800 kilos apiece, they were intended to scatter a convoy by drifting down via parachutes into its center, where they detonated amid the closely guarded ships. Once the freighters were dispersed, they became more vulnerable. But intense fire from all three anti-aircraft cruisers forced the SM-79s to drop their Motobombas at too great an altitude, and they exploded above the convoy with no effect, other than startling its crews with their terrific detonation.

The Italians then launched a remotely operated CANT seaplane packed with 1,900 kilos of ordnance at HMS Indomitable. A direct hit would have almost certainly disabled the veteran aircraft-carrier. But her good fortune held, as the flying-bomb refused to answer the commands of its radio control, willfully flying off on its own accord toward the south, harmlessly self-destructing in a thunderous fireball over the Libyan Desert, where the phenomenon panicked a camel caravan of nomads.

Less unorthodox weapons were equally ineffective. Between too many skillfully flown interceptors and thick walls of flak, forty Sparvieros attacking in concert were prevented from getting close enough to launch their torpedoes. The same ferocious opposition frustrated a wave of incoming Stukas, but one of the German dive-bombers did penetrate the heavy defenses to unloose its single 1,700-kg bomb on Operation Pedestal’s second victim, the Deucalion. Unlike its mythological namesake, who survived the Great Flood, the freighter could not escape the waters that closed over her.

Bad luck continued to dog the Italians, however. A pair of new Reggiane 2000s sortied against HMS Victorious, whose gunners misidentified the enemy fighter-bombers as Hawker Hurricanes, which they somewhat resembled at a distance, and failed to fire a shot at the approaching planes. A near-miss erupted off the aircraft-carrier’s port bow, but the other Reggiane’s pilot scored a direct hit on the forward deck, where his 500-kilo bomb failed to explode.

After dark, Regia Marina commanders ordered a submarine ‘wolf-pack’ to engage the convoy. Anticipating such a move, Admiral Burrough in command of Operation Pedestal aggressively counter-attacked with depth-charges, sinking the Ithuriel and severely damaging the Emo, whose torpedoes had gone wide of their target. A destroyer rammed and sank the Corzano, later saving forty of her crew members, but eleven went down with her. All other Italian submarines were prevented from making contact with the enemy.

In their desperation to strike at the relatively unscarred convoy, Stuka pilots flew a few meters above the surface of the sea to avoid enemy radar and surprise HMS Victorious, damaging her flight deck so badly its planes had to be transferred to the Indomitable, already over-burdened with aircraft from the sunken Eagle. Blasted by three direct hits and struggling to contain a dangerous fire that threatened to engulf her, the Indomitable, limped back to Gibraltar in the company of another stricken warship, the torpedoed destroyer Foresight, which was subsequently abandoned and scuttled.

As the convoy entered the Skerki Channel after dark, it sailed into a trap set by Italian submarines. On the night of 13 August, Lieutenant Renato Ferrini, commanding the Axum, sighted Admiral Burrough’s flagship, the Nigeria, accompanied by the dangerous anti-aircraft cruiser, Cairo. Ferrini launched his spread of torpedoes at the same moment another submarine, the Dessie, fired a salvo at the oncoming vessels. The Nigeria shuddered to a full stop, all power knocked out, after being struck amid ships. Suffering an explosion that blew off her screws, the Cairo stood on her stern before diving for the bottom, while the immobilized Brisbane Star and Ohio were left for dead by their escorts. Forced to abandon the Nigeria for a destroyer, the Ashanti, Admiral Burrough watched as his wounded flagship, whose crew had restored some power, returned at a greatly reduced speed toward Gibraltar.

Other torpedoes found the freighter Empire Hope, sending her beneath the surface in a matter of minutes. Not far from the scene of her demise, a mountain of fire arose from the surface of the sea to mark the end of a gasoline tanker that rolled over and disappeared in the midst of the conflagration after its bow had been blown off by the Bronzo. Lieutenant Puccini’s Alagi then zeroed in on the Kenya and Clan Ferguson, hitting them both with two torpedoes apiece. While the heavy cruiser was able to remain afloat with severe damage, the merchant ship in her care keeled over and sank, leaving fifty three survivors to be picked up by Italian rescue ships after day-break.

By then, Regia Aeronautica bombers showed up to make their own contribution to the convoy’s destruction. The carnage was joined by torpedo-boats roaring out of Ras Mustafa. Defying intense shelling from HMS Manchester, Ms.16 and Ms.22 sped to within perilously close range before launching their torpedoes. The cruiser’s stern was literally shorn off, and the doomed ship slid to her deep grave the following day. Six more Italian, plus a pair of German torpedo-boats rushed in to dispose of the Almeria Lykes, Glenorchy, Santa Elsa and 3 other freighters in rapid succession. A final victim, the Waimarama, singled out by a Junkers 88, was actually lifted into the air by the force of a tremendous explosion just before dawn.

Morning revealed the wreckage of nine transports from Operation Pedestal’s original fourteen freighters scattered for hundreds of kilometers across the face of the sea. Of the four escorting cruisers that set out with them from Gibraltar, only one, the Kenya, was still afloat, but she was almost crippled. All the escaped transports had been damaged, most of them badly. The retrieved tanker, Ohio, was kept from sinking only by a pair of destroyers lashed on either side to keep her afloat. While the five surviving merchant vessels brought much-needed relief to the Maltese inhabitants, their invaluable supplies could do little more than prevent starvation, and did less to enhance the island’s severely diminished military capabilities.

“For once,” observes Hans Werner Neulen, “the cooperation between the U-boats and the German and Italian air forces was exceptionally successful, and the convoy was almost completely wiped out.”¹² British warships had been literally driven from the Central Mediterranean. Not one Royal Navy vessel was to be seen there for the next three months. The Axis triumph was so sweeping, no one doubted that Malta had been successfully isolated without recourse to invasion, and Axis convoy routes were wide open.

At the end of the month, a successful British attack at Alam el Halfa Ridge had knocked out forty-nine tanks, seriously depleting Axis armor. But almost immediately thereafter, thanks to the defeat of Operation Pedestal, transports arrived in Tobruk with 234 Panzers, 251 M.3 tanks, seventy-two of the superb Saharianas and another forty-seven German armored cars, 563 mixed pieces of field artillery, 350 Luftwaffe aircraft, and 427 warplanes from the Regia Aeronautica. To man the new weapons were sixty-seven fresh infantry battalions of German and Italian troops. Speedy arrival of these abundant resources was made possible by Italo-German victories at sea, so cancellation of Operation Hercules seemed justified.

Aerial reconnaissance revealed a disturbing picture, however. More than 150 new bombers and fighters were parked on Maltese air-strips. They were the very aircraft responsible for inflicting heavy losses on Italian convoys beginning after the middle of August, when a quarter of Axis supplies on their way to North Africa was sunk. Worse still was endured by the tankers, which lost a staggering forty-one per cent of the fuel oil dispatched. Allied strategists were confident they could avenge the recent fall of Tobruk by destroying its port, together with the other principle harbor at Benghazi. Neutralization of these two points of convoy embarkation would effectively sever Rommel’s supply-lines, signaling the British 8th Army to begin its major offensive for which it had already been stockpiling arms and equipment over several weeks.

This abrupt and surprising reversal of fortune turned on the assassination of a single man. As head of the Sicherheitsdienst (‘Security Service’), Reinhard Heydrich hunted down traitors and spies subverting the Third Reich. He was so adept in ferreting out sedition and espionage that even the Allies’ partial penetration of Germany’s ‘Enigma’ encryption device, through which Germany’s entire military and diplomatic codes were transmitted, could not prevent Hitler’s virtually unbroken series of victories for the first three years of the war. On 27 May 1942, the British Secret Service had Czech agents parachuted into Prague, where their thrown grenade exploded in Heydrich’s car. The real turning-point of World War Two occurred precisely at 4:30 in the morning of 4 June when he died of his wounds. Mussolini was himself not far off the mark when he stated that “the wheel of fortune turned on 28 June 1942, when we halted before El Alamein.”¹³

Henceforward, important traitors such as Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, Germany’s own military intelligence, filled in the blanks for the so-called ‘ULTRA Secret’, British code-breakers now-perfected decryption of Enigma intercepts. Over the next few months, as they refined their penetration and the German turncoats supplied them with secret information, Allied strategists behind the front and officers in the field were provided with every Axis battle plan, time-table, sailing schedule, supply location, or troop strength in advance of operations. In short, virtually every Axis communication was now monitored by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt.

Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had any secrets from their enemies. After the war, Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, characterized ULTRA as having been absolutely ‘decisive’ for the Allies’ final victory.¹⁴ Heydrich had stood between them and its effectiveness. His biographer, Robert Mikkelson, concluded, “Allied leaders in London and Moscow knew exactly what was at stake. Their murder of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich guaranteed that the Third Reich would be crushed in the Allied pinchers of overwhelming numbers.”¹⁵

But Germany was not the only victim of ULTRA. The entire Italian diplomatic and military structures were no less deeply compromised, encouraging British commanders to break the Italian armies in the Western Desert and put an end to the North African Campaign, beginning with retaking Tobruk and the assassination or capture of Rommel himself. They arranged for Spitfires flying in from Malta to catch Axis planes by surprise, then land at Allied-held bases in Libya, where they could refuel for flights back to the island. The heavy cruiser Coventry, six destroyers, sixteen motor gun-boats (MGBs) and twenty patrol-boats were to shield 900 demolition experts put ashore by dozens of landing-craft. After knocking out enemy airfields, communications, ammunition stores, fuel dumps, artillery positions and port installations, Axis ground forces would be isolated and annihilated at El Alamein.

The Tobruk operation began according to plan before daybreak on 13 September, when the destroyers Sikh and Zulu landed 400 demolition specialists without raising the alarm. The experts were spotted soon after, however, and held at bay by one company of mixed German and Italian sailors aided by a few Caribinieri. Meanwhile, a battalion of marines of the San Marco regiment stopped another 500 commandos simultaneously put ashore on the other side of the harbor. MGBs attempting to aid their comrades on the coast were blasted by a trio of Italian destroyer escorts and seventeen smaller craft. All the attacking vessels fled after suffering numerous hits, and one of their number was set ablaze. Caught in the first rays of dawn, they now came under the fire of shore batteries, whose gunners turned their attention to the two destroyers that landed the commandos, all of whom had either been killed or captured.

The Sikh, struck dead in the water, was abandoned by her crew, who saw their ship sink under another barrage from the vantage-point of bobbing life-boats. Heavy damage was similarly inflicted on the Zulu, which withdrew behind a smoke-screen, her upper decks trailing flames. She thereby escaped further punishment from coastal shelling, but became the special target of Italian warplanes. One 320-kilo bomb dropped by a single Macchi MC200 Saetta scored a direct hit on her foredeck, and the wounded destroyer capsized. The Duce could claim at least some credit for the ‘Thunderbolt’s’ successful attack, because it was at his urging that this aircraft, originally intended solely as an interceptor, be hastily redesigned for the anti-shipping role.

Other Italian fighters appeared in such large numbers, Malta withdrew its proposed air-cover, leaving the routed surface vessels to fend for themselves. Newer Macchi Folgores made low-level strafing runs against scattering naval units, sinking another MGB and ten patrol-boats. But the ordeal was not yet over for survivors of the foiled attack. While beating a swift retreat toward Alexandria, they were caught by warplanes of the Luftwaffe based at Crete. Junkers 88 torpedo-bombers converged on the Coventry, which went down by the bow after several direct hits. Keeping her company on the bottom was another MGB sunk by Stukas.

The Tobruk assault achieved no results at a heavy cost the Royal Navy could ill afford. It also demonstrated the over-confidence British strategists placed in the ULTRA secret before it became fully operational. They did not have much longer to wait, however, before decipherment of Axis’ codes was complete enough to make Field Marshal Montgomery’s victory at El Alamein possible in late October.

Effects on the war at sea were no less deleterious. During November, 26% of supplies shipped to Libya were lost almost exclusively to air strikes directed from Malta, which received the benefits of a large convoy arriving intact on the 19th. The following month was still more catastrophic, with destruction of 52% of the freighters leaving Italy. A mere 4,093 tons of supplies and 2,058 tons of oil reached Rommel, who was swiftly running out of food to feed his men or gasoline to fuel his tanks. “In a man-to-man fight,” he warned, “the winner has one more round in his magazine.”¹⁶