LEST WE FORGET

 

RAF and Commonwealth Air Forces Servicemen

Lost in the Defence of Malta

 lest we forget

John A Agius MBE

Frederick R Galea

with Kevin Mifsud


SIEGE OF MALTA  June 1940 - October 1942

The history of the Island of Malta is ancient and remarkable and when the valour and endurance of its population in the years 1940-1942 were honoured with the unique award of the George Cross many admirers reflected on the sieges which it had already undergone. In comparatively modern times Malta has changed hands more than once. In the 16th century it was a stronghold of Christianity under the rule of the Knights of St John, under the inspired leadership of Grand Master La Valette, Malta withstood the siege laid by the Turks in 1565. Again at the end of the 18th century the island was blockaded, this time by the British with the aid of the Maltese themselves, who had rebelled against the Napoleonic occupation of their island. By the Treaty of Paris in 1814, Malta was admitted to the British Empire, by the free will of the Maltese people and in its function as a link in the Mediterranean route towards the east, it was strategically one of the most important of British territories. Its value from this point of view was never more significant than in the critical years of the last war, when the battles in the Mediterranean hinged upon supplies. In standing up to ferocious air bombardment Malta became a symbol of high-spirited endurance and finally had the distinction of serving as headquarters for the launching of the first attack upon the home territory of one of the Axis powers - the invasion of Sicily.

The Island’s resistance was the result of combined operations in which the Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the Merchant Navy were all indispensable and inseparable. The story of the air battle for Malta, which follows this account, is largely the story of the Army, the Navy and the Merchant Navy, as well. The greater part of the ground forces was devoted in one way or another to maintaining the Air Force. The Navy and the Mercantile Marine with difficulty maintained the other two services as well as the civil population and between them kept Malta open as an air and naval base. Had Malta surrendered, the removal of this base from the map of the Mediterranean might have spelt the death knell of the Eighth Army then engaged in its desperate struggle with Rommel in North Africa. The defeat of the Eighth Army would have meant also the end of Malta.


 

The Land Forces

In the breathing space between Munich and Italy’s declaration of war on 10th June 1940, everything possible was done, with the scanty resources available, to strengthen the Island’s defences. It was envisaged that in the event of war Italy would come in on the side of Germany and would attempt a sea-borne invasion of Malta. Cliffs along the south-western side of the Island rendered that area secure from large-scale landings. In the north, about eight kilometres inland, there stands a natural escarpment - stretches right across the Island - which late last century had been fortified and named the Victoria Lines. The defence scheme was therefore based on the coast. However, the anticipated attacks by sea did not, in fact, develop; the first and last attempt upon Malta by sea was a raid by Italian E-boats and one-man barchini on Grand Harbour, on 26th July 1941, just after the arrival of a large convoy. The Malta coastal gunners wiped out the entire fleet and not one of the supply ships lying in the harbour was lost. Nor was airborne invasion attempted, but the enemy tried to subjugate Malta by air bombardment.

Normally the Island was but lightly garrisoned. There were a number of defence posts on the northern beaches and there were the immensely strong fortifications of Valletta Harbour. When war broke out on 3rd September 1939, the garrison consisted of: the 2nd Bn The Devonshire Regiment, the 2nd Bn The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, the 1st Bn The Dorsetshire Regiment, the 2nd Bn The Royal Irish Fusiliers, the 7th AA Regiment RA (renamed, in 1940, 7th HAA Regt.) and one battalion of the local territorials, the 1st Bn The King’s Own Malta Regiment.

There were three airfields: Luqa, the largest but not quite ready for use and situated about two kilometres from the base of Grand Harbour, Hal Far, which was the Fleet Air Arm aerodrome in the south of the Island with its anchorage at Kalafrana in Marsaxlokk Bay, small but in running order and Ta’ Qali, near the centre of the island, equipped with a reception building and used by small passenger aircraft.

By the end of September 1939 voluntary recruiting had produced enough men to form two more battalions of the King’s Own Malta Regiment. The Maltese Auxiliary Corps had been formed and its personnel had joined various regular units. In November 1939 the status of the army in Malta was raised to that of a Division and a draft of officers and other ranks from the reserve arrived from England. In May 1940, the 8th Bn The Manchester Regiment arrived. Steps were taken during the first nine months of the war to provision the island but only regular convoys could sustain her and it was planned to bring these from Egypt in the east and from Britain in the west. Not all ships sailed in convoy, however. In 1941 a number sailed alone, adopting what means they could devise to hoodwink the enemy. Losses were heavy but the vessels which reached Malta were vital in keeping the fortress in being.

Up to the end of 1941 most convoys struggled through bringing food, ammunition, guns, lorries, cement for gun emplacements and many other necessities for total war, including reinforcements too. In September 1940 the 27th HA Battery arrived to strengthen the 7th HAA Regiment. At the same time came eight 3.7-inch mobile guns and 12 Bofors light anti-aircraft guns which almost doubled the Island’s gun capacity. In November the 59th LAA Battery reached Malta and was incorporated in the regiment. In the beginning, until more aircraft were available, defence against air attack rested largely upon the RA, as it did again in early 1942 when, after day and night bombing by the 2nd German Air Fleet, only a few aircraft were left to oppose the enemy.

In February 1941 the 1st Bn The Hampshire Regiment and the 2nd Bn The Cheshire Regiment arrived from Alexandria and later two substantial drafts brought the strength of the Buffs up to nearly 1,000. Moreover, in February 1941 also, the Malta Council of Government introduced conscription which made all males between 16 and 65 liable for national service and men between 18 and 41 also for service with the armed forces. These Maltese recruits were trained by the regular United Kingdom battalions and each formation was enrolled as a unit of the British regular army.

The multifarious duties of the army included regular patrols along 145 kilometres of intricate coastline, manning defence posts, providing the boarding party which accompanied every naval vessel engaged upon contraband patrol, unloading and transporting to safety the cargoes brought in by the convoys, the enlargement of the airfields and the servicing of aircraft. The soldiers created 43 kilometres of dispersal area between the Luqa and Hal Far airfields which linked the two and was known as the Safi Strip. Save for some labour provided in the early stages by the Malta Police, the Hampshire Regiment made this strip without assistance. The Hampshires were also entrusted with the disposal of delayed action bombs and rescue and clearance work after air raids.

There was not enough RAF ground staff in Malta and men of the infantry and field artillery came to the rescue. Luqa aerodrome, which became the bomber base, was maintained by the Royal West Kents and the Buffs, Ta’ Qali, the fighter aerodrome, by the Manchesters and Hal Far by the Devons. They kept the runways in repair, filled up bomb craters, bombed up bombers, refuelled the aircraft and became expert belt fillers and armourers - all under ceaseless day and night attack. Some days there were as many as 3,000 infantry and RA troops at work. Air Vice-Marshal Lloyd said afterwards, “I’d have been out of business but for the soldiers”.

The gradual accretion of land strength laid the foundations of the Island’s resistance against the second and third appearance of the Luftwaffe upon the scene. The air defences had been reinforced and at the end of 1942, following the air battles, Malta emerged triumphant from her ordeal.


 

The Navy

In the early months of the war Malta, inadequately defended against air attack, could not be used as a naval base except for submarines, of which at that time there were only six. Offensive operations in the Mediterranean and the convoy of supply ships were conducted from Alexandria and Gibraltar. In April 1941, however, a surface force of four destroyers was sent to work from Malta against the enemy’s convoy for Italy and on the night of 15th/16th April they annihilated an outward bound convoy off Sfax, sinking five merchantmen and three destroyers for the loss of the destroyer Mohawk.

From June 1941 to the end of the year there were on average only ten or twelve submarines working from Malta but they reaped a rich harvest in transport, tankers and other supply ships sunk or damaged. Casualties were inevitable and eight submarines were lost.

At the beginning of November 1941 another surface force comprising two cruisers and two destroyers was sent to Malta to harass still further the cross-Mediterranean shipping and on 8th November scored a resounding initial success by destroying all ten ships of the Brindisi-Benghazi convoy and sinking two of the four escorting destroyers. A third destroyer was sunk the next morning by the submarine Upholder which had arrived on the scene during the night.

In the early part of 1942 when the air onslaught on Malta was at its height and convoys could not get through, the position for surface forces was too hazardous and adequate maintenance was no longer possible. They were therefore withdrawn to Alexandria or Gibraltar. Only the submarines remained, and with the constant need for them to submerge during the day it was increasingly difficult to keep them efficient. At the end of April they too had to withdraw to Alexandria. Three had been sunk during air raids and another, the last to leave, was sunk by a mine off the harbour mouth. In the lull following Rommel’s success in North Africa, which gained him Tobruk and made Malta less of a menace to his communications, the submarines returned and once more patrolled the Mediterranean. From that time onwards, despite another heavy air bombardment in October 1942, Malta was successfully re-provisioned and surface forces could once more be based there. By the end of November the 15th Cruiser Squadron and two destroyer flotillas had been transferred from Egyptian waters and proceeded to thwart the enemy’s efforts to reinforce and supply his hard-pressed army in North Africa.


 

The War in the Air 

The ordeal of Malta began as soon as Italy entered the war on 10th June 1940. Previously, the Island had fulfilled its normal function as a link in the Mediterranean route towards the East, albeit subjected to increasing stress as the war developed. On 11th June, Malta suffered its first air raid. Its airborne defence at that time consisted of four obsolescent Sea-Gladiator biplanes which had reached the Island only a short while earlier and were borrowed from the Navy by Air Commodore Maynard, the AOC Malta. These few fighter aircraft held their own against superior numbers and forced the Italians to send fighter escorts with their bombers.

Before the end of June reinforcements arrived in the shape of four Hurricanes which had been intended for the Middle East but which Malta was permitted to retain. At the end of June, too, Swordfish aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm, originally based at Hyeres in Southern France, reached Malta by way of Algeria and Tunisia; they began anti-submarine patrols by the beginning of July. In spite of the pressing need for fighter aircraft in Britain, more Hurricanes were sent to Malta at the beginning of August; these were flown in from the aircraft-carrier Argus. Malta’s powers of retaliation and offensive action were increasing. Aircraft from Malta reconnoitred Taranto Harbour as a preliminary to the successful attack on that Italian naval base by the Fleet Air Arm in November 1940. Indeed, photographic reconnaissance of the Central Mediterranean was the responsibility of Malta-based aircraft from 1940 till the end of 1942. By this means a constant watch was kept on Axis shipping at sea and in the ports of Italy, Sicily and North Africa.

The tactical reconnaissance preparatory to the Allied landings in North-West Africa was all carried out by aircraft from Malta. Enemy airfields as well as shipping were closely watched. In January 1941, German Air Force units were transferred to Sicily and air attacks on Malta increased both in scale and intensity. When on 11th January, HMS Illustrious, severely damaged, put in to Grand Harbour for repairs, heavy raids followed. These did not succeed in their object of destroying or incapacitating Illustrious (which sailed for Alexandria under her own power on the 23rd) but caused heavy casualties as well as severe damage to the homes and defences of the Island.

In February and March there were again large-scale raids, following an increase in German air strength in Sicily; numbers of British aircraft were destroyed or damaged on the ground and the airfields of Luqa, Hal Far and Ta’ Qali were rendered temporarily unserviceable. At the beginning of April a dozen Hurricanes were flown in off the aircraft-carrier Ark Royal and twenty-three more arrived towards the end of the month. By the end of June, 75 more carrier-borne Hurricanes had reached Malta. In May, the Luftwaffe 10th Fliegerkorps, which had been in Sicily, left for the Balkans, for the Battle of Crete. The Germans, whilst enjoying superiority in the air, had not succeeded in destroying the naval base or the airfields, nor in entirely cutting off supplies even though they had limited both air and naval operations from Malta. Now the task of subduing Malta was left to the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian Air Force, which had already proved inadequate to cope with the task.

In the summer of 1941, Malta was (to say the least) under-equipped and understaffed, yet overcrowded. Even essential supplies could be brought in only with difficulty. With the departure of the Luftwaffe units from Sicily a quieter period in the Axis air war against Malta followed. The Malta-based reconnaissance and striking forces had a better opportunity to play their part in the battle of supplies, on which victory in Africa so largely depended. German and Italian supply ships on their way to Africa, were within range of aircraft from Malta which, along with the Royal Navy, seized their opportunities to such good effect that by October little more than one-third of the gross tonnage of German and Italian supplies which left Europe arrived safely in Africa. The losses were so serious that for a time all Axis convoys to Africa were discontinued.

Wellington bombers which, for a time had been unable to operate from Malta now again made raids on Tripoli nightly for several weeks and also raided Italian bases in Sardinia and Sicily. The work done from Malta during the summer of 1941 is summed up in a message sent to the Island, in October, by the Secretary of State for Air; it reads: “The brilliant defence of the Island by the Hurricanes, the audacious attacks of the Beaufighters on enemy air bases, the steady and deadly slogging of the Wellingtons at the enemy’s ports, the daring and dextrous reconnaissance of the Marylands, culminating with the tremendous onslaughts of the Blenheims and Fleet Air Arm Swordfish on Axis shipping in the Mediterranean are watched with immense admiration by your comrades in the Royal Air Force and by your fellow countrymen at home. You are draining the enemy’s strength in the Mediterranean”.

By the late autumn of 1941 the enemy supply situation in the Mediterranean had become so serious that the Axis leaders decided that Malta as a base for offensive air and naval operations must be destroyed. Accordingly, towards the end of the year large German air reinforcements were transferred to the Mediterranean from the Russian front. From the beginning of January until the end of April 1942, the 2nd Fliegerkorps under Field-Marshal Kesselring subjected Malta to constant day-and-night attacks. On days of major operations, more than 500 enemy aircraft were in action against the Island’s defences, this period later being referred to as the Spring Blitz.

The RAF losses were extremely heavy and in spite of reinforcements, the point was reached when only a handful of serviceable fighters was left to resist the enemy and the main task of defending Malta fell to the anti-aircraft gunners. The attacks were aimed first of all at the airfields and fighter strength, then at dockyards and harbours and then at stores, barracks and communications. The civilians suffered severely. Only with the help of the Army was it possible to keep the airfields serviceable. In the single month of April 1942, the airfields alone received twenty-seven times the tonnage of bombs dropped on the city of Coventry in its great raid the previous November.

It was at this anxious time, on 15th April 1942, that Governor, General Sir William Dobbie, received a message from His Majesty King George VI; it reads: “To honour her brave people I award the George Cross to the Island fortress of Malta to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history”.

By April 1942 Kesselring considered that Malta had been effectively neutralised as a sea and air base. Adequate reserves had been accumulated in Africa to enable Rommel to launch his advance towards Egypt on 26th May. The plan envisaged the capture of Tobruk and an advance to the Egyptian frontier, when these operations would be halted to allow the invasion of Malta to take place. Such, however, was the success of Rommel’s drive that Hitler announced that “the historic moment has come to conquer Egypt” and the plan for the invasion of Malta, which was to have taken place on 10th July, was postponed. By the end of June the Axis army was far into Egypt, within sixty miles of Alexandria.

In the meantime active steps had been taken for the reinforcement of Malta. At the beginning of March, fifteen Spitfires had been flown to Malta off the aircraft-carrier Eagle. On 1st April, Prime Minister Churchill asked President Roosevelt for the use of the American carrier USS Wasp to deliver to Malta a reinforcement of Spitfires. A positive reply was received and on 9th April, 47 Spitfires took-off for Malta from Wasp. A further sixty-four Spitfires were flown off the aircraft-carriers Eagle and Wasp to the Island on 9th May. This prompted Churchill to send the now-famous signal to the American carrier: “Who said a wasp cannot sting twice?”. Their arrival marked the turning-point of the struggle for local air superiority as from the following day. About this time the Luftwaffe was diverted to the support of Rommel’s offensive in Africa, leaving Malta once again to the Italians.

By June 1942 Malta had resumed the offensive against the Axis convoys bound for Africa so effectively that Rommel’s army was involved in another of its recurrent supply crises. Powerful Luftwaffe units were again transferred from Africa to Sicily and in July another effort was made to subdue the Island by air attack. By this time, however, the Island’s defences were sufficiently strong to beat the attempt and the enemy sustained crippling losses in both aircraft and men. Between 1st June 1941 and 13th July 1942, it is estimated that the RAF and the AA defences between them accounted for 693 Axis aircraft shot down over and around Malta. The battle for Malta had, in fact, occupied hundreds of Axis aircraft whose use to Rommel in Cyrenaica (now Libya) might have made success in Egypt possible, leading to Axis hegemony over the Middle East and control of the immensely important oil supplies.

Then followed the battle for the stabilisation of the Eighth Army at El Alamein in July. The German and Italian parachute troops already assembled for the invasion of Malta had to be rushed by air to Africa to strengthen Rommel’s forces which, lacking adequate supplies, were being gravely endangered by the Eighth Army’s attacks, under the leadership of General Auchinleck. The loss of these trained troops, the renewed strength of Malta and Hitler’s lack of faith in the ability of the Italians, finally forced the enemy to abandon the plan for the invasion of the Island.

Meanwhile the Air Force had to play its part in protecting convoys coming to the relief of the Island, both by providing fighter escorts and by strategic bombing of enemy ports. In June, two convoys had attempted the perilous passage, one from Gibraltar and one from Alexandria. The latter, having been under constant air attack, was forced by a shortage of ammunition and a threat from the Italian fleet to turn back. The convoy from Gibraltar suffered such severe attacks that only two out of six merchant ships reached Grand Harbour, the other four having been destroyed by air attack.

By August, the Island’s food and fuel reserves were almost exhausted and this would have compelled the authorities to capitulate shortly afterwards through starvation! Another convoy, code-named Pedestal, ran the gauntlet from Gibraltar. Losses again were very heavy and only five merchant ships, including the American-built Texaco tanker Ohio, out of fourteen arrived. The Navy lost an aircraft-carrier, a cruiser, an anti-aircraft ship and a destroyer. Only at the price of such sacrifices by the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy was relief brought to Malta.

In October 1942, the third and final attempt to subdue Malta from the air was undertaken by the Luftwaffe. British fighter opposition was so intense that by 15th October an attacking force of 14 bombers was being escorted by 98 fighters; this became known as the October Blitz. After about eight days the attacks were called off, as they were proving too costly. The Western Desert Air Force had also begun their air offensive preparatory to the Battle of El Alamein and the Luftwaffe units were sent back to Africa.

During the air offensive against Malta, the RAF still managed to carry out attacks by night against Axis shipping. The war against the Axis supply lines across the Mediterranean by aircraft based on Malta and Egypt and submarines of the Royal Navy reached a new pitch of intensity, reducing to a mere trickle the flow of supplies intended for the German and Italian armies in Africa. The tide turned with the Axis defeat at El Alamein. Throughout November 1942 Malta-based bombers attacked airfields and harbours in Tunisia, Sicily and Sardinia in aid of the Allied forces in North-West Africa and continued their relentless war against the enemy’s supply lines. On 20th November a convoy from Egypt finally raised the siege of the Island, reaching Grand Harbour intact.

Thereafter, Malta achieved its importance as a base for offensive action. The number of aircraft operating from its airfields could be steadily increased and they were used to assist each fresh step towards victory in the Mediterranean. When the Island served as headquarters for the invasion of Sicily, more than thirty squadrons assembled there - it was the most important air base in the Mediterranean, by virtue of its central geographical position.

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