In the summer of 1942, the British launched Operation Pedestal, a desperate attempt to supply Malta. By then, the besieged island was just weeks away from being starved into surrender. The small island lies in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It is about 50 miles south of Italy, 175 miles east of Tunisia, and 200 miles from Libya’s coast. That strategic location made Malta extremely important. So the Axis did their best to try and capture the island by bombing and starving it into surrender. Or at least make it useless as a military base. Malta’s defenders, both British military and Maltese civilians, heroically resisted.
The result was a ferocious campaign from 1940 to 1942, that pitted the German and Italian navies and air forces against the British Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and the Maltese people. Malta suffered heavily, and hardest hit was the densely populated capital city of Valetta and its Grand Harbor. Those areas, which measure only 0.75 square miles, were subjected to history’s most sustained and concentrated bombing campaign.
Malta Occupied Some Important Real Estate
Allied warships and warplanes from Malta could interdict supply convoys from Italy to Axis forces in North Africa. In Axis hands, Malta could interdict Britain’s Mediterranean links to Egypt. Communication and coordination between British forces in the Eastern Mediterranean from those in Gibraltar would also be severed. Early in the war, the British thought that Malta’s proximity to Italy rendered it indefensible.
So the British relocated the bulk of the Royal Navy fleet that had been stationed in Malta to Alexandria, Egypt. They also stripped the island of airplanes. Luckily, the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious had ditched some crates of obsolescent Gloster Sea Gladiator fighters in Malta during a stopover in early 1940. The locals assembled six of them into an ad hoc squadron. Their pilots had trained on air boats and transports, but lacked any experience with fighter aircraft.
When Italy joined the war in June, 1940, the six Gladiator biplanes were all the fighter cover that Malta had. Flying from the Royal Air Force’s Hal Far airfield, they came to be known as the “Hal Far Fighter Flight”. Because no more than three of them flew at once, the ones in service were nicknamed “Faith”, “Hope”, and “Charity”.
A Spirited Fight by Obsolescent Airplanes
The Gladiators might have been obsolescent, and their pilots inexperienced and untrained. However, they put up a spirited fight from the first day of combat. It began when the Italians sent about 120 bombers and dozens of fighters to bomb and strafe the island. One of the defending Gladiators was shot down, but the rest shot down several Italian airplanes in turn.
In a variety of ways, random good fortune intervened to help Malta and her defenders. A series of flukes had created Malta’s defensive air force. Another series of flukes ended up creating the nucleus of the island’s offensive aerial arm. It began with twelve Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Fairy Swordfish torpedo bombers that showed up out of the blue, to land at the Hal Far airfield on June 19th, 1940.
It was the final leg of a journey that started in southern France. The biplanes had been stationed there, but were forced to flee just days ahead of the French surrender to Germany. The torpedo bombers had made their way from southern France to airfields in French Tunisia. However, lack of security there prompted them to cast about for somewhere safer. So the British Swordfish flew to Malta.
The Axis’ Missed Opportunity for an Early Conquest
Malta’s authorities quickly put the Swordfish to use, and within little more than a week, the new arrivals raided Sicily. They sank an Italian destroyer, damaged a cruiser, and destroyed oil storage tanks in the Italian port of Augusta. Despite the enterprise and pluckiness of Malta’s defenders, the Italians probably could have captured the island in those early months.
It would have required a determined air and sea attack on the part of the Italians, combined with an amphibious landing. The garrison was simply too small to offer serious resistance, and the British were busy fighting for their lives at home in the Battle of Britain. They had little attention to give a tiny Mediterranean island that they had already written off as indefensible. As seen below, that was soon to change.
The Axis Quest to Subdue Malta
By the fall of 1940, the British had come through the Battle of Britain. With their home islands secure from invasion, they could finally take a closer look at goings on elsewhere. In September, 1940, Mussolini had sent his armies from Libya to invade neighboring and British-controlled Egypt. It was a debacle. The Italians crossed the border, only to halt after a 50 mile advance and dig in. They were routed that December by a British force only a fifth their size, which killed, wounded, and captured about 150,000 Italians.
The rampaging British threatened to overrun all of Italian Libya, before other commitments forced them to halt their advance and cannibalize its units in order to send reinforcements elsewhere. British arms met further successes against the Italians that December, when a surprise air raid from Royal Navy aircraft carriers devastated the Italian fleet anchored at Taranto.
Containing the Naval Threat to Malta
The survivors of the British raid on Taranto fled their base in southern Italy, from which they had threatened British Mediterranean sea lanes. They now found themselves forced to scurry for safety elsewhere. The Italian naval threat to Malta had been contained. However, the very existence of that threat had refocused British attentions on the island and its potential as a base from which to disrupt Axis efforts in the Mediterranean. In the meantime, the Italian fiasco in Egypt and Libya had forced Hitler to come to his ally’s aid. In early 1941, a German corps under the command of Erwin Rommel was sent to North Africa.
Rommel, whose forces often operated on a shoestring because of a tenuous link to resupply and reinforcements from Europe, recognized Malta’s importance. In May, 1941, he bluntly warned that: “Without Malta, the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa”. The Germans joined the Italian air campaign against Malta in late 1940, when the Luftwaffe sent to Sicily bomber squadrons of Ju 87s, Ju 88s, and Heinkel He 111s, along with Messerschmitt Bf 109 and 110 fighter units.
Reinforcements and Declining Morale
By then, Malta’s obsolescent Gloster Gladiators, flown by amateurs, had been reinforced and replaced by newer fighter aircraft such as Hurricanes, flown by RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilots. They had their hands full against the Germans, whose Bf 109s were superior to the British Hurricanes, and were flown by better pilots to boot. One of the German crack fighter wings, 7/JG-26, claimed 42 aerial victories in its first four months of operations, without losing a single airplane over Malta. In the face of such lopsided losses, morale plummeted in British squadrons in Malta.
During that period, Axis supplies to North Africa sailed uninterrupted for the most part, and about 95% of the tonnage shipped arrived safely in Libyan ports. Malta’s defenders got an unexpected reprieve in mid-1941, when the Germans redeployed most of their airplanes from Sicily to Eastern Europe, in preparation for the invasion of Russia, and to North Africa, where Rommel was rampaging against the British. As seen below, it was just a temporary respite for Malta’s defenders.
From Threatened Island, to Base for Offensive Action Against the Fascists
The Luftwaffe returned to Sicily in late 1941, and redeployed many of its squadrons from the Eastern Front, where winter had ground most aerial operations. By then, Malta’s defenders had been reinforced with better fighters such as the Spitfire, which were more of a match for the German Bf 109s. Experience and better training had also improved the quality of Allied pilots, whose numbers now included Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Americans.
The difference in the rematch was remarkable. In the first half of 1941, Malta’s defenders had struggled to down a single German fighter over Malta. Now, Allied fighters downed Luftwaffe planes in droves. Allied aces, and then aces of aces, emerged as they notched up kills over the skies of Malta and the surrounding seas. One pilot, Royal Canadian Air Force Flight Lieutenant George Beurling, who came to be known as “The Knight of Malta”, shot down 27 Axis planes in a single two week stretch in July, 1942.
Nonetheless, things continued to look grim for Malta’s defenders. They were subjected to daily air bombardments and raids, and gradually starved of food, arms, munitions, and fuel to keep up the fight. Various British attempts to send supply convoys had ended in failure, with most ships sunk, and their cargoes ending up on the bottom of the Mediterranean. By mid-1942, it was predicted that unless supplies reached Malta, and soon, the island would be starved into surrender by September.
Operation Pedestal: A Last Ditch Effort to Save Malta
That August, in a last ditch effort, the British mounted Operation Pedestal, a desperate attempt to force a supply convoy through to Malta. Fourteen supply ships, most important of which was an oil tanker, Ohio, were sent under strong Royal Navy escort. The operation cost the British an aircraft carrier, two light cruisers, a cruiser, a destroyer, and nine out of the fourteen supply ships sunk. Another aircraft carrier, two light cruisers, and three supply ships were damaged. Only five of the fourteen ships made it to Malta, but they included Ohio and its vital fuel. It was enough to keep Malta in the fight.
From a threatened island, Malta morphed into a base for offensive operations against the Axis. By autumn, 1942, two thirds of the Italian merchant fleet had been sunk by planes, ships, and submarines, mostly operating out of Malta. As a result, Axis forces in North Africa were gradually starved of supplies and reinforcements. That precarious condition played a key role in the decisive British victory in the Battle of El Alamein, October 23rd – November 11th. 1942.
From Besieged Island, to Base for Allied Counterattack
The surviving Germans and Italians were forced into a headlong retreat, hotly pursued by the victors. They eventually ended up in Tunisia, sandwiched between British forces advancing from the south and east, and Americans, advancing from the west. With their forces cornered in Tunisia, the Germans and Italians were forced to abandon the Siege of Malta in November, 1942, and focus their efforts on saving their last enclave in North Africa. That was when Malta demonstrated its full potential as a sword thrust into the Axis’ vitals.
In December, 1942, Allied air and sea forces operating out of Maltese airfields and ports went on the offensive. In the next five months, they sank 230 Axis ships – the highest Allied ship sinking rate in WWII. Cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and under intense pressure on the ground, Axis forces in Tunisia were forced to surrender in May, 1943. That netted the Allies a haul of over 230,000 German and Italian POWs. Allied success in Malta ended up playing a key role in ultimate Allied success in the North African Campaign. Victory had been won in Malta, but it came at a considerable cost.
In a campaign that lasted two years and five months, the Allies lost 716 airplanes, 1 battleship, 2 aircraft carriers, 4 cruisers, 19 destroyers, 38 submarines, and about 2300 airmen killed or wounded. The Maltese lost 1300 civilians killed, thousands more wounded, and 30,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. In 1942, Britain’s King George VI awarded the people of Malta the George Cross – the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross, awarded for acts of the greatest heroism or most conspicuous courage in the face of extreme danger.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
BBC History, February 17th, 2011 – The Siege of Malta in World War Two
Imperial War Museum – How Malta Survived the second World War
Hastings, Max – Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942 (1921)
History Halls – World War II Bombers: The Junkers Ju 88, Germany’s Most Successful WWII Bomber
History Net – Air Battle For Fortress Malta
Holland, James – Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege, 1940-43 (2003)
