Siege of Malta (World War II)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Siege of Malta was a military campaign that ran from June 1940 to November 1942, pitting the air and naval forces of Italy and Nazi Germany against the defenders of a small British island in the heart of the Mediterranean. At its worst, the bombing was so relentless that Kesselring reported to the German High Command that "There is nothing left to bomb." Yet Malta held. And its survival would prove decisive to the entire war in North Africa.

  The island was tiny: 27 by 14 kilometres, with an area of just under 250 square kilometres. Around 250,000 people lived there in June 1940, and most of them were packed into the few kilometres around Grand Harbour. Valletta, the capital, held 23,000 people in an area of barely 0.65 square kilometres. Those dense streets would become some of the most heavily bombed ground in the history of aerial warfare.

  What was it about this island that made it worth such destruction? Why did General Erwin Rommel warn in May 1941 that without Malta the Axis would lose control of North Africa? And how did a garrison that began the war with six obsolete biplane fighters manage to survive more than two years of siege by two of the most powerful air forces in the world? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Fortress Without Walls

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  Malta was the only Allied base between Gibraltar and Alexandria, a stretch of sea spanning well over a thousand kilometres. In peacetime it had served as a stop along the British trade route to the Suez Canal and India. When the war closed that route, the island's value shifted: it became a forward platform for striking Axis ships supplying the campaign in North Africa.

  Yet when war came, Malta was almost undefended. British military planners had concluded before the war that the island was simply indefensible, and the Admiralty had moved the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet from Valletta to Alexandria in October 1939. Only a monitor and a few submarines remained. When the Maltese government challenged that decision, they were told the island could be defended just as effectively from Alexandria, which was untrue.

  The question of whether to hold Malta at all came up again in May 1940, when French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud suggested that Benito Mussolini might be appeased with concessions including the island. Winston Churchill persuaded the British War Cabinet to refuse. But the decision to hold Malta did not bring resources with it. When Mussolini declared war on the United Kingdom and France on the 10th of June 1940, Malta's entire fighter defence consisted of six obsolete Gloster Sea Gladiator biplanes, with another six in crates.

  The pilots who flew them were not even fighter pilots. They were flying boat aircrew and others with no experience of fighter operations. Ten of the crated Gladiators were assembled and named Faith, Hope, and Charity, and no more than three flew at once. The defences, almost non-existent on the ground and in the air, were the starting point for what would become one of the longest and most costly aerial campaigns of the Second World War.

• 3. The Italian Opening

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  On the 10th of June 1940, within hours of Mussolini declaring war, the first bombs fell on Malta. Fifty-five Italian bombers and 21 fighters flew over the island and dropped 142 bombs on the airfields at Luqa, Hal Far, and Ta Qali. A total of eight raids were flown on that first day alone.

  The Regia Aeronautica's targets were designed less to destroy installations than to break civilian morale. The bombing did not cause much physical damage, and the casualties were mainly civilian. No RAF airfield was operational at the time; Luqa was close to completion. Despite the absence of any serviceable airfields, at least one Gladiator flew against a raid of 55 Savoia-Marchetti SM.79s and their 20 escorting fighters on the 11th of June. It surprised the Italians but could not stop them.

  By the start of July, twelve Hurricanes had been delivered to reinforce the Gladiators, and the defenders were organised into No. 261 Squadron RAF in August. But the supply problem was acute. After eight weeks, the original Hurricane force was grounded for lack of spare parts. An attempt in November to fly twelve more Hurricanes into Malta, led by a Fleet Air Arm Blackburn Skua in Operation White, ended in disaster: eight Hurricanes ran out of fuel and were lost after taking off too far west, and several pilots were killed.

  By the year's end, the RAF claimed 45 Italian aircraft shot down. The Italians admitted the loss of 23 bombers and 12 fighters, with a further 187 bombers and seven fighters damaged, mostly by anti-aircraft fire. Meanwhile, twelve Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers had arrived from southern France in June and formed the nucleus of 830 Naval Air Squadron, giving Malta its first offensive strike aircraft. Before June was out, they had raided Sicily, sunk one Italian destroyer, damaged a cruiser, and destroyed oil storage tanks in the port of Augusta.

• 4. The Luftwaffe Arrives

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  German intervention over Malta came not because the Italians had failed to subdue the island directly, but because Italy was losing the war in North Africa. Hitler had to rescue his ally or lose the chance of taking the Middle Eastern oilfields. In January 1941, Fliegerkorps X, under the command of Hans Ferdinand Geisler, arrived in Sicily with 255 aircraft including 209 dive and medium bombers.

  The change in pressure was immediate. Geisler's chief weapon was the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber, and one of his first targets was HMS Illustrious, the aircraft carrier that had played the central role in the Battle of Taranto. On the 10th of January 1941, during the British Operation Excess convoy, 43 Ju 87s caught the carrier in range. Ten Ju 87s attacked unopposed while her Fairey Fulmar fighters were drawn off by Italian SM.79s. Witnessed by Admiral Andrew Cunningham from his flagship, the Stukas scored six direct hits in an attack lasting six minutes. They killed 126 crew members and wounded 91.

  Badly damaged but with her main engines intact, Illustrious made for Malta. Over the next twelve days, workers at the Grand Harbour shipyard repaired the carrier under determined air attack so she could reach Alexandria. The Germans attacked repeatedly: on the 14th of January alone, 44 Ju 87s scored a further hit on her aft lift. On the 23rd of January she slipped out of Grand Harbour and arrived in Alexandria two days later. The Luftwaffe had failed to sink her, but the demonstration of land-based dive-bombing had frightened the British into withdrawing their fleet's heavy units from the central Mediterranean.

  The Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-7 fighters of 7. Staffel, Jagdgeschwader 26, led by Oberleutnant Joachim Muncheberg, compounded the RAF's difficulties. The German fighter pilots were experienced, tactically astute, and flying aircraft that outclassed the worn-out Hurricanes. The Luftwaffe claimed 42 air victories in the period, 20 of them credited to Muncheberg alone. By February, around 107 Axis attacks took place against Malta, and 105 in March, with Bf 109s strafing any signs of movement on the ground. Over two thousand civilian buildings were destroyed during the German offensive, compared to only 300 during the entire Italian siege.

• 5. The Counter-Strike From Below

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  Air Vice Marshal Hugh Lloyd arrived to take command of the RAF on Malta on the 1st of June 1941, and found things worse than expected. The island had fewer than 60 aircraft of all types. Spare parts were obtained by sifting through the debris of wrecked machines or by cannibalising undamaged ones. Hammers and wrenches were nearly impossible to find. All refuelling had to be done by hand from individual drums.

  Nevertheless, Lloyd chose to attack. Outside his underground headquarters at Lascaris, he hung a sign: "Less depends on the size of the dog in the fight than on the size of the fight in the dog." In North Africa, Rommel was pressing toward the Suez Canal and Alexandria. Malta was the only place from which British strike aircraft could reach his supply lines. Lloyd's bombers and a small flotilla of submarines were the only forces available to slow that advance.

  The results were significant. In the second half of 1941, some 60% of Axis shipping was sunk. The Deutsches Afrikakorps and its partners were not receiving the 50,000 tons of supplies a month they needed, and were unable to resist the British counter-offensive in Operation Crusader. In September 1941, Ultra intercepts confirmed the losses: 3,500 tons of aerial bombs, 4,000 tons of ammunition, 5,000 tons of food, one entire tank workshop, 25 Bf 109 engines, and 25 cases of glycol coolant were all lost in a single sinking. Between June and September, the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in concert with Royal Navy submarines sank 108 Axis ships totalling 300,000 gross tons.

  The Royal Navy's surface forces also played a decisive role. The arrival of Force K led to the Battle of the Duisburg Convoy, in which every ship in the convoy was sunk, practically blockading Libyan ports. During November 1941, Axis fuel losses amounted to 49,365 tons out of 79,208 tons dispatched. The Chief of Staff of the Deutsches Afrikakorps, Fritz Bayerlein, later said: "We should have taken Alexandria and reached the Suez Canal had it not been for the work of your submarines."

• 6. The Hardest Year

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  On the 2nd of October 1941, Hermann Goring met with his Regia Aeronautica counterpart to discuss reinforcements. His chief of staff Hans Jeschonnek proposed sending Luftflotte 2 and Albert Kesselring to Sicily from the Eastern Front. Goring agreed, and Kesselring arrived as Oberbefehlshaber Sud from the 1st of December 1941. What followed was the heaviest aerial bombardment Malta would endure.

  Kesselring opened 1942 with a raid on New Year's Day, the 1,175th raid of the war. In January the RAF lost 50 Hurricanes on the ground and another eight shot down. Of the 340 fighters that had passed through or stayed on the island since the war began, only 28 remained. Fliegerkorps II grew from 118 aircraft in January to a peak of 425 aircraft in March. Between the 20th of March and the 28th of April 1942, the Germans flew 11,819 sorties and dropped 6,557 tons of bombs, including 3,150 tons on Valletta alone. At Ta' Qali airfield, 841 tons were dropped on the suspicion that the British had built an underground hangar.

  The civilian population was suffering badly. All livestock had been slaughtered. The lack of leather meant people were forced to use curtains and used tyres to replace clothing and shoe soles. Soldiers' rations were cut from four thousand to two thousand calories a day. The threat of starvation was real. Poor nutrition and inadequate sanitation spread disease through the population.

  The convoy operation that offered the most relief was Operation Pedestal in August 1942, but it came at a terrible cost. Of the 14 merchant ships sent, nine were sunk. The aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, one cruiser, and three destroyers were also lost. Only five merchant ships reached Malta. The Regia Aeronautica played the central role in attacking the convoy: according to historian Sadkovich, from 1940 to 1943 the Italians flew 35,724 sorties against the island compared to 37,432 German sorties, but 31,391 of the German missions were flown in 1942 alone. The Italians, often overlooked in accounts of the siege, were credited with the destruction of 575 British fighters on Malta and the sinking of 23 of 82 merchantmen dispatched to the island.

• 7. Park and the Turning Point

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  Air Vice Marshal Keith Park arrived on Malta by flying boat on the 14th of July 1942, landing in the middle of a raid despite his predecessor Lloyd's specific request that he circle the harbour until it had passed. Park had faced Kesselring before, during the Battle of Britain. He knew the man's methods.

  Park reversed the defensive tactics that had governed Malta's air war. Where Hurricanes had previously scrambled and gained height over the island before turning to engage, Park now used his growing force of Spitfires to intercept enemy formations before they reached their targets. His Forward Interception Plan, issued officially on the 25th of July 1942, split attacking formations into layers. One squadron would engage the escorting fighters by bouncing them out of the sun. A second would strike at the close escort or the bombers themselves. A third would attack the bombers head-on.

  The impact was rapid. The plan forced the Axis to abandon daylight raids within six days. The Ju 87 Stuka was withdrawn from operations over Malta altogether. Kesselring responded by sending fighter sweeps at higher altitudes to force the Spitfires into unfavourable fighting positions. Park countered by ordering his fighters to climb no higher than 6,100 feet, forcing the Bf 109s to descend to altitudes more suitable for the Spitfire.

  The Spitfires themselves had arrived in growing numbers through 1942. On the 9th of May, Operation Bowery delivered 64 more, giving Malta five full Spitfire squadrons. On that same day the Italians acknowledged 37 Axis losses; on the 10th of May, 65 Axis aircraft were destroyed or damaged. By the end of May, Kesselring's forces had been reduced to 13 serviceable reconnaissance aircraft, six Bf 110s, 30 Bf 109s, and 34 bombers: a total of 83 aircraft compared with several hundred two months earlier. The estimated tonnage sunk by British U-class submarines alone operating from Malta reached 650,000 tons, with another 400,000 tons damaged.

• 8. Victory and Its Measure

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  The Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 broke Axis power in North Africa, and the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch forced the Axis to divert forces to the Tunisia campaign. Attacks on Malta were reduced, and in December 1942 the air and sea forces based on the island went over to the offensive.

  The numbers from the final months of the campaign are striking. By May 1943, the Allies had sunk 230 Axis ships in 164 days, the highest Allied sinking rate of the war. The German and Italian air forces had flown a total of 3,000 bombing raids over two years and dropped 6,700 tons of bombs on the Grand Harbour area alone. The Italian Navy had deployed 54,000 mines around Malta to cut off its supplies, and around 3,000 more were laid off Tunisia's coast.

  The human cost in Malta was immense. By the close of 1941, approximately 70% of churches on the island had been reduced to rubble. Almost 60,000 people had left the cities by May 1941, with some 11,000 people, roughly 66% of Valletta's population, abandoning the capital. The island's defiance was recognised on the 15th of April 1942, when King George VI awarded Malta the George Cross collectively, one of the rare times the decoration had been given to a place rather than an individual.

  The operation that Rommel himself believed was necessary, Operation Herkules, the combined German-Italian amphibious and airborne landing on Malta, never happened. Hitler's nervousness about paratroop operations after the heavy losses of the Battle of Crete, combined with Rommel's insistence that Egypt and the Suez Canal were the higher priority, kept the plan in limbo until circumstances made it irrelevant. The plan had envisaged one German and one Italian airborne division under German General Kurt Student, followed by a seaborne landing of two or three divisions. Its failure to launch left a small, battered island free to strangle the supply lines of an entire theatre of war.