The Battle for Malta Page #3

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didn't notice it, you know!

The people, when you come ashore,

say you can't mistake the smell

diesel and everything else.

Malta is just a rock

sticking out of the sea.

It was a ghastly place for us.

The food was dreadful!

Everybody had Malta dog, or diarrhoea,

which used to produce

the most ghastly smell.

The fleas abounded,

mosquitoes bit us to death.

It was a very unpleasant place to be.

Unpleasant, but with the Axis

gaining in North Africa,

Malta had never been more important.

We knew very well

that we had to stop these

convoys getting over to Rommel

to help our army...

.. which is, er... the whole

purpose of being there, really.

General Erwin Rommel commanded

the Axis army in North Africa.

By mid-1941, he needed 70,000

tonnes of supplies each month,

nearly all shipped across

the Mediterranean.

Malta's submariners had

yet to make much impact,

but that was about to change.

In May, HMS Upholder,

led by Lieutenant Commander David Wanklyn,

was heading back to Malta

when Crawford spied an Axis

convoy on the horizon.

I was actually on watch

when we sighted her.

Our listening gear was out of action,

we had two torpedoes left,

it was just getting dark.

And I spotted a couple of shapes,

so I called Wanklyn into the control room,

and the attack started.

He just says, "Take her down,"

and so then up to the First Lieutenant

and the crew to carry the order out.

It stayed quiet,

except for the navigating officer

saying the speed for the enemy.

Orders to the planes went

from the First Lieutenant.

Speed, telegraphman.

They finally got off the two torpedoes.

We managed to hit with the two torpedoes,

and down she went.

And we went down as well,

to try and get clear.

Well, we knew we'd hit something,

we did hear a grating noise,

and it sounded almost like a

wire scraping down the side

of the submarine, and someone just

said, "Oh, that's all right. "

"That's the Conte Rosso

breaking up as she goes down. "

We had quite a heavy

depth-charging after that.

But you never know how

long it's going to take.

Meantime, you're all sort of

trying to zigzag and creep away.

It is frightening, yes.

It does shake, and some lights go out,

and you can hear the propellers

of the destroyers up top.

And as you hear the

thrashing of the propeller,

as it gets louder and louder,

you know, everybody starts crouching,

and wondering when the

crash is going to come.

But there you are. You've

just got to wait for it.

And, finally, you throw them off.

In the battle for supplies, Rommel

felt the loss of every ship keenly.

Particularly because the Axis

was struggling to replace them.

This made the loss of the enormous

Conte Rosso a particular blow.

For Malta, it marked a

turning point in fortunes.

Submarines and aircraft

operating from the island

savaged Rommel supply lines,

and the Luftwaffe also departed.

Pressure had been lifted.

For months, the Maltese had

been driven underground,

into shelters cut into the rock,

but in the summer of 1941, the

bombing suddenly lessened,

as the Luftwaffe left Sicily

for the invasion of Russia.

The relief was huge, and life

improved, but it wasn't to last.

As the Russian winter brought a

freeze to the campaign in the east,

so Hitler turned once more to

the war here in the south.

The Luftwaffe had returned.

They come back to the Mediterranean,

and under Albert Kesselring's command,

Malta starts to take a beating

from his Luftwaffe squadrons.

And I think what's happening here

is that Kesselring has commanded an

air fleet in the Battle of Britain.

He is now back in the Mediterranean

with a miniature version

of the United Kingdom,

and what he wants to do

is return to his tactics

in the Battle of Britain,

but get it right this time,

using Malta as the punchbag,

and so what he's going to do

is grind Malta into the dust

with a huge bombing campaign

as a prelude to invasion.

A witness to the return of the

Luftwaffe was John Mizzi.

He lived in Birkirkara, in

the centre of the island.

They used to come in the

morning at breakfast.

You knew that from between eight

and nine they would come out.

They used to come at noon

until 1:
30, you had an air raid.

Then they used to come at four

in the evening, five, six,

perhaps, so you could regulate your day.

We knew we were going to be beaten to

pieces, because they now had 109F's -

a more up-to-date model of the 109-

and they were patrolling Malta

as though it was their own base.

And eventually, we got to

the stage that the pilots

had no aeroplanes to fly, and we

were used as aircraft spotters.

So many people were lost unnecessarily.

Golden people, shot down.

And also as a result of aircraft failure.

We used to complain every day, all day.

The people who were leading us didn't

really know what was happening.

We were flying stuff we

should never have flown,

we weren't reinforced in the

manner that we should have been,

and our Air Marshal was

concentrating on other things.

Commanding the RAF on Malta was Air

Vice-Marshal Hugh Pughe Lloyd.

With a background in bombers,

he'd shown little understanding

of fighter tactics.

Tom Neal was confronted by Lloyd

after yet another pilot had been shot down.

He stood in front of me, and put his

face very close to mine and said,

"You know, Neal, it isn't the

aircraft, it's the man. "

And I must confess that, on

that particular occasion...

.. I came very close to

striking a senior officer.

Complacency was to blame for the

continued use of obsolete aircraft.

This was a result of

indifferent leadership.

There had been the chance to

build up a new fighter force

that hadn't been taken.

And it was the Maltese people

that were going to pay dearly.

"27th December, 1941. Mother found

a cannon shell in the terrace. "

"At about 8:
30 PM, we saw

a German bomber crash

"and burn in the sea off Dragonara. "

"It was the most glorious show ever. "

This is New Year's Eve.

"Night raids started at

7:
30 PM to last all night. "

"Awful ending for 1941."

And what's incredible about

that is that we know

it's only going to get a whole load worse.

Absolutely.

Rommel was losing ground in North Africa,

as Malta's forces sank nearly

80% of all Axis convoys.

Subduing Malta was now a priority.

If you're here on the ground,

there's no doubt conditions were brutal,

but the truth is, up to this

point, Malta had got off lightly.

The Italians had failed to invade

when Malta had been defensively vulnerable,

and the Germans had never fully

focused on dealing with the island.

At the dawn of 1942, everything changed.

As Malta's strikeforces cut

increasing amounts of shipping,

so Axis forces in North

Africa began to suffer.

Germany realised that solving the

problem in Malta was the key

to winning in the Mediterranean.

Field Marshal Kesselring was

convinced that this meant invasion.

"In order to produce a safe

connection route from Italy

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