Philip
Vella’s comprehensive account of the Second World War siege of Malta was
published in 1985; my copy was the third edition, 1989. In the 1970s a group of
Maltese enthusiasts formed The National War Museum Association and over the
years they have collected and collated documents, photographs, first-hand
reports, interviews and eye-witness testimonies about the Battle for Malta.
This large-format book is a result of those endeavours.
Besides
relating in detail from the outset of hostilities, it also contains almost a
hundred pages of appendices recording convoys, daily rations, buildings
destroyed or damaged, honours and awards. There are also dozens of
illustrations, maps and black-and-white photographs. It is a treasure-trove for
any writer or student of history.
In
the summer of 1939, when it seemed that war was imminent, the Admiralty pressed
to strengthen the island against air attack by installing 122 heavy AA guns, 60
light AA guns and 24 searchlights. Inertia hampered this process. On June 10,
1940 Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Malta was in the firing line
and by this time the islands only had 34 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 8 Bofors;
the number of searchlights was up to strength, however.
‘...
Malta’s loss would have denied the Allies of a staging post to the Middle East,
jeopardised the fate of the British Army fighting in North Africa, and turned
the Mediterranean into an Axis lake’ (p163).
The
air-raid sirens sounded to warn of the first raid on June 11, 1940. ‘... ten
Savoia Marchetti 79s crossed the 60 mile channel on their way to their target Hal
Far airfield’ (p6). Other targets were the dockyard and forts. There were seven
bombing sorties that first day, with no planes lost on either side.
That
year, Malta suffered 211 air raids. Succeeding years increased in number, 963
and 2,031 for 1941 and 1942 respectively. The devastation was horrendous (as
many photographs attest); ‘the Royal Opera House was demolished along with
several other buildings in Valletta on April 7, 1942’ (p111); the ruins of the
opera house are still there, concrete yet mute testimony to the siege. Two days
after that, a bomb penetrated the dome of Mosta Church but instead of exploding
merely bounced among the congregation. In the first weeks of 1942 ‘the number
of unexploded bombs from heavy daylight raids by German aircraft rose from 6 to
143 per week’ (p128).
Civilians
sought refuge in ‘the old railway tunnels in Valletta and Floriana, as well as
in the Hypogeum, a prehistoric underground burial place, and also the Catacombs
at Rabat’ (p15).
The
Royal Malta Artillery recruited ‘a motley crowd of clerks and farmers, shop
assistants and masons, intellectuals and illiterates’ (p34). In fact, as early
as September 1938, ‘3,000 volunteers enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Reserve
set up by Lady Bonham-Carter, the wife of the then Governor of Malta’ (p73). The
native RMA and the Royal Artillery raised a curtain of flame that was fearful
to behold... Captured German pilots admitted that they had been unnerved by it.
It probably saved the Island from devastation, saved many a British warship... Remarkable
was the stoicism of the civilians’ (p173).
Supplies
came by seagoing convoy, the first in September 1940 from Alexandria.
Subsequent convoys sailed from Gibraltar as well. Freight was also transported
by RN submarines, among them HM Submarines Porpoise,
Rorqual, Cachalot, Osiris and Otus
[While in SM drafting in the 1970s I sent men to submarines that bore these
names, but newer boats of the Porpoise and Oberon class, launched 1958 to the
1960s]. Submarines based in Malta attacked German convoys destined for Rommel’s
Afrika Korps, sending to the bottom
of the sea some 400,000 tons of supplies. In April 1942 HM Submarine Upholder was lost on her twenty-fifth
patrol.
Shortages
meant that improvisation was the order of the day; ‘men found fig and vine
leaves a substitute, albeit a distasteful one, for tobacco... women made coats
from blankets and dresses from curtains’ (p77). By September 1941 the only
unrationed items were bread, pasta, cheese, rice and tea. At this stage of the
war, the Enigma codes had been cracked and warnings of imminent attacks on
convoys could be countered. ‘Cigarette-smokers took a deep breath when, on October
30, 1942, after many months of enforced abstinence, an issue of 30 cigarettes a
week was introduced on a ration basis, to be increased to 50 with effect from January
15, 1943’ (p172).
‘Radar...
is regarded as one of the main contributors to Malta’s defeat of the enemy.
Radio Direction Finding was first brought to Malta in Marsh 1939 when the Air
ministry Experimental Station was set up at Dingli Cliffs, one of the highest
spots on the Island’ (p83).
Allied
aircraft were transported by convoy but many were lost during the air-raids on
Ta’ Qali, Hal Far and Luqa airfields. ‘In answer to the 200-240 daily Axis
sorties, Malta could seldom muster more than six fighters at one time’ (p101).
In
September, 1942, even while conflict still raged, the King presented the George
Cross to the Island Fortress and its people, acknowledging the ‘gallant
service’ the Maltese people had already rendered in the fight for freedom
(p120). On June 20, 1943 the King visited the Island, ‘sailing through a
hostile sea, with enemy air bases a mere 60 miles away’ (p184). He was given a
rapturous reception by civilians and the armed forces; he toured much of the Island
all day, witnessing the destruction and speaking to the Maltese. Prime Minister
Churchill visited the Island on November 17 for two days and President Roosevelt
arrived on December 8 and presented the people with a citation concerning their
‘valorous service above and beyond the call of duty’ (p197).
With
the retreat of the Germans from Italy in 1944, few air-raids occurred and none
resulted in any further damage or deaths. The last alert sounded on August 28.
‘...
looking back across the years, serving at Malta in spite of the hardships,
hunger and the constant presence of danger and death, is curiously one of these
parts of one’s life, which if given the chance, one would do all over again’ – Leo
Nomis, an American pilot flying from Ta’Qali (p154).