The Battle for Malta

Malta.

An island of ancient legend and warrior knights.

A link between Europe and North Africa.

And, in 1940, a pivotal British base in the Mediterranean.

For two years during the Second World War,

the people of the island were forced underground in terror

as the Axis powers unleashed on them

one of the greatest aerial bombardments in history.

If Malta fell, the British feared,

then so would North Africa, the Suez Canal

and the oilfields of the Middle East.

The King himself recognised the suffering,

awarding the entire island the George Cross.

The tale is ingrained in the island's legend,

but Malta's story is more than its siege.

This was a desperate fight for life

won by the narrowest of margins.

A fight for the seas, a struggle for the skies,

the battle for Malta itself.

Looking out over the peaceful harbours today,

it's almost impossible to imagine

that, during the war, this was hell on earth.

The battle for Malta was one of the most vicious

of the Second World War.

Malta is just 17 miles long,

but it endured a concentrated attack so violent

it became the most bombed place on earth.

This may seem out of all proportion to the island's size,

but it underlined its crucial importance,

for this tiny piece of rock in the middle of the sea

held the key to the entire war in the Mediterranean.

SPEECH IN ITALIAN

And it all started with a speech in Rome.

When Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on Britain,

it meant war for Malta, too.

Malta had been British since 1814, home to the Mediterranean Fleet

and an important base in Britain's Empire across the seas.

But it was now vulnerable to Italian ambition.

You don't have to travel very far out from Malta

to realise how isolated this place was.

The nearest British port was Alexandria in Egypt,

820 miles away to the east.

To the west, you have to travel 990 miles to Gibraltar.

But 60 miles to the north, and swarming with enemy aircraft,

lay Sicily, just 15 minutes' flying time from Malta.

AIR-RAID SIREN WAILS

For Mussolini, the island was an obvious target,

one he believed was ripe for the taking.

When the bombs started coming down,

the first reaction was terror.

Italy and Malta shared a close bond, but overnight they were at war.

What we call the rude awakening of the 11th of June.

Eight sorties in a day.

15 civilians casualties, over 200 wounded.

Our brothers, the Italians,

did not take care of what was being said in Malta.

They just bombed us and killed us.

Malta held great value to the British,

but the first priority was saving her own shores.

By 10th June 1940, the Nazis had swept across Europe

and pushed the defeated British Army back to the Channel coast.

No wonder Mussolini was confident.

France was about to fall,

and it looked like Great Britain would be next.

Peter Caddick-Adams

is a lecturer in military history at Cranfield University.

He believes Italy was gambling on Britain's exit from the war.

The timing is key.

What Mussolini is doing is jumping on the coat-tails of Germany.

He wouldn't dare do anything against Britain before,

but now it looks as though Britain is about to be swamped

by the German war machine,

and all of a sudden Malta finds itself on the front line.

And Malta's role will be important.

Mussolini had dreamed of creating a new Rome.

Malta would cement the link between Italy and his empire in Africa.

And with Britain out of the war,

it would be the easy prize it needed to be.

The thing to remember with Mussolini's declaration of war

is it takes the Italian military by surprise,

as well as the rest of the world.

The Italians are not geared up

to fight any kind of a war in any shape or form.

In the First World War, Italy had lost a huge number of men.

It had completely destroyed the nation's love of war-making,

any kind of enthusiasm for military adventures.

While Mussolini waited for the British surrender,

his bombers still flew over.

Anne Agius Ferrante was 16 in 1940

and remembers those early attacks well.

At first we were frightened.

We got very used to the bombing,

because for the first few months of the war,

when the Italians were bombing us,

they had absolutely no idea where to bomb.

They were much happier to...

to put the bombs in the sea and go home.

As a matter of fact,

there was a caricature in the paper saying, "Corraggio, fuggiamo."

"Courage, let's run away."

By the autumn, the island was still in British hands.

Il Duce's gamble had failed.

Italy's bombing campaign had been spectacularly ineffective,

even though in June 1940 Malta had been left under-defended.

Mussolini had assumed the British would roll over,

but they'd fought on,

winning the Battle of Britain in their own shores.

Now, with every week, more guns and more aircraft were arriving.

For Italy, the opportunity to take the island quickly had slipped away.

Mussolini had missed his chance.

Italy's inability to take Malta quickly

had allowed the British to rearm.

Mussolini also overreached in Africa.

The situation had reversed.

Italy now faced defeat and had only one place to turn.

One man's blunder had brought a new player to the Mediterranean -

Germany.

In December 1940, Hitler sent Fliegerkorps X to Sicily.

Their impact was immediate.

When the Italians used to come, they used to drop the bombs

and then go away, but not the Germans.

The Germans used to make sure

that they dive on the place that they want,

and they never used to come in threes and fives.

They used to come in big rows.

Meme Turner was a 19-year-old nurse

working at Imtarfa Military Hospital.

We used to watch them right from our mess,

coming over the Grand Harbour, rows of ten,

and they used to come right down, boom-boom-boom.

They'd do it and off they'd go, and then the other lot comes.

Concentration of force had been key to German success in the war.

With the Luftwaffe over Malta, nowhere was safe.

This place may have been designed as a military hospital,

but no-one had ever imagined that it would come directly under fire.

Like much of the island, this hospital was now on the front line.

Malta was now dependent on convoys from Alexandria and Gibraltar,

convoys the Luftwaffe had to stop.

While Britain was trying to supply Malta,

Germany was about to follow Italy into North Africa

and had to protect troops being sent there.

It was becoming clear

the war in North Africa would be a battle of logistics

and that Malta was at the crux.

In January 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked a convoy to the island.

Badly damaged,

the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious steamed to Malta for urgent repairs.

From the blitz of the Illustrious,

it really bombed the engine room quite direct,

and that's where the fire starts.

And so many that died come in to hospital

or as soon as they got into the bed.

And we always used to remember -

lie a Union Jack over them

to take them down to the mortuary.

We were in the next berth to Illustrious

when, um...she was bombed

pretty heavily.

We watched these aeroplanes come in

and saw the bombs coming down over our heads,

and all we had was a little Lewis Gun,

which wasn't much good.

We knew they were aiming at Illustrious,

but we knew that some might miss Illustrious

and, um...come fairly close to us.

Lots of things were hammering away,

but the Stukas got through all right.

The Luftwaffe struck hard,

but Illustrious had been well protected by British reinforcements.

Six months in, Malta's anti-aircraft guns were formidable.

With Britain now safe from invasion, Malta continued to be rearmed.

Among the reinforcements was Battle of Britain ace Tom Neil,

leading a flight of Hurricanes from Gibraltar.

Following a guide from an aircraft carrier,

but still over water, fuel was running low.

We'd been going for almost six hours, and I said to the bloke in front,

"If you don't get us down within ten minutes, we're all in the water."

And then, magically,

Malta appeared by my left elbow.

It suddenly appeared out of the cloud.

And as we crossed the cliffs,

all the ack-ack guns began to fire at us.

But I didn't give a damn,

I just wanted to get my wheels on the ground.

And as I approached Luqa, suddenly the airfield erupted.

Aircraft were bombed and burst into flames,

and for the first time I looked up,

and above me were 50, 60, 70 Germans bombing.

They knew what we were doing long before we did.

We landed eventually, the air raid was still in progress.

Aircraft were burning all the way around us.

And then a man appeared, smoking a pipe.

And he came, and he jumped on board my aircraft.

He said, "There's an air raid on!"

I said, "I know it, mate I've just landed in the middle of it."

With Malta's defenders still greatly outnumbered,

new pilots were thrown straight into the action.

We'd been there about 20 minutes

when three Germans appeared over the hill

and wrote off what was left of the squadron.

And before we'd even taken off,

we were reduced to impotence with three aeroplanes.

And quarter of an hour later, I was scrambled.

I remember climbing up above Malta, thinking,

"What on earth has happened to us?"

The infrastructure of the island was being reduced to rubble.

Thousands lost their homes.

Electricity and water mains were damaged,

and distribution of goods became harder.

These events were recorded each day by the Times of Malta.

It was run by Mabel Strickland.

We publish seven days a week.

And by the way, tremendous credit goes to the newsboys.

It would have been useless to have printed

if we hadn't been able to distribute.

Were your printing machines underground?

No, that wasn't possible,

but they were sited around a deep shelter my father had prepared.

Despite huge bomb damage,

the Times was printed on every single day of the siege.

Each edition is kept here, at the National Library in Valletta.

On Friday 10th April,

there's a piece about the problems facing the island

and distribution of food and so on

and how they're proposing to tackle them.

And it's interesting, because it reassures them

that that it's the breakdown of communication that's the problem,

not the shortage of food.

'These editions also give an insight into the public mood.'

There's a lovely advert

on the back page of the Thursday June 12th 1941 edition

by CH Bernard and Sons, who are military tailors.

And it says, "We were blasted well out.

"But we have blasted well started again."

Nobody escaped the hardship.

Margaret Crawford had remained on the island

while her father served with the Navy.

One snatched food when you could, and water, of course.

The shortage of water was a terrible thing.

You had a bucket of water,

which had to do everything for the day.

And do you remember reading the Times of Malta?

Oh, yes.

-We couldn't do without the Times of Malta.

-Yes!

-BOTH LAUGH

-I know.

-It...

-It was used for everything!

-Yeah, I...

-Not only reading!

-Yes.

Although the suffering was shared, for Anne Agius Ferrante,

there was a marked divide between British and Maltese.

My father was really very fond of the British

but disapproved certain things,

like us girls during the war going a bit wild with the...

..RAF and others.

But there was this colonialism,

and we were treated as colonials.

But there was no ill feeling as such.

It was just that they felt we were inferior,

rather than that we were no good.

But as historian Simon Cozens has found,

it's a sentiment that could cut both ways.

This is a diary for the whole of 1941.

This belonged to a Maltese civilian who lived in Sliema.

"25th of October 1941.

"Today is the worst day of my life.

"At noon, Italian planes bombed a petrol dump

"which blazed fiercely indeed.

"In the afternoon,

"we discovered that Gemma

"has been carrying on with an airman.

"With the atrocious name of Clive!

"She told us a packet of lies

"and has indeed disgraced us."

The relationship between the Maltese and British

may have been uneasy at times,

but most accepted they were fighting for a common cause.

In a very real sense, they were all in it together.

But each had their own set of problems.

Malta was a very difficult place to fly from,

because the island itself was just a series of very small fields

with rock barriers everywhere.

And if you had an engine failure in Malta, you usually killed yourself,

because flying into a rock barrier,

er...the aircraft burst into flames.

But one of our great problems was the aircraft weren't up to it,

and a lot of people were killed as a result of engine failures.

Britain regarded Malta as a base from which to attack Axis shipping.

It meant her defenders were neglected

in favour of strike forces.

This is the lazaretto on Manoel Island.

During the war it was home to the 10th Flotilla,

Malta's submarine force.

Although never more than 12 submarines,

they sank half a million tonnes of Axis shipping in just 18 months.

Tubby Crawford was second-in-command

of Britain's most successful submarine,

HMS Upholder.

Well, at that stage, it wasn't too bad.

Food and drink were there.

Each submarine had a cabin area, the captain had his own cabin.

There was a big veranda all round the lazaretto,

where armchairs and things were available

so you could relax out there.

At the lazaretto, the submariners lived in some comfort,

a necessity for morale after the appalling conditions at sea.

Operating on Malta was an intensely claustrophobic experience.

You're on a tiny island with no chance of escape,

being bombed to hell day in, day out.

But imagine being on a submarine, which is even more cramped.

Whatever they were feeling on the island,

it was a hundred times worse for the submariners.

Well, they are very cramped,

and the ship's company

live amongst the torpedoes up in the front end.

We all got a bit stinky, so you 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

"to North Africa, the capture of Malta is an absolute requirement."

All that stood in his way was a weak and inferior air defence.

"German fighters are fundamentally superior to British fighters."

"It is primarily important to crush the enemy air force on the ground

"and in the air through ongoing incessant attacks

"by bomber and fighter planes, day and night."

"Signed, Field Marshal Kesselring."

When Kesselring had written his report, he'd been right.

The Hurricanes were inferior.

Despite better planes being available back in Britain,

the defenders of Malta were still flying aircraft

that were underpowered and underarmed.

Malta's war leaders had been slow to demand better fighters,

but Britain had now woken up

to the strategic importance of the island's position.

Finally, in March 1942 came the reassuring sound of an aircraft

that was more than a match for the German and Italian fighters.

PLANE ENGINE ROARS

I was on the roof one morning, and the next thing I saw

was two aircraft speeding up right above our heads

and doing the victory roll.

And I recognised that they were Spitfires.

The cannon-armed Spitfire had finally arrived.

It was a huge morale boost for the islanders.

It wasn't just the fighter pilots that were eagerly awaiting

the arrival of the Spitfires.

So, too, it seems was The Times of Malta, who report with great glee

that Spitfires had gone into action for the first time.

And then the very next day, March 12th,

"Spitfires over Malta. Their first kill."

It says, "Spitfires engaging."

"These dramatic two words that have chilled the hearts

"of many German pilots again made history today."

"For the first time since the war began, Spitfires were in battle

"over this tiny island fortress in the central Mediterranean,"

"and they met with success in their first engagement."

It was an encouraging start, but had it come too late?

Many more would be needed to make a decisive impact.

On Sicily, Kesselring had more than 800

German and Italian aircraft at his disposal.

Malta had 80 fighters.

When the Germans started coming, they meant business.

And there were bombs, bombs and bombs.

With these raids, there were times

when we just couldn't breathe in between.

There were always raids, raids, raids.

But the thing was that we had to carry on our work.

We still had to go to the hospital to carry on work.

With much of the Mediterranean now in Axis hands,

reaching the island was becoming increasingly difficult.

By 1942, the situation got desperate, extremely desperate.

Convoys were being sent, and not much coming into Malta,

and seeing the ships coming into harbour, convoys,

hearing of convoys coming in and not making it.

And the great loss of life and shipping, you name it.

That was really sounding ugly and looking ugly and feeling ugly.

By the spring of 1942, Malta's port facilities had been wrecked.

The island's infrastructure was largely destroyed.

And it was now that strong leadership was most needed.

As the battle of Malta intensified,

so the demands on her war leaders became greater.

What had been adequate before was now found wanting,

as the islanders discovered to their cost.

'In March, a four-ship convoy was sent from Alexandria.

'It was the first attempted since December.'

We always knew the convoys were coming, because the Italians

always reported the early attacks on them, so we knew that.

It's hard to express just how much Malta needed the March convoy

to be a success, so when three out of four ships reached

the island safely, the relief was immense.

But getting here was only half the job.

Incredibly, no extra hands were brought in

to help with the unloading.

Not one serviceman, and despite low cloud preventing enemy raids,

for two whole nights, no unloading took place at all.

When the skies cleared, the Luftwaffe returned

and sank all three ships in harbour.

Of the 26,000 tonnes of precious cargo, only 5,000 were salvaged.

It was nothing short of a disgrace.

The lost cargo was entirely down to poor planning.

In failing to prepare for the unloading of the ships,

Malta's war leadership had failed the people.

It had directly contributed to their mounting misery.

During the heavy, heavy bombing, we had nothing.

We didn't dare go out during the heavy bombing.

When there was nothing to eat,

the farmers were frightened to go to work,

the fishermen were frightened to go out to sea,

because they use to machine-gun them.

So when the convoy didn't come in, there was no food on the island.

If you had the money, there was nothing to buy.

It was tough after the March convoy,

because more rationing was enforced.

But one didn't really think about it, you know.

One got used to hunger, too.

We carried on above ground, between the raids.

We ran like rabbits down into the shelters

if the bombers were too near.

Then the dockyard grimly moved underground, into the living rock.

Soft, yellow limestone rock,

that trembles and vibrates under direct hits, but doesn't yield.

Malta had been neutralised.

The island was on its knees, gasping for life.

Above ground, the RAF was engaged

in one of its biggest ever aerial clashes.

The only time I'd been in the public shelter was a terrible experience,

really, because it was a big shelter under Valletta,

and the people had bunks, and it was sort of dirty,

and it was like a sort of ghetto, and the noise of the bombs,

the vibrations, was something terrible.

The poor people, most of them didn't have a home.

They lived down there, so they cooked down there,

they slept down there, they made love down there,

they did everything down there.

This was the Malta Blitz.

Axis forces mounted round-the-clock air attacks.

In eight weeks, nearly 7,000 tons of explosives fell on the island.

Malta had become the most bombed place on earth.

At the lazaretto,

the submariners had been forced out of their comfortable digs.

The bombs were destroying the submarine base,

so by expanding the old sewage system,

they were able to create a labyrinth of tunnels.

Already living under the sea when on patrol,

the submariners were now forced to live underground when back on Malta.

These are their bunks.

It's hard to imagine a tougher existence.

And there was no let up in the raids.

We were all out having dinner,

and we left it rather a long time before going down to the shelter.

Too late.

One of the bombs dropped, and we got the blast.

It was a big, big window. That blew right in.

And with it, we three, and I was knocked out for a little while,

came to, and their voices saying, you know, "Maggie, where are you?"

"Are you alive?"

And I must have sat up and said, "I don't know, but I think so!"

And of course, they hooted with laughter.

But, of course, I had been injured.

It was a bad night.

It was hard going, because on top of it all you were hungry,

you had nowhere to live when your house was bombed,

but we had no alternative.

And when your back is to the wall, you seem to have a lot more courage.

How do you put up with that kind of incessant level of bombing?

If you're there...

..you just have to, don't you? Get on with it.

News broke that would stiffen Maltese resolve

and cement British claims to the island.

The King made his award of the George Cross on 15th April,

but it wasn't announced in The Times of Malta until the 17th,

two days later.

But, interestingly, the very next day, Saturday 18th,

now on the headline, alongside The Times of Malta,

is a little image of the George Cross.

It was an image that remained on the paper right throughout the war,

and, indeed, is on it still.

I was so proud that it was given to Malta and the Maltese,

because of its heroism that it had.

Of all the people, and I always say, right from a grandpa,

right down to a child, we all took part.

And if it wasn't for Malta,

they would have never won the battle in Africa.

The award of the George Cross,

the King is thinking about what we're doing.

We're not alone. That's the most important thing.

There were some who grumbled that we were better off not in the war,

or that it was better in the form of food or whatever was needed,

but generally, it was that feeling, a sign of courage.

You are not alone.

The George Cross was a symbolic lift at a desperate moment.

But it was the material boost of 47 new Spitfires

that gave the island the chance to fight back.

Among the new pilots arriving on 20th April

was a promising young artist.

This is the diary of Dennis Barnham,

a Spitfire pilot who served here in 1942, and I can honestly say

I've never read a better or more vivid account of air fighting.

Just on these pages alone,

this is the description of his first combat over Malta,

where he and two other Spitfires take off

to intercept more than 50 enemy aircraft.

What's so incredible is the immediacy of it.

Each of these extracts written just hours after the events took place.

"And I'm at Malta.

"It's an island of exquisite peace for a while,

"and then violent fury with death everywhere."

'Two new squadrons of Spitfires was a step in the right direction.

'But again, few plans had been made for their arrival.

'Air Vice-Marshal Lloyd was now increasingly out of his depth.

'On his first evening, Dennis Barnham

'and the other pilots were taken by bus

'up to the Xara Palace for a pep talk by Lloyd.

'It was a talk that did little to calm Dennis's nerves.'

Lloyd had barely begun, when suddenly a aircraft roared overhead.

Bombs whistled down, then exploded almost on top of them.

The whole building shook, but as the dust settled,

Lloyd merely cleared his throat and said,

"As I was saying, the Germans are cowards and bullies."

He conceded that the task facing the new pilots was a tough one,

but to help them, now had ten twin-engined bombers

with which to take the attack to the enemy.

Compared with what they were up against,

it was clear to all that ten bombers

was hardly going to make much difference.

No wonder Dennis left feeling even more terrified than ever.

His unease was soon proved right.

'The long-promised Wellingtons arrived, ten of them.

'Throughout the last week they tried their hardest -

'six of them were blitzed on the ground.

'After the raids, clouds of smoke would roll back

'from the Lucca drome, changed to a hazy red dust that would drift away

'with the wind and reveal another Wellington burning.

'When they operated, they did magnificently,

'making three trips to Sicily in one night.

'Of the four Wellingtons still serviceable,

'two did not return from that raid.

'In the big bedroom in the house, 12 beds were empty.'

There were few Spitfires left either.

Within 48 hours, just seven remained.

Exposed and unprotected, they were shot up on the ground.

One day, I did see a plane coming down,

and I thought, "That's not our plane."

It was one of the Messerschmitts.

He did really machine-gun all the Spitfires that were laying there.

'On the ground, Spitfires were easy pickings for Axis aircraft.

'Targets that should never have been there.

'Deep in the rocks,

'Malta now had the most sophisticated ground control

'outside Britain.

'The new fighter planes should have made a big difference.'

The operation rooms used so successfully

in the Battle of Britain were also replicated here,

from the plotting table through to the coloured clocks

and the squadron tote boards.

In the spring of 1942, there was one major difference,

as you can see from that conspicuously empty squadron board.

On Sicily, there were hundreds of enemy aircraft.

Here on Malta, for five separate days in April 1942,

there was just one aircraft available.

And on two days, none at all.

'But without aircraft, the operations room was redundant.'

'Plans for their arrival had to improve.'

'At Berchtesgaden, Hitler met with Mussolini to discuss plans

'to invade Malta, codenamed Operation Hercules.

'Germany would supply airborne troops and air power,

'but the invasion itself would be Italy's responsibility.'

"German parachutists and equipment should be made available

"to the Italians who want to take Malta

"through a surprise raid around the end of May."

Weakened and vulnerable, the island was braced for invasion.

Dennis Barnham was among the few still defending Malta.

"Two 109's were coming in from my side.

"There was a loud report from my engine.

"Blue smoke came into my cockpit,

"and I was upside down and spinning again.

"I saw the blue seas and cliffs hanging over my head.

"They seemed very close. 'Am I going to be killed now?', I thought.

"I remember saying to myself,

" 'You'll have to hurry, Dennis, old chap.'

"There's not much time!

"But I must put on opposite rudder, for she came out of the spin."

SPITFIRE ENGINE ROARS

A week after his arrival, Barnham came here,

to the RAF rest camp in St Paul's Bay.

It's pretty clear from the diary that he was already exhausted,

and filthy.

As he says, "My hair was dusty, my clothes were sticking to me,

and my socks smelled."

So, stripping off, he jumped into the cool water.

It was, he says, "Quite unutterably glorious."

But even here, with spent cannon shells lying all around,

what should have been a respite came to a dramatic halt

with the arrival of yet more enemy aircraft.

Pilot Officer Herbert Mitchell summed it up perfectly.

"The tempo of life here is indescribable.

"It all makes the Battle of Britain seem like child's play."

The scars of that air battle remain.

You can still find evidence of the war all over the island,

even in a tiny field like this.

How about this?

This may look like a rusty fence post,

but in actual fact, it's a 20mm Oerlikon cannon.

And look over there. There's the other one.

15 feet apart, exactly the spacing they would have been on a Spitfire.

Fortunately, the pilot,

a Canadian called McCann, was able to bail out,

but his Spitfire plunged deep into the ground,

the wings disintegrated as it landed.

The cannons were thrust deep into the soil.

70 years on, they're still here.

Time was running out.

Unsurprisingly, many were losing their grip on humanity.

A plane was shot down.

And it actually landed in the rubble of the opera house,

and everybody cheered like mad.

It was terrible really, in war, isn't it?

German pilot Walter Schwarz came down near Attard,

in the centre of the island.

The German 109 crashed about a mile away from our house.

When I got there, there were more dogs than people.

And the dogs were eating bits of flesh from the pilot.

By the middle of May, Dennis Barnham was at breaking point.

He'd not been on the island a month.

For pilots like Barnham,

Malta was veiled by an atmosphere of doom and violence.

But the island's defences were steadily improving.

More Spitfires arrived on the 9th of May.

The control room had them airborne again in minutes.

In the next raid, the RAF shot down 60 Axis aircraft.

And the enemy was releasing pressure too.

"Thereupon the Fuhrer expressed the following dramatically

"and was very dissatisfied.

"No confidence whatsoever in the confidentiality of the Italians.

"The British are more likely to have an articulate picture

"of Italian intentions than the Italian commanders.

"The Italian assault forces are completely insufficient

"and no confidence whatsoever in the Italian fleet.

Kesselring had planned to eradicate Malta.

But the island received an unlikely reprieve.

Rommel had persuaded Hitler to back a new push in North Africa

that would require maximum resources.

Plans to invade Malta were quietly dropped.

German interest in taking Malta had waned.

But the suffering of the people was still to increase.

The island was starving.

You really get a sense of how the shortages of food

are really starting to kick in.

There's a piece here, "The Feeding Problem."

It says, "Keepers of poultry "and rabbits are their wits' end

"to solve the problem as to how to feed them.

"The ration allowed by the government

"does not even go halfway to meet the necessity."

There's another piece about firewood for bakeries.

There's no firewood left

because all the wood on the island has been burned already.

"One commodity stocks which must be rigidly conserved is coal."

This is the absolute last resort.

If you can't have fires, you can't bake bread.

The problems in producing enough food by the end of June 1942

are just getting worse and worse.

It was in June, when the siege settled down on Malta

good and proper, grim and cruel.

The phrase "target date" was introduced too.

It's when the bread runs out, along with the ammunition and fuel.

And the realisation that this was actually the test

of how long we could make everything last.

We were very rationed.

We were to have only one slice of bread.

And there were times when we could have only one egg

and we used to get them because there was the farmers beside us.

The staple food of the Maltese workman is bread.

They were given a slice or so per head a day.

The bread became black.

The government set up a feeding scheme

called the "victory kitchens".

With few supplies,

the island had to feed over 250,000 mouths every day.

You had to go with a bit of paper worth three pence.

You used to get a bowl of disgusting soup.

Or a tin between four of McConnachies herrings in tomato sauce

or something like that.

When the authorities start off instituting victory kitchens,

they were in a way unpopular, but they were a necessity.

You couldn't do without them in a way.

Because you don't have any food at home.

And sanitation was worsening.

The documents here ...

Simon Cousins has unearthed official papers

that demonstrate how bad things have become.

And even the people in highest office have to cut corners.

Break their own rules.

For example, "The flushing of lavatory pans after urination

"to be prohibited.

"And I'm not permitting anybody

"to wash their hands under running water."

But that's incredible because the flushing of loos and washing hands

in particular, are one of the number-one tenets of hygiene.

Most basic.

And this is addressed to the district medical officers.

"It is particularly necessary to economise in the issue of drugs,

"cotton wool and dressings.

"As an example, bandages should not be used once only,

"but washed when necessary and used repeatedly

"until they are completely unserviceable."

The island had survived is blitz,

but beating starvation would be a greater test.

I wondered sometimes whether we would ever leave the island.

And the Maltese people, you know, the more bombs that were dropped,

the louder their prayers.

It was quite amazing really.

They were really stoic.

They always believed that it would be all right.

I think they were rather marvellous.

On the 10th of August 1942, a convoy of 14 ships set sail from Gibraltar.

It was the last chance to save the island.

With much of the North African coast in Axis hands,

the convoy could expect to be attacked the entire way.

The chances of getting through seemed desperately remote.

On Malta, the island was now ready to unload

and distribute the goods quickly.

There was no secret about it at all.

A fortnight before, all the roads had been signposted,

saying where the trucks with the supplies had to go

to dump the food, the ammunition.

Everybody knew that the convoy was due.

With lessons of past failures learned, nothing was left to chance.

Making its way across the sea

was a convoy that carried more than food and fuel.

It carried deliverance.

For those here on Malta, all they could do now was wait.

At sea, the convoy was repeatedly attacked.

The ships were the most defended of the war,

but the forces arrayed against them were immense.

We could hear the poor, wretched ships as they got nearer,

being bombarded and so on.

One could see from the rooftops the battle going on.

The most important ship of the convoy was the SS Ohio,

a tanker filled with vital fuel.

Already hit ten times, and taking on water,

three destroyers hurried to its rescue.

From the roof of my house, I could see the entrance of the harbour

and I could see ships coming in.

Three at one time, one on its own.

Of the 14 ships, nine had been sunk.

One more was still at sea.

The Ohio was inching towards land.

With a destroyer strapped either side and a third leading her in,

as dawn broke, the Ohio finally came within sight of Grand Harbour.

Now tantalisingly close,

but travelling at no more than walking speed,

there was still no certainty she would make her destination.

The Ohio, I remember, a ship,

a big ship with its decks completely awash,

no-one on board, like a ghost,

being brought in by a destroyer and two tugs going very slowly.

All along the bastions,

crowds watched Ohio's agonisingly slow progress.

But at 8am, she finally passed through the breakwater

and into Grand Harbour.

It was the 15th of August 1942,

the most important date in Malta's calendar -

the feast day of Santa Maria.

I don't think I've ever cried with so much emotion.

And the Army were throwing their hats up in the air on the quay there.

And people were crying and singing and clapping.

The convoy of Santa Maria was so welcome

because that really brought everything.

I think at the end, if it wasn't for that convoy,

we would have been down then.

Even children took place to see that they were all emptied,

to take them away and put them in storage somewhere, the rations.

Because otherwise we would have been really starved -

no ammunition, no medicines, no nothing.

That was the most momentous moment

because we realised that was the saviour really.

I don't think there was a dry eye, you know,

people all wept with joy.

The tanker Ohio managed to come into Grand Harbour,

plus the four merchant men -

ammunition, fuel and foodstuffs.

And subsequently aeroplanes could fly and people could eat.

Dress a bit and eventually hit back hard at the Axis powers.

Just two weeks after the Ohio reach the island,

four Axis tankers were sent to Rommel's aid.

Malta's now stronger and better organised forces sank them all.

The island had seen out its darkest day.

Malta's ordeal was far from over,

but she'd faced down her stiffest challenge.

The siege had been lifted and the convoys were getting through.

In a matter of months, the island's fortunes had reversed completely.

The RAF had regained control of the skies,

her strike forces were sinking more Axis shipping than ever before

and she had in place the leadership upon which could depend.

But it was the change in Axis strategy that spared Malta.

Kasselring's fears had been realised.

Fortress Malta proved decisive in North Africa.

In the desert, Rommel's supplies were drained

as Malta was crippling his supply lines.

40% of fuel was sunk in August.

Another 20% lost in September.

The Axis adventure in North Africa was doomed.

The struggle of the Maltese people to defend their islands

has become a famous one and the debt the Allies owe them is huge.

But Malta's importance lay in the wider battle.

Its offensive role was vital.

In July 1943, the Allies turned north to Sicily.

Spearheading the invasion, lying just 60 miles away,

and now swarming with aircraft, was Malta.

Churchill later identified the defence of Malta as the keystone

to Britain's position in Egypt and the Middle East.

It was more than a great tale of hardship and valour.

Indeed, success in North Africa started and hinged on

the battle for Malta.

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