An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir February 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 30 | BY PETER MULREADY MA M alta was an important military and naval base on Britain's supply route to India, positioned midway be- tween Gibraltar and Egypt. However, in the run up to WWII, British authorities considered it to be strategically unten- able and logistically unsustainable, given the proximity of Italian naval and air forces and its island isolation; the 27km by 14km island (with a population of around 250,000 in 1940) lay within 150km of airfields in Sicily. On 10th June 1940 Italy declared war on Britain and France and on the same day 55 bombers of the Italian Air Force (Regia Aero- nautica) dropped 142 bombs on three airfields in Malta, where the defending aircraft were obsolete Gloster Sea Gladiators, only three of which, Faith, Hope and Charity, flew at once. Although a further 402 Italian sorties followed over the next six months, dropping lightweight ordnance, it was not an intense enough campaign to maintain an effective state of aerial denial against the RAF on Malta. The offensive capability of the Regia Aeronautica was also lessened by the limited capabilities and combat techniques of its increasingly obsolescent medium bomber force. The defenders dug an extensive system of tunnels, air-raid shelters and underground bunkers into the limestone rock underneath the capital, Valetta. These included the Lascaris War Rooms, a complex of bunkers housing the command and control centre for the defence of Malta. Hurricane fighters were added to the defence of the island. The Luftwaffe arrived in theatre in January 1941 as a prelude to the German reinforcement of the Italian army in North Africa with the Deutsche Afrikakorps (DAK). X Fliegerkorps moved to Sic- ily, ensuring a combined air fleet of 250 aircraft was available for operations. Heavy attacks occurred that month when the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious was in dock under repair. After the 'Illustri- ous Blitz' the Germans launched numerous, small, nuisance raids, typically at night and composed of one to three bombers. By April 1941 the Germans were considering an invasion of Malta but they followed the same flawed analysis that their Ital- ian counterparts had months before - that the lack of British of- fensive aerial and naval action from Malta meant that the island had been adequately subdued from the air. In May 1941 the RAF improved facilities and better co-ordinated operations to enhance Malta's striking power against Axis convoys supplying North Africa. Malta-based submarine operations were also stepped up. Signals intelligence and Bletchley Park decryption greatly assisted in targeting Axis operations. Then in June a large part of X Fliegerkorps was transferred east for the invasion of Russia. Malta had been hard hit by X Fliegerkorps, especially compared to the Italian attacks of the previous year. Its bombers conducted 1,465 raids against Malta between January and May 1941, compared to the 402 earlier raids by the Ital- ians. However, most of these 1,465 raids were small-scale nocturnal, nuisance raids of only one-to-ten aircraft. The heavy raids, while devastating, were not conducted with enough regularity to keep Malta's airfields suppressed. With RAF Blenheim and Wellington bombers now on Malta, the island's aircraft and submarines went on the offensive, and by November these operations had resulted in losses of over 60% of supplies despatched from Italy to North Africa. The second stage of the siege began in early 1942 when Hitler deployed a full air fleet, Luftflotte 2, consisting of II Fliegerkorps and the remains of X Fliegerkorps, from the Russian front to Sicily. He also redeployed U-boats to the Mediterranean and appointed Air Field Marshal Kesselring as commander of all German forces in the Mediterranean, with the task of the annihilation of Malta, or failing that, to starve it into submission. In March air raids reached a peak, forcing the bombers and submarines to evacuate to Egypt. Supply convoys for the island were attacked and either failed to get through or arrived with only a fraction of their cargoes intact, and by April starvation and disease was setting in. The RAF's Hurricanes were replaced with Spitfires, and in a morale-boosting move the island was awarded the George Cross. On 29th and 30th April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini approved a plan for the invasion of the island, codenamed Operation Herkules, an airborne assault supported by a seaborne landing. By 10th May Kesselring believed that his forces' efforts had success- fully neutralised the offensive capabilities of Malta and declared Axis aerial supremacy over the island and central Mediterranean. Italy considered the conquest of Malta essential to victory, but THE SIEGE OF MALTA

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