Battle for Malta, The (2013)

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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 w*r,

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 w*r,

this was hell on earth.

The battle for Malta was

one of the most vicious

of the Second World w*r.

Malta is just 17 miles long,

but it endured a concentrated

att*ck 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

w*r in the Mediterranean.

And it all started with a speech in Rome.

When Italian dictator Benito

Mussolini declared w*r on Britain,

it meant w*r 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.

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 w*r.

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 k*lled 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 m*llitary history

at Cranfield University.

He believes Italy was gambling

on Britain's exit from the w*r.

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 w*r 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 w*r,

it would be the easy prize it needed to be.

The thing to remember with

Mussolini's declaration of w*r

is it takes the Italian

m*llitary by surprise,

as well as the rest of the world.

The Italians are not geared up

to fight any kind of a w*r

in any shape or form.

In the First World w*r, Italy

had lost a huge number of men.

It had completely destroyed the

nation's love of w*r-making,

any kind of enthusiasm

for m*llitary adventures.

While Mussolini waited for

the British surrender,

his bombers still flew over.

Anne Agius Ferrante was 16 in 1940

and remembers those early att*cks well.

At first we were frightened.

We got very used to the bombing,

because for the first

few months of the w*r,

when the Italians were bombing us,

they had absolutely no idea where to b*mb.

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 g*ns

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, h*tler 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 m*llitary 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 w*r.

With the Luftwaffe over

Malta, nowhere was safe.

This place may have been

designed as a m*llitary 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 w*r in North Africa would

be a battle of logistics

and that Malta was at the crux.

In January 1941, the Luftwaffe

att*cked 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 d*ed 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 g*n,

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

g*ns 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 g*ns 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 b*mb 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 m*llitary 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!

- 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 w*r

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 k*lled 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 k*lled

as a result of engine failures.

Britain regarded Malta as a base

from which to att*ck Axis shipping.

It meant her defenders were neglected

in favour of strike forces.

This is the lazaretto on Manoel Island.

During the w*r 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 att*ck 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 h*tler turned once more to

the w*r 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 b*ating

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, sh*t 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 sh*t 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 inv*de

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 att*cks

"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 w*r 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.

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 k*ll. "

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 w*r

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 w*r

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 att*cks

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 w*r 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-g*n 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 att*cks.

In eight weeks, nearly 7,000 tons

of expl*sives 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 w*r,

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 w*r,

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 att*ck 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 sh*t 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-g*n 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, h*tler met

with Mussolini to discuss plans

'to inv*de 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 k*lled 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. "

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 w*r 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 sh*t down.

And it actually landed in the

rubble of the opera house,

and everybody cheered like mad.

It was terrible really, in w*r, 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 v*olence.

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

sh*t 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 as*ault 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 h*tler to

back a new push in North Africa

that would require maximum resources.

Plans to inv*de 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 b*rned 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 amm*nit*on 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 dr*gs,

"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 b*ating 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 att*cked 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 amm*nit*on.

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 att*cked.

The ships were the most

defended of the w*r,

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 amm*nit*on, 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 -

amm*nit*on, 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.