ITALY BOMBS MALTA, BRITISH ISLAND FORTRESS

Malta, Central Mediterranean June 11, 1940

On this date in 1940, one day after Italy entered World War II on the side of Axis part­ner Nazi Germany, the Ital­ian Royal Air Force opened a nearly non­stop series of air raids on the Medi­ter­ra­nean is­land of Malta, a British pos­ses­sion since 1800. Benito Mus­so­lini spec­u­lated that he’d be in occu­pa­tion of the island inside three weeks. Lying 50 miles off Italy’s Sicilian coast and 200 miles north of the Ital­ian colony of Libya, Malta was a stra­te­gi­cally cru­cial Brit­ish holding, an “unsink­able air­craft carrier” in the words of Prime Minister Win­ston Chur­chill, whose nation had lost the air­craft carrier HMS Glorious in a battle in the Nor­we­gian Sea two days earlier. (The Royal Navy nearly lost the carrier HMS Illus­tri­ous east of Sicily to Axis air­craft the following year, on Janu­ary 10, 1941, and did lose the HMS Ark Royal on Novem­ber 13, 1941, after the carrier had delivered aircraft to Malta.)

Allied planes and sub­marines based or simply refueling at Malta pre­vented over 60 per­cent of the supplies slated for the Axis North Afri­can cam­paign from getting through. The island’s 16,000-strong garri­son was divided evenly between engi­neers and support person­nel for harbors and airfields and a field force of infan­try and anti­aircraft artil­lery person­nel. German Afrika Korps com­man­der Erwin Rom­mel pre­dicted in May 1941 that unless Malta fell into Axis hands, he and his Ital­ian allies would end up losing con­trol of North Africa. Her­mann Goe­ring’s Luft­waffe and Mus­so­lini’s Regia Aero­nau­tica thus directed special atten­tion to the is­land begin­ning in 1941, flying a total of 3,000 bombing runs over a two-year period in an effort to des­troy Malta’s defenses and sea­ports. In so doing they drove island defenders and civilians underground for years.

Operating from Sicilian and Libyan air bases, the Luft­waffe, taking over the Regia Aero­nau­tica’s unfinished busi­ness, achieved air supe­ri­ority over Malta in the first four months of 1941 just as Rommel’s expe­di­tionary force was being shipped to Libya. Flying through the most concen­trated anti­air­craft fire on earth, the Luft­waffe managed to drop more bombs on Malta in March and April 1942 than it did on Lon­don during the entire Blitz (Sep­tem­ber 1940 to May 1941). Fortu­nately for the Maltese, Allied con­voys were able to supply and rein­force the island, while the Royal Air Force defended its air­space, though at great cost in mate­rial and lives.

On April 15, 1942, King George VI awarded Malta the George Cross, the high­est civil­ian award for gal­lan­try in the Common­wealth, nor­mally awarded to indi­vid­uals, to honor the is­land’s quarter-million inhab­i­tants for their bravery. The Maltese placed their treasured award in the capital’s cathe­dral. Just six months later, by Nov­em­ber 1942, Axis for­tunes were dealt two Allied knock­out blows: a vic­tory at the Second Battle of El Ala­mein in Egypt and Allied Torch landings in North­west Africa. (A contem­plated high-risk, high-cost Italo-German air-sea inva­sion of the island (Opera­zi­one C3), to be staged chiefly from Sicily, never got close to kicking off: it was post­poned in June 1942 and can­celled in July.) Axis atten­tion was quickly yanked away from Malta to the Medi­ter­ranean littoral and the Eastern Front, thus effectively ending the island’s siege.



Axis Siege of Malta, June 1940 to November 1942

Malta in World War II: Bomb-damaged street, April 1942Malta in World War II: Malta-bound British convoy

Left: Service personnel and civil­ians clear up debris on a bomb-damaged street in Malta’s capi­tal Val­letta, April 1942. Beginning in January 1942 Malta became the most heavily bombed place on earth; in two and a half years 14,000 tons of bombs rained down from Axis war­planes, destroying three-quarters of Malta’s buildings. The tiny island (122 sq. miles, or 3‑1/2 times the size of New York’s Man­hattan) lay smack-dab in the center of the Medi­ter­ranean Sea and thus sat at two marine cross­roads: Italy’s sea route south to North Africa and Great Britain’s sea route west to Egypt, the Suez Canal, and its In­dian and Far Eastern pos­ses­sions. Which­ever coun­try held the Maltese ou­tpost could inter­rupt the other’s access to stra­te­gic military and commercial assets both near and far.

Right: Three British cruisers provide es­cort ser­vice for Malta-bound supply con­voys. Heavily escorted con­voys sus­tained the besieged island during Malta’s dark­est hours in mid-1942, a time when Malta had tem­po­rarily ceased to be an effec­tive offen­sive base for the Allies owing to its des­per­ate need of fuel for air and naval forces and food for its mili­tary garri­son and civil­ian popu­la­tion. (Malta’s agricul­tural resources could feed no more than a third of its popu­la­tion.) Small quanti­ties of impor­tant sup­plies were sent by fast warship and submarine during this period.

Malta in World War II: An Italian SM.79 Sparrowhawk attacks a Malta-bound convoyMalta in World War II: HMAS "Nestor" being scuttled, June 1942

Left: A convoy bound for Malta is attacked by an Italian Savoia-Mar­chetti SM.79 three-engine tor­pe­do bomber. The SM.79 was the best-known, most widely pro­duced Ital­ian medium bomber of World War II, with some 1,300 built. Originally designed as a fast pas­sen­ger air­craft in 1936, the SM.79 Sparviero (Sparrow­hawk) became famous and achieved many succ­esses as a tor­pe­do bomber in the Medi­ter­ra­nean Thea­ter, beginning in July 1940. However, Malta-based single-engine, single-seat Glos­ter Gladi­ator bi­planes and Hawker Hurri­canes began taking the shine off the SM.79’s repu­ta­tion, erasing the Regia Aero­nau­tica’s numer­i­cal advan­tage and air supe­ri­ority as more Hurri­canes followed by Spitfires settled in on Malta’s airbases.

Right: The HMAS Nestor sinks after being scuttled on June 16, 1942. The Austra­lian destroyer was part of a Malta convoy of 11 mer­chant ships carrying food, fuel, and sup­plies to the besieged is­land. Having left Haifa in Pales­tine on June 12, the Nestor was heavily damaged by an Italian bomber off Crete. Attempts to tow the ship to base were abandoned.

The Battle for Malta, 1940