The Siege Of Malta: Operation Pedestal (Part 6)

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Speaker 5 We knew Malta was pretty crucial, but I was just a young man doing a job. The weather was marvellous.
It seemed like a piece of cake to begin with.

Speaker 5 We got into the med and nothing really happened for a while, and then the Germans attacked. Then it got terrifying.
Night after night, day after day.

Speaker 5 There was high-level bombing, stukas, very frightening. The first time you hear a Stuka, it's petrifying.

Speaker 5 They dive bomb and they have one 500-pound bomb plus smaller weapons and they have a siren on the wings and it's like a banshee from hell.

Speaker 5 And there were JU-88s, there were submarines, the E-boats from North Africa were torpedoes. There was a submarine under the Eagle which was torpedoed.
I went on deck.

Speaker 5 I saw all the people jumping into the sea, heard them screaming. It was a terrible sight.
I think some of them must have survived, but masses died. That was the first major happening of the convoy.

Speaker 5 The noise was unbelievable. 16mm guns crashing away, tracer fire, orange flashes, everything.
We never slept.

Speaker 1 The Germans were relentless, and that was Cadet Freddie Treves, junior officer officer aboard the merchant vessel waimarama welcome to we have ways of making you talk with me i'm murry and james holland for our sixth part season finale of the siege of malta and we offer you nothing but the highest drama in this episode and i know some of you maybe can't listen to these all in one big lump because there's just too much drama flying around there's just simply too much to take in

Speaker 1 you know that you emotionally you can only cope with so much but we promise you thrills and spills of the highest order, the most incredible redemption, the sort of thing that, you know, our entire special effects budget for the next series has had to go into this series.

Speaker 1 This is it. So our next series is basically.

Speaker 5 Think of the animations we're going to have on this.

Speaker 1 I can't wait, Jim.

Speaker 5 So, but I should just say that Freddie Treves was fantastic. What a lovely fellow he was.
And he became a pretty well-known character actor after the war.

Speaker 5 leading man in the in the 50s and 60s and as he got older he always you know he'd always play the kind of sort of you know the old gent and stuff and And I don't know if anyone saw the Cazlets, which was a series based on Elizabeth Jane Howard's novels, the Cazlett Chronicles, which came out, I would say, 25 years ago, maybe even more than that.

Speaker 5 And he played the brig, the kind of patriarch of the family. He was just lovely.
He lived in Wimbledon.

Speaker 5 I remember coming down there and, and, you know, he just kept breaking down on me the whole time. Really? Recalling it all and what had happened.
Yeah, just goodness.

Speaker 5 And he was a lovely old fellow, such a gent. He'd been 17

Speaker 5 when he was on Operation Pedestal.

Speaker 5 Just to give you a little bit of a spoiler here, Pedestal was the most heavily, single, most heavily defended and most heavily attacked convoy of the entire Second World War. Anyway, that's to come.

Speaker 5 First of all, it's high summer on the island of Fortress Malta, and everyone's finding the heat completely oppressive, it has to be said.

Speaker 1 Well, and the Sirocco, which is coming from North Africa, so there's more dust, which is bringing dust with it. So the island is smashed to pieces, shrouded in dust.

Speaker 1 And every time a Spitfire takes off, there's this giant, dense cloud of dust.

Speaker 1 Raul Daddu Longlo who we'd been following he said he's watching Spitfires take off then they're all away roaring across the parch field until they were lost to sight in a dense cloud of dust which got into one's hair and eyes of which was what there was no escape except the island so it's still hard and even though I mean as we related at the end of the last episode the RAF have turned things round Lord Gort's in town Keith Parks shown up so things are getting much more sort of organized and serious but their ration is cut again and at the start of July pasteurized pasteurized milk is restricted to hospitals and children aged 2 till 9.

Speaker 1 And, and I can't believe I'm having to say these words, potatoes are running short. That's a serious business, is it? The chips are down, quite literally.

Speaker 1 Court writes to Churchill saying, nations at war have managed to ration either bread or potatoes, but not both.

Speaker 1 Does not matter whether the calorific or vitamin content of a diet is sufficient scientifically to maintain health if the psychological side of the diet is wrong.

Speaker 1 To be told you will not start, but to be conscious at the same time that that your stomach is an aching void is apt to leave the average person discontented. And he's right, isn't he?

Speaker 5 Yeah, he knows what he's talking about. He's on the same rations as everybody else.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and he's riding around on a bicycle.

Speaker 5 And what's amazing is on the 2nd of August, General Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, on his way to Egypt to confer with Alexander, he calls in on Malta. Wow.

Speaker 5 He's absolutely appalled by what he sees. And he says, you know, Malta's in a terrible state.
We've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 5 The target date is now the end of September, thanks to the two ships of the June Convoy and of course the Magic Carpet Service, which is still going on.

Speaker 5 But you know, managing the meager stocks is a very, very constant battle.

Speaker 5 But the fact that the Chief of the Imperial General Staff is calling on Malta shows how this is, you know, it's what you were saying at the end of the last episode. You know, its status is lifted.

Speaker 5 It's got a GC to its name now. And, you know, all eyes are on Malta.
And the penny has dropped on a much broader footage. But Malta is the key to the whole thing.

Speaker 5 The whole future of the Mediterranean strategy depends not only on the survival of the island fortress of Malta, but its return as an offensive base. That's the key of it.

Speaker 5 And it is this military role that has to be considered. You know, in all the kind of weighing up of what we're going to do about rations, what can it do to help the struggling allies in North Africa?

Speaker 5 Because don't forget on the 21st of June, Tobruk has fallen.

Speaker 5 You know, 8th Army has flooded back across Libya into Egypt, or 60 miles from Alexandria only on the Alamein line, managed to hold out the Panzer Army Africa at the Alamein line throughout July, but the situation is very sticky.

Speaker 5 We've had the flap in Cairo. You know, this is where all the, you know, everyone's so convinced that Rommel's about to be storming in any minute, they started burning papers and stuff.

Speaker 5 And Malta has a part to play in saving it, not only saving it, turning around the tables. But how you do this whilst at the same time starving and running short of supplies is a real issue.

Speaker 5 And it starts to become a little bit of a friction between Gort and Park, the two giants on Malta, as to how best to achieve this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What Park wants to do is be much more offensive, but that requires more fuel. Park wants to keep going at the Axis supply lines, especially now that Rommel has stopped at the Alamain line.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a sense of Brooke visiting that we're in the British phase of we can have no more screw-ups, no more cock-ups. We've got to take this all much, much more seriously now.

Speaker 1 That the Chief Imperial General Staff has shown up is a clear indicator that time has run out for the amateurs.

Speaker 1 To Brooke, having fallen that that's a port that's lost to the allies but but is arguably maybe robb won't be able to use it but that also offers a point of attack doesn't it for the royal air force because it's it's in range of malta critically for the raf and for american army air force bombers operating out of egypt so this puts rommel in a vulnerable situation strategically and operationally and park reads this and he also understands i think the key thing is that park realizes that with all the Axis attention in North Africa, there's not going to be much adventure operations against Malta at this point.

Speaker 5 And you can see this, you know, in the air operations. Fadi's sort of, you know, he's mainly coming up against Italians now.
They're shooting them down.

Speaker 5 They're shooting up down 200 aircraft in, you know, 100 plus aircraft in two weeks and so on. Germans aren't going to do anything to attack Malta anytime soon.

Speaker 5 You know, now is the time to strike as much as you possibly can. You know, the ball has transferred into their court.

Speaker 5 You can see why Gort is cautious because he's the one who's having to to manage all the rations and the morale of the Maltese people and all the rest of it.

Speaker 5 And you can also see why Park is more offensively minded because his job is to manage the RAF on the island, not worry about potatoes and milk rationing. But there's no question that Park is correct.

Speaker 5 I mean, absolutely no question at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's 100% right, isn't he? No two worries about it.

Speaker 5 You know, Raronel's got to Brook, which is his nearest port, but it's really small. And that alone is 300 miles away from his front line.

Speaker 5 I mean, 300 miles, that's wider than the width of France from Germany to the Atlantic coast. So that's just his nearest port, which is next to useless because it's so small.

Speaker 5 His main supply route is from Tripoli, which is 1,300 miles away. You know, that is the same distance as Berlin to Rostov or Stalingrad or something.

Speaker 5 You know, so that is a seriously large amount away.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's a proper opportunity for an offensively minded Allied posture. And you can do this with Malta-based aircraft and submarines sinking as much as they can.

Speaker 1 And 10th submarine flotilla is back. It's come back from Alex.
Shrimp Simpson's back at Lazaretto on the 22nd of July. And he's got six submarines.
He's got six boats ready for the start of August.

Speaker 1 And this element of an offensive posture, the moment's coming. But there's only one way to do this.
And that's to bring a convoy in. to supply Malta.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's just a lump of rock in the middle of nowhere that's no use to the Allies. So here we go.

Speaker 1 And you've right from the start, Jim, you've been saying the fortunes of the Allied effort in in North Africa ebbs and flows with the fortunes of Malta. They're intertwined.
Obviously, they are.

Speaker 1 And this is also the period of the war where there can be no more withdrawals. You know, we see there's a change of attitude in North Africa coming.

Speaker 1 Massive sea change upon us, isn't there, with Alex's arrival. And that needs to go all the way down.
But you can't do that without a convoy. And so we come to...

Speaker 5 This is not hyperbole. Okay, this is not hyperbole.
The entire fate of the Mediterranean and the Middle East now depends on whether another convoy can reach Grand Harbor imminently.

Speaker 5 For both sides, the stakes couldn't be higher, and the situation could not be more dramatic.

Speaker 5 This is not me writing the movie script. This is for real people.
Everything is turning on whether the next convoy is going to reach Grand Harbor or not. Da, da, da.

Speaker 1 The stakes could not be higher. Will the convoy make it to Maltor?

Speaker 5 Or will the Axis forces come in and destroy them?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all there.

Speaker 5 I can just feel the adrenaline surge going around me right now, just thinking about this.

Speaker 5 My heart is beating a little bit quicker.

Speaker 5 I am literally on the edge of my seat.

Speaker 1 So, how James Holland gets on the edge of his seat is because the Chiefs of Staff write an order saying they've approved the largest possible convoy to be run into Malden from the West on the 15th of June.

Speaker 1 And this is because they're able to do this because the Arctic convoys are suspended over the summer months because it's daylight all day and all night in the north.

Speaker 1 So it's too difficult to move stuff around mid-summer. And Midway in early June in the Pacific, and you know, we're into the global scale of things here.
Midway in early June

Speaker 1 has also got the Royal Navy off the hook for having to send more warships to the Pacific, where they've not had a good time with the warships against the Japanese after all. No.

Speaker 1 Because the Royal Navy can manage... the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, but it can't manage the Pacific as well.
It can't do the three things. It can do two of the three things that it needs to do.

Speaker 1 There's not time to get everything straight for july so august is the the date for this convoy for operation pedestal it needs to be quick so they need merchant vessels that can do 15 knots they find 12 and they all have the same mixed cargoes we talked about previously that the cargoes are a bit of everything so that one ship goes down it doesn't take all the you know waggle pumps or whatever you need for spitfires

Speaker 5 That's a phrase we've never had.

Speaker 5 Six years of we have ways of making it. We've never had waggle pump.

Speaker 1 I finally got my waggle waggle pump in. But aviation fuel is obviously critical.
That's of a different order, and you need a specific ship for that.

Speaker 1 So they need a tanker that's the right size and speed.

Speaker 1 And fortunately, the Americans have already loaned two tankers via the British merchant shipping mission in Washington, the Kentucky, which went down in a convoy in June, but there is still the Ohio.

Speaker 1 A name of legend. It's originally built for the Texas Oil Company, but it's now manned by a British crew under the Captain Dudley Mason.
There's a name straight from the era.

Speaker 1 They've got anti-aircraft guns, which have been added to all the merchant vessels and the Ohio. And it's Ohio that is basically the balance here.

Speaker 1 The difference between Park's offensive strategy or, you know, basically hedgehog down, try and carry on, hang on in there till the next convoy.

Speaker 1 And there's another 14th ships added, another American vessel's end of July. So we've 13 merchant vessels

Speaker 1 and one tanker.

Speaker 5 The last one is the Almira Likes. Right.
Only in America can you call a ship the Almira Likes.

Speaker 1 And in the meantime, Park, though, I mean, although it's going well for Park, he's still losing planes. That's the thing to remember.

Speaker 1 He's losing about 17 Spitfires a week, which is a rate of attrition he really needs to do something about. They aren't losing as many pilots because on arrival he insisted on better SC rescue.

Speaker 1 But he really wants more pilots. And of course, his thing is he wants plenty of pilots so that people don't get worn out.
But he needs airframes. And luckily, Tedder is aware of this.

Speaker 1 And, you know, this is how it works in the British setup, really. Basically, if you've got the right sponsor, the right guardian angel higher up, you get what you want, right?

Speaker 1 And Tedder is watching out for Park, so green lights this. So you get another 59 Spitfires.

Speaker 5 Everything has changed.

Speaker 5 And actually, this is the greatest thing that the King has done by giving them the George Cross. You know, you can have all your comments about you can't eat a George Cross and all the rest of it.

Speaker 5 And it's all jolly good for Maltese morale. The biggest thing about it is it puts Malta first and foremost in the attention of all the senior commanders.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And it's not just the changing situation and the balance of power in the Mediterranean, although that is a big part of it.

Speaker 5 What the king has done, everyone wants to suck up to the king because he's a king. Britain exists in this deferential society.
The king giving it this singular honor has elevated Malta massively.

Speaker 5 So suddenly everyone's going, yeah, sure,

Speaker 5 you want the most heavily kind of in the defended convoy? Not a problem. You know, you want more Spitfires? Absolutely can do.
Yeah. And obviously success has helped as well.

Speaker 5 You know, the success of the 10th of May has made a big difference.

Speaker 1 Success breeds success. And it's post to Brooke.
No more cock-ups. We cannot carry on like this.
And so, you know, the professionals are in town, is what it really is.

Speaker 1 But I mean, I think there's a sort of parallel, isn't there, between, say, Brooke and Monty and Tedder and Park in this instance, isn't there? He's got a guardian angel. Get him what he needs.

Speaker 5 Yeah. The long and short of this is I get 59 spits arrive in June from HMS Furious and then another 38 of me flown off a week later and a further 32 after that.

Speaker 5 Anyway, among the new pilots arriving on Malta is an American pilot called Art Roscoe who I met in Hollywood all these years ago. He's one of the coolest people I've ever met.

Speaker 5 He was wearing a sort of, you know, Hawaiian shirt, still had slick back hair that was still dark even in his sort of, you know, early 80s and still smoking. He was a very, very cool guy.

Speaker 5 He'd grown up around Burbank in Hollywood and servicing the planes and, you know, getting little tips and stuff and just hanging out at the airport and eventually learned to fly and with a mate bought a plane and you know so when war broke out he was just desperate to fly so he he then joined the Royal Canadian Air Force got shipped over to England joined 71 Eagle Squadron and then when there was a when there were sort of rumors going out that they were going to be sent over to join the US Army Air Force and remember that he had this sort of astigmatism in his eye and it didn't affect his flying whatsoever but he was worried that if he got transferred to the United States Army Air Force they'd boot him out so he thought well I'm already in the REF.

Speaker 5 Let's stay in the REF. The way to stay in the REF is to run away from England.
The way to run away from England is to volunteer for service overseas. So he volunteered to go to Malta.

Speaker 1 Amazing.

Speaker 5 Which is why he ends up on HMS Furious flying off on the 10th of August. Yeah, absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 Well, and then pedestal, the convoy enters the Mediterranean Sunday, the 9th of August. Convoy's assembled.
They do an exercise as they approach the Straits of Gibraltar.

Speaker 1 On Waimer Armour, we've met Freddie Treves, who's straight out of the Nautical College in Pangbourne. It's his first posting.

Speaker 5 Four days after passing out, he joins the Waimer Armour at Clydeside, straight onto the start of pedestal.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Incredible.

Speaker 5 So in July, he's at Pangbourne. In August, the 10th, he's in the mouth of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 1 And he's 17 years old. And he's never seen anything like it when they meet at the mouth of the Med.
The whole sea seems to be covered in ships.

Speaker 1 There's four aircraft carriers and battleships, Nelson and Rodney. There's cruisers, Sirius, Nigeria, Charybdis, Manchester, Kenya, Cairo, and Phoebe, and 32 destroyers.

Speaker 5 Just can you imagine? I mean, that's quite a force, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Yes, it's the most heavily defended convoy of the entire war, or a target-rich environment, if you're the Luffauffer.

Speaker 5 It's both at the same time.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And I suppose the calculation is, if you're the Royal Navy, as long as they're attacking the warships, fine, because the convoy has to get through.
The merchant vessels have to get through.

Speaker 1 They go through the narrows at Gibraltar, stretch Gibraltar on the 9th, 10th of August. Freddy Treves, he's on the bridge and he sees a string of lights in front, which is a Spanish fishing fleet.

Speaker 1 And he wonders, of course, whether they're going to pass on the info to Berlin. I mean, obviously, they are being watched.
This is like something from a Trojan War, isn't it?

Speaker 1 You've got to make your way from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. You've got to go through the Straits of Gibraltar where you will be seen by the enemy.

Speaker 1 It's just got every element of this is an epic, isn't it?

Speaker 5 Homeric.

Speaker 1 You can keep Achilles and Agamemnon and Helen of Troy when you've got the pedestal convoy.

Speaker 5 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you pedestal. Yes.

Speaker 1 Dawn's rosy fingers and all that, that, that we need a blind poet.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, the Axis have received intelligence of the convoy, and they've got planes, ships, submarines, Schnellbuten to try and make sure that not one ship gets through.

Speaker 1 Pitched against pedestal, 659 frontline aircraft, six cruisers, 15 destroyers, 19 Schnellbuten, 16 Italian subs, and three U-boats.

Speaker 1 And a bloat with a pair of binoculars in Morocco basically watching it, an Italian spy. Well, yeah, he's the guy who's tipped them off.

Speaker 5 It's not the Spanish fishing fleet. It is an Italian spy in Spanish Morocco that has given them the nod.

Speaker 5 And as they sail on serenely on the 10th of August, day one in the Mediterranean, you know, the skies are blue. The sea looks wine dark.
All is at peace. There's barely a breath of wind.

Speaker 5 It's a glorious day. And one of the sailors on the Waimarana says to Freddy Trees, he goes, what a beautiful day.
Costs money in peacetime. And here we are for nothing.

Speaker 5 You can just see this in the Hollywood film, can't you? That scene. And that is your signal to warn you that something terrible is about to happen.

Speaker 1 It's all there. Obviously, it would be hard to move a convoy this large and it not be spotted and noticed and worried.
I mean, you know, it doesn't require a spy on the Moroccan coast, does it?

Speaker 1 This kind of effort, basically impossible to conceal.

Speaker 5 Should we take a break at this point and have a slightly extended second half of all the action?

Speaker 1 Yeah, my mouth's watering with the prospect of the drama to follow. So, yes, let's do exactly that.
We will see you in a second for the first attacks on pedestal.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to Weird Ways of Making You Talk. I mean, come on.
That was a cliffhanger, wasn't it? What do you people want?

Speaker 5 Honestly.

Speaker 1 Right, so at 1.15 on the 11th of August, this is bad. It shows that the enemy are prioritising things pretty carefully.
The carrier, the Eagle, is hit by four torpedoes south of the Baleric Islands.

Speaker 1 Eagle is obviously a great big ship. And she goes down in minutes.
Men are seen sliding down the deck along with sea hurricanes.

Speaker 1 You know, there's screaming heard from the ship as they jump into the water.

Speaker 5 Well, yes, and the sea hurricanes are there to defend the convoy. They're not flying to Malta.
They're there to defend the convoy. They've gone.
They've gone.

Speaker 1 That's that. And Freddie Cheeves, he says, I felt numb with horror.
And over on the Furious, Art Roscoe is about to set off in the fourth flight from Furious. He takes off soon after.

Speaker 1 And Jeff Wellem as well, he's part of this effort too.

Speaker 1 Sees the Eagle go down. As he takes off, he sees the white wake of a torpedo directly underneath him.
I could see the damn thing, it was just creaming along.

Speaker 1 Clearly, there was a submarine out there somewhere. I was glad to get off that ship.
There might have been a couple more coming. And Eagle's gone in eight minutes with 163 of her crew.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean, it's a devastating start to the whole thing, isn't it? And, you know, more access aircraft reach the convoy that evening, the 11th of August.

Speaker 5 Loads of near misses, but amazingly, the convoy gets through with no more hits. Morning of the 12th of August, it's day three.

Speaker 5 South of Sardinia and now north of Tunisia. And of course, now they're within easy reach of hostile airfields.

Speaker 5 And the first merchant vessel to be hit is the Deucalion, which is straddled by a four-bomb stick from a JU-88 at 1pm on the 12th of August. This is its second Malta run.

Speaker 5 Survived the first, but not the second. The fourth bomb hits her and seriously disables her.

Speaker 5 The destroyer, HMS Bramum, goes straight to the rescue and Deucalion gets going again, but only only at eight knots. And it's then attacked again at 7.45pm.

Speaker 5 And of course, now it's on its own with Bramham still desperately trying to protect her. And two JU88s swoop in low, JU88s miss.
But then it's attacked a third time at 9pm.

Speaker 5 Two Heinkel 111s attack low, and with total surprise, they actually cut their engines and glide in. Bit like the string bags over Tripoli.

Speaker 5 It glides in, dropped their torpedoes, and Dekalion is hit again. And this time, it's absolutely finished.

Speaker 5 Bramam picks up the survivors and heads off at full speed to catch catch the rest of the convoy.

Speaker 5 And just as they're leaving, you know, and the wreckage of Dekalion is sort of seen disappearing on the horizon. They heard a huge explosion as Dekalion is blowing up and sinking.
God.

Speaker 5 And meanwhile, the rest of the convoy are getting hammered. So HMS Indomitable, another aircraft carrier is singled out, hit by three bombs, doesn't sink, but it's hit.

Speaker 5 Part of the deck is collapsing and fires are breaking out. And the cruisers HMS Cairo and HMS Nigeria are also hit by torpedoes.
So as you say, Germans have done their homework, haven't they? Yeah.

Speaker 5 They're hitting the defenders first.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're getting it right. I mean, the loss of Eagle means that air attacks can be pushed home much more, much more successfully.

Speaker 5 Wow, and now Indomital's out of action.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you don't have the fighter cover that you could have.

Speaker 1 And the thing is, this is, you know, it's J-U-88s, it's Heinkels, it's aircraft that you would be able to deal with with hurricanes, with sea hurricanes, right? And yet they've all gone to the bottom.

Speaker 1 And of course, we said that it's not all the eggs in one basket, but here's a great big basket full of eggs, the Ohio, and she's struck.

Speaker 5 The one tanker?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the one tanker. The torpedo smashes into her alongside the pump room, causing an explosion that rips open a large section of her decks.

Speaker 1 A huge column of flame shoots up into the air as part of her cargo catches fire.

Speaker 5 Good God.

Speaker 1 There's chaos in the pump room. The steering gear is damaged.
And the crew are all expecting it to blow up any moment. They get ready to abandon ship, but the captain says no.

Speaker 5 Dudley Mason.

Speaker 1 We're holding firm.

Speaker 5 Hold on. Hold on.
Just wait.

Speaker 1 Exactly. They stop the engines.
They put out the fire.

Speaker 5 and interestingly the hole 27 by 24 feet i mean that's enormous yeah that's like five meters yeah yeah an hour later ohio is steaming once more carry on captain mason can you believe it truly unbelievable but anyway force zed has to turn round so this is a lot you know the last two aircraft carriers well indomitable still going um the the three aircraft carriers that are still surviving and the two battleships they leave the convoy i mean this was all weight planned you know because there's a point where you can't risk these things anymore but this is the tricky bit now you know because they're now, obviously, the force is denuded.

Speaker 5 And of the remaining force, two of the cruisers are out of action. The Caro has to be scuppered, and Nigeria is limping back to jib.

Speaker 5 And now it's down to Force X, which is under Rear Admiral Burroughs, and he transfers his flag from Nigeria to

Speaker 5 HMS Ashanti. You know, Force Z is gone, and they're still out of range from the fortress island of Malta.

Speaker 5 So, you know, by this is the point where wave after wave of enemy aircraft arriving, and the noise of battle is absolutely devastating. And it's still only the 12th of August.

Speaker 5 You know, Freddy Treves is on the Waimarama and he's watching the two merchant vessels ahead of him go down. I mean, so there they are one minute, the next minute they're here.

Speaker 5 Empire Hope and Clan Ferguson. And Clan Ferguson's hit with a massive explosion.
Men burning alive on the decks as the ship slithers down into water, then is gone.

Speaker 5 You know, it's all over and very quick. And there's this ring of flame left on the surface where it had been.
I mean, Jeepers.

Speaker 5 Incredibly, 60 of her crew are picked up, but I mean, you know, it's terrifying stuff, isn't it?

Speaker 5 And 11 p.m., Freddy is on the forecastle, absolutely frightened out of his wits and unable to stop shaking.

Speaker 5 I mean, just to remember, two weeks earlier, he'd been at the nautical college in Pangborn, you know, on the River Thames. And now here he is in this sort of, you know, absolute mayhem.

Speaker 5 But he's been taken under the wing of the oldest crew member, who's able seaman Bodori. Bodori is 60 years old and has two sons already out at sea.

Speaker 5 And he just thinks, you know, I just can't sit here at home and do nothing. I need to help.

Speaker 1 So he joins the merchant navy and really keeps a lookout for freddy and they they strike up this very brief but intense friendship and camaraderie in the kind of mayhem of operation pedestal anyway it's now day four isn't it august the 13th yeah well the pedestal report the diary says d4 13th august point 27 the attenuated line of merchant ships the reduced number of escort ships provided easy opportunities for attacks by the e-boats which is the schnellbutton which were lying in wait off kelibia So here, three of the merchant ships which failed to reach Malta were torpedoed.

Speaker 1 Of these, the Wairangi, it is believed, was hit in the engine room, was permanently disabled, but the Almira Likes was hit before the bulkhead of number one hold and could well have continued steaming to Malta.

Speaker 1 So basically, it's a happy time for the Schnellbuten, which can get in amongst it. There's a reduced convoy escort.
Rochester Castle's hit in number three hold, but staggers on at 13 knots.

Speaker 1 Glenorkey is the fourth merchant vessel to be sunk. Then HMS Manchester torpedoed.
The diary says, in the early morning, Manchester was torpedoed, supposedly by an e-boat, or possibly mined.

Speaker 1 And after the ship's company had abandoned her in the ship's boats and Carly rafts, she was scuttled by order of her commanding officer. Jim, how's this going to, how is this going to end?

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what we should do with this episode. We should just keep taking breaks.

Speaker 5 I think we could probably get 15 cliffhangers into

Speaker 5 the rest of this story. While we all go down and put a cold flannel on our foreheads.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Warangi's gone, Amira likes Santa Elisa as well. And the Bramum again is zipping about trying to pick up survivors.
So goes the aid of the crew of Santa Elisa.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and on the morning of the 13th, there's an eerie calm across the sea.

Speaker 5 Two days before, you know, Pedestal had been this huge armada, and now it's just a handful of merchant vessels and destroyers. They're still 85 miles from Malta.

Speaker 5 Dorset is one of the merchant vessels, and it sounds like a destroyer, but it isn't. Decided to split from the convoy.
And so it's taken a more northerly route. But this is also found and hit.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, captains do have the right. You can go off on your own if you want to.
And sometimes they do. They just think, well, I'm not hanging around in all this.

Speaker 5 You know, all the attention's here. I'm just going to sneak off.
But anyway, he gets hit. It's not sunk, but it's in a bad way.
And the crew abandon her and get picked up.

Speaker 5 I think the Bramham again is the one who seems to.

Speaker 1 Yes, under Lieutenant Commander J.H.

Speaker 5 Swain. The Brisbane star has also been hit at 9pm the previous evening by a Schnell boot.
But it's kind of okay despite a jagged hole in the bow and it can't keep at the 15 knots.

Speaker 5 So it's worried it's going to be a straggler behind.

Speaker 5 So Captain Riley decides to peel off and take a completely different route down the North African coastline instead, hoping that by going on a completely different route, you know, it'll be assumed it's an Axis ship and just sort of sneak past.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's high stakes, isn't it? It's a risky thing to do. And actually in the morning of the 13th, she's stopped by a French launch coming out of Tunisia.

Speaker 5 But Riley manages to talk his way out of trouble and is allowed to continue on his way. But anyway, that morning, 13th of August, it's the turn of the Weimar Armour.

Speaker 5 And you'll remember, Freddy Treves is on there. And it's hit by two JU-88s.
The first bomb scores a direct hit on the deck cargo of tinned petrol. So there's a massive explosion.

Speaker 5 And Joe McCarthy, who's an engine artificier on the Rochester Castle, has come up on deck for a breather and he sees it. And he just said, you know, it was incredible.

Speaker 5 The fireball was so intense and sudden the second bomber was blown up mid-air from the blast.

Speaker 5 This is where Freddie Treves has his miraculous escape because blast blows him and Bo Dory from their action stations on the forecastle when the ship is hit.

Speaker 5 And fortunately, there's no fuel nearby, and he's blown through a doorway in the bulkhead onto a bag of lime. And so is Bodori.
And Bodori lands on top of him.

Speaker 5 Treves feels very, very numb and thinks he's going to die. But Strange is calm about this.
And then feeling comes back into his body. And Bodori lifts himself up and runs out onto the deck.

Speaker 5 And there's thick brown smoke. And he looks up at the bridge, and it's listing badly to starboard.
And then Freddy remembers a premonition he's had the previous night about being hit.

Speaker 5 And the ship had been listing then but to port rather than to starboard as it is now.

Speaker 5 So he decides to rush over to the port side and look down at the water and hesitates for a moment, wondering whether to jump.

Speaker 5 And then just at that moment of indecision, the ship groans and sinks further and Freddy goes for it. He just jumps.
He's wearing a buoyancy suit and his tin helmet.

Speaker 5 He smacks into the water and swims away as fast as he can. And eventually he pauses to catch his breath and he's surrounded by debris and he could hear the cries of panic stricken men drowning.

Speaker 5 More planes are roaring overhead and machine gunning the water.

Speaker 5 And the Waimerama is sinking and sinking really quickly, although flames are still billowing upwards and smoke is rising in this sort of huge dark column high into the sky.

Speaker 5 And then he sees his friend Bodori and his friend couldn't swim. And he's standing on a kind of sort of raft of flotsam, silhouetted against the huge flames burning on the surface of the water.

Speaker 5 His arms outstretched, sort of imploring him to help. And Freddy wants to save him and he wants to haul him out of the carnage, but he just can't.

Speaker 5 The suction from the sinking ship was pulling the raft closer to the flames. And Freddy could feel this suction pulling him too.

Speaker 5 He doesn't know what to do, and he's desperately trying to save himself, but he knows he can't get to Bodori. As Bodori gets engulfed by flames, he can hear his friend screaming.

Speaker 5 And Freddy watches his friend, this kindly old man who's looked after him, burned to his death. And that point, he absolutely broke down on me.
And he just said, This has haunted me ever since.

Speaker 1 Dear God.

Speaker 5 And the Waimarama sinks in three minutes and there's a famous photograph of this and all you can see is this long winding zigzagging streak of oil and smoke still coming out from where it disappears between the waves it's just

Speaker 1 it's 17 i mean just imagine yeah terrifying stuff isn't it yeah it's absolutely shocking The enemy are being pretty organized about all this, aren't they? Because they come for Ohio again.

Speaker 1 It's obviously a tanker. Obviously got fuel.

Speaker 5 Freddy Trees, by the way, is picked up by HMS Ledbury, which is another of the destroyers.

Speaker 1 Yes, commanded by Lieutenant Commander R.P. Hill, Royal Navy.
A Stuka comes for the Ohio, and the Ashanti is alongside firing furiously, trying to provide cover.

Speaker 1 They hit one Stuka and it's screaming as it hits the water, bounces and lands on Ohio's deck in a shower of flames. But still, the tanker doesn't go up.

Speaker 5 If that had been a movie, you and I'd be watching that and go, that would never happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's bollocks. Yeah, yeah.
They're all too close together. Yeah, and so on.

Speaker 1 She stops dead in the water, though. The boiler fires go out.
She's essentially stuck. And now...
Because we're inching closer and closer to Malta.

Speaker 5 We've got... We don't know what's happened to the Brisbane Star.
We've still got the Rochester Castle, the Melbourne Star, and the can't remember the other one.

Speaker 5 So we've got three merchant vessels still in the main convoy.

Speaker 5 We've got the Ohio dead in the water, and we've got the Brisbane Star has headed off down the African coast, and we don't know what's happened to it. That's all that's left.
A handful of destroyers.

Speaker 5 We're just going to pause there and divert what's going on in Malta.

Speaker 1 Obviously the question of air cover and what Park and Vice Admiral Leitham are planning to do over Malta because of course what you've got to do is try and fend the Italian Navy off as best you can.

Speaker 1 Deter them. So Adrian Warburton, our rec-pilot Supreme, he's been out with his extraordinary eyesight and his nonchalant manner.
He's been charting the movements of the Italians.

Speaker 1 You've also got ASV, which is the surface radar. Wellington's out looking for the Italian fleet over the night of the 12th, 13th of August.
What they're doing is it's a game of bluff.

Speaker 1 So they're setting off flares, illuminating the Italian fleet to make the Italians think they're about to be attacked.

Speaker 1 Because after all, the track record with the Italian fleet is attack them and they go away, basically.

Speaker 5 Don't like this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, steam hard for Naples or whatever. And their fleet air arm Albacores are also sent off to attack.

Speaker 1 And at two o'clock on the 13th of August in the morning, this seems to work and the fleet seems to be turning away from the convoy. So it looks like they've made this work.

Speaker 1 And Woody Woodall has also, he's got false radio traffic. The Italians are listening, Germans are listening.
There's non-existent Liberator crews flying out of Malta looking for the fleet.

Speaker 1 So they're keeping up a deception as well as this sort of feint.

Speaker 1 And Simpson's subs are also lying in wait. So his boats are ready to go.
HMS Unbroken strikes two Italian cruisers with four torpedoes and they're both stricken.

Speaker 1 So as it happens, Mussolini had already ordered the fleet to turn back after Kessarin refused it air cover because as we we know the Luftwaffe can't be everywhere. So that's worked, hasn't it?

Speaker 1 Although the convoy is under enormous pressure, it's reduced it at least.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And Art Roscoe, who we met, our American friend, who'd flown off Furious, just dodging a torpedo, has landed on Malta on the 11th of August, along with our other old friend Jeff Wellham, formerly of 92 Squadron in the Battle of Britain, and both joined 1435 Squadron.

Speaker 5 It's just been given squadron status because it was 1435 flight.

Speaker 5 And by 13th of August, both that day, both are flying their first convoy convoy patrols and they find the convoy under attack from six italian bombers and spitfires attack them as the italians are beginning their bomb run and all six scatter so it's not just the navy it's the italian navy it's the it's the bombers too are kind of going to run away uh one is shot down and and rosco hits another one and so you know what you see is that the air cover is suddenly making all the difference and so there's now a glimmer of hope that some of them might be able to get through rochester castle has suffered a number of near misses that morning you know but these near misses that the shrapnel's going everywhere so they're all getting sort of spitchered and pummeled by this by the shrapnel.

Speaker 5 And you know, fires have started and flooding one of the magazines. And by the time she was fixed, she's 36 feet below the waterline at the front and 30 at the stern, so really pretty long way down.

Speaker 5 Leaks going everywhere, but still making good progress. It's still going on.
I mean, you know, these ships are some of them are just you know, they're refusing to kind of give in.

Speaker 5 And of course, the Spitfires can now escort them all the way to Malta. And at 6:25 p.m.
that night, the 13th of August, the Rochester Castle is the first ship to reach Grand Harbour.

Speaker 5 And soon after, the Port Chalmers and the Melbourne Star follow. Hooray! Three merchant vessels have managed to make it to Grand Harbour.

Speaker 5 And of course, there's huge crowds there to witness this and to cheer them. Everyone knows on the island the importance of this convoy.
Everyone knows what's going on.

Speaker 5 And it is a moment of triumph, but they've still got, you know, bated breath because will the Ohio manage to make it? That's the key thing.

Speaker 5 And actually, August the 14th, the fifth day, our old friend, the Brisbane star turns up. Its ploy of going down the North African coastline has worked.

Speaker 5 It's gone down the North African coastline and then done a diagonal turn overnight, basically. So it's hugged the Tunisian coast, the French coast during the day of

Speaker 5 the 13th, and then overnight has just gone hell for lever straight across the Mediterranean and reached Grand Harbour. And so its lonely detour has paid off.

Speaker 5 So the Ohio and Dorset Dorset are still at sea. Dorset, in fact, actually has sunk by this point.
And Bramham has gone to kind of pick up the survivors.

Speaker 5 But the Ohio, it has to be said, it's in big, big trouble.

Speaker 1 Yep. This is in the movie where, I don't know, the steering wheel breaks off the bus that's loaded with explosives.

Speaker 1 There's a large piece of her side sticking out, which is acting as a rudder. So she's turning in circles.
So she's very vulnerable. She's attacked again.

Speaker 1 It's a near miss, but it causes even more damage. And the crew abandon ship because they think she's about to break up.
She's going to split in half any moment. We're off ski.

Speaker 1 So HMS Penn circles the Ohio, protecting her while waiting for reinforcements. And incredibly, the ship, she doesn't sink.
So the crew de-abandon ship, whatever the naval phrase is.

Speaker 5 Go back on board. Go back on board.

Speaker 1 But even though the enemy do then make a concerted effort with aircraft, there are plenty of Spitfires. And Ohio's only hit the once.

Speaker 5 Only the once. Yeah.
The trouble is, though,

Speaker 5 very often being hit the once is enough.

Speaker 1 Well, yes, of course.

Speaker 5 Not for the mighty Ohio.

Speaker 1 Not for the mighty Ohio. The cat with more than nine lives.
And the bomb destroys the engine room. Crew, abandon ship again, right? I mean, this is incredible.

Speaker 1 Bramham, and I think the crew of Bramham, they've been everywhere all the time. They're absolutely incredible, the effort on that ship.

Speaker 1 She's picked up people from the Dorset, then she's looking for survivors for the Manchester, and then she joins joins the Penn and the Ledbury at the Ohio.

Speaker 1 And obviously, you've got to get the Ohio moving. There's another plan hatched to get the Ohio moving, and there's one last attack, and a Stuka comes in and drops a thousand-pound bomb.

Speaker 1 There's another near misk, dangerously close to smashing another hole in the stern. But the crew of the abandoned ship yet again.

Speaker 5 Well, the point is, is the Ohio is still floating. It hasn't broken its back.
Despite this yet another hole in its stern, it's still somehow going.

Speaker 5 So if they can just, and someone thinks, well, you know what?

Speaker 5 We need to cheer everyone up so i'm going to switch on the radio and they tune in and hear chattanooga choo-choo by the glenn miller band and so they put it through the ship's speakers and this sort of you know this jazz is just floating across the mediterranean sea between these destroyers and the ohio that night and lifts everyone's spirits i mean who could not have their spirits lifted by glenn miller corny movie nonsense that never happened It's not happening.

Speaker 5 It's not happening. You imagine that on a movie.
You tutton just

Speaker 1 corny movie moment that's been stuck in. That never happened.
They've added that to to the story. It's one of those moments.
You go, that didn't happen. They've done that to make us feel good.

Speaker 5 It happened. It happened.
It happened.

Speaker 1 HMS Braman, which is now my favorite ship of the Second World War, which is, of course, a Hunt-class destroyer. She's lashed to the Ohio with the pen.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so basically they go either side. They go either side.

Speaker 5 So the Bram is on one side. The pen is on the other, with Leadbri ahead acting as the rudder.
And survivors from other merchant vessels volunteer to board the Ohio and man the remaining guns.

Speaker 5 So the food is now getting a bit short because they've taken longer than they intended to get to Malta.

Speaker 5 So the Ohio raid their Christmas lockers and they pull out party hats, chocolate and rum and go, well, you know, might as well. Oh, come on.

Speaker 5 And they're now traveling at walking pace, but darkness is descending and darkness means cover from aircraft. You know, they're not safe from U-boats.

Speaker 5 They're not safe from Italian submarines, but they've got the destroyers beside them and they're inching ever closer to Malta.

Speaker 5 And Lieutenant Ted Fawcett is on the Bramham and I interviewed him at some length and he was a charming fellow and he said you know as dawn broke you know there was no sudden arrival into Grand Harbour we seem to be looking at the breakwaters for hours so here we are suddenly we're on the 15th of August day six of the pedestal convoy and it is the feast day of Santa Maria and we just go back to the Hollywood movie again you know so so Catholic feast days are really really important on on Malta and every church parish has its own feast day but the national feast day is the Ferra Gosta the 15th of August it's the feast day of Santa Maria, the Holy Mother of Jesus.

Speaker 5 It's the most important of all. And here we are on the 15th of August with the Ohio inching through the breakwaters at 8 o'clock in the morning of Grand Harbour and all around.

Speaker 5 You know, the whole, all the bastions of Malta are crowded with people. Fort Ricosoli is on the kind of southern mouth of Malta, at Fort St.

Speaker 5 Elmo on the northern mouth, along the lower Baracas, the upper Baracas, Baracas, the bastions of the three cities. There they all are cheering, waving flags.

Speaker 5 And Ted Fawcett, who's on the bridge of the Bramham, says the relief was absolutely unbelievable. Undoubtedly, it was one of the greatest moments of my life.

Speaker 5 And Michael Montebello, remember him bombed out at Senglair in the illustrious Blitz? He was there too. He's only 10 years old.

Speaker 5 He goes, there were so many people, you wouldn't have been able to put a needle between them.

Speaker 5 He said everybody knew exactly what was on the Ohio and how important it was, more so than the other four merchant ships. Just amazing scenes.
Amazing scenes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, the idea of the crew of the Ohio in their party hats, in their Santa hats, arriving on the feast day of Santa Maria.

Speaker 5 Eating chocolate and drinking rum.

Speaker 1 It's just, I'm sorry. This is all too commercial.
It's been done to tug our heartstrings. It's all completely unbelievable.
I mean,

Speaker 1 absolutely extraordinary. And of course, to top it off, Screwball Burling, he's recovered from Malta Dog and he celebrates by flying inverted upside down the length of the Grand Harbour.

Speaker 1 Over he goes like that.

Speaker 5 It's too much.

Speaker 5 It's too much.

Speaker 1 Anthony Kimmins, a war correspondent on board the Ohio.

Speaker 5 That's a good gig, isn't it? I mean,

Speaker 5 well, yeah.

Speaker 1 He's played by Tom Hanks. We need to start casting this because it's just too ridiculous.
He says, if ever there was an example of dogged perseverance against all odds, this was it.

Speaker 1 Any one of those hundreds of bombs in the right place and she would have gone up in a sheet of flame. It's too good.

Speaker 5 Brad Pitt is Dudley Mason.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. We screwball Burling.
I mean, I don't know. Dave Batoista is Screwball Burling.
How we fit him in a Spitfire is a different question.

Speaker 5 No, that'd be Barry Keogh, wouldn't it? Barry Keogh would be Screwball Burling.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Paul Maskell is Ted Fawcett.

Speaker 5 The guy who was in the TV series Harry Potter is now Freddy Treves.

Speaker 1 Russell Crowe is Keith Park.

Speaker 5 It's all there, isn't it? It's my Spitfires. No, he wouldn't say that.
He'd He'd go, get my Spitfires ready.

Speaker 5 I want them to fly plenty of cover. Husband to a murdered wife, father to a murdered child.
I will have my revenge against those JU-88s and those stukers.

Speaker 1 Tom Hollander is Field Marshal Gort VC on his bicycle.

Speaker 5 Yes, he'd be brilliant, wouldn't he? He'd be absolutely perfect at that. Tom Hollander is Lord Gort.

Speaker 1 Anyway, this means that Park can now take on the offensive because he's got the fuel he needs for his Spitfires, his Bowfoots, and Wellingtons, and bow fighters are on their way. So.

Speaker 5 Well, how many tons have been delivered?

Speaker 1 55,000.

Speaker 5 55,000 tons. It's the biggest convoy so far in Malta's war.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 The pedestal convoy saves Malta and therefore saves, actually, therefore that results in saves the Royal Navy the trouble of having to go to such dramatic ends again because with Malta properly established and defended, you could do something about the enemy effort and bring the conflict in North Africa to a conclusion is the truth.

Speaker 5 It's time to take the fight back to the enemy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and this is evidenced with with we have a Malta strike force now.

Speaker 1 This is Wing Commander Patrick Gibb, who commands 39 Squadron and 217 Squadron, Beauforts, Bowfighters, getting out and giving Axis shipping what for?

Speaker 5 And they absolutely hammer them. They absolutely hammer them.
Second half of August, September 1942, they go for it, as do the 10th Submarine Frontilla.

Speaker 1 And you've got offensive sweeps now over Sicily. On the 20th of August, you know, the contrast with April is staggering, really, isn't it? Art Roscoe and George Burling are on this sweep.

Speaker 1 And Burling says, not a Jerry stirred not a drop of flag was poured up at us. We rolled along coming out over Cape Scaramir and beadled home.

Speaker 1 Nothing much to it by the pleasure of sticking your nose into the enemy's country for a change. I mean you're absolutely right.
It's Barry Keogh, isn't it? Playing George Burling.

Speaker 1 And this means you've now got a proper offensive in the Mediterranean screwing things up for Rommel.

Speaker 5 Big time. He's already been blunted at Alamein by Aukinlek's 8th Army in July.

Speaker 5 So he knows he's got this tantalizing opportunity to kind of do the big breakthrough, get to Alexandria, get to Suez Canal, get to the oil fields in the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 And he knows he needs his supplies to get through to allow him to do one last great big effort to burst through the Alamein line. But key to this is the safe arrival of six tankers.

Speaker 5 It's those six oil tankers, those fuel tankers of precious fuel that are his most important cargo. And every single one of them is sunk.

Speaker 5 Every single one of them sent to the floor, most of them by Malta-based aircraft and submarines. Alam Halfa is a defeat.

Speaker 5 It's the last time that the Axis forces go forward in Egypt, and it allows 8th Army to build up its strength by more.

Speaker 5 And as Rommel notes, Malta has the lives of many thousands of Germans and Italian soldiers on its conscious. Trust me, they're not really on its conscious at all.

Speaker 5 They're just only too delighted they could have fought back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, boo-hoo, Rommel.

Speaker 5 You know, and then in October, sensing that 8th Army is about to attack again, Kessring thinks, okay, clearly Malta is the main effort.

Speaker 5 By the way, plans for Operation Hercules have been long ago kicked into the long grass. I mean, they're just not.

Speaker 5 You remember Hitler had said to Kessering, keep your shirt on, Field Marshal Kessering. I will do it.
Well, he doesn't do it. You know, the big gamble has failed.

Speaker 5 There is no invasion of Malta, of course.

Speaker 5 In October, Kessering tries to reduce the offensive capabilities of Malta one last time, launches an amazing big blitz again on the island on the 11th of October.

Speaker 5 And by that time, Berling has already shot down 24 enemy aircraft, including four in a day twice.

Speaker 5 The blitz, the October Blitz begins on the morning of the 11th of October and they're just absolutely slaughtered.

Speaker 5 Although it has to be said that both George Berling and Art Rusco are wounded on the 14th of October and so that's the end of their time on Malta.

Speaker 5 But by that point, Castlering's forces have been absolutely smashed. And the headline in the Times of Malta on the 15th of October is, 82 in four days, Malta's answer to Luftwaffe's new bid.

Speaker 5 I mean, fantastic stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the thousandth Axis aircraft was shot down over on near Malta by Berling on the 14th of October, which is quite something, isn't it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, before he gets hit himself and has to bail out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 In that October blitz, the Germans lose 350 aircraft, or the Axis do, rather. You know, Kessering's failed.
He's trying to bolt the door after the, you know, stable door, isn't he? A little.

Speaker 1 It's too late. Their timing has been absolutely rotten.
And that ship has sailed, literally, and that ship was Ohio. Is the truth? Yep.
They've no answer.

Speaker 1 And the first complete convoy, Operation Stonehenge, reaches Malta in November 1942 with just one ship damaged and 35,000 tons brought in. And that's the official end of the siege.

Speaker 1 But really, it's pedestal that means that Malta is saved. The siege of Malta is over.
Not that there are tides in the Mediterranean, but the tide has turned in the Mediterranean.

Speaker 1 And we come to our seasoned finale. What we need now is a scene where people meet on a balcony and drink gin and tonics and say, can you remember what it was like in April?

Speaker 1 Do you remember what it was like in April, boy?

Speaker 5 It was ghastly.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking of everyone who can't drink that gin and tonic with us now.

Speaker 5 i don't know about you but i just need to pause and get my breath back um i think we should do a war awful episode to kind of wash up on malta don't you yeah i'm glad you're in a better mood though jim i feel so much better a couple of episodes ago we were in a dark place ladies and gentlemen we were we were walking through the valley of the shadow now we're finishing the series on a on a glorious high we've returned to the sunlit uplands

Speaker 1 Well, thanks everyone for listening.

Speaker 5 What a story, eh? What a story. It's just, it's amazing, Malta's wartime story, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, and JR, our producer in our live stream chat, has said, would be a good movie, though.
And he's absolutely right.

Speaker 5 It would.

Speaker 1 It'd be an extraordinary film. It needs six to eight parts, basically, to do it justice, I would say.

Speaker 1 If you join our Patreon, you will find One Man's Window, which is Dennis Barnum's memoir of flying in Malta, Malta Spitfire Pilot, it's also known as, which is a perfect segue, I think, to encourage you to become a member.

Speaker 1 There's audiobooks on there. There's other afflicted Second World War interested people chatting with one another.
There's live casts. There's all sorts of stuff, and no ads, of course.

Speaker 1 Now, whatever we're going to do next, Jim, I don't know that we can promise the roller coaster ride of high drama, excitement, and special effects. I don't know that we can do that.

Speaker 1 But thanks, everyone, for listening. The siege of Malta has been lifted.
George Cross has been polished one more time. Thanks, everyone.
We'll see you again soon. Cheerio.

Speaker 5 Cheerio.

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