The Siege Of Malta: Spitfire (Part 3)

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams, and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well.

Speaker 1 Plus, early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com/slash wehaveways.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by eBay. Buying a car should feel secure start to finish.
That's why you should buy your next ride on eBay. Whatever you're into, eBay's got it.

Speaker 2 From classics to SUVs and trucks to imports, all in one place. And with secure purchase, the process is streamlined and protected.
Secure purchase means no DMV visit.

Speaker 2 Sellers and titles are verified, all the paperwork is handled, and financing, delivery, and insurance options are built right in.

Speaker 2 Plus, eligible vehicle purchases are backed by up to $100,000 in protection. Looking to sell your ride? Secure purchase makes that easy too.

Speaker 2 Your buyer and their funds are verified, and the title transfer and loan payoff are totally seamless. So skip the hassle, shop with confidence, buy your next car on eBay, eBay, things people love.

Speaker 2 Secure Purchase is powered by Caramel Dealer Services LLC, an eBay subsidiary.

Speaker 3 Baking Hershey's Kisses Peanut Butter Blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holidays season with friends and family.

Speaker 3 With their classic, rich, creamy milk chocolate taste, there's no better way to heartwarm the holidays than by baking with Kisses Chocolates.

Speaker 3 Find Hershey's Kisses Holiday Chocolates at your favorite retailer.

Speaker 4 Wayfair's big sale is returning. Get ready for Way Day.
For four days only, score up to 80% off all things home with free shipping on everything.

Speaker 4 From October 26th through 29th, score Wayfair's best deals, like up to 80% off area rugs, up to 60% off mattresses, up to 60% off bedroom furniture, and more exclusive doorbuster deals.

Speaker 4 So mark your calendar and shop Way Day starting October 26th at Wayfair.com.

Speaker 7 Wayfair, every style, every home.

Speaker 1 Spitfires over Malta. Their first kill.
Spitfires engaging. These dramatic two words that have chilled the hearts of many German pilots again made history today.

Speaker 1 They came through the earphones of the RAF fighter controller in the operations room of Malta at 11.03 this morning.

Speaker 1 For the first time since the war began, Spitfires are in battle over this tiny island fortress and the central Mediterranean. And they met with success in their first engagement.

Speaker 1 A flight lieutenant had the honor of the first kill. He shot down into the sea an ME-109 fighter.

Speaker 1 The successes of the fighters and the guns during the last 48 hours has been a great tonic to the Maltese people who have suffered cheerfully the intense bombing attacks since the Luftwaffe returned to Sicily during the middle of December.

Speaker 1 The word has gone round for several days that Spitfires, the magic fighters that won the Battle of Britain, had arrived on the island.

Speaker 1 That was, of course, the Times of Malta from Thursday, the 12th of March, 1942.

Speaker 1 Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, and our third part of our Fortress Spulter series. That's stirring stuff, isn't it, Jim? That's what you want to hear.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's absolutely splendid.

Speaker 6 The Maltese people cheerfully accepting being bombed. Oh,

Speaker 6 more bombs then? Oh, well.

Speaker 1 Thank God we are part of the British Empire.

Speaker 6 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 6 Anyway, I mean, it's all stirring stuff. The Spitfire's arrived at long last, but will it be enough?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because in our previous episodes, we left on rather, well, with trouble to come, but with rather a sort of a pleasant autumn with the Royal Navy and the Fleet Air Arm getting out there and bashing up the Regi Marina and the Reggie Aeronautica.

Speaker 6 And once the Lough Father had withdrawn its single scaffold and Balta under its heel, which is the shocking part, really. 42-0, by the way, just to remind everyone.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, as scores go, but always lurking in the background. It's like the eye of Sauron, isn't it? In The Lord of the Rings, the film.

Speaker 1 The eye darts around looking for where to direct its attention. And then once it's focused on where it thinks the ring is, so Malta, it sends the orcs.

Speaker 1 And the orcs, in this instance, are led by Albert Kesselring.

Speaker 6 Yeah, who obviously we're all big fans of Kesselring. Not, not my favourite person.
And we've covered his career, his varied career in very, I mean, the media often crops up, isn't it?

Speaker 6 You know, there he is in Sicily. There he is in the Battle of Britain.
There he is in Italy. Now here he is again in Malta.
Holy moany!

Speaker 6 Anyway, he's arrived in December with Le Flossa II, but also half and half the entire U-boat fleet has been sent to the Mediterranean, much to the consternation of Admiral Dernitz, who you know wants them all in the Atlantic for very obvious and sensible reasons.

Speaker 6 But no, they've been sent to the Mediterranean. This just undermines the point that everyone was sort of, you know, the traditional thing is

Speaker 6 the soft underbelly, yada, yada, yada, all this kind of nonsense. And, you know, British being obsessed with colonial outposts in the Mediterranean.
Not a bit of it.

Speaker 6 It's Hitler Hitler who's obsessed with the Mediterranean. Why? Because he doesn't like vulnerable flanks for obvious reasons.

Speaker 6 And secondly, because he's really worried about his only single supply of oil, which comes from Romania, which is accessible from the eastern Mediterranean. So that is why.

Speaker 6 And Kesselring, the mission is very, very clear. Neutralize Malta and very quickly.
So you bomb it, you starve it, and then invade it. That's basically the plan.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So as a direct result, we start with the bombing. Bombing gets worse.
Kesselring's ordered more intense air raids over Malta.

Speaker 1 And of course, now he's simply in charge of all German forces in the Mediterranean. He can call shots.

Speaker 1 And the idea is to destroy British operations and defenses on the island, bomb the island into submission so that he can seize it. And it's interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Because there's actually a direction of travel in theory.

Speaker 1 There's strategy here, rather than bombing it to look like they're taking part of the Second World War, like the Italians have done previously, or making sure the British know that the Germans are in town, because after all, you don't, if you're only really spending one ME109 Staffel on Malta, you're not that serious about dealing with it, are you?

Speaker 1 But this is different. This is of completely different intensity.

Speaker 6 Castle Ring and the Luftwaffe realise what it takes the Americans until January 1943 to realise.

Speaker 6 That what you need to do is you need to destroy the air forces first and then you're you're at liberty to do whatever you want.

Speaker 6 So, you know, this obviously from the American point of view develops into Operation Point Black signed off in June 1943. But for Malta it's very simple.

Speaker 6 You know, you attack the three airfields, you absolutely hammer them. Anytime there's any movement at all in the harbours, you hammer that as well.

Speaker 6 But once you've destroyed the fighter fighter force and the defensive force and any air forces on on multi you can do basically whatever you want and so that's problem the big problem for for for castring in january is it is that it's um you know there's still a warm-up operations as left flotter 2 is arriving you know and moving an entire air fleet is it's not you know it's not that it's not like you just arrive on the airfield and then off you go you've also got to bring in supplies and spares and tentage and food and ammunition and and fuel crucially and getting fuel to Sicily isn't easy because you know they don't have huge fleets and stuff so you know know it's not it's not just as straightforward as you think so there's a bit of warming up going on um also the weather is really bad in January as I've mentioned many times weather wasn't good in the winters of the 1940s and that extended to the southern Mediterranean and so it's you know it's not great and the problem also for for the airfields in Malta is that they are they're dirt you know Tikali is basically a dried-up lake so when it rains a lot the lake tends to fill up a bit and so it's very it's very soggy and not in a good way so it makes things very very difficult 25th of january is the first successful operation of the Malta Night Fighter Unit over Sicily.

Speaker 6 But it comes on a back of massive losses earlier that day. A group of 22 hurricanes attacked by 12 109s from above.
Seven hurricanes shot down. Then an additional one afterwards.

Speaker 6 Three return early with engine failure. And four pilots escape the planes.
Two crash land and one is killed. I mean they're the same old problems.

Speaker 6 Can't get into the air quick enough. Can't get height enough.
Yeah. Aren't as fast as 109s, which are now F's, by the way, and even faster.
And, you know, it's hopeless.

Speaker 6 So one of the guys I got to know when I was doing my work for Malta was Tommy Thompson, who'd been in 249 Squadron and had a contretemp with Barda when he'd been at North Weeld. It was very funny.

Speaker 6 But anyway,

Speaker 6 he was great fun. He had come over and joined 249 Squadron and then volunteered to join the Malta Night Fighter unit.
He just thought it'd be a bit cushier, actually.

Speaker 6 He thought, you know, the odd flight overnight, you know, it'd be safer. And he could sort of put his feet up during the day.

Speaker 6 You know, he's always, he was one of his guys who was always sort of looking for the kind of the main chance.

Speaker 6 And on that Sunday, the 25th of January, that's the day that one of their youngest guys, Alex Mackey, was only 21. He took off on a flight test.

Speaker 6 So, what you would do is you get your hurricane ready, then you do a quick kind of circuit and bumps around the island, come back down again and just check everything was okay.

Speaker 6 He takes off six ME109Fs, come in under the radar, scream over, see him taking off, shoot him down.

Speaker 6 He's killed. Not immediately, though, actually.
And then they just go straight on back to Sicily again. You know, it's kind of job done.

Speaker 6 And this is kind of part of the sort of jitter raid kind of principle of just coming over and just harrying them, making sure that no one can ever relax.

Speaker 6 And if you can get one in the air, then so much the better.

Speaker 6 Actually, Alex Mackey's crash site is the one surviving crash site of the entire battle, pretty much, because he was hit and clobbered and was desperately trying to gain height and couldn't, and circled round the back of so behind Dikali is the twin hills of Imtarfa, where's the military hospital and Medina and Rabat.

Speaker 6 He goes in around the back of that into sort of beautiful kind of market garden kind of little cute fields. And there's a wall on the far side.

Speaker 6 It used to be an old part of a sort of monastery land and he just crashed into the side of it and you can see where the wing hit the wall and just sheared off.

Speaker 6 There's a huge great gap in the wall still.

Speaker 6 Mackie's Sutton harness was broken in the force and he was flung about 25 meters forward of the of the hurricane in a pretty bad way and some locals picked him up on a ladder and used the ladder as a stretcher.

Speaker 6 He was taken to Imtarfa. He died four days later, sadly.

Speaker 6 So I remember talking to Tommy about that death and he just said, well, you know, you didn't become callous exactly, but you took death too too heavily.

Speaker 6 You know, you wouldn't have been able to carry on. So, you just sort of park it, you know.

Speaker 6 Suddenly, Malta is becoming a very tough place again.

Speaker 6 You know, it's sort of yeah, it's small and you're surrounded, and the enemy, overbearing, enemy, are just 60 miles away, and there's a lot of sea, you know.

Speaker 6 And when you're flying, there's not, you know, what do you do? You bail out into the sea. Well, good luck with that.

Speaker 6 You know, for all the reasons that Dowding was desperate for pilots not to be flying over the channel, you know, times 20 in the Mediterranean, because it's huge.

Speaker 6 And flying over Malta is really difficult because if you want to crash now, there aren't lovely soft fields on the top of chalk downlands.

Speaker 6 It's craggy and bare and there's just loads and loads of very small fields with dry stone walls all over the place.

Speaker 1 But you have to engage the enemy over the sea because you can't engage him over Kent, which is the equivalent in the Battle of Britain, isn't it? Before he gets to London, say, there's no equivalent.

Speaker 1 It's got to happen over the sea. So, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's an invidious position for the pilots, isn't it? Essentially, they don't have that luxury of a home advantage that they have in the Battle of Britain.

Speaker 6 Yeah, no, exactly. You know, end of January, things are kind of sort of everyone knows that the Luftwaffe have arrived.
Everyone's sort of slightly braced. Weather's not great.

Speaker 6 The signs of the superiority of the Germans already, you know, the attack on Alex Mackie is quite significant because they've hurtled in at kind of 350 miles an hour under the radar, low, you know, just showing off their superiority of their machines against sort of battered, rather tired hurricanes, etc.

Speaker 6 You know, and there's big, big losses in January. You know, 50 hurricanes destroyed or severely damaged on the ground.
Eight hurricanes shot down.

Speaker 6 Only 28 of the 340 that have been sent to Malta are able to fly by the end of the month. Just 8%.

Speaker 6 The requests for more reinforcements keep coming, but no one actually is asking for Spitfires.

Speaker 6 Well, Lloyd is a Hugh Pugh Lloyd, who's the AOC, the air officer commanding, he's not asking for Spitfires. You know, and this is just unactioned by the air ministry.

Speaker 6 And then Tedder, who is Air Marshal Tedder, who is the commander-in-chief of RAF Middle East in Egypt, goes, look, come on, what the hell is going on in Malta?

Speaker 6 And he's not getting the right answers from Lloyd, particularly.

Speaker 6 So he sends over Group Captain Basil Embry, who's one of his staff at air headquarters in Cairo, and says, look, just get yourself over to Malta and have a look and see what's going on.

Speaker 6 And Embry is just absolutely appalled by what he discovers. I mean, really.

Speaker 1 Embry's history in the Battle of Britain, he knows what he's talking about, which is, I think, really interesting, isn't it? He can point directly at what the issue is. You need Spitfires.

Speaker 1 The previous episodes, we've been suggesting that Spitfires be sent to Malta, but now it's it's actually official. Someone is actually going to do something about this.

Speaker 1 Also, that pilots shouldn't exceed the six-month stint on the island.

Speaker 1 I think one of the things we talked about in the Battle of Britain series is how Fighter Command is very, very careful with its pilots, husbanding its resource of pilots, making sure people don't get worn out.

Speaker 1 He's coming at it from, you know, the technology needs upgrading. The pilots need taking better care of.
And this is the really, really interesting thing. You need experienced and competent

Speaker 1 operations controller on the ground there. Those are the three things you could argue that win the Battle of Britain, aren't they?

Speaker 1 The right planes at the right time, pilots being taken care of, and an integrated control system that is then able to deploy those resources.

Speaker 1 He says, I'm informed that the German fighter pilots often fly in front of a hurricane in order to show off the superiority of the 109Fs.

Speaker 1 Every possible step should be taken to make Spitfire 5s and Kitty Hawks available with the least delay. He's put his finger on it, hasn't he, Jim?

Speaker 6 Yeah, he absolutely has. And frankly, the kind of the lack of Spitfires until he specifies this this is, I think, absolutely unforgivable and just extraordinary.
I mean, it really is.

Speaker 6 And it's interesting, you know, Tom Neal was very strong on this.

Speaker 6 And obviously, Tom Neal, great friend of the show, fantastic Battle of Britain, fighter pilot, first pilot to land in Normandy in 1944. I mean, you know, absolute ledge.

Speaker 6 But anyway, he's with 249 Squadron in Malta for much of the second half of 1941. And he thought, you know, he just said the hurricanes are absolutely useless by this stage.

Speaker 6 He said, you know, he was repeatedly asking for Spitfires every time. They all would, every time they had any chance to talk to anyone superior, they'd go, please can you get us a Spitfires?

Speaker 6 Please can you get us some Spitfires? And he knew, they all knew that tired, increasingly obsolescent hurricanes were just letting everybody down and not least the precious pilots.

Speaker 6 You know, it's a lot of time and effort goes into creating a pilot. Most of the guys in 249 Squadron were experienced pilots.
They know what they're about.

Speaker 6 They've, you know, a lot of them have been in the Battle of Britain. You're wasting an unbelievable resource by just giving them completely crap planes.

Speaker 6 the end of his tour, which is sort of, you know, he finally left in December 1941, but I think it was like November 1941. Lloyd came down to sort of give him a pep talk and said if they need anything.

Speaker 6 And Tom said, yes, we want some Spitfires. Why haven't we got any Spitfires? And Lloyd told him it wasn't the aircraft.
It was the man.

Speaker 6 And I remember Tom saying, it was the closest I ever came to punching a senior officer. You know, and as he pointed out, you know, it was Spitfires coming out of people's ears back in England.

Speaker 6 And do you know what? He's absolutely spot on. So between the 1st of November 1940 to the 31st of December December, 1941, 8,442 hurricanes were built.
11,797 Spitfires. What are they doing?

Speaker 6 They're doing completely pointless rhubarbs. You know, just not needed.
Just get them over to the Middle East.

Speaker 1 But even that, what are they doing with them all, right? Because they're not deploying 1,000 Spitfires in those rhubarbs a time, are they? You know, what are they doing with all these airframes?

Speaker 6 But I mean, you know, that's more than 3,000 more Spitfires than there are hurricanes. You know, 300 of those sent to Malta would have made all the difference.
You know, it is absolutely unbelievable.

Speaker 6 You know, obviously, right at the top is Sholto Douglas, who is the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command and Lee Mallory, who's 11th Group Commander.

Speaker 6 Then the Air Ministry, just sort of lack of vision, lack of thought, lack of any kind of imagination whatsoever. Sort of stuffiness, stodginess, sort of, oh, no, no, you can't take Spitfires.

Speaker 6 The Mandar Carriage is too narrow for Malta. What? Why?

Speaker 6 You know, if you can take off from a grass airfield in Devon, you can take off from a dusty airfield in Malta.

Speaker 6 You know, there's things called Vox filters, which they all come equipped with, which sort out

Speaker 6 the dust and stuff. I mean, it's just absolutely nonsense.
You know, Meshesmith has got a narrow undercarriage, and they're functioning from Sicily okay.

Speaker 6 So, I mean, that's an argument that just doesn't cut any mustard whatsoever. Why isn't Lloyd going, what I desperately need more than anything else, is Spitfuz?

Speaker 6 You know, only Spitfuz can that have the rate of climb that we need for this. And why isn't he appealing both to the air ministry and to his superior, Tedder?

Speaker 6 Why does it take Tedder to send Embry, who is junior in rank by about two ranks, to come to Malta to point this out? Dobby's not saying it either.

Speaker 6 In fact, even not, nor is even ABC, but I mean ABC is a naval man. It's not maybe not his job.

Speaker 1 Well, it's because they haven't sent their best people there, have they?

Speaker 6 No, because it's so sea-less, the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Well, and if you haven't sent your best person somewhere, even when they do ask for the right thing, you don't listen to them either.

Speaker 1 What lobbying power they have, and they're getting it wrong, but what lobbying power they have is minimal, isn't it?

Speaker 6 But if Churchill is going, Malta is of huge strategic importance, the Chiefs of Staff are agreeing it's of huge strategic importance and holds the key to the Mediterranean, why aren't you giving it your very best effort?

Speaker 6 I mean, it makes no sense. It's so clearly and obviously the key to unlocking success in the Mediterranean.
And certainly central Mediterranean, certainly in Libya and Egypt.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, because

Speaker 1 so much of what's gripped the RAF is their victory last year was the fight to command victory. So they know what they're doing.

Speaker 1 So they know what they're talking about because of the Battle of Britain. And because they know what they're talking about, they won't listen to anyone else.
It's to do with that. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 The victory of the Battle of Britain empowers the people that come out victorious at the end of the Battle of Britain, like Lee Ballary and Sholto Douglas, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Who, as we in a previous episode pointed out, have elbowed the competition aside, have elbowed aside the people who actually won the Battle of Britain.

Speaker 6 Well, I think it was an absolute disgrace. I think it's a really big black mark on the war strategy and particularly the performance of the RAF, not to supply Multi-Addi.

Speaker 6 It's such an easy win for them, and they just don't do it.

Speaker 6 You know, as Tom pointed out, if you have a bomb dropped on your head or being chased around the sky by an enemy aircraft 100 miles an hour faster than your own, you tend to take a more realistic view of things.

Speaker 6 I mean, you know, quite right.

Speaker 1 But it's strange that Churchill isn't across this. This is a black mark on Churchill's strategic judgment.

Speaker 6 It's a black mark

Speaker 6 on all of them. It's a black mark on Izme.
It's a black mark on the chiefs of staff.

Speaker 6 Izme, by the way, is the senior military advisor to the War Cabinet and to Churchill.

Speaker 6 It's a black mark on all of them. It's a black mark on Portal.
It's a real mistake. It would have completely changed the outcome of the way the war in the Mediterranean plays out.

Speaker 6 It would have completely transformed it. Because if the Axis shipping couldn't get to North Africa, that's it.
You know, and there's only so many Luftwaffe you can put on Sicily.

Speaker 6 And if you put them all on Sicily to try and neutralize Malta, it becomes a bigger battle. But that then means they've got less for elsewhere.

Speaker 6 So the knock-on effect, you know, whichever, however you play it out, bolstering Malta is the key.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because in the end, you draw planes away from Barbarossa. That's how shorthanded the Germans are.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 The luftwaffe is not as big as everyone thinks it is and they can't be everywhere no the naval situation is worsening as well force k who are having such a good time in the autumn run into a minefield in december just off the coast near tripoli neptune is lost the cruiser neptune three other ships turned back from altar for urgent urgent repairs so only one of the force k cruiser remains which is a real problem because this is when you want to it'd be intercepting axis supplies helping uh delivering supplies to rommel so um that's a nigh on disastrous The 18th and 9th of December, the Italians get into Alexandria Harbour and badly damage two battleships, the Valiant and the Queen Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 And ABC's on the Queen Elizabeth during this attack. So that means as the new year turns, ABC, Admiral Cunningham, does not have a functioning battle fleet to go around causing mayhem anymore.

Speaker 6 I know, and you know, an 830 fleet air on, they're still trying to do what they can, but, you know, they're just being bombed to hell. It's absolutely incessant.

Speaker 6 Nat Gold, who we talked about in an earlier episode, you know, he's been there since previous year.

Speaker 6 This is one time, you know, a bomb drops 20 feet away from him and then a 109 starts shooting in his direction.

Speaker 6 You know, he's unharmed, but there's nighttime bombing, the sleep deprivation, dire living conditions, scarce food and water, you know, bars and places you can go out to.

Speaker 6 They're depleting because they're running out of booze. You know, it's just horrendous.
He finally leaves on a boat on the 25th of January. But the intelligence picture is improving a little bit.

Speaker 6 There's a few successes. Upholder sinks merchant vessel on an Italian submarine at the beginning of January.
On 23rd of January, Ultra D-Crypts now able to detect enemy convoys leaving the harbour.

Speaker 6 69 Squadron, the Recke Squadron, they keep flying over Axis territories regardless, acting as if they haven't already deciphered the code, so that they do keep going.

Speaker 6 Adrian Warburton, who we've talked about a fair bit, Warby, he's been posted from Malta to North Africa as an instructor in Egypt at an operational training unit, an OTU.

Speaker 6 But then he's made operational again with number two photo reconnaissance, photographic reconnaissance unit. So number two PRU.

Speaker 6 And he's posted back to Malta in December 1941 to fly over and photograph a Sicilian and southern Italian airfields.

Speaker 6 One guy he's flying with him recalls how during a flight over Tripoli, their plane was hit, engine failed, armor plate, door between himself and Warby flew open, and Warby landed the plane safely regardless.

Speaker 6 His navigator says he had his hat on the top of his helmet, cigarette hanging from his lips, one elbow resting on the side of the cockpit, driving the plane with the other hand.

Speaker 6 His complete lack of fear and nonchalant attitude to the noise from the flak was absolutely fantastic. Just amazing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And they've got a bit of tech now on the on the island as well.

Speaker 1 There's a special duties flight who have a new air-to-surface radar.

Speaker 1 And this is Wellington's Wind Piece with this, essentially gives them a nighttime detection capability for tracking convoys movements in the dark.

Speaker 6 Yes, it's called ASV, isn't it? Air-to-surface vessel radar.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not named after a committee, this like ASDIC. As it works, you know, it sends out a signal, the rebound, the quicker the rebound, the closer the object.

Speaker 1 You all know, you know how this stuff works. It works the same way as the parking sensors on your car, just it's tracking convoys, which is more exciting.
I mean, it would be great, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 If you're parking the car one day and a convoy came up on it, that would be that would make things more interesting.

Speaker 6 A U-boat, yes.

Speaker 6 That makes me feel a whole lot better about parking sensors, actually.

Speaker 6 I don't really like my car bleeping at me. I don't like my car bleeping at me at all.
I find it really, really annoying.

Speaker 6 It's one of the great things about driving an old Citroen is that you don't have any of that nonsense.

Speaker 1 What you need, though, is a big cathode ray tube as a parking sensor that you lean into. Look into it with a green glow on your face.

Speaker 6 Convoy appearings

Speaker 6 there she is yes five troop ships

Speaker 6 anyway one of the guys that comes into this arrives to join the special duties flight is a chap called flight lieutenant peter rothwell he's a he was a splendid fellow had one of these luxurious moustaches and kept it right through to the end of his life and he was great and you know he he arrives um in the middle of a raid inevitably infrastructure's absolutely you know the the the building they're in has got a sort of half a ceiling off they're kind of you know it's open to the elements he said you know it was absolutely freezing The boys are all drinking gin with hot water and eating tiny pickled onions to help them to forget the cold.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's like sleeping in caves by March.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and there's nine air raids a day at this point.

Speaker 1 Although he has an early success on the 7th of February, he leads some fleet air arm squadrons towards a convoy of a tank and a merchant ship, which have both attacked and sunk.

Speaker 1 So there's a glimmer of what they can do with the ASV. But this new year is when the Axis are doing really well, aren't they?

Speaker 6 Well, yes, they are.

Speaker 1 Because they put their focus on things. Rommel's supply lines are running nicely to sustain his campaign.
Aircraft are being bombed on the ground.

Speaker 1 There's not enough crew to do the recce-work required. The bad weather is also

Speaker 1 restricting Malta more than it is the Axis powers. But this is the point.
You need Malta. If Rommel's going to succeed,

Speaker 1 Malta needs neutralising at worst, seizing at best. And in January, he's doing well against the British in Cyrenaica.

Speaker 6 Well, he does that little kind of pre-movement, doesn't he? This is following Crusader.

Speaker 6 But you know, the thing about Crusader, you know, Operation Crusader in November and December 1941, you know, that correlates to the success of Malta. Now, Malta's being hammered.

Speaker 6 So Rommel's getting his more kit over, which means he can then launch a counter-offensive on the 21st of January, which pushes him back, pushes the Allies back across Cyrenaica.

Speaker 6 And that is the point at which, you know, the British forces, 8th Army, pull up along the Gazala line, you know, 15 miles to the west of Tobruk. So you can start to see very clearly this pattern.

Speaker 6 When Malta is doing well, fortunes in North North Africa go in the favour of the British. And when Malta is under the Kosh, they turn against them.
It's just, it's absolutely clear as day.

Speaker 6 You know, this is why you get the Benghazi stakes and all the rest of it and the toing and froing backing across the north of Libya.

Speaker 6 It follows the patterns of what's going on in Malta, which, as you say, it just underlines the point.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, again and again and again, we keep coming to this strategic importance.
I think we should take a quick break. When we're back, Spitfires will arrive at some point in this second half.

Speaker 1 Don't worry, everyone. They're coming.

Speaker 6 Just haven't got there yet.

Speaker 1 We'll see you in a tick.

Speaker 8 The Lincoln Wishlist sales event is happening now. Here's what's on everyone's wish list.
Enjoying holiday jingles with brilliant 3D audio that surrounds you? Check.

Speaker 8 Watching snow flurries through the panoramic vista roof?

Speaker 6 Check.

Speaker 8 Packing up presents with the spacious Lincoln split gate?

Speaker 1 Check.

Speaker 8 Everything you want. All standard on the 2025 Lincoln Navigator SUV.
Visit your local Lincoln retailer or learn more at lincoln.com for exceptional offers on 2025 Lincoln Vehicles Today.

Speaker 9 This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Carvana lets you buy your next car on your terms.
Explore a massive inventory online, filter for what matters, and find your perfect match.

Speaker 9 Then choose delivery to your home or pick it up at one of Carvana's iconic car vending machines. Every car also comes with a seven-day money-back guarantee, so you can make sure it's the right fit.

Speaker 9 Buy your car on Carvana. Delivery or pickup fees may apply.
Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

Speaker 10 Carvana.

Speaker 11 If you used Babel, you would. Babel's conversation-based techniques teach you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

Speaker 11 With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babel today.

Speaker 11 Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription right now at babel.com/slash Spotify. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash spotify rules and restrictions may apply

Speaker 6 welcome back to we have ways of making you talk where the siege of malta grinds on how many air raids are there jim over malta in december and january at the turn of the year because this is a boggling amount 432 so what's that that's and it's more in january than there are in december so suddenly you're getting up to kind of you know like what's that 215 a month that's a lot a day i mean that's that's getting on to 10 a day isn't it Eight or nine a day.

Speaker 6 That's quite a lot on a little island. But the big problem is, is that, is that, you know, the island is running short suddenly.
You know, there hasn't been a convoy since November.

Speaker 6 Three merchantmen set off from Alexandria on the 12th of February, but are bombed and first forced to turn back. So that failed convoy leads to fresh cuts on the island.

Speaker 6 Petrol, sugar, fodder for livestock. You know, which again means, you know, you're further restricting the people's ability to move on the island.

Speaker 6 Rationing is now a big feature of everyday life for Maltese people. Supply short everywhere.
Island's less vibrant. Bars are shutting down.
Shops are shutting. Infrastructure's destroyed.

Speaker 6 You know, diminishing spaces for any kind of socialization, community, or anything like that, which has a massive dent on morale, both to the civilian population and to, of course, the people serving there as well.

Speaker 6 On the other hand, you know,

Speaker 6 the gunners are doing a sterling job and are about to absolutely take on the burden of defending the island because of the impotence of the fighters.

Speaker 6 And one of the guys I got to know was a chap called Ken Griffiths, a lovely chap he served with. He'd come on the previous summer and he served with 32 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment.

Speaker 6 So he was a Bofors gunner. Each gun team of a Bofors gun had six shifts 24 hours long.
Can you imagine? Given earplugs.

Speaker 6 But the problem is, there's hardly anyone ever used the earplugs because if you did, you couldn't hear what the crew was saying. So you just, you know, you'll go deaf, as you can imagine.

Speaker 6 And one time he's caught in a raid and a piece of shrapnel strikes his thigh. He's taken to hospital.
Then the hospital itself is bombed while he's in it. And he's taken to a shelter on a stretcher.

Speaker 6 And what he did note was he told me, and he was absolutely insistent on telling me this: the bravery of the nurses who cared for him. He said, the nurses were incredible.
No one panicked.

Speaker 6 They just got on with their jobs. One nurse calmly carried on with her job, even though she'd been hit in the leg.
She must have been in agony, but she never showed any sign of pain or indeed fear.

Speaker 6 Goes back to Suzanne Parlby, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Yes, we go back to that.

Speaker 6 And I think you get this very clear picture of the sort of worsening conditions on the island at this point. You know, it's starting to really go to pot.

Speaker 1 Everyone's working really, really long shifts. So REF ground crew are working extremely long shifts.
And obviously, you've got all these infantry on the island. You've got to use them for something.

Speaker 1 They can't, I don't know, permanently either on guard duty or not.

Speaker 1 So they're being used as labor, building pens around the edges of the airfield, which are supposed to protect them from bomb blast and 109s and being strafed.

Speaker 1 So there's a huge effort that goes into building pens. So that's everyone.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the blast pens has become a real feature. You know, they're absolutely everywhere.

Speaker 6 They're coming up every single day. They're blocks of stone.
They're flimsies, you know, four-gallon petrol cans filled with sand and dirt, you know, anything they can.

Speaker 6 And the airfields are just expanding outwards as well. So you further away you can get them from the actual heart of the runway, the better is basically the idea.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so 60,000 flimsies needed for a single Wellington.

Speaker 1 As we've said, you've got Germans just popping up out of nowhere. So this work in itself is dangerous because Mescherschmits might turn up and brass up the airfield while you're building.

Speaker 1 So it's this building pens, filling craters, grabbing a gun and firing rounds at the enemy as they come over, sheltering from bombs.

Speaker 1 So this permanent, I mean, everyone living permanently on their nerves and on adrenaline.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and I think the other thing it's worth noting is that, you know, unlike the Battle of Britain where you're getting 24 hours a week and 48 hours off every two or three or whatever and regular leave and you're being rotated, there's none of that here.

Speaker 6 And even if you do have time off, there's nothing to do because all the bars are shut and there's no drink. And you know, it's absolutely freaking miserable,

Speaker 6 you know, because Malta is a great place to go if you're going on holiday, but it's absolutely dreadful if you're stuck there and you don't want to be there and there's no fun to be had and you're facing you know mortal danger every time.

Speaker 6 And the problem is, is all the you know, there's not enough parts, so the ground crew having to sort of make do and mend and sort of you know take from Peter to kind of feed Paul and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 6 And the hurricanes are just getting

Speaker 6 more and more ineffective for an already ineffective aircraft because they're not being serviced as well as they could be. And one of the biggest problems is just endless engine failures.

Speaker 6 And there's one time, Tommy Thompson, who you know is a night fighter we mentioned, you know, flying over Camizo over Sicily, his engine cuts out five times.

Speaker 6 Every time he manages to kind of revive it. But I mean, just imagine that.
Imagine the nerves of flying over Sicily at night and your engine just keeps cutting out.

Speaker 6 Another flight, he's with two other hurricanes, they fly into 5109s. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's interesting this, isn't it? Because in a way, this is what the REF running on fumes, the Plucky Pilots, an actual amount that you could call a few here, right?

Speaker 1 It's much more than this is much more like the imagined Battle of Britain than the Battle of Britain, isn't it? What's going on here? This sort of...

Speaker 6 It's the Battle of Britain that never was.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
But

Speaker 1 he leaves Malta for a post in Egypt on the 21st of February in a Wellington, and he writes in his log book, last view of Malta was the best.

Speaker 6 Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank God that's over.

Speaker 6 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 But, I mean, it's worth pointing out.

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously, we talked about the, you know, the ebb and flow of North African fortunes for Duke forces and for the British at this point of the year goes with the ebb and flow at Malta.

Speaker 1 But actually, there's global ebb and flow, isn't there? Because we're into the beginning of 1942. And the real difference in the beginning of 1942 globally is that Japan has entered the war.

Speaker 1 The British are now fighting their two-front war or their two-opponent war that they've done everything they possibly can to avoid coming about. And it's happened anyway.

Speaker 1 And there's nothing they can do about it. Pearl Harbor in December.
Japanese take Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1941. Then in February, of course, you've got Malaya.

Speaker 1 The fall of Singapore, which is, we need to say this out loud, the biggest military capitulation in British history. Maybe we'll do an episode on it.
Maybe we just can't do it.

Speaker 1 Maybe we just can't bring ourselves to face it, Jim.

Speaker 6 I can't, certainly. I mean, you know, you're very welcome to write the notes to that one, but I'm not.

Speaker 6 It's too awful. It's too depressing.
I mean, writing about Malta's lack of Spitfires is bad enough.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a shocking blow. 80,000 men taken prisoner by a Japanese force of 35,000.
And it also means a massive blow to British imperial prestige, which is felt all over the world.

Speaker 1 And I think in a strange way, had the Americans not been also having such a terrible time of it themselves in the Philippines, actually keeping them on board would have been much, much harder.

Speaker 1 If the Philippines had gone well for the Americans, they'd have been much more justified in saying, well, this is your own pickle. Get yourselves out of it.
This does mean, though, that the the

Speaker 1 American factories are not just online for the British, but they're online for America now and for the Soviet Union, because Lend-Lease follows hot on the heels of all these developments.

Speaker 1 But the Germans have, you know, by the looks of it, are in Moscow. They're 20 miles outside the city centre.
Most of Europe has fallen under fascist control.

Speaker 1 And those governments that aren't conquered by the Germans are all turning their allegiance to them. And the Battle of the Atlantic's going badly.
It's 2 million tons sunk in 1942.

Speaker 1 So it's bad, isn't it? The start of 1942, which makes the end of 1942 all the more remarkable, let's be honest now.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And I'm much more interested in that period.

Speaker 6 To be perfectly honest.

Speaker 6 But, but I do think that I think the period we're getting into is really on Malta is really, really, really interesting.

Speaker 6 And it is without, you know, we're, you know, March, April, May, June, July, 1942 is the most intense period of air fighting for RAF fighters at any point and anywhere in the Second World War.

Speaker 6 Bar none. It just is.

Speaker 6 There is nothing to compare with it for its brutality, for its intensity, for the challenges. And it's all because they're on this tiny little island in the middle of

Speaker 6 the Mediterranean, surrounded by Axis forces. But I thought it'd be good in the next couple of episodes to focus on a, you know, see this through the prism of a couple of pilots.

Speaker 6 And one of them is Raul Daddo Longley. And he is.
When I was doing that novel, The Pair of Silver Wings, I used his logbook and his experiences as the basis of

Speaker 6 kind of the main guy in the fictional version of it. And I was very, very touched by his experiences and what happened to him because I had his logbook.
I had loads of contemporary letters.

Speaker 6 And again, you know, that character just really, really shone through. So he joins 66 Squadron along with Laddie Lucas.

Speaker 6 And Laddie Lucas is a little bit older than him and is already a sports journalist. He's a very good sportsman, amateur golfer, and a sports journalist for the Daily Express.

Speaker 6 So he's a kind of slightly older figure. And it's clear that Raoul, who's only 19, looks up to him.
He's 18 when he joins. looks up to Laddie.
They become great friends.

Speaker 6 It's slightly sort of they're friends, but it's a slightly sort of a vuncular kind of relationship as well.

Speaker 6 They joined 66 Squadron, and it's really boring because all they're doing is just sort of doing patrols over the channel. There's nothing for them to do.
So they both volunteer to go to Burma.

Speaker 6 Instead of going to Burma, they end up being held in Malta instead because suddenly this is post the Embry report. So they get to Malta where they're still there on hurricanes.

Speaker 6 And Tikali is flooded and all the rest of it. They joined 249 Squadron.
But you said you wanted action. You wanted some

Speaker 6 liveliness. You know, you were bored in Cornwall.

Speaker 6 Still sure about that?

Speaker 6 I mean, you know, arriving there, being picked up by a bus that's got no windows, it's got bullet holes all over it, taken up to the Shara Palace in Medina, which, you know, was once very, very grand, is now a kind of sort of threadbare, stony, cold large house in Medina overlooking Tikali.

Speaker 6 It's now a very, very nice Chateau and Roulette hotel.

Speaker 6 If you want to go and stay there for a weekend and have a half decent room, it's going to cost you 1300 quid. That's the kind of place it is now, but it certainly wasn't in 1942.

Speaker 6 But the whole point, one of the reasons they're there is they are there.

Speaker 6 249 Squadron is going to be the squadron that takes on, and 185 are going to be the ones that take on the Spitfires when they finally come.

Speaker 6 And they have experience of flying Spitfires because they were flying Spitfires with 66 Squadron down in Cornwall. So that is why they're there.

Speaker 6 But the Spitfires haven't got there because, as we know, they don't actually arrive until the 7th of March when they finally, finally touch down.

Speaker 1 And we go back to that reading from the Times of Mortal that you run out at the beginning yeah where they score their first their first kill and this is um on march that they arrive on the 7th of march the spitfires i mean that is a story in itself that we haven't got time for because it is absolutely bonkers how they arrive how they get there and obviously they can't fly them straight away they need to synchronize their guns align the guns they need to repaint the aircraft from from their um grey and green to a desert camouflage.

Speaker 6 Big question. Why haven't they done this first? Why haven't they thought about this beforehand?

Speaker 1 Look, Jim, just be grateful the Spitfires are here, okay? Although, personally, I'd be thinking, is the colour scheme really the thing that matters right now?

Speaker 1 I think getting them in the sky is more important, you know, but they're going to divvy up duties, aren't they? So the Hurricanes are going to do the bombers.

Speaker 1 The Spitfires are going to fly above the Hurricanes to attack the 109s. On the 9th of March, and this is during Raoul's practice flight, seven Spitfires attack JU88s and 109s from above!

Speaker 1 From above, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 6 For the first time.

Speaker 1 One of them goes into the the sea one of the 109s goes into the sea as we saw in in that newspaper extract but the germans in in february had discovered the submarine base at manuel island so they've been attacking that relentlessly i should say we're looking at double figure air raids a day yep they've struck the barracks they've killed three men doing that they're more they've destroyed the officers quarter four greek officers are killed In early March, more submarines themselves are damaged.

Speaker 1 Four submarines are damaged. HMS Talbot is sunk.
Shrimp's solution is to have two complete crews for each submarine. So the sub can go out, come back in, swap crews out, sub goes back out again.

Speaker 1 That's a pretty smart response to it, isn't it, to keep people fresh. Although, it's not like you're on R ⁇ R when you're on Walter.
This is the thing. How fresh are you?

Speaker 1 You're hiding from air raids all day.

Speaker 6 No, and they're having to go to the bottom of the sea. You know, they're having to go and get into their subs and go to the bottom of the sea until night, just sit at the bottom.

Speaker 6 Christ.

Speaker 1 And David Wanklin and Boris Kanicki agree with this, but one of the other commanders, Lieutenant Tomkinson, refuses and breaks down and says he's not going to share his boat. He'll quit.

Speaker 1 And Simpson realizes that actually he can't do this because people believe in their boats, they have loyalty to their boats. So they ditch this rotation idea.

Speaker 1 Everyone's on there, living on their nerves, aren't they? So you can see why there might be a febrile reaction to that idea because it's pretty sensible, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Your crew's an important resource, your boats are too. How best to preserve the two of them? But you can see why someone might say, no, afraid not.
Life's tough. I'm not doing it.

Speaker 6 Tompkinson, Edward Tompkinson, and Wanklin are super tight. They're absolutely best of friends.
And Urge is only is only second to Upholder in successes.

Speaker 6 And they are the absolute two champs of the Temp Submarine Flotilla. You know, the intensity of patrols where you're under, you know, you're on this very, very tight confines for a long time.

Speaker 6 You know, when you get back from patrol, you need to let your hair down and go off and hit the bars and have a few gins and pims and what have you.

Speaker 6 You know, so to get back and then have to sit at the bottom of Marsom Shet Harbour all day or sit in the shelter underneath the Lazaretto, which is sort of half full of oil.

Speaker 6 You know, it's still got oil everywhere and stinks. And, you know, sort of, it's just horrible and dark and dank and horrible.
That is not what you want.

Speaker 6 You want fresh air and to be above ground, don't you? You want to be out of the water on ground. And so it's just, it's, it's, you know, a lot is being expected of these people suddenly.

Speaker 6 Going out on patrol is incredibly dangerous, really, really fraught.

Speaker 6 You know, if you're going out, like four boats are going out on patrol, there's every chance that one of them is at least is not going to come back. And all the crews know this.

Speaker 6 So to have this situation on Malta when you're off patrol is just, that is really, really tough.

Speaker 6 Anyway, so Warby's still on the island in March, just about.

Speaker 6 He's still dating Christina Ratcliffe of the Wizbangs, who is doing whiz-bangs, or was doing whiz-bangs by night, all that, all Ensa shows and stuff.

Speaker 6 That's gone, been kicked into long grass, as you can imagine, because there's nowhere to do it.

Speaker 6 But she is working as a control, you know, in the as a plotter in the control room in Las Garris in the tunnels underneath Valletta.

Speaker 6 And on the 4th of March, is one of Warby's last flights of Malta before being posted back to Egypt.

Speaker 6 He's flying from Palermo in Sicily and Christina is in the control room and she warns him of approaching 109s. I mean, can you imagine that? No, she's on the telephones.
That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then the connection with Warby's plane is lost and, you know, everyone assumes he's been shot down till the radar station confirms through her headphones that his plane has landed safely. Amazing.

Speaker 6 I mean, just imagine that listening to that. You know, it's your lover, your boyfriend, the man in your life.

Speaker 6 And anyway, another night soon after Christina's woken by air rays, the entire building is shaken. It's about to collapse.
She rushes out to find a shelter.

Speaker 6 And once the all clear has sounded, she discovers that the corner flat is completely destroyed. Just absolute rubble.

Speaker 6 So Warby leaves Malta on the 19th of March and leaves behind an extraordinary reputation. When you think of where he's come from back in 1940, but I mean, think how long he's been out there.

Speaker 6 Just extraordinary, isn't it?

Speaker 1 The intensity of living there and deploying from there. Living there is intense.
The operational life is super intense as well. I mean, how people kept their nerve.

Speaker 1 And we go, and again, we go all the way back to that,

Speaker 1 not showing fear knowing that you're frightened containing it anyway admiral cunningham is now planning another convoy to the island uh from alexandria because the failed convoy in february and there are critical shortages of food fuel ammunition and the chiefs of staff in london seem to have the penny seems to have dropped on this our viewers that malta is of such importance both as an air staging post and as an impediment to the enemy and reinforcement routes that the most drastic steps are justifiable to sustain it finally but i would have put it the other way around wouldn't you such importance as an impediment to enemy reinforcement and as a staging post rather than the other way around, but anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, but still, finally.

Speaker 6 Come on, lads.

Speaker 1 And this involves actually coordinating the three services, Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Army is to advance in North Africa.
You know, good luck with that.

Speaker 1 And encroach on Axis airfields, distracting aircraft, and hopefully leaving the convoy undisturbed as this happens. The RAF is going to bomb airfields in Crete and Cyrenaica.

Speaker 1 Fighters from North Africa are going to escort the convoy and be met with more fighters from Malta as the convoy approaches the island.

Speaker 1 And the Navy is to escort the convoy which is only four ships but this colossal tri-service effort for four ships it's extraordinary the pampas clan campbell breckonshire and talabot and the convoy leaves alexandria on the 20th of march this is this is a big moment in in the story it has to be said yeah and the bombing is ramped up aircraft are being continually damaged the ref pick up a new word spitchard comes to the maltese spica which means of no further use so a written-off aircraft is spitchard it's a great word that is i'd forgotten that one yeah yeah we should work that back in.

Speaker 1 On the 20th of March, so the same day that the convoy leaves Alexandria, it's one of the biggest German raids yet. 63 JU-88s with their fighter escort.

Speaker 1 And Kessoring is gradually ramping it up, isn't he? He's bringing more and more stuff to bear to concentrate their power, minimize their losses.

Speaker 1 And they're striking Tikali, which is where the Spitfires in general are based. And they drop, I mean, they drop 114 tons of bombs on the airfield.

Speaker 6 Yeah, just on the 20th of March, yeah. Got a photograph of Tikali after this.
It's just, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 yeah the following day that the clear-up begins but there's a there's another raid an even bigger raid a 200 aircraft raid with 182 tons of bombs I mean this is this is as sturdy an effort as you see over London in in the summer of 1940 isn't it Jim yes it is yeah it's extraordinary and night attacks as well the the evening attacks are the singest bigger attack ever on an allied airfield with a thousand bombs dropped across the two nights yes and a lot of a lot of the um tikali airmen so the officers tend to be in the in the shara Palace in Medina, but just outside,

Speaker 6 there's a sort of busy market square and there's the Pont de Vu hotel, which is still there, by the way.

Speaker 6 And Buck McNair, who's flight lieutenant from Canada in 249 Squadron, he's there when a stray bomb lands just outside the entrance and he's blown from the ground floor to a higher floor.

Speaker 6 Upstairs, straight upstairs. He blasted up into the air.
He's fine, but it's complete carnage. There's bodies everywhere.

Speaker 6 One without a head, one with a massive hole in the stomach, another whose head is split in two halves walls covered in blood and dollops of flesh and stuff and bombs also drop on Imtarfa i mean the bottom line is this is all this is what happens with a very small island everything's very very close together and and meanwhile while all this carnage is going on on to Kali you know this is very obviously to kind of neutralize the fight force and particularly for spitfires the march convoy is is heading on its way towards malta and it and it gets through the danger zone gets through between crete and sirenaeca unscathed but then german transport planes spot them on the 21st of March.

Speaker 6 And a Malta submarine later reports that Italian ships are leaving Taranto and heading towards it.

Speaker 6 So on the 22nd of March, the next day, the aerial attacks on the convoy begin and Italian cruisers advance, but then withdraw off the convoy starts opening fire at them.

Speaker 6 That's very much the Italian fleet way. Convoy also fends off Juncker 88 attacks, but ammunition is already getting short.

Speaker 6 You know, by the 22nd March, you know, 60% of their ammo on these ships is gone. So the Italian naval force, having pulled back, is now heading to cut off the convoy as it approaches Malta.

Speaker 6 And there's three cruisers one battleship eight destroyers and again the italians ultimately withdraw because they can't get through a smokescreen nor cut off the weaving of the convoy but you know it's all looking touch and go but a miracle of miracles on the 23rd of march the talibut and pampas arrive in grand harbour to you know great relief from from the island you know and everyone on the island knows about this they've heard about the convoy coming you know the the rumor mill gets out and when they've been sighted everyone goes oh my god you know these these boats arrived it's great we've been saved it's fantastic.

Speaker 6 You know, two bombs have previously hit the Talibot, but don't explode. The Breckenshire's been hit very badly.
Engine shut down, and two destroyers try and then fail to tow it into the harbour.

Speaker 6 But ultimately, she is able to drop her anchor on the shore. And the Clan Campbell's engine room is also hit and is sunk.

Speaker 6 But the Breckenshire does make it and gets towed down to Master Schlock Bay, which is to the south of the island near sort of California seaplane basin. So three of the boats have reached Malta.

Speaker 6 Some more Spitfires arrive on the 21st as well. But again, they're not operational immediately.
And there's still not enough. And there's just insufficient spare parts for these Spitfires as well.

Speaker 6 So one of the Spitfires that's come earlier has to be broken down to provide parts for the other planes.

Speaker 6 Work on clearing the rubble and everything, but British aircraft are really, really badly outnumbered. And by the end of March, there's only five fighter planes available against...

Speaker 6 200 JU-88 Stukas 109s and Messerschmitt 110s. So clearly they're going to try and sink the convoy before its cargo's unloaded.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the docks have been smashed up too.
So is it even possible to unload the convoy?

Speaker 1 So the Talibut and Pampas dock in the Grand Harbour, not in Corridino Heights, where ships have docked before.

Speaker 6 Well, the Coradino Heights is where the Illustrous was. You remember it has that, it's very well protected.

Speaker 1 Where it can be tucked away. The cargo's transferred onto barges first, then towed to the quayside and unloaded.
It's slow and exposed and vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Maltese dockers start unloading the barges immediately, even though attacks are continuing.

Speaker 6 But they have a stroke of luck. They have a stroke of luck, and that is that the weather kicks in.
And so there's low cloud over Malta on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th of March.

Speaker 6 And it's not until the 26th that the weather finally clears. And of course, what do the Luftwaffe do?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't rely on the weather to defend yourself if you've only got five Spitfires. The 26th,

Speaker 1 the bombing intensifies. Breckenshire is hit and sunk.
Talibot and Pampas are hit and catch fire. Pampas sinks.
Talabot scuttled due to fear of its ammunition exploding.

Speaker 1 It's a very, very poor harvest. 799 tons of the 7,462 tons from the Pampas are recovered.
And a similar percentage of a tenth, roughly a tenth,

Speaker 1 972 tons of the 8,956 from Talibot. It's not good.
And nothing from Breckenshire.

Speaker 6 You know, Breckenshire is out at sea, and it's difficult to get it because it's anchored in Maasaschlot. The Pampas and Talibot, this is one of the worst moments on on Malta.

Speaker 6 And I'm afraid to say this is entirely down to the leadership. They have three days and nights in which they can unload this.
And they haven't got a plan for it.

Speaker 6 And unfortunately, once both ships are hit and catch fire, a huge plume of black smoke rises up about 10,000 feet. And everybody on the island can see it.
And everybody knows what's happening.

Speaker 6 And how on earth could this have happened?

Speaker 6 Why wasn't the army and ground crew and literally every spare body brought in to unload this as quickly as possible?

Speaker 6 You know, and why didn't they go that, you know, the bottom line is the multi-stevadors knocked off as soon as it got dark. Well, why didn't he put the flight lights on? It's dark.
There's low cloud.

Speaker 6 It is absolutely unforgivable. And it's really interesting because Wing Commander pal Snet Sheddon, who is at Luca, thinks, God, where are my parts?

Speaker 6 You know, he's desperately waiting for some spare parts. So he goes down with a whole load of guys on the night of the 25th, you know, to try and get them himself and go, where the hell's going on?

Speaker 6 He can't see anybody. So he calls the harbour master who says, no, no, no, there's no unloading during the night.
And Paul Shannon just goes, goes, what?

Speaker 6 Goes down to the harbor himself because he's absolutely no activity at all. You know, all is quiet, all is calm.
There's nothing going on. So he then rings up Lloyd.

Speaker 6 Lloyd just goes, oh, go back to sleep. You know, I don't know what you're talking about.
Then rings up the governor. Governor says exactly the same thing.

Speaker 6 And it turns out there has been no unloading at all on the night of the 23rd, 24th, or 25th. And these were two nights where there were no, on the 24th and 25th, no raids at all.

Speaker 1 But no plans for unloading either.

Speaker 6 No plans for unloading.

Speaker 6 And where they're moored on the Valletta side of Grand Harbour, you're by the kind of corniche, there's a little sort of roadway, and then there is the rock of Valletta rising up above it.

Speaker 6 The whole of that front is loaded with old warehouses dug into the rock, which have obviously been expanded to become public shelters where people are living from Valletta.

Speaker 6 So the moment there's an air raid siren, you take cover, right? But why aren't they there? Why haven't the army been drafted in? You know, what the heck is going on?

Speaker 1 So whose fault is this? Is this it's not Lloyd's fault. He's not in charge.
He's in charge of his effort, isn't he?

Speaker 6 It's it's it's the administrative council's fault. It's the administrative council.
So these are the three chiefs.

Speaker 6 There's Admiral Leeve, Vice Admiral Levum. There's General Beak, Major General Beake, who's the Army guy.
There's Lloyd.

Speaker 6 AVM Lloyd. Then there is the Lieutenant Governor, who's Sir Edward Jackson.
And then there is the governor himself, Dobby. Those are the five men running Malta's war effort.

Speaker 6 It is their responsibility for all this huge effort that's gone into creating the March Convoy, with distracting operations in North Africa, with the huge effort of the remains of the Mediterranean fleet, with RF Middle East involved, with RF Malta involved, for the ships to actually get there, and then there to be no plan for their unloading other than just normal Maltese stevadors during the day is an absolute shower of the highest orders.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is completely unforgivable.

Speaker 1 Well, this is the problem with it being the bottom of the pile personnel-wise, isn't it? This is the problem with C-list appointments, isn't it?

Speaker 6 What are they thinking? You'd have thought the first thing they would say is, right, we have to cover off every single eventuality.

Speaker 6 We need to have people on hand. We need to kind of use whatever trucks we've got, whatever cranes we've got.
We need to have them on hand. We need to work out exactly where they're going to land.

Speaker 6 We have to have all the men ready. This needs to be unloaded ASAP.

Speaker 6 And I'm afraid this is one of these instances where air raids or not, regardless of whether we're going to have to work through the night. We're just going to have to do it.

Speaker 6 If there's an air raid we'll all take cover but we've got to do everything we possibly can and that just doesn't happen lloyd then dumps the blame on dobby calls for his dismissal writes to the pm writes to churchill and says it was not the fighting which had brought us to our present past but sheer ineptitude lack of resolution and bomb-stunned brains incapable of thought correct hundred you know on this he's absolutely right but he has to take his part of the blame of this because this is a shared collaborative effort he's part of the administrative um council he's one of the chiefs he's got men he's got manpower if pal Sheddon is going down and going, what the heck's going on?

Speaker 6 Why isn't he? Yeah. Why hasn't he gone down the first night and said, okay, what's the plan?

Speaker 1 Well, he's assumed someone else has taken care of it. That's what's going on here, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Don't assume anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, but that's what's going on here, isn't it? And they're right. It's bomb-stunned brains.
They don't know what to do. They don't know what to do with themselves.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, on the 29th, seven more Spitfires arrive. You know, in the end, they get 5,200 tons of the 26,000 tons of supplies they rescued.
But here we go. There are seven more Spitfires.

Speaker 1 but April is about to get a whole lot worse, and Malta will become the most heavily bombed place on earth in our next episode.

Speaker 6 And there's been no convoy since November 1941.

Speaker 1 As you can see, the battle is in the hands of the competent, the focused, and the excellent.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's...

Speaker 1 Jim, if this is how you feel about the unloading of this convoy, I mean, we've got to do Singapore at some point.

Speaker 6 We definitely can't do Singapore. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 We could power the southeast with your righteous rage and fury.

Speaker 6 My ire.

Speaker 1 Boil a billion kettles with it.

Speaker 6 But aren't you feeling it? Aren't you feeling the frustration? Don't you feel the pain of this ineptitude?

Speaker 1 Up to a point, but it's been very much the pattern. And it just feels like, oh, what? Not again, is how I feel about that.
Oh, not again. You people are hopeless.
This is palf the appalling course.

Speaker 1 Anyway, if you're enjoying this series and want to listen to them all in one go, then of course go to our Apple channel, become officer class, as we call it.

Speaker 1 Although, not this class of officer, please. We assume that a We of Ways listener would make sure that there were people on hand to unload the convoy when it arrived.

Speaker 1 That's all, and to work through the night, perhaps.

Speaker 1 Or join our Patreon, uh, where you can experience such joys as the live cast and, of course, these podcasts, same as the Apple channel without adverts.

Speaker 1 We will see you very soon as Malta really cops it in our next episode. Cheerio, cheerio.

Speaker 12 Do you know why Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice is so delicious? It has just one ingredient, oranges. Picked at peak ripeness and squeezed within 24 hours.

Speaker 12 No extras, no fuss, just pure, joyful sunshine. Perfect for slow mornings, running errands, or watching sports.
Really anytime you're craving a fresh squeeze flavor.

Speaker 12 Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice.

Speaker 10 The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online. and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft.

Speaker 10 But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 10 Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock.
Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast.

Speaker 10 Terms apply.

Speaker 7 Introducing Taking Share Lessons from Leaders with Rob Holmes, Chairman, President, and CEO of Texas Capital.

Speaker 7 During each episode, you will hear from leaders, decision makers, and culture shapers across industries. What drives them?

Speaker 13 What tips the scales when making tough calls?

Speaker 7 How do they continue to evolve? We're here to understand the thoughts behind their actions and discover how they are taking share.

Speaker 13 For more information on Texas Capital, please visit us at our website.