by John Nichol
The next morning’s headline in The Times of Malta read: ‘Battle of Malta: Axis Losses Heavy’, followed by: ‘Spitfires Slaughter Stukas’.20
One good day was not an assurance of campaign victory. They were trapped on a tiny, besieged island, which, at seventeen miles by nine, was smaller than Greater London. But, unlike the Battle of Britain, there was no steady replacement of aircraft, and troops had to fight on near-empty stomachs.
Malta’s population, which now exceeded 300,000 with military included, was approaching starvation. No convoys had got through in April or for the rest of May. Aside from the Welshman’s fast runs, the only other supplies came from the submarine Clyde, which had been converted into an underwater supply ship. Steel and cordite were no substitute for calories.
While the Axis aerial attacks lost their ferocity, the blockade was throttling the island into submission. Malnutrition began to have a debilitating effect on the troops. Scores of pilots went down with ‘Malta Dog’, a violent form of dysentery caused by contaminated water. ‘To put it crudely, the definition of the “Dog” was being able to shit through the eye of the needle 50ft away at least fifteen times a day,’ wrote one pilot.21
There was little sustenance for those who could eat. ‘The rations are terrible, just two slices of bread a day and some biscuit duff, which is the mainstay of the diet,’ wrote an RAF fitter in his journal.22 ‘It can be flavoured, like mash. The tea is discoloured because the water is filled with chlorine. Some men think bromide is added to their tea to reduce their sexual longings and safeguard the local maidens. On our rations it is very debatable whether anyone could sustain an onslaught on the local ladies.’
Churchill recognised the peril, urging in a personal note to his foreign secretary that it was ‘vitally urgent’ to keep the island supplied. In June the Admiralty sent two convoys simultaneously from the east and west. Only two freighters out of a total of seventeen got through, delivering 25,000 tons of supplies. The planes were running desperately low on fuel. Malta was again on the brink of disaster.
* * *
Allan Scott, 1941
After his excursions on Rhubarbs, Allan Scott, who had lost his twin sister in the 1920s influenza epidemic, had come a long way from flying in a Fox Moth as an eleven-year-old and was eager to get on with the job of fighting in a Spitfire after ditching his career as an architect. Thus he was delighted to find himself on HMS Eagle, in July 1942, steaming eastwards towards the besieged island of Malta with dozens of badly needed Spitfires.23
At dawn on 21 July, Scott nervously took his place on deck alongside twenty-nine other pilots. He marvelled at the sight; he had never seen so many Spitfires crammed together in such a small area. It was a potent force. Now all they had to do was get off the damn carrier and find their way to Malta. He looked out over the ocean and again was assailed with doubt over whether he would be able to build up enough speed in the short distance to get off the deck. They had all heard stories of nose-heavy Spitfires that had failed to get into the air and had simply plunged into the depths, just a few bubbles marking their passing. It had kept Scott awake long into the night.
It was a fear harboured by many pilots and some lost their nerve. The morning did not start well.
A few minutes earlier Scott and the others had watched in horror as a pilot failed to pile on enough power on take-off. The Spitfire had reached the end of the carrier runway then simply tumbled over the ship’s bow straight down into the sea. A wake showed momentarily then aircraft and pilot were gone. The sight left the next pilot, an Australian, thoroughly shaken. Halfway down the deck without enough power he slammed on the brakes. The Spitfire skidded and wrapped itself around a Bofors gun.
Burying thoughts of disaster, Scott fixed his eyes on the sailor wielding the take-off ‘bats’. A circling sign was made. Scott opened the throttle. More circling. He poured on the power, watching the needle climb towards 3,000rpm.
He had to trust the deckhand implicitly. The sailor had the knowledge and experience to know the precise moment when there were enough revs for the take-off run.
The needle pushed over the 3,000rpm mark. The Spitfire’s tail shuddered. It was desperate to fly.
Scott’s stare remained fixed on the batons and the arms attached to them.
The batons shot forward.
Scott released the brakes and threw the throttle fully open. The Spitfire bolted.
To stay on a straight line he kept the white centre markings under the cannon on his left wing, building up speed as he rapidly approached the bow, partially obscured by the Spitfire’s long nose.
The needle nudged 85mph as he staggered over the bows, dropped a few feet then powered upwards. He was off.
Scott joined the formation of twenty-eight Spitfires and set course for Malta. It was the tenth Spitfire mission off a carrier that year. The Luftwaffe Staffel based in Pantelleria by now knew that with only a few rounds of ammunition and limited fuel the Spitfires were a vulnerable target. On 3 June an inbound flight from the Eagle had been detected and the fully armed and fuelled Messerschmitts were waiting. Four Spitfires were lost.
Tense and sweating, Scott scanned the blue for dark specks. It was clear. An hour later he arrived over Malta to a sky full of 109s attacking Takali, the very airfield on which he was meant to land. Then a 109 loomed in his rear-view mirror.
Scott screwed up his eyes and thought through the options. ‘Short of fuel, desperate to land and with a 109 on my tail there was no time to put the undercarriage up. I heaved the Spit into the tightest turn I have ever made in my life, the adrenaline gripping my body and helping me to evade his attack. He missed. I was able to out-turn him and shake him off. Only then could I attempt another landing.’
Scott dumped the Spitfire on the ground and tore towards the protected pen, parked, leapt out and headed for the nearest slit trench.
He looked over the lip to see his Spit already being refuelled by a string of men – army, navy and air force – passing tins of petrol from hand to hand and then up to the ‘erk’ who was straddling the fuselage as though on horseback. Desperate to get the aircraft ready for the next scramble, he was pouring the petrol into a large funnel to fill the tank. Welcome to Malta.
* * *
With almost sixty new Spitfires arriving from the Eagle during July, Kesselring knew he had to strike quickly to have one last chance at gaining air supremacy prior to invasion. Fleets of German and Italian bombers were assembled over Sicily then sent the fifty miles south to pummel the three RAF airfields.
The Spitfires were now really under pressure to see off the threat. Orders went out to the pilots to take down the enemy.
Allan Scott had been on the island for just two days when he was ordered onto a scramble against a formation of bombers escorted by Italian Reggiane fighters on 23 July. His mouth was dry with tension as he sped up through the sky to engage the enemy.24 The Spitfires’ orderly formation evaporated as aircraft broke off to seek their own individual targets. Scott began looking frantically around to find his own enemy aircraft.
‘In a split second the sky was filled with weaving and turning aircraft. I managed to get on the tail of a Reggiane fighter but at first could not fix my gunsights on him as he violently manoeuvred to avoid me. But as he broke to dive and turn for home I did manage to let fly a quick burst of cannon shells.’
Scott felt frustrated as he came back to land. He also felt some guilt at expending precious fuel and ammunition without landing a blow on the enemy.
In England, after the Battle of Britain, dogfights – something most pilots thirsted for – had been a rarity. In Malta, between snatched moments of sleeping under his wings and ‘Malta Dog’ lavatory trips, they soon became part of the daily routine for Scott.
‘The sky would be filled with aircraft, all of them twisting, turning and diving, my head jerking with them, eyes flitting from one flick of a movement to another. All actions became instinctive and so rapid, from brain to body to manoeuvring
the aircraft, that it is hard to imagine them separately. Ultimately, the machine became an extension of the mind, one pilot-machine against an enemy pilot-machine, each trying to outwit the other, each determined not to be defeated. Manoeuvrability was vital, and it was here that the Spitfire had the advantage. It was up to the pilot to use it skilfully.
‘Called to scramble, the squadron would climb at full throttle to gain as much height as possible as quickly as possible, in order to be above the approaching bombers. We knew, and accepted, that the escorting 109s would always be above us. Nevertheless, on sighting the bombers we would individually pick our targets and dive to attack. At this point the Me109s would target the Spitfires. My tactic was to go for the bomber in a turn, as I knew this would give the turret gunners difficulty in getting the correct deflection on me. It would also give me sight of any 109 preparing to attack, as he would have to turn inside me in order to get deflection.
‘The firepower I had was four machine guns and two cannons each firing twenty rounds a second which, in a three-second burst, would deliver 600 rounds, usually sufficient to destroy a bomber. In those brief three seconds it all became one movement – fire and break left. It was in the break that I could pick out an Me109 attacking, at which point the dogfight would start.’
Head-on attacks with 109s were the most fearful. Not only did they have a closing speed of 800mph, but the Germans had the advantage of being able to shoot through the Messerschmitt’s nose cone, allowing them to fire sooner.
‘These encounters happened in a flash and were far too close for comfort. Not only did the hair stand up on end, there was always the risk that a new pair of trousers would be needed on landing – as well as a cigarette or two.’
Scott soon found himself at the wrong end of the altimeter when he was engaged by two 109s at sea level. He had shot down one bomber but in doing so had expended all his ammunition. Then something extraordinary happened.
‘I was sitting on the tail of one of them and unable to shoot. The German pilots realised this. All I could do was use the Spitfire in its defensive role and keep out-turning them as they came down. After several tight turns of getting nowhere, they decided it was a stalemate. To my utter amazement they came in and, at a reasonable distance, took formation on either side of me and waggled their wings. For that brief moment we were no longer enemies but fellow aviators.
‘I often found that the Luftwaffe pilots had the same outlook as our own; of course we were at war and our take was to destroy enemy aircraft, but as far as I was concerned I was shooting at the aircraft, the pilot could bail out.’
Not all the combat above Malta was so chivalrous. Indeed, at times there were acts of murder by the Germans and retribution by the British.
Laddie Lucas believed that machine-gunning a parachuting pilot was the exception to the rule in the ‘hard, clean, ruthless fighting in the air’. But he was eyewitness to one instance of dirty fighting earlier in the year.
Dougie Leggo, a Rhodesian pilot of 249 Squadron, had successfully bailed out over the sea after being hit by a German ace who was in turn downed. ‘Leggo rolled his Spitfire onto its back and parted company. His parachute opened immediately. As he descended earthwards, a lone Messerschmitt, appearing seemingly from nowhere, sprayed the canopy with tracer bullets in a callous gesture of murder. It was over in seconds. There was no chance of retaliation.25
‘No discipline will hold the blind fury of a squadron which has witnessed such cruelty to a comrade. I knew it could only be a question of days before one of the pilots surreptitiously would find a chance of levelling the score. It came within a week. A Junkers 88 had been shot down. The aircraft had ditched in the sea and now the crew of three were in a dinghy. Their chances of being picked up must have been good. As we headed home for Takali my eye caught sight of a single Spitfire away to my left, at the bottom of a shallow, fast dive, heading straight for the dinghy. A sustained burst of fire sent geysers of sea water creeping up on the tiny, inflated boat. Not content with one run, the pilot pulled up into a tight climbing turn to the left and dived again. In war one bad act will always beget another . . .’
* * *
The continuous dogfights were exhausting both pilots and machines, and draining the island’s fuel, and by early August Malta was down to a fortnight’s aviation fuel.
It wasn’t just fuel for the aircraft. Food was again in increasingly short supply. Allan Scott had only been on the island for a month but had rapidly seen the mild excess of flesh around his belly pinched to nothing. As the pilots washed and shaved in the mornings, he looked at men whose ribs clearly showed. He saw extra notches added to trouser belts that now spilt out excess material over thinned-out waists. At other times he watched as pilots with ‘Malta Dog’ ran at full tilt into the toilet block, and then heard the groans of pain as they emptied their bowels for the umpteenth time that day. ‘Bloody well lost four stone since March,’ one angular-looking pilot croaked between loo trips enforced by the painful and debilitating diarrhoea.
There were further groans of dissatisfaction when it was announced that rations were to be reduced from four to two thousand calories a day. Scott soon discovered that a maggot-infested fruit and nut chocolate bar was considered a delicacy. ‘If it’s good enough for the maggots, it’s good enough for us,’ one pilot said. ‘Boil the weevil-infested chocolate in water, skim off the bugs, then drink the rest.’26
Bombing had destroyed water pumps. All livestock had been slaughtered. The threat of starvation was very real. All the island’s efforts to date would be for nought if supplies ran out.
Malta’s biggest resupply convoy was assembled off British waters for what was codenamed Operation Pedestal. Fourteen merchantmen were loaded with fuel, aircraft spares, ammunition, food and medical supplies.
In their midst was the modern American oil tanker, the Ohio. Crewed by British sailors, the tanker, capable of sixteen knots, was carrying 170,000 barrels of fuel, enough to supply Malta’s Spitfires for three months.
The Royal Navy escort was phenomenal in size and power. A fleet of four aircraft carriers, two battleships, along with thirty-nine cruisers and destroyers, would guard Operation Pedestal.
Both sides knew the stakes were immense.
Every available Axis warship sailed to meet them – heavy cruisers, motor torpedo boats, a dozen submarines and a force of nearly 300 bombers.
Operation Pedestal set out from the Strait of Gibraltar on 11 August. Within hours the attacks began. The ever-reliant Eagle was the first victim, sunk by submarine. The attacks became relentless. Ship after ship went down and with them their life-saving supplies.
Within three days there were only five of the original fourteen merchantmen left, including the Ohio. The Germans knew they had to sink the tanker.
At 10.45am on 13 August, the Ohio, which had suffered a torpedo strike amidships the previous day, came to a standstill sixty miles west of Malta. A Stuka lay on her deck, its bomb still unexploded. Elsewhere the damage was severe. The ship had been lifted out of the water and slammed back down when straddled by bombs. Another hit was scored on the same hole made by the torpedo, virtually breaking her back. The crew had to fight boiler fires to get the stranded ship’s engines going again.
The big prize was in reach. Sink the Ohio and Malta was sunk. The order went out to Kesselring’s bombers.
The first wave of Stukas came in shortly before 11am, a bomb sending burning liquid over her decks. Another three echelons of bombers approached. The Royal Navy destroyers lashed to the tanker to keep her afloat went to full speed, deliberately snapping the ten-inch hemp towlines.
The Ohio’s captain listened to the approaching drone of bombers, knowing all their sacrifice was about to become an irrelevance. Across his decks came the reek of burnt oil and rubber.
Suddenly he heard the approach of another engine roar over the stifling Mediterranean waters.
The crew shouted in delight and defiance as fighters tore into the bombers
. Sixteen Spitfires from Malta were hurtling towards the enemy. Unnerved by the oncoming fighters, the first echelon of aircraft broke formation, followed shortly by the second. But a section of four bombers held firm and headed for the Ohio, determined to sink the tanker no matter the consequences to themselves. The Spitfires pushed their throttles fully open in a dash to rescue the tanker. Among the pilots was Allan Scott, who latched onto a bomber. ‘As we came within range I spotted a bomber doing a run-in, carrying a full bombload. I fired a beam shot at it. My fire, from nose to tail, shot it out of the sky, and I flew through its debris.’
Other Spitfires joined in, along with the Ohio’s own AA gunners firing off with everything they had. Flak clouds clogged the sky around the RAF fighters but they carried on firing on the enemy planes, taking down two more.
But one German had made it through the wall of flak and the Spitfires snapping at his heels. As he flew over the ship a 1,000lb bomb slipped out of its cradle down towards the deck. Crippled and travelling at just five knots the Ohio was slow. But not too slow. The bomb landed in the wake just behind its stern. The force of the blast threw the tanker forward, buckling its plates and creating another great hole. But still she remained afloat.
Further attacks were beaten off by the Spitfires and Malta’s shore batteries, now within range.
The Ohio, lashed once again between two destroyers, limped towards Grand Harbour. Crowds gathered to watch the scene, some cried, nearly all cheered. They all knew the significance of the oil tanker’s arrival.
Scott had jumped with other pilots onto the bus that was heading down to Grand Harbour to witness the Ohio’s arrival. He wanted to see at close quarters the near-broken ship he had seen at sea. ‘The efforts to protect its precious cargo and to get it into port had been heroic. Frantic in their relief, the jubilant crowds came out to wave the Ohio into port, knowing only too well that had this convoy not got through Malta would have fallen and the course of the war been dramatically changed.’
