The failure of ‘Essential’ was a crippling blow. On Malta the situation deteriorated day by day. Flour, bread, sugar, coal, benzene and kerosene were either running short or not running at all. Even drinking water was in short supply. Rationing and the communal ‘Victory Kitchens’ ensured that the hardships were shared, but that was small comfort as they grew harder to bear. All in all, Malta’s life-support system was stretched to the limit. Although it was estimated that the island could hold out until the end of April, there is no doubt that its ability to resist an invasion had been growing steadily weaker since the middle of March.
In the purely military sphere the shortages were also taking their toll. The Breconshire’s failure in January had left the stocks of aviation fuel dangerously depleted, a situation only saved, ironically, by the shortage of planes to use them up. By the end of March only six Hurricanes remained of the island’s fighter force.
Ammunition was also a pressing problem. There was enough for small arms and the light anti-aircraft guns, but not for the vital heavy anti-aircraft weapons. Since these latter guns, together with the now largely non-existent air force, formed the backbone of the island’s air defence it was unlikely that any serious opposition could be offered an airborne assault while it was still in the air. Malta’s survival would have to be fought for on the ground.
Through 1941 the garrison had been steadily increased despite the calls of other theatres, and by August consisted of some thirteen infantry battalions and the King’s Own Malta Regiment, altogether some 23,000 men. It had been intended to raise the numbers still further but the Luftwaffe’s grip on the Central Mediterranean made reinforcement impossible.
Up until January 1942 the plans for thwarting an invasion rested, in the worst British tradition, on an almost exclusively static conception of defence. A line of fortifications - the Victoria Lines - was built from east to west so as to cut off the north-western corner of the island, and the coastline of the remaining two-thirds was fortified. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines were sown on and behind the beaches, wire was laid in profusion, and an anti-tank ditch excavated. Concrete and mutually-supporting pill-boxes were built in three parallel lines inland from the coast. Others were scattered around the all-important airstrips. Only a few companies were allotted a mobile role; these would counterattack in the event of an enemy threat to the airfields. The rest of the garrison was supposed to sit inside its defences and wait.
General Beak, who arrived in January to take over the military command, did not think much of these arrangements. He wanted a considerably enlarged mobile reserve. But at the end of the month the Luftwaffe offensive moved into top gear, and most of the garrison’s time was taken up with repairing damage done by the bombing. There was little time for training exercises, or for the implementation of Beak’s ideas. The island’s defence would have to rest, in the great tradition of Rourke’s Drift, on the thin red line and a wall to put it behind. Unfortunately the British were wearing khaki now, and the Ju52s would not be dropping Zulus.
III
The invasion of Crete the previous May had been a costly affair for Student’s XI Airborne Corps. Out of 22,000 troops committed over 6000 had been killed, and 3764 of those had been members of the Airborne Corps. The losses in experienced officers and NCOs had been particularly high. It seemed to many as if the fallschirmjager’s days of glory were now at an end.
Student had disagreed, and for several months had been awaiting the opportunity to prove the doubters wrong. Now, with Malta, he had been given his opportunity. The mistakes made during the Cretan operation - inadequate reconnaissance, wrong choice of dropping zones, the inadequate preparation of the Greek airfields - could, he believed, have been rectified. In the Malta operation they would be rectified.
This time round the fallschirmjager would be dropping with their Italian allies, a less disheartening prospect than might have been imagined by those used to decrying the efforts of the Italian infantry in the desert. Italy, like Germany and the Soviet Union, had taken an early interest in the possibilities of airborne assault, and experiments in the new form of warfare had been proceeding since the late ‘20s. The Italian parachute battalions raised during the previous decade - by 1942 expanded into the Folgore and Nemba divisions - were well-trained, and possessed of a high esprit de corps. If the Germans were to be let down by the Italians, it would not be by the airborne troops.
The preparations for ‘Operation C3’ (the Italian designation) had begun in late November under the overall supervision of Student. It was recognised that it would have to take place by mid-April at the latest, for both Rommel and the Army in Russia would be demanding the return of their air strength by that time. The invasion could not take place much earlier on account of the conditions at sea.
The forces available were certainly large. 30,000 men were to be lifted in by air and another 70,000 by sea; an invasion force which outnumbered the British garrison by four to one. Four hundred Ju52s and two hundred Savoia 82s would drop the paratroopers and bring in the other airborne troops once an airfield had been captured. There were also over five hundred gliders available, most of them either the standard DFS230s or the newer Gotha 242s. The former, which had been used in Crete, carried only ten men, the latter either twenty-five men or the equivalent in hardware. There was also thirty of the aptly-named Me321 ‘Gigants’; these could transport either two hundred men, a 75mm anti-tank gun, or a small tank. They had to be towed by a troika of Me 110s.
In Crete the gliders had gone in first, their silent approach maximising the element of surprise. But in the case of Malta surprise was considered highly unlikely, and in any case the nature of the terrain - most notably the stone walls which cut the island into tiny segments - made it impossible to land the gliders anywhere outside the airfield areas.
The one outstanding advantage Malta had over Crete was the short distance the troops would have to be carried. Each transport plane could be expected to make the thirty-minute run four times each way in the course of a day. In the two runs envisaged on the afternoon of the invasion some 12,000 troops could be dropped.
The amphibious operation presented more difficulties. For one thing the six Italian divisions involved were of dubious quality, for another it was doubted in some quarters whether the Italian battlefleet would defend their passage with sufficient resolution. There were also the usual anxieties about insufficient oil supplies.
But for all this, there was no lack of confidence in the Axis camp. The Prince of Piedmont, the conservatively competent nominal commander of the operation, expected it to be successful. Student was also optimistic. His subordinate, Major Rancke, had submitted glowing reports on the state of the Folgore Division; the size of the forces involved in the operation was almost overwhelming. Student saw no flaws in the plan. Kesselring did expect problems with the amphibious operation, but did not anticipate any with the more vital airborne invasion. Only the Italian generals commanding the six infantry divisions expressed deep pessimism, but their doubts were swept aside by Mussolini’s military supremo, Marshal Cavallero. He was hoping for the laurels.
One major source of all this confidence was the thoroughness of the reconnaissance operation. Every square inch of Malta had been caught by the camera’s eye; the type and position of all but the most expertly camouflaged defence positions had been noted and taken into account. As Student said later: ‘we even knew the calibre of the coastal guns, and how many degrees they could be turned inwards.’ The invaders had a very clear idea of what they were invading.
Armed with all this information the German-Italian Planning Staff in Rome had drafted their plan of attack. The area chosen for the initial assault was in the south-eastern corner of the island, for the coasts in this section, though rockier and steeper, was known to be less well defended. At around noon on the chosen day intensive attacks would be launched on the anti-aircraft positions in this area and, as the last bombs fell, the airborne troops would drop from their transpo
rt planes in the areas north and west of their primary objectives, Hal Far airfield.
By this time the amphibious operation would be getting underway. The spearhead force - 8300 men, artillery and tanks carried in self-propelled craft - would beach that night in the Marsa Scirocco Bay, within easy linking distance of the airborne troops. On the following day continuous flights of transport planes would bring in more troops to the captured Hal Far airfield, and the bulk of the invasion fleet would be pulling in to secured beaches. The Luftwaffe would be controlling the skies and, aided by the Italian Navy and German U-boats, the sea. Conquering the rest of the island would be no problem.
IV
The initial drop went well. Over Crete the pilots had overcompensated for the strong offshore winds and dropped the troops too far inland, but here the winds were light and onshore and no such mistake was made. By 15.00 nearly 4000 German and Italian paratroopers had been dropped into the intended zone west of Hal Far. Only a dozen or so transport planes had been downed by the AA fire, and most of the troops had safely reached the ground. Once there they swiftly regrouped and, closely supported by the diving Stukas, began to consolidate and expand their bridgehead.
In the other major dropping-zone, between the Birzebbugia-Tarshin road and Hal Far, the Axis losses were heavier. The anti-aircraft positions, more numerous and better camouflaged, claimed a healthy number of the Ju52s, and the defenders’ machine-guns killed some five per cent of the 7th Airborne Division’s 3rd and 4th Battalions before they hit the ground. But again the drop was well concentrated, and soon the other ninety-five per cent was consolidating its position, one unit setting up a north-facing road-block as the others moved east into the rear of the coastal defences and south against the northern perimeter of Hal Far airfield.
As the invaders began to put down roots in Malta’s stony soil the island’s civil and military leaders were meeting in Sir William Dobbie’s office in Valletta’s Government House. For many weeks they had been expecting the worst, and here it was. The island’s air force was virtually non-existent, and no help could be expected from the Royal Navy until the following day. In any case the scale of naval assistance was unlikely to offer any panaceas. Vice-Admiral Syfret, commanding Force H at Gibraltar, had only the small carrier Argus, the battleship Malaya, the cruiser Hermione and eight destroyers available for the rescue mission. The US carrier Wasp was also docked in the shadow of the Rock, but her employment in such a dangerous undertaking required the assent of Washington. No one had thought to secure this permission in advance. It was the early hours of 13 April before Syfret could begin his thousand-mile journey east to the embattled island.
The enemy was at sea by dusk on the 12th, the Italian troop-carrying craft moving round Cape Passaro escorted by the Italian Battlefleet. They had a mere seventy miles of ocean to cross, and the only threat to their passage was that offered by British submarines. One of these, the Upright, had observed the invasion fleet assembling outside Syracuse harbour. It had radioed the information to Valletta and was now shadowing the convoy south.
On Malta itself darkness fell with the battle for Hal Far airfield well underway. Seven miles away in Valletta Generals Beak and Dobbie were struggling to make sense of the confused information at their disposal. Beak decided on caution. He would commit his small mobile reserve against the bridgeheads, but would not move any other units from their present positions until such time as he knew the landfall of the armada coming down from the north.
He had, like his predecessors on Crete, got the priorities wrong. It was the airborne threat that had to be countered, and immediately. If the Axis troops gained control of Hal Far they could bring in heavy equipment and large troop reinforcements by glider and transport plane. Sooner or later the respective forces would be equalised, and from there on the odds would rise against the defenders. Already, with the second mass-drop around 16.30, there were almost 9000 Axis troops on the island, over half of them German. And the battle for Hal Far was not going well for the incumbents.
By 21.00 the bridgehead west of the airfield was four miles wide and over a mile deep. The Folgore units on the northern and western flanks had taken the village of Safi and were ensconced in the outskirts of Imkabba. On the eastern flank the fallschirmjager of 7th Airborne’s 1st and 2nd Battalions had reached the western and southern perimeters of the airfields, and were working their way around the latter towards the Kalafrana road. To the north of the airfield the 3rd and 4th Battalions were holding, with some difficulty, the Tarshin road and closing in on Birzebbugia and the southern beaches of the Marsa Scirocco. The two bridgeheads were now less than a mile apart.
The fighting continued through the night. The German troops poured mortar fire into the 231st Infantry Brigade’s positions in and around Hal Far. In the early hours the airfield was the scene of bitter hand-to-hand encounters as the forces from the two bridgeheads squeezed the British defenders out to the north and east.
Another mile to the north-east similar struggles were taking place for the coastal stretch around Birzebbugia. The village itself fell just before midnight; further to the south the Kalafrana flying-boat base was overrun soon afterwards. The beaches between the two were cleared in the succeeding hours in circumstances which could only be described as chaotic, for it was at this time that the amphibious invasion force arrived in Marsa Scirocco Bay.
It had been realised by the Axis planners that their timetable was a tight one, and that Marsa Scirocco might not be cleared of the enemy before the first landings took place, but it was felt that leaving the amphibious operation any later would allow the Royal Navy time to intervene. So at 03.00 on 13 April the first Italian boats sailed into a hail of fire from the British guns on the northern arm of the bay, and soon afterwards those troops fortunate enough to survive this enfilade clambered on to mine-strewn beaches and into the British-German inferno raging above them. Not surprisingly the Italian losses were incredibly high; something in the region of forty per cent of the first wave did not survive to see the dawn. Much of the equipment, including most of the light tanks, followed the boats to the bottom of the bay. It was not an easy baptism of fire for the inexperienced Italian infantry.
Dawn brought relief to the invading force. As the sun rose the Stukas and Messerschmitts filled the skies once more. General Beak had received news of the Italian armada’s destination soon after 02.30; he had then issued the orders that a more adventurous spirit would have issued six hours before, thinning the garrison’s deployment across the rest of the island and moving his strength into the south-eastern sector. It was too late. With daylight the movement of troops became more and more hazardous, as the German planes launched strike after strike against the unprotected British columns. Though the leaders in Government House were loath to admit it, the battle for Malta had already been lost.
Hal Far had been finally cleared by the Germans just before dawn, and although the airfield was still under fire from the north and the runway in need of repairs, the Axis command could now begin to send in its gliders. Lieutenant Johnston, still holding out with two hundred others on the peninsula south of Kalafrana, watched them wafting in soon after 09.00, ‘sinister and silent’. He had seen the DFS230s in Crete, but not the enormous Gigants, ‘like bloated birds’. The gliders, score after score of them, belly-flopped down on to the grassy expanses of the airfield, disgorging their troops and - in the case of the Gigants - howitzers, several 75mm guns and seven Panzer IIs.
By mid-morning the Axis bridgehead comprised - Lieutenant Johnston’s party apart - the entire south-eastern corner of the island. The dividing line ran from the coast south of Sijuwi through Imkabba and Kirkop to the Marsa Scirocco coastline south of Zeitun. All along its eastern half fierce fighting was taking place as the British tried to force their way back into Hal Far and the Germans attempted to clear the northern arm of the bay. The latter were more successful. In Syracuse a satisfied General Student was preparing to leave for the bridgehead.
A
t 11.00 Syfret’s Force H was two hundred miles to the west of Malta. On the bridge of the cruiser Hermione, the Admiral was sifting through his apparent options. They seemed pitifully few. On paper his fleet was far inferior to that of the Italians; for contesting the skies with the all- powerful Luftwaffe he had sixty-five Spitfires aboard the Wasp and the slow Argus. If he attempted to interfere with the troop transports moving across the Malta Channel in daylight he was likely to incur what in any circumstances would be regarded as unacceptable losses. The Western allies could certainly not afford to lose a carrier like Wasp with the situation in the Atlantic so precarious. Yet the Italians were unlikely to be fool enough to shift their transports by night once they knew the Royal Navy was in the vicinity. Syfret could bombard the German bridgehead by night, but he doubted whether this would make much difference to the outcome of the land battle. Whatever he did the risks were likely to outweigh the benefits. Successful naval activity beneath an enemy-held sky was just not on the cards.
By noon the need for a decision was growing more acute. Rounding Cape Bon, Force H was spotted by long-range Axis reconnaissance planes. Surprise, always unlikely, was now out of the question. What, thought the Admiral, should he do?
In London, too, there was agonised indecision. The reports from Malta suggested that the Germans had already secured the airfield they needed. The Chiefs of Staff remembered only too well that the seizure of Maleme had proved the beginning of the end on Crete. Was the battle for Malta already lost? And, if so, was there any reason to risk Force H and the remains of the Mediterranean Fleet? Would it be better for Syfret to fly off his Spitfires and return to Gibraltar?
The Moscow Option Page 11
