The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945

by Richard Overy

  Despite the intensity of the German attacks, Malta survived the first serious offensive. German aircraft were soon required to support the campaigns in Libya, and in April and May operations against Yugoslavia, then Greece and Crete, absorbed more of the German air effort. The German Navy commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, asked Hitler in March 1941 to approve an airborne operation to seize Malta, but Hitler was hesitant.69 The Italian Air Force could see that neutralizing Malta was a larger task than it had seemed: ‘the end of the offensive,’ ran the official Italian Air Ministry account, ‘found enemy forces on Malta almost intact’.70 After May 1941, Air Corps X abandoned Sicily in favour of bases in the eastern Mediterranean, leaving Italian air and naval forces to cope with the problem of preventing Malta from interrupting Italian supply lines to North Africa. The same pattern of continuous but small-scale raids carried on over the summer and autumn against a growing fighter and anti-aircraft strength on the island. By September 1941 there were 120 serviceable aircraft on Malta, together with submarines and torpedo boats. The seriousness of the failure to take Malta now became apparent: by the autumn the transport of supplies to the Axis armies in North Africa had reached a crisis point; 204,000 tons of shipping had been sunk or damaged by forces from Malta in five months.71 Raeder told Hitler that the problem was Italian ‘operational and tactical impotence’.72 On 2 October 1941 Göring told Pricolo that the German Air Force was going to send aircraft once again to Sicily and at the end of the month Hitler promised Mussolini that this time the German Air Force would make sure that Malta was permanently neutralized. The German Second Air Fleet commanded by Field Marshal Kesselring was sent south from the front in Russia to cover the Mediterranean; the fleet’s Air Corps II was posted to Sicily and southern Italy under the command of General Bruno Loerzer, with approximately 400 aircraft, including 190 bombers.73 The German force arrived in waves in late 1941 and early 1942, when flying on the Russian front was restricted by the poor weather conditions. The operational orders were to defend Italian convoys, to attack the ports and airfields on Malta, and to destroy any merchant ships attempting to break the siege of the island.74 German operations opened against Malta on 18 December 1941 and grew in strength and intensity into what became, by March, the Malta Blitz.

  The air defences on Malta were inadequate to meet the renewed offensive, which reached a climax of uninterrupted day and night attacks by the early spring of 1942, chiefly carried out by German aircraft in an offensive that matched in intensity and operational shape, though not in scale, the Battle of Britain. The statistics of the German assault are set out in Table 8.2. Italian aircraft by contrast carried out only 22 small raids against Malta involving 135 sorties.75 Most of the tonnage was directed at the three airfields and the small number of aircraft which were difficult to conceal or disperse.76 The worst month for the island was April 1942 when attacks were made at times by over 200 bomber and fighter aircraft against an island force of around 80 fighters commanded by Air Vice Marshal Hugh Lloyd, and a remarkable 230 anti-aircraft guns crammed around the island’s key points. On 14 April the airbases at Hal Far and Ta’Qali were no longer serviceable; the main base at Luqa was rendered unusable by 21 April. Much of the dock area sustained damage that could not be repaired.77 By early April, Kesselring was confident enough to report that air superiority had been established over the island, something his air fleet had been unable to achieve over southern England (though German estimates of RAF losses of 239 aircraft were a gross distortion of the true figure of 36 lost, 44 damaged).78 The next step was to use that advantage to mount an invasion of the island to eliminate permanently any possibility that Malta might revive over the summer. Air superiority was valuable only as long as it could be maintained, but by the late spring German plans for renewed offensives on the Soviet front meant that many of the aircraft used for bombing Malta would have to return east. This gave the occupation of Malta an added urgency.

  Table 8.2: Statistics on the German Air Effort against Malta, January–April 1942

  Date Sorties Bomb Tonnage German Losses Estimated Enemy Losses

  Jan 42 1,659 609 11 40

  Feb 42 2,132 623 19 43

  Mar 42 4,882 1,750 37 59

  Apr 42 7,557 4,623 8 97

  Total 16,230 7,605 75 239

  Source: IWM, Italian Series, Box 14, E2545, Ministero dell’Aeronautica, Servizio informazioni, Bollettino Periodico, 20 May 1942.

  Mussolini favoured a dramatic operation – ‘a surprise with formidable results’ – to seize Malta in a sudden paratroop attack, backed up by seaborne forces.79 The idea was presented to Hitler in March, and although he was reluctant to release forces from other operational theatres, he finally agreed to allow preparations to go ahead, including the training and preparation of three German paratroop regiments to support the small Italian airborne force. The German operation was codenamed ‘Operation Herkules’; the Italian plan, an updated version of an operation first examined in the 1930s, carried the title ‘Requirement C.3’.80 The object was to launch an unexpected night-time attack with airborne forces on the south-west of the island, followed by an amphibious landing with army units and armour. The air force was to maintain a continuous heavy bombardment, using delayed-action bombs and fake gas bombs to force the enemy into the awkward use of gas masks and to encourage ‘declining morale’ among the defenders.81 The initial plan had been based on an invasion in late May, but the poor level of Italian preparation and the successful advance of Rommel’s army towards Egypt led to a further postponement. On 30 April Hitler and Mussolini met at Berchtesgaden to discuss the future of the war in the south. Hitler, noted the Italian Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, ‘talks and talks and talks’ while Mussolini, used to doing the talking himself, visibly suffered from his unaccustomed and almost complete silence. At the end of his monologues Hitler agreed to support the Malta invasion fully as long as it took place after Rommel had succeeded in defeating the British in Egypt. Since this was expected to happen by the summer, a tentative date of mid-July was set.82 But by June Hitler was once again uncertain that it should be undertaken while fighting on the German-Soviet front continued, and ‘especially not with Italian troops’, whose value was regarded by German leaders with profound scepticism.83

  There is a strong case for arguing that Hitler was never as enthusiastic about the capture of Malta as his subaltern ally, Mussolini. The neutralization of the island as an air and submarine base through bombing had apparently been achieved by the early summer, and the German High Command was now much more concerned with the campaign in southern Russia and the prospect that Rommel might soon occupy the Suez Canal. The growing confidence that in the summer of 1942 decisive defeats might be inflicted on the Allies in both these theatres consigned Malta for the present to a subsidiary status. There were also considerable risks with even so modest an amphibious operation. The Italian Navy staff, which had been inclined to exaggerate Malta’s defensive strength from the start of the war, thought the invasion ‘without doubt, one of the most difficult operations that could be undertaken’, against an area believed to possess ‘one of the greatest concentrations of defensive power in the world’. The navy assumed that anti-shipping artillery, beach obstacles and a countryside riddled with machine-gun nests would be a formidable challenge for a force that had not yet undertaken an opposed landing.84 The operation had to be carried out by August at the latest to gain favourable tides. Despite the intensive and destructive bombing, it was evident by May, once the first squadrons of Spitfires arrived on Malta and German aircraft began to move back to Russia, that Maltese resistance had not been broken, either materially or morally by the bombing. After two months of continuous operations, Kesselring by the end of May had only 83 serviceable aircraft left. By August 1942 there were 165 Spitfires available, a remarkable concentration of high-quality air power on one small territory, and a force which allowed the RAF, now commanded by Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, one of the victors of the Battle of Brit
ain against Kesselring, to adopt a far more aggressive posture against enemy incursions.85 Neither the German commander of Air Corps II nor the new commander-in-chief of the Italian Air Force, General Rino Fougier, favoured taking risks with invasion. By default the continued neutralization of the island by bombing became the only option and every effort was devoted to trying to deny Malta the convoyed supplies needed to sustain island resistance.86 In October, in anticipation of a decisive battle around the small Egyptian settlement of El Alamein, the decision was taken to undertake once again a determined air offensive against the island to reduce its threat to the Axis supply chain, but the resources now available, particularly to the shrunken Italian Air Force, resulted in an indecisive and limited offensive. In the first week of October 114 Axis aircraft were shot down, for the loss of 27 Spitfires. By November the Axis effort against Malta declined to a long series of nuisance raids. Over the course of the war the RAF lost 707 aircraft in all operations from Malta, and 2,301 crew.87

  The most remarkable aspect of the ‘Blitzes’ on Malta was the capacity of the population, the military garrison and the British colonial authorities to cope with almost daily bombing over a period of more than two years of aerial siege, and particularly through the two months of intense and destructive bombing in spring 1942, without a serious social crisis or a movement to surrender. ‘The Maltese have nothing to laugh about,’ observed Goebbels in his diary in April 1942. ‘At the moment, they are the population tormented the most in the entire globe by air attacks.’88 The anxiety felt by the authorities in 1940 that the population might panic entirely under bombing was soon replaced by positive efforts to find ways to turn Malta into a veritable fortress capable of withstanding a long aerial siege. Despite evacuation, there were such small distances between the main targets and the inland villages that almost all areas of the island were bombed at some time. By 1942 it was observed that a high proportion of bombs hit buildings already destroyed in earlier raids. Fields and roads became pitted with bomb craters and unexploded bombs (including unstable anti-personnel bombs) and live ammunition could be found all over the island. Warnings were issued in September 1940 and again in May 1941 to stop people removing or playing with the ordnance, but there were regular civilian injuries, some caused by the occasional juvenile practice of hitting live bullets with a hammer to make them explode.89

  For the Maltese people the two most important factors were shelter and food. The provision of public or private shelter was eventually extended by early 1942 to a shelter space for almost the entire population of Malta and Gozo. These included spaces for 149,000 in shelters built or renovated by the Maltese government, employing 2,000 miners and stonemasons.90 Each shelter had to be provided with bunks and sanitary equipment and, where it was possible, separate cubicles were excavated into which whole families could move possessions and furniture and the ubiquitous small shrines to the Madonna. The authorities also set up a scheme for the ‘1,000 head store’ to make sure that for every 1,000 shelterers there would be a dedicated stock of food, kerosene and water in case of emergency.91 Nevertheless there were numerous problems in trying to maintain standards in a situation where raiding sometimes occurred as often as eight times in 24 hours. In January 1942 the government established a Select Committee to investigate public concerns over shelter provision. The public was invited to submit their complaints and 95 people did so, highlighting chiefly the problems of overcrowding, poor lighting and water seepage. The committee also identified a shortage of bunks and poor sanitary arrangements and recommended regular inspection, a ticketing system for entry to the shelters, and better links between the underground shelters and the emergency stores. In some cases shelters lacked a shelter warden to supervise the shelter community and an effort was subsequently made to recruit more volunteers to help organize and control what for most Maltese had become an uncomfortable way of life.92

  The most critical factor was the supply of food and fresh water. Malta was intensively farmed but lacked a great many essential foodstuffs. The traditional Maltese diet consisted mainly of macaroni, spaghetti, and bread covered with olive oil and tomato paste. Fish and goat meat supplemented a cuisine high in carbohydrates. Sugar was highly prized. In the first years of war rationing was limited, partly to avoid any possible friction with the population, partly because it did not seem necessary. Hoarding occurred in the first weeks, and the islanders conducted their own black market, concealed from the authorities by traditional networks of family or kin (and by the linguistic veil of Malti). The government was slow to implement a scheme for building up food stocks or for rationing, though a Director of Rabbit Production was appointed since rabbits were easy to raise on scraps and waste and were plentiful on the island. In February 1941 a Maltese nobleman, Marquis Barbaro, was made Food Distribution Officer and limited rationing was imposed from April 1941, but bread and flour paste remained unrationed until the height of the spring Blitz in 1942, while tea, butter and cheese remained outside the ration.93 For islanders rendered unemployed by the war, or for the young and old with restricted access to food, the government brought in a welfare scheme of cash coupons or relief in kind. In 1941 a chain of Victory Kitchens was established, where a standard and monotonous menu of soup and spaghetti and goat stew was served at low prices to ensure that everyone who needed it could get a midday meal, however limited its nourishment.94

  Once the heaviest bombing began in spring 1942, food needs became more urgent; the convoy crisis of the summer faced Malta with the prospect of widespread hunger. In June a delegation of food experts arrived from Britain to investigate what could be done to ensure Malta’s survival. They reported that the urgency had been exaggerated: ‘neither the troops nor the people in the streets showed any obvious signs of underfeeding’. They found the black market rife on the island and encouraged tighter controls. Their final report recommended suspending brewing, slaughtering livestock, cutting onion growing, expanding tomato cultivation, and possibly killing domestic pets. ‘Rabbits,’ the report concluded, ‘should be maintained as long as possible.’95 Rationing was tightened up on a range of supplies, including a standard 10.5 oz of bread a day, and 14 oz of sugar, 15 oz of fats and oils, and 12 oz of canned meat every two weeks, while at the same time an effort was made to improve the standard of Victory Kitchen meals, about which there were wide complaints. Stocks of food on the island in June 1942 amounted to 7,319 tons of flour, 783 tons of oils and fats, 1,287 tons of tinned meat, 1,021 tons of sugar and 129 tons of tea, but the island’s Food and Distribution Board found that only flour and wheat supplies posed any real danger. Black-market hoards were investigated more vigorously and new punishments (one month in prison and confiscation of all goods) instituted.96 Fresh-water stocks were increased to 17 million gallons from the 9.8 million gallons available in autumn 1941, while the government aimed to maintain a food reserve equivalent to at least ten months’ consumption.97 Just enough food got through to the island during the convoy battles of the summer of 1942 to allow the island to survive the siege.

  The ‘morale’ of the island throughout the long months of bombing was sustained, as it was in Britain and Germany, by adequate enough provision of shelter, welfare and food supplies for the whole Maltese population. There was also a marked hostility of the Maltese directed towards the Italians, whose efforts to claim Malta as an Italian outpost did not prevent them from bombing it repeatedly. After the first raid on 11 June 1940, according to one account, ‘the air grew blue with blasphemy’ as angry Maltese cursed Mussolini and shook their fists at the air. The town council changed the traditional Italian street names to English.98 There was no shortage of Maltese volunteers to man the anti-aircraft guns and 1,700 joined the Maltese ‘Home Guard’ volunteers.99 The Catholic population also relied on their deep religiosity, a sentiment shared with the devoutly Christian lieutenant governor, Sir William Dobbie, who arrived in Malta in April 1940. From early in the war, priests held open-air masses (to avoid the danger of a sudden bomb
on a church) and officiated at shelter services. One Spitfire pilot, on arriving at his base in the medieval walled city of Mdina (the old capital), was told by his Maltese driver that it was a sacred site: ‘The Holy Father will not let the Germans bomb it.’100 The British in Malta were impressed by the way the local population ignored the raids, staying on in cinemas when the air-raid warning sounded or refusing the formal requirement to take cover when bombing started. As in most bombing in Europe during the war, the raids evoked a range of attitudes, but in this case the bombing was relentless and there was nowhere to escape its effects. Almost 30,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged, though only 5,200 were rendered permanently uninhabitable.101 The same Spitfire pilot later wrote that the Maltese people endured the bombing with an enviable stoicism and a level of bravery that had to be witnessed rather than imagined, since he found the situation ‘unsettling and claustrophobic’.102 Formal reports on the outlook of the Maltese population also highlighted the capacity to absorb the shock of bombing (‘have stood up to their ordeal magnificently’) and although this assertion suited the colonial authorities, there is no reason to doubt that it described a certain reality.103 Malta was, nevertheless, a colony. Censorship, internment, compulsory conscription of male labour, regular checks and controls were built into the ruling system, while the British forces, officials and residents formed an elite that dominated the Maltese and restricted opportunities for protest or abdication. Among that elite, there seems to have been no moment when surrender was seriously contemplated.