Yeoman watched one Spitfire, clinging to the tail of a bomber like a leech, close right in to a range of only a few yards. White flame flared up from the Junkers’ wings; it held its course for a few seconds, then blew up, the shock wave rippling out through the drifting ack-ack bursts and pushing them aside. The pursuing Spitfire flew through the cloud of smoke and debris and Yeoman saw it turn away, descending steeply towards Safi.
The remaining bombers, with the other Spitfires in hot pursuit, dropped their bombs almost at random and jinked away over the sea After a while, the Spits gave up the chase and came back to Luqa, landing and taxiing in. The returning pilots were Powell and Randall, and the former came up to Yeoman with the news that Kearney had landed safely at Safi. The Irishman, Powell announced in a tone of disgust, had accounted for both the 88s destroyed.
‘Couldn’t get a look in for the bugger,’ he said. ‘The boy sure can fly. Thought he’d bought it, though, when I saw him disappear smack through the middle of what was left of his second Hun.’
A few minutes later, two Spitfires appeared in the circuit over Luqa. They were the fighters which had set out with Roger Graham earlier that morning to fly top cover over the convoy. Their exhausted pilots told how they had become involved in a hell of a scrap with Junkers 87s and swarms of Messerschmitt 109s just at the point where they were about to turn for home. Graham and his number two had both been shot down in flames, and there was no hope that either of them could have survived.
Throughout the day, the sky over Malta echoed with the crackle of Merlin engines as the Spitfires went out again and again to protect the remnants of the convoy. Returning pilots, sweat-soaked and exhausted, brought back stories of terrific air battles over the sea, always against vastly superior numbers. They tore great gaps in the enemy’s ranks, but they suffered heavily themselves, too; by the end of the day, losses in combat and battle damage had halved the strength of every fighter squadron on the island.
That evening, two freighters — the sole survivors of the six which had left Gibraltar four days earlier, their hulls blackened and scarred by near misses, pock-marked by splinters — limped into the shelter of the Grand Harbour. One of the freighters was badly damaged; a bomb had torn a great gap in her side and one of her holds was flooded, mining a quarter of her precious cargo.
Two destroyers, one British, the other Polish, their blast-swept decks crammed with survivors from the ships that had gone down, shepherded the freighters to safety. As they approached the entrance to Grand Harbour, the Polish warship struck a mine and blew up, sinking in a matter of minutes. There were few survivors; those who were rescued were numbed by this cruel twist of fate, scarcely able to believe that their comrades, with whom they had battled through so many dangers, had died within sight of sanctuary.
During the next two days the enemy made determined attempts to sink the merchantmen before their supplies could be unloaded, but each attack was frustrated by patrolling Spitfires and the ack-ack barrage. Yeoman took no part in the air fighting, for the medical officer at Luqa had taken one look at him and ordered him to the military hospital in Umtarfa for a thorough check-up, after which he had been sent to Palestrina House in St. Paul’s Bay, the pilots’ rest camp.
Powell came to visit him, bringing him grim news of the devastation around Grand Harbour and of friends whose faces they would see no more.
By the morning of Wednesday, 17 June, the last supplies had been unloaded from the freighters. They had been bought with the life-blood of brave men, whose sacrifice would sustain the garrison and people of Malta for just six more weeks.
Chapter Nine
The pilots of No. 2 Squadron, Fighter Wing 66, were playing Skat in the readiness tent. The game had been going on at intervals for a fortnight; a pilot would go off on a mission, and on his return take up more or less where he had left off. If he didn’t come back, his stake money went straight into the pot.
Joachim Richter had a handful of spades, and was wondering how to dispose of them, when a breathless runner arrived from base HQ.
‘Everybody is to report immediately to the Group Commander’s tent,’ he announced. ‘It’s a big circus today.’
Richter laid his hand face-down on the blanket that served as a card table and joined in the general scramble as the pilots searched for their gear. The air was blue with curses.
The squadron truck screeched to a stop outside. ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake get a move on,’ Richter called impatiently, almost tripping over Ernst Sommer, who was grovelling on his hands and knees, trying to retrieve his helmet from beneath a pile of parachute bags which someone had dropped haphazardly in a corner.
They all got themselves sorted out at last and piled on to the truck, which careered away over the field. Richter saw that No. 1 Squadron’s transport was also heading in the same direction; as the runner had indicated, something big was in the wind. It was unusual for both squadrons to go out on a mission at the same time; one of them was usually held in reserve.
He hoped it would not be anything too strenuous. Today, 5 July, was Willi Christiansen’s birthday, and a celebration was planned for that evening. It promised to be quite a party; a bevy of nurses was coming down from the hospital in Catania, and the pilots were looking forward to some action.
The Wing Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Dollmann, was waiting for them in his tent, seated behind a trestle table. This was the man who had taken over the Wing after the loss of Colonel Becker, and although he was capable enough he was by no means the leader his predecessor had been. He had spent most of the war so far stationed in Norway, and apart from some skirmishing with the Russians in the far north he had seen very little action. In fact, most of the pilots under his command were more experienced than he was. He was a heavy-featured man, tending to run to fat, even though he was only in his early thirties. He was balding, and when he addressed someone he had the most annoying habit of staring over one’s head. He had become firm friends with the base commander, Colonel Dessauer, and most of the pilots thought that they were admirably suited to one another.
Dollmann wasted no time on preliminaries. As soon as all the pilots were gathered around him in a semicircle, he said: ‘Gentlemen, today the whole of the Axis air strength in Sicily is to begin phase three of our air offensive against Malta. Our orders, received late last night directly from Commander-in-Chief South, are quite specific. During the next three weeks, we are to destroy every fighter aircraft available to the enemy and are to prevent reinforcements or supplies from reaching the island.’
Richter glanced at Johnny Schumacher and raised an eyebrow. That could mean only one thing: the long-awaited invasion of Malta was coming, and soon.
Dollmann cleared his throat and shuffled some papers that lay before him on the table. ‘During the coming phase of the offensive,’ he continued, ‘our bombers will be concentrating on airfield attacks. We, in addition to our normal escort role, will carry out an increased number of fighter sweeps over these objectives in between the bombing raids, with the object of catching the enemy fighters on the ground while they refuel and re-arm.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Beginning at noon today,’ he said, ‘one hundred bombers will operate over Malta in relays at ten-minute intervals. Each relay will consist of approximately ten aircraft escorted by twice as many Messerschmitts. This means that in order to sustain the pressure, you will have to fly four, maybe five sorties over the island in the course of the day.
‘During today’s operations, the bomber escort will be mounted by Fighter Wings 3 and 53. We shall undertake the ground-attack work, timing our strikes to follow every third raid. I emphasize, gentlemen, that accurate timing is absolutely essential. We must not give the Tommies a moment’s respite. Our sole purpose is to bring them to battle in the air and to harass them on the ground to the point where operations become impossible for them.’
He went on to give the assembled pilots their take-off times and times over the target. Luqa was to be
the primary objective; if this airfield could be neutralized, even temporarily, the surviving Spitfires would be forced to concentrate on Takali and Hal Far and both these objectives could then be attacked in turn. Safi strip, Luqa’s satellite landing-ground, had already been badly hit by a high-level Italian air raid earlier that morning, and reconnaissance had indicated that it would probably be out of action for the rest of the day.
Outside Dollmann’s tent, after they had been dismissed, Richter gathered the pilots of his No. 2 Squadron around him and had a quiet word with them.
‘Look,’ he said, taking a pull at his cigarette, ‘We all know our feelings about ground attack, especially those of us who were in Russia. So, what I’m saying to you is — no heroics, and that’s an order. Go in low and fast, shoot up whatever is directly in front of you and get out. Some of us, the older hands that is, are sometimes tempted to push our luck. We get the feeling we’re immune. Well, we are not. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt a second run over the target, even though you don’t hit anything on your first pass. If anyone tries it, I’ll kick him all the way up Etna and slow-fry his balls over the crater. On second thoughts, I probably won’t need to, because he’ll be dead anyway. That’s all.’
Each of Fighter Wing 66’s two squadrons was putting up twelve aircraft. They were to fly in sections of four, each section taking off at twenty-minute intervals. No. 1 Squadron was first away, and by the time it became the turn of the leading elements of Richter’s squadron to take off the first two sections of its sister unit had already returned. Richter noticed, grimly, that three Messerschmitts were missing and that several of the others had sustained combat damage. It looked as though a hot reception awaited them.
At twenty past one Richter’s pilots climbed into their Messerschmitts. A mechanic, standing on the wing beside the cockpit, helped Richter to fasten his straps and attach his oxygen and radio-telephone leads. The man shouted something, and Richter lifted the flap of his helmet in order to hear better:
‘Get one for me, sir!’
The pilot grinned in acknowledgment and operated the switches in the cockpit as the mechanic cranked the handle on the starting-trolley. The Daimler-Benz engine kicked over a few times and then burst into full-throated life. Richter checked the instruments carefully to make sure everything was in order, then waved away the chocks and released the brakes. The Messerschmitt taxied forward, flanked on its right by Hans Weber’s aircraft and on its left by Johnny Schumacher’s. The fourth 109 of the section, trailing along behind and almost completely obscured by a swirling cloud of dust, was flown by Warrant Officer Buchada.
When they reached the take-off point and swung into wind Buchada drew abreast of the other three; a very necessary precaution, for to take off in the teeth of a cloud of dust, blotting out all forward vision, was to invite disaster.
The pilots opened the throttles and the Messerschmitts moved forward, their wingtips no more than fifteen feet apart, gathering speed over the bumpy, sandy ground. The rambling of their wheels ceased abruptly and they were airborne, flashing over the aerodrome perimeter, their shadows flitting over objects which by now had become so familiar: the burnt-out wreck of an Italian Savoia bomber, the skeletal remains of a few trucks, worn out and cannibalized for spare parts.
The Messerschmitts stayed as low as the terrain would permit, speeding over the broad Simeto river that wound its way from the mountains across the plain of Catania. A mile or two to the left, a lake shimmered in the sun; then it was behind them and they were threading their way through the hills and valleys of the Monti Iblei, dotted with numerous white hamlets. Peasants, resting in the shade, looked up as the fighters thundered overhead; in one village a patient donkey, terrified by the sudden crescendo of sound, took flight down the twisting street, scattering its load in all directions.
They followed the line of the little river Irminio and sped over Ragusa, perched on its ridge between two deep gorges. Three minutes later they were over the sea, heading out into the Malta Channel on a heading of two hundred degrees and at a height of not more than a hundred and fifty feet. The course would take them past the north-west tip of Gozo, after which they would turn on to a hundred and seventy degrees for three more minutes before turning sharply eastwards. Then they would leap over Dingli cliffs, make one fast run over Luqa and carry on at low level across the island, finally heading out to sea once more over St. Paul’s Bay.
The first leg of the flight was accomplished without incident. Gozo slid by, well over on the left, and the fighters turned south-south-east on their second heading, the pilots alert for any sign of danger.
As they turned towards Malta, they could see a great deal of smoke and dust over the island, kicked up by the explosions of bombs. A few thousand feet higher up, drifting slowly on the wind, a host of flak-bursts had mingled to form another, thinner smoke layer.
The white slash of Dingli cliffs leaped towards them. So far, there was no sign of any other aircraft, either enemy or friendly. Knowing exactly where Luqa lay beyond the cliffs, Richter turned slightly more to the right; the other three Messerschmitts accompanied him effortlessly, as though held to him by an invisible thread.
A slight back pressure on the control column took the fighters leaping over the cliffs, and the whole panorama of the island lay before them. Richter took in the whole scene with one swift glance, and realized at once that their timing was near perfect. A raid had just ended, and over the northern end of the island clusters of new anti-aircraft bursts betrayed the position of the retreating bombers. The bombers themselves were invisible, as were any fighters that might have been pursuing them, but looking ahead Richter saw something that brought elation welling up inside him; several Spitfires were in the Luqa circuit, their wheels and flaps down as they prepared to land.
For the first time since they had taken off, Richter broke radio silence. ‘Spitfires over Luqa,’ he warned the others. ‘Remember, straight in and straight out again.’
The circling Spitfires would be low on fuel and doubtless out of ammunition. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to knock a few down without fear of pursuit.
It took the speeding Messerschmitts forty-five seconds to cover the four miles between Dingli and Luqa. They flashed over Siggiewi and the blast pens on that part of the airfield perimeter, but Richter had no time to note whether there was anything in them or not because at that instant a Spitfire loomed up in front of him. Its pilot appeared to have seen the danger, because he made a desperate attempt to escape at the last moment, starting to retract his undercarriage and climbing. He was too late. Richter pressed both triggers on his control column, sending a lethal burst of 7.9-mm machine-gun bullets and 20-mm cannon shells into the British fighter just forward of the cockpit. Instantly, a great gush of flame burst from the Spitfire, enveloping the whole of the centre fuselage. The fighter, one undercarriage leg dangling, went into a steep diving turn and ploughed into the ground, bursting apart in boiling gouts of fire.
Richter streaked over the remains, conscious of the other Messerschmitts fanning out and firing at other targets on either side of him. A group of steel-helmeted figures swept into his field of vision, running for their lives, and he instinctively pressed the triggers again, seeing the ground around them erupt in fountains of dust. He did not see whether he had hit any of them. Slightly off to the right he saw what looked like a Wellington, parked half in and half out of a blast pen, and kicked the rudder bar to bring his sights to bear, forgetting about Hans Weber and almost colliding with his number two in the process. They both fired at the Wellington at the same moment, seeing their bullets and shells ripple across the bomber’s rear fuselage and tail and kick up sand from the bags around it.
Then they were over and away, speeding over the network of stone walls that lay between Zebbug and Hamrun. Behind them, belatedly and uselessly, the flak opened up, adding to the confusion that already reigned over the airfield.
They raced out over St. Paul’s Bay, keeping lo
w until they were clear of the land, then began to climb, turning left until they were flying parallel with the north-east coast of Gozo on a heading that would bring them back to Sicily. Richter called up the others, asking each in turn if he was unharmed; all three replied in the affirmative. Their voices were jubilant; they had destroyed three Spitfires for certain and shot up several more on the ground. If they kept up this sort of pace, the Tommies would soon have no fighters left.
*
To the hard-pressed garrison on Malta, the shattering series of air attacks in the high summer of 1942 would always be known as the July Blitz. It began on the fifth of the month and ended on the twenty-ninth. In between those dates, the island, and particularly the airfields, reeled under an unprecedented weight of high explosive by day and night. For the exhausted fighter pilots, their numbers dwindling constantly, there was no respite, for almost every daylight raid was followed by a fast hit-and-run attack by Messerschmitts. The spectre of the Dog was always present, its deprivations adding to those of continual air combat, and young men in their prime wasted away until they were haunted shadows of their former selves. The daily diet was atrocious, but nevertheless the best that could be offered on an island under real threat of starvation; a typical lunch consisted of a few shrivelled olives, four ounces of bread, a slice of fried bully beef, three dried figs for dessert and a mug of tea. There were also, when available, two tablespoonsful of shredded carrots soaked in cod-liver oil and one sulphur pill per day, the former nauseating to rebellious stomachs and the latter completely ineffective against dysentery.
Yeoman entered the grim days of the July Blitz fresher and more relaxed than most, thanks to his spell in the pilots’ rest camp. Lucia had visited him there, almost every day, and through her eyes he had learned to appreciate new beauty; the glory of the pink haze that crept over St. Paul’s Bay with each sunrise, the silver-grey of the olives and deep green of the carob trees on the hillsides, the red earth. Together, they had found beauty even in the barren rocks, speckled with clusters of narcissi and the glowing colours of the flowering prickly pear. In the three days immediately before his return to duty, while he regained much of his lost strength, she had shown him much of the true, ancient Malta, the Malta of the legends, a world removed from the ugly sprawl of Valletta. They had looked down on Ghajn Razul, the ‘Spring of the Prophet’, where it was said St. Paul had slaked his thirst after being shipwrecked on the island’s shores; they had climbed the steep incline overlooking the bay to the little hamlet of Wardija where, Lucia said, wild flowers emerged in a mass of colour all around in the spring and autumn, and afterwards they had walked hand-in-hand down to the fertile valley of Pwales, connecting St. Paul’s Bay to Ghajn Tuffieha, the ‘Well of Apples’. In a little grotto halfway down the valley Lucia had knelt in simple prayer before a shrine of the Virgin, and her companion, anxious to please, had knelt beside her. Later, they had climbed the flat-topped hill called II Qala, opposite the grotto, to look at a series of holes that might have been Phoenician tombs, and then had gone down to the valley again to sit and watch the birds, Lucia laughing as she tried to teach Yeoman to pronounce their names. He learned, and never forgot, that the common-or-garden little house sparrow rejoiced under the name of ghasfur-il-beit, or ‘roof bird,’ and that the ousel was called tas-sidrija-bajda, ‘white waistcoat’.
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