The Battle for Malta Page #6

---

and you can hear the propellers

of the destroyers up top.

And as you hear the

thrashing of the propeller,

as it gets louder and louder,

you know, everybody starts crouching,

and wondering when the

crash is going to come.

But there you are. You've

just got to wait for it.

And, finally, you throw them off.

In the battle for supplies, Rommel

felt the loss of every ship keenly.

Particularly because the Axis

was struggling to replace them.

This made the loss of the enormous

Conte Rosso a particular blow.

For Malta, it marked a

turning point in fortunes.

Submarines and aircraft

operating from the island

savaged Rommel supply lines,

and the Luftwaffe also departed.

Pressure had been lifted.

For months, the Maltese had

been driven underground,

into shelters cut into the rock,

but in the summer of 1941, the

bombing suddenly lessened,

as the Luftwaffe left Sicily

for the invasion of Russia.

The relief was huge, and life

improved, but it wasn't to last.

As the Russian winter brought a

freeze to the campaign in the east,

so Hitler turned once more to

the war here in the south.

The Luftwaffe had returned.

They come back to the Mediterranean,

and under Albert Kesselring's command,

Malta starts to take a beating

from his Luftwaffe squadrons.

And I think what's happening here

is that Kesselring has commanded an

air fleet in the Battle of Britain.

He is now back in the Mediterranean

with a miniature version

of the United Kingdom,

and what he wants to do

is return to his tactics

in the Battle of Britain,

but get it right this time,

using Malta as the punchbag,

and so what he's going to do

is grind Malta into the dust

with a huge bombing campaign

as a prelude to invasion.

A witness to the return of the

Luftwaffe was John Mizzi.

He lived in Birkirkara, in

the centre of the island.

They used to come in the

morning at breakfast.

You knew that from between eight

and nine they would come out.

They used to come at noon

until 1:
30, you had an air raid.

Then they used to come at four

in the evening, five, six,

perhaps, so you could regulate your day.

We knew we were going to be beaten to

pieces, because they now had 109F's -

a more up-to-date model of the 109-

and they were patrolling Malta

as though it was their own base.

And eventually, we got to

the stage that the pilots

had no aeroplanes to fly, and we

were used as aircraft spotters.

So many people were lost unnecessarily.

Golden people, shot down.

And also as a result of aircraft failure.

We used to complain every day, all day.

The people who were leading us didn't

really know what was happening.

We were flying stuff we

Rate this script:3.0 / 1 vote