Read Online At All Costs by Sam Moses - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sam Moses
Tags: nonfiction
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Italian Air Force) wasn’t deterred, however, and bombers attacked Operation Hats. But
Illustrious
also carried a squadron of new two-seat Fairey Fulmar fighters, each with eight guns; they shot down six “flying buffalos” and more SM.79s were damaged, while others jettisoned their 2,750-pound payloads over the sea and turned for home.
The three freighters and one small tanker were escorted into Malta’s harbor, with a tugboat towing one of the freighters, which had a hole in her hull and a smashed rudder from near misses—bombs that land in the water close enough for the concussion to cause damage. The merchant ships carried 40,000 tons of supplies and were greeted by cheering Maltese lining the bastions and barrancas, five deep in some places.
But the cheery mood lasted just three days. On the evening of September 5, as Churchill was announcing the success of his Operation Hats to the House of Commons (and as Minda Larsen was having her twenty-fourth birthday, without a cake because the Nazis took all the eggs), the Junkers Ju 87—the scary Stuka—made its debut over Malta. The Luftwaffe had sent fifteen Stukas to Sicily, and five of them went looking for the battleship
Valiant
in Grand Harbour. She was already gone, so the Italian pilots—rushed into the cockpit after taking only half of the twenty-five-hour German training course—bombed a fort instead. There was little damage, but the writing was in the sky, and it was as ugly as the plane.
In October 1940, Malta got its first big bombers. A dozen Wellingtons, called “flying cigars,” landed at Luqa after being flown from England. There were no ground crews to prepare them, but they made a bombing run the next night anyhow, to Naples Harbor, barely getting airborne on the treacherously short and crater-filled Luqa strip. For the next mission the payload was decreased to lessen the weight, but that evening’s heat and humidity robbed the engines of power, and two of four Wellingtons went down just after takeoff, killing five crewmen and making orphans of five children whose parents were killed when one of the bombers crashed and burned on their house.
Bombers were at least as important to the war in the Mediterranean as the Hurricanes and other fighters, because bombers could cripple the enemy, while the fighters’ role was support and defense. But the fighters got the attention, because spectacular dogfights over Malta were like a spectator sport, watched by thousands. The Malta bombers rumbled away without fanfare, usually after dark, and destroyed targets in Italy and Sicily, as well as ships in convoys to North Africa that supplied the Axis’ drive toward Egypt and Persian oil. With some bombers, Malta could now shift from a defensive to an offensive position. But big bombers needed many tons of aviation fuel, which could only come on ships.
Admiral Cunningham led another convoy into Malta: five freighters escorted by four battleships, five cruisers, one aircraft carrier, and thirteen destroyers. But it was just a stop along the way to Italy’s Taranto Harbor for him.
There was also a new Photo Reconnaissance Unit on Malta, with three high-flying, American-made Martin Maryland bombers, whose range of 1,300 miles gave the Allies the ability to look down on every Italian port and airfield in the Mediterranean. Reconnaissance flights over Taranto, 350 miles northeast of Malta, had photographed six Italian battleships.
Under a nearly full moon on Sunday, November 11, twenty Swordfish flew off the
Illustrious,
170 miles out to sea, toward Taranto Harbor. Eleven of the “Stringbags” carried 1,500-pound torpedoes, and the rest were armed with 250-pound bombs. Harbor defenses heard the slow, droning Stringbags coming and started firing before they even got there.
“The sky over the harbor looked like it sometimes does over Mount Etna in Sicily, when the great volcano erupts,” said Charles Lamb, one of the Stringbag pilots. “The darkness was
Illustrious
also carried a squadron of new two-seat Fairey Fulmar fighters, each with eight guns; they shot down six “flying buffalos” and more SM.79s were damaged, while others jettisoned their 2,750-pound payloads over the sea and turned for home.
The three freighters and one small tanker were escorted into Malta’s harbor, with a tugboat towing one of the freighters, which had a hole in her hull and a smashed rudder from near misses—bombs that land in the water close enough for the concussion to cause damage. The merchant ships carried 40,000 tons of supplies and were greeted by cheering Maltese lining the bastions and barrancas, five deep in some places.
But the cheery mood lasted just three days. On the evening of September 5, as Churchill was announcing the success of his Operation Hats to the House of Commons (and as Minda Larsen was having her twenty-fourth birthday, without a cake because the Nazis took all the eggs), the Junkers Ju 87—the scary Stuka—made its debut over Malta. The Luftwaffe had sent fifteen Stukas to Sicily, and five of them went looking for the battleship
Valiant
in Grand Harbour. She was already gone, so the Italian pilots—rushed into the cockpit after taking only half of the twenty-five-hour German training course—bombed a fort instead. There was little damage, but the writing was in the sky, and it was as ugly as the plane.
In October 1940, Malta got its first big bombers. A dozen Wellingtons, called “flying cigars,” landed at Luqa after being flown from England. There were no ground crews to prepare them, but they made a bombing run the next night anyhow, to Naples Harbor, barely getting airborne on the treacherously short and crater-filled Luqa strip. For the next mission the payload was decreased to lessen the weight, but that evening’s heat and humidity robbed the engines of power, and two of four Wellingtons went down just after takeoff, killing five crewmen and making orphans of five children whose parents were killed when one of the bombers crashed and burned on their house.
Bombers were at least as important to the war in the Mediterranean as the Hurricanes and other fighters, because bombers could cripple the enemy, while the fighters’ role was support and defense. But the fighters got the attention, because spectacular dogfights over Malta were like a spectator sport, watched by thousands. The Malta bombers rumbled away without fanfare, usually after dark, and destroyed targets in Italy and Sicily, as well as ships in convoys to North Africa that supplied the Axis’ drive toward Egypt and Persian oil. With some bombers, Malta could now shift from a defensive to an offensive position. But big bombers needed many tons of aviation fuel, which could only come on ships.
Admiral Cunningham led another convoy into Malta: five freighters escorted by four battleships, five cruisers, one aircraft carrier, and thirteen destroyers. But it was just a stop along the way to Italy’s Taranto Harbor for him.
There was also a new Photo Reconnaissance Unit on Malta, with three high-flying, American-made Martin Maryland bombers, whose range of 1,300 miles gave the Allies the ability to look down on every Italian port and airfield in the Mediterranean. Reconnaissance flights over Taranto, 350 miles northeast of Malta, had photographed six Italian battleships.
Under a nearly full moon on Sunday, November 11, twenty Swordfish flew off the
Illustrious,
170 miles out to sea, toward Taranto Harbor. Eleven of the “Stringbags” carried 1,500-pound torpedoes, and the rest were armed with 250-pound bombs. Harbor defenses heard the slow, droning Stringbags coming and started firing before they even got there.
“The sky over the harbor looked like it sometimes does over Mount Etna in Sicily, when the great volcano erupts,” said Charles Lamb, one of the Stringbag pilots. “The darkness was
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