In the spring of 1944, two American pilots from the US 4th Fighter Group, operating together, began to destroy flights of German fighters, right over the Nazi heartland — representing a remarkable turn for the relatively inexperienced US fighter force. (Akhil Kadidal)
The American fighter pilots of the US 8th Air Force who fought and destroyed the German Luftwaffe have largely been given a bum deal by history. Sure, reams of paper have been written about them but scant have they been portrayed by the celluloid or the digital screen. I started thinking about this post while watching “Masters of Air” (detailed in a separate post) and especially about two ace pilots, John Godfrey and Don Gentile, who are nearly forgotten now, but who played their part (however modest) in the final Allied victory. Their combat careers are the subject of the infographic above and some of the text below.
“The ordinary air fighter is an extraordinary man and the extraordinary air fighter stands as one in a million among his fellows.”
Theodore Roosevelt
In the skies over World War II Europe, relatively green American fighter pilots met their battle-hardened opponents in the Luftwaffe and the result was an astounding test of arms, driven by small groups of talented survivors and stone-cold killers who earned the right to be called “aces.”
Fighter pilots of WWII were like some type of superhumans who went to war, wielding a battery of heavy machineguns and/or cannons. Not all survived the crucible of combat. In any squadron in World War II, a gifted 30% of pilots roughly accounted for 60% of all squadron kills. Another 15-20% of squadron pilots in a given squadron were so much cannon-fodder.
To be called an “ace” in the western air forces of WWII, one needed to have shot down five aircraft (this basic requirement has continued). The Germans did not recognize the term “ace” but instead used the word “expert” (experte). But if measured by the Allied yardstick, the German Luftwaffe had a monopoly on aces during the war — with over 2,880 of them, out of which 104 pilots racked up an hitherto unprecedented number of aerial kills (over 100 each).
The US had 1,200 aces during the war, but none in Europe scored more 28 aerial victories. No Allied pilot (including the British commonwealth and Soviet) exceeded 62 in the war. But as the European air war showed, Allied and US pilots were no welterweights in comparison to their Luftwaffe counterparts. The disparity in scores boiled down to how many opportunities for combat Allied pilots had, shorter tours of operational duty and different operational procedures.
Having fed on the obsolete aircraft of the French and Polish Air Forces in 1940 and then romping through the largely inept Soviet Air Force from 1941, the Luftwaffe was stunned to discover that American fighter pilots could actually shoot them down in combat.
A typical example was in early 1944, in the sky over Berlin, when two American fighter pilots in the US 8th Air Force began a deadly partnership during a strategic bombing raid on the city.
Since the finale of the WWII TV show “Masters of the Air” aired weeks ago, hundreds of media articles have emerged, talking about the “true stories” behind the show. Most are incomplete, repetitive. The following piece will try to provide a historical context to the events portrayed in the show, accompanied by the usual raft of custom infographics.
Please be advised that the following contains spoilers.
Some of the greatest war stories ever told are of units on the brink of destruction and among them, in the European theater of war in World War II, is the tale of the American 100th Bomb Group. The group’s story is now the subject of a new TV drama produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as a follow-on to their critically acclaimed Band of Brothers (1998) and The Pacific (2010), in what could be the final salvo of their World War II trilogy.
Assembled stateside in June 1942 and shipped out to England in February 1943, the 100th Bomb Group was part of a massive military experiment: the first daylight strategic bombing campaign of an adversary.
The unforgiving air war. (Masters of the Air)
This placed it dead center in an unforgiving war fought at 25,000 feet, at temperatures of -50 Fahrenheit against a Nazi foe with some of the finest technology and combat veterans that could be mustered. The Nazis had declared “Total War” (Der Totale Krieg) in February 1943, a state of being meant to achieve victory in the war in the shortest time space by enhancing home front activities and combat operations. Facing such an enemy, the 100th, as an ill-disciplined unit with cavalier officers, became ill-fated and subject to such bloodletting that it became known as “The Bloody Hundredth.”
Masters of the Air (2024), supposedly based on the Donald L Miller history of the same name, tries to be a soaring finale to the Spielbergian view of the American WWII experience, the “good war”: decency versus barbarism, can-do initiative versus clumsy totalitarianism.
Origins
The 100th was a core member of the England-based American 8th Air Force (the “Mighty Eighth”) which tried to blast the German war machine off the face of the map. The Eighth’s “ships,” as the men called their Boeing B-17 heavy bombers, represented a view of American masculinity: strong, rugged, resplendent with gleaming Plexiglas, bristling with guns, an extension of the old west, and decorated with all manner of squadron heraldry and artwork, primarily Disney cartoon characters or gaudy pinup girls. In fact, the rule of thumb appeared to be: the gaudier the art, the better.
Men of the 91st Bomb Group paint a relatively tame nose art on a B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed “Nine-O-Nine” at Bassingbourn in 1944. Nose art formed a vital component of the aircrews’ esprit d’corps. (Imperial War Museum)
Some men called their machines, “flying porcupines,” but the US Army Air Force (USAAF) preferred the name, “The Flying Fortress.” The B-17’s raiding partner was the Consolidated B-24 Liberator which gets zero screen time in the TV series.
Across B-17 and B-24 bases, the “ops” always began the same: a fleet of jeeps racing towards planes assigned on the mission, men with anxious faces and shouting voices. A green flare launched from the control tower indicating to men in the cigar-shaped hulks that the moment had come. They were to return once again to the lion’s den where some had gone before and had never lived to tell the tale.
In the spring of 1943, when the 100th appeared on the scene, 8th Air Force was a neophytic army, the US Army Air Force’s (USAAF’s) newest progeny. Its inception on 1 February 1942 had come with a twin caveat: sustain the primary American air effort against Nazi Germany and validate the controversial pre-war concept of strategic bombing.
The Eighth’s leading elements arrived in England shortly after – a scant two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In comparison to tactical air power, tested on the battlefields of France in the latter part of World War I, strategic air warfare was a new idea. As US historians put it: “Strategic bombing bears the same relationship to tactical bombing as a cow does to the pail of milk. To deny immediate aid and comfort to the enemy, tactical considerations dictate upsetting the bucket. To ensure eventual starvation, the strategic move is to kill the cow.”
The 8th Air Force’s singular objective was to incapacitate Germany by air before the first American troops set foot on occupied Europe. This, it did not achieve, but without the Eighth’s presence, Allied victory over Nazi Germany would have been more costly and less assured. The Eighth’s war was spread across an unprecedented and bloody 39 months, battle-torn and replete with massive losses. The Eighth suffered more deaths than the entire US Marine Corps (USMC) did during the Pacific campaign, Miller writes.
The statistics are sobering. The Eighth lost at least 6,333 aircraft of all kinds in combat during the war, 26,000 men killed in action, 18,000 men wounded and 28,000 men captured. The 100th Bomb Group alone lost 177 bombers in combat and suffered 1,756 casualties. (See Roger Freeman’s 8th Air Force War Diary, Eighth Air Force History & Statistical summary of Eighth Air Force operations European theater, 17 Aug. 1942 – 8 May 1945, HQ Eighth Air Force, June 1945) The USMC’s total fatalities in World War II were between 19,733 and 24,511 personnel. (USMC University/National WWII Museum)
This chart shows how many aircraft in each bomber group in the 8th Air Force were lost in combat during the war. The loss of a bomber also meant the loss of the 10-man crew onboard, although sometimes, fortunate crew members evaded capture and returned to England. (Akhil Kadidal)Continue reading “Masters of the Air: The Historical Context”→
Unable to mount a cross-channel invasion of France early in the Second World War, the Anglo-American alliance believed that their bombers could open a veritable “second front” against the Third Reich which the Soviet Union had been clamoring for since 1942. The British believed that their bombers could win the war single-handedly. American enthusiasm was more tempered in that they believed that their daylight strikes would shorten the war. Both sides had bitter lessons to learn.
Once touted as a technology masterwork capable of bringing wars to an end with a minimal cost in lives, the heavy bombers of the Second World War occupied a hallowed position in wartime societies which saw them as an essential tool.
The great quest of the human race in the years of austerity from the 1920s to the 1940s was not to cure poverty, hunger or disease, but how to push aloft multi-engined behemoths with a bomb-load and how to dump that deadly cargo onto an enemy state with the utmost of accuracy and a minimal of effort. Such an achievement, it was thought, would save lives — through the obviation of another static, land slog such as World War I.
The Americans favored the use of rugged, heavily armed day bombers equipped with the top-secret Norden bombsight to carry out pinpoint accuracy of bombing against Germany’s most vital military targets, while the British, who having tried daylight bombing only to be badly bloodied, preferred to bomb German cities at night in an effort to break Axis morale. The American view was that indiscriminate night bombing (indiscriminate because accuracy in night bombing was impossible despite advances in technology), was not only wasteful but that the bombing of civilian areas would do little to cripple the German war industry. The British, in turn, warned the Americans that daylight operations were impracticable because of the vulnerability of four-engined heavy bombers to enemy fighters. Yet, the British had no leg to stand on when on a single night in 1944, they lost 96 bombers in combat.[1]
This horrific casualty figure was a direct result of the unwavering confidence of Allied bomber barons that the relentless bombardment of Nazi Germany would force Adolf Hitler out of power and bring about the economic collapse of the Third Reich. In reality, just as American drone strikes in Afghanistan and western Pakistan have served to increase suicide and terror attacks on American and western forces in the modern era, German resistance congealed into an overwhelming hatred of the Allies, driven by the need to kill as many of “them” before Germany herself collapsed. To this end, the Germans developed fantastic tactics involving heavily armored fighter aircraft to ram bombers, a bat-shaped, rocket-powered craft designed to bolt into the midst of a heavy bomber formation and engage them using a large-bore cannon, a jet fighter made partly out of wood intended to be flown by teenagers of the Hitler Youth and a range of technical breakthroughs which not only made the business of finding the enemy easier, but blowing him out of the sky as well.
Yet, a sense of vulgarity permeates discussions about bombs, bombers and aerial bombardment, with their inseparable echoes of the secret human lust for corruption. It is a thing of uncouthness, unsophisticated, like conversations about pornography. The late writer, David Foster Wallace, once described how a pornographic actress looked as she excitedly told a fellow writer (Evan Wright, the author of Generation Kill) about her rescue and adoption of a stray dog. She looked for “a moment” like a 14-year-old, Wallace wrote, only to have the impression last for only a “heartbreaking” second or two.[2] Aerial bombardment, with its metaphorical manifestation of debasement is no less of a loss of innocence of the species. Where the unsavoriness arguably ends, however, is at the legions of ordinary airmen of all sides whose wartime experiences constitute some of the most extraordinary tales of duty, loss and heroism in the annals of military history. From a sociological point of view, it is nothing if not remarkable that an entire generation of humans, hewn out of the hardships of the depression-era and thus being largely unused to technology, were able to adapt to the role of “modern” aviators.
But why talk about events which are now over 70 years old? Because then as now, bombing continues to be touted as a solution to external problems and because then as now, we are witness to pronouncements by those promising panacea through technology. If the last one hundred years of human history and culture have told us anything it is that while technology has the means to perhaps improve our lives, it is incapable of solving our more fundamental problems because human nature, in general, is intractable.
By 1944, at the apex of the Second World War, it had begun to sink in to the Allies that the war would not be won by the bombers despite their formidable technology. As hundreds of airmen continued to die on a daily basis for futile war aims, the military boffins and the inventors continued their dogged progress into uncharted scientific territory, developing one wondrous gadget after the next, until, in the end it became not so much as winning the war in the air, but giving the fighting men the means to stay alive in the face of escalating odds until the juggernaut of the land armies could roll into Germany to crush the last vestiges of the Reich. Perhaps the air campaign against the Nazis is less an indictment against the effectiveness of bombing than a statement of fact that bombing is perhaps not the ideal solution to the world’s problems.
47,268 members of the Royal Air Forces (including 9,887 Canadians, plus thousands of other “colonials”) and 26,000 American airmen of the US 8th Air Force lost their lives over Europe during the war in order for strategists to learn that indiscriminate or wholesale bombing is ineffective. How well that lesson has been absorbed by successive generations is debatable.
While nose art was classified by American psychiatrists as a projection of the violent male ego, aircrews likely saw them as a means to soften and feminize the brutal nature of warfare. By assigning a motif to aircraft, the airmen hoped to turn their machine into a living thing capable of graciousness and mercy. Aircraft became a “she,” a female entity which shared in their life and death struggles. Air Force headquarters, however, was appalled by the pornographic nature of these artworks. Yet, their fears for the inner souls of their airmen and potential of their wholesale transformation into ribald, roughened warriors so far gone into the realm of immorality that they would be incapable of returning to the fold in civilian life, was in many ways, as ludicrous as sending them out to drop bombs on populations in the first place. As actor Marlon Brando’s character, “Colonel Walter E. Kurtz,” succinctly points out in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux (1979): “We train young men to drop fire on people but their commanders won’t allow them to write “Fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”
Perhaps, in demanding that aircrews tone down the explicit nature of their artwork, 8th Air Force headquarters was also trying to protect the innocence of the English youth, who were bombarded daily with images of nude women soaring over their rural villages and homes on canvases of airborne aluminum.
The high stresses of air combat prompted men to adopt a variety of animals for emotional support. Every combat group had an animal mascot, and nearly every hut in every squadron had at least one pet, usually a dog, although there were exceptions as the following photographs show:
First Lt. Quince L. Brown of the 84th Fighter Squadron and Bristow, Oklahoma, reputed as the “first man in the European theater to destroy four German planes on one day while flying a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter,” poses with his dog, a German shepherd pup. Quince was shot down and captured — and subsequently murdered by German civilians on 6 September 1944. His dog was sent on to his folks in Oklahoma. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE309)
Lt. Albert C. Rood of the 390th Bomb Group poses with his new terrier, “Eager,” in England, after returning from an arduous shuttle mission to Regensburg and North Africa in August 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE3968)
Second Lt. Richard H. Lightfine of Garden City, Long Island, and the 323rd Bomb Group with his dog “Trea” in July 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE4623)
A gunner in the 451st Bomb Group sits with his dog before a mission. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE8795)
2nd Lt. Robert W. Biesecker of the 390th Bomb Group poses with his crew and their pets, “Scrappy” the dog and “Joe” the monkey, in front their B-17 “Honey Chile” (#42-31027) in October 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1593)
Airmen of the 386th Bomb Group, (from left) Private Walter E. Kelly of Chicago, Tech-Sgt M.E. Shank of Dayton, Ohio, Private F. Carpole of Brooklyn, New York and S/Sgt James M Marcus, also of Brooklyn, pose with their squadron mascots, “Windy” the duck, “Rose Bud” the goat, and Flak” and “Salvo” the dogs in September 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE2250)
Captain Davis Perron of the 363rd Squadron, 357th Fighter Group holds the squadron dog, Jack, while sitting in the cockpit of his P-51B Mustang “Little Bitch” (#43-6792). Perron was killed in action in January 1944. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE473)
“Meatball” runs to greet a B-17 crewman returning from a mission over occupied Europe in March 1944. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1264)
“Flap,” the mascot of the 448th Bomb Group sits on a jeep. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1800)
First Lt. Walter J. Konantz, a pilot of the 55th Fighter Group, holds his Scottie dog, Lassie II, who is nursing a leg injury (as is evinced by a plaster cast).
First Lt. Robert C. Peterson, a navigator of the 44th Bomb Group, sits inside his B-24 Liberator with the crew’s mascot: “Pilot Officer Rusty.” Rusty allegedly took part in several missions. (Associated Press)
Staff Sergeant Antoni Bednarchuk of the 303rd Bomb Group, a former bus driver from Providence, Rhode Island, poses with his dog in April 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE4189)
Two airmen of the 96th Bomb Group place an oxygen mask on their dog in front of a B-17G Flying Fortress. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE3962)
“Roscoe,” the bear mascot of the 390th Bomb Group sits atop crates of ammunition in August 1943. Adopted by a group squadron as a cub while the unit was still in the United States in early 1943, “Roscoe” was later found to be a female and renamed “Ann.” Beset by health problems later in the year, the bear had to be put down, much the anguish of the group and the local English village children who had become attached to her. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1560)
The crew of a 91st Bomb Group Flying Fortress play with their dog. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE3527)
An airman of the 306th Bomb Group with his dog, underneath the wing of a B-17 Flying Fortress. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE4397)
Captain James A. Verinis of the 91st Bomb Group poses with his Scottie, “Stuka,” in the waist gun position of his B-17 Flying Fortress “Memphis Belle” on 30 June 1943, following the conclusion of his crew’s tour of duty. Verinis was the co-pilot of the “Memphis Belle.” (Roger Freeman Collection FRE3500)
A bomber crewman of the 381st Bomb Group lifts up his dog, “Meatball” on 10 March 1944. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE4835)
Sgt. Harold Rogers of the 401st Bomb Group with his dog mascot “Mister,” in the waist gun position of a B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed “Un Petit Peu.” “Mister” allegedly flew several missions with his master who designed a custom respirator for him. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE9719)
War artist Frank Beresford is assisted by “Lady Moe,” the donkey mascot of the 96th Bomb Group. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE3968)
Two fighter pilots of the 82nd Fighter Squadron with “Brussels,” who belonged to a friend who was later killed in action. (Courtesy Huie Lamb)
The crew of a 390th Bomb Group B-17 commanded by 2nd Lt. Robert W. Biesecker of Lexington, North Carolina pets their mascots “Scrappy” the dog and “Joe” the monkey. Scrappy was adopted by the crew during training in the United States while Joe was adopted at an airbase in England. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1593)
“Buddy” the dog mascot of the 62nd Fighter Squadron poses for the camera on 10 June 1942. Walt Disney drew a squadron insignia for the unit based on “Buddy,” which he characterized as the “First Flying Sergeant of the ‘Fighting 62nd’ Fighter Squadron.” (Roger Freeman Collection FRE2704)
William “Bill” Pulliam, a photographic officer of the 91st Bomb Group, pets his cat, “Cross Eyes” at Bassingbourn. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE5671)
Captain H. Carey, a flight surgeon in the 356th Fighter Group, sits with his dog “Don.” (Roger Freeman Collection FRE6074)
Lieutenant Harry S. McMurray of the 305th Bomb Group and San Leandro, Califronia, feeds “Flak,” his crew’s pet monkey. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1113)
Fighter ace, Lt. Ralph K. “The Kid” Hofer of Salem, Missouri and the 4th Fighter Group, plays with his Alsatian, “Duke.” When Hofer was killed in a dogfight over Berlin in July 1944, Duke was adopted by fellow pilot, Lt. “Deacon” Hively, and taken home after the war.
A bomber crew of the 322nd Bomb Group prepares to board their B-26 Marauder “Jezabelle,” with their pet dog “Salvo.” (Roger Freeman Collection FRE1184)
Lt. Howard “Deacon” Hively of the 4th Fighter Group greets “Duke,” a police Alsatian which belongs to another member of the squadron, Lt. Ralph K. Hofer, in October 1943. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE2250)
Colonel Robert Landry, the commander of the 56th Fighter Group, poses with his dog. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE2731)
American fighter ace, First Lt. John Godfrey of the 4th Fighter Group, tells his dog “Lucky” to stay as he prepares to climb into his P-51B Mustang. (American Air Museum in Britain)
Staff Sgt. Joe Pace, a wounded B-17 radio operator, pets “Stinky,” a Jack Russell terrier belonging to his pilot, Lt. Gerald “Jerry” White, at a hospital in England. (Roger Freeman Collection FRE5886)
The following is an excerpt from my 267,000-word manuscript on the battle for Malta, which remains in work. This post was updated in August 2023. | Header painting above by Rowland Hilder, 1942
When the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini bought his country into the Second World War in June 1940, he did so believing he could wrest control of the Mediterranean Sea from his rivals, Great Britain and France.
For those Italians who dreamed about a new Roman Empire stretching to the oceans, the Mediterranean was mare nostrum (our sea). Only one immediate hurdle stood in their way — the tiny British bastion of Malta, just 60 miles south of Sicily, occupying a strategic place in the narrows of the central Mediterranean, a rocky aircraft carrier from where the British could launch attacks on Italy and her territories and a natural anchorage for their Royal Navy from where it could project power in the region.
Mussolini was determined to crush the island. But he (and later the Germans) had badly underestimated the fighting spirit of the islanders. Although outnumbered and outgunned, British planes and warships manned by volunteers, veterans and misfits from across the British Empire and the United States harried Axis aircraft and wreaked havoc upon their convoys. This hindered the movement of supplies to North Africa where a skilled German General, Erwin Rommel, was campaigning to seize Egypt and ultimately, the oil-rich territories of Persia.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in 1938. (Hugo Jaeger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
The Axis responded by trying to blast Malta off the map and starve it into submission.
Kept alive through a tenuous and erratic supply line — vulnerable convoys sailing from Gibraltar and Alexandria, Malta hung on, wielding massive influence on the battles raging in North Africa and sparking fierce naval clashes which gutted the Axis merchant fleets and scarred the Italian Regia Marina – that other Royal Navy.
The phrase “naval battles of World War II” may conjure imagery of the Pacific, but more surface engagements were fought in the Mediterranean than in any other place during the war — 50, compared to 36 in the Pacific and 49 in the Atlantic. The siege of the island lasted for nearly two-and-a-half years. The siege eclipsed all the great sieges of modern history (barring Leningrad) as the defenders fought a lonely, heroic campaign, a private little war against the might of two Axis militaries
Over its 900 days of siege, the lonely island began to thwart distant Rommel and preserve the Allied war effort. It found itself confronted by the weightier concerns of saving its people not only from a deluge of bombs but also the prospect of mass starvation as its defenders reached breaking point time and time again.
1940, THE JACKALS
Nazi Germany’s emergence as a military superpower was a result of its conquest of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries and France in 1939-40. However, this feat of military prowess threatened to mitigate the two-decades of Italian empire-building. Such feats by the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, also threatened to eclipse the reputation of Benito Mussolini as the strongest man in Europe.
“Every time Hitler takes a country he sends me a message,” Il Duce complained to his inner sanctum. It propelled Il Duce (as he was known to his people) to embark on a dangerous path to rival Germanic military successes with Italian conquests in the Mediterranean.
It did not help that Mussolini’s relationship with Hitler see-sawed from loathing to love. Despite his suspicion of the Nazis, he could not ally himself with Germany’s great rival, Great Britain, because he had been angered by a British naval blockade as retaliation for his conquest of Ethiopia in 1936. That blockade had been enforced by units operating out of Malta. Neither could he turn to France, whom he regarded as yet another rival for dominion over the Mediterranean. Instead, he forced himself to ally with Nazi Germany, and began making tepid preparations to enter the war in mid-1940.
With France on the back foot and with the British Army hemmed in at Dunkirk by June 1940, Italian military leaders believed that the “state of prostration of our adversaries,” presented Italy with the chance of a quick, short war, in order to stake a claim of the spoils.
Italy, however, was in no shape to make war. The country was heavily dependent on imports from the British Empire, and was bogged down by a corrupt bureaucracy and an inefficient arms industry. Convinced that the war would end in September 1940 with the German conquest of Great Britain, Mussolini made half-hearted plans to contain the British Mediterranean Fleet. His plan was to subdue Malta – a strategically important British base, which, like Italian Sicily, had dominated the central Mediterranean for five centuries.
Malta’s position in the narrows of the Mediterranean made it vitally important – a fact that the Italians and the Germans were quick to recognize. (Akhil Kadidal)
The Italian Air Force (the Regia Aeronautica) recommended pinning the island down with air attacks until the Italian Army could secure Egypt.
The plan seemed sound. But when, on June 10, Mussolini announced his declaration to make war against Britain, and in a speech to the Italian people, described the coming conflict as a clash of ideologies, nationalism versus democratism, and as a “gigantic struggle…of the fecund and the young peoples against barren peoples slipping to their sunset,” ordinary Italians appeared strangely sullen and uninspired.
The declaration of war threw Malta into confusion. Not only were the islanders perplexed by Mussolini’s decision to go to war against the British but few believed that the Italians, their friends and brothers in peace, would attack them in war.
A consumerist culture, the island was in no position to withstand a siege. It imported £5 million (equating to £418.1 million in 2023) worth of goods annually from Britain, and what was worse, it was no position to defend itself. The British Royal Navy having had decamped for Egypt in 1939, followed by the single flight of the Royal Air Force (RAF) based on the island. The island’s military chiefs could count on just a few small warships, a few thousand under-equipped British and Maltese troops, and a paltry collection of anti-aircraft guns for defense.
The island had almost no aircraft and certainly no fighters to thwart the 200 Italian combat aircraft gathering on nearby Sicily. When several crates with Gloster Gladiators, an obsolete type of biplane fighter aircraft were discovered at a naval storehouse, senior British officials on the island ordered their immediately assembly. All this happened even as distant London debated pulling out of the Mediterranean all together. Mussolini’s gamble, it seemed, was on the verge of paying off.
The biplane Gloster Gladiators were unimpressive, seemingly held together by string but the pilots are unanimous in praise of their mounts. Said one pilot, Flying Officer John Waters: “They could turn on a sixpence and climb like a bat out of hell. Other aircraft all had their nasty little ways, but the Gladiator had no vices at all.” Other pilots described the aircraft as a flying tank but the Maltese likened them to donkey carts. (BAE Systems)
As the declaration of war was relayed over the radio on the evening of 10 June 1940, the island’s governing council made a last-minute attempt to place its military forces on alert.
It opened all available air-raid shelters across the island and prepared the population for the possibility of massed air raids. Few Maltese, however, were taken in by the government’s worry. Many islanders were convinced that the islands’ small size made them difficult targets to bomb. A group of Maltese accosted RAF men in Valletta, demanding that they ratify the idea that the odds of a bomb hitting the island were a “million to one.” The airmen agreed. Malta was too small to hit.
Pre-war Grand Harbor at Valletta (Malta’s capital) in relative peace. The deep water harbor was instrumental in making the island an valuable naval base. Much of the fortifications of the harbor front were built by the Knights of St. John, carefully constructed over a period of three centuries. (photo source unknown)
This mentality, in part, prompted the collapse of an elaborate plan by the Governor, Sir Charles Bonham-Carter, to evacuate the residents of the heavily populated Grand Harbor area and the capital, Valletta, to the countryside. But Bonham-Carter was not unduly worried. He knew that the bombs would achieve what his edicts had failed to do so far.
On the morning of June 11, a Tuesday, the Maltese were awoken sounds of gunfire and explosions. The bombing caught the early morning shifts of dockyard and municipality workers in the open. But casualties were relatively low — seven men killed. This raid, the first of eight that day, threw the Maltese into panic. Their sense of vulnerability was made more acute by the fact that their Italian brethren had betrayed them and that the RAF’s quartet of old biplane Gladiator fighters had failed to score.
Malta in 1940 was a rocky “aircraft carrier” with three airbases which could support a sizeable number of aircraft. However, the airbases required improvements and enlargement to reach their full potential. The nearly treeless island was vulnerable to bombing but the limestone architecture of its towns, villages and cities would help to mitigate casualties. (Akhil Kadidal)
Great hopes had been pinned on the Gladiators. The first three aircraft were named “Faith,” “Hope” and “Charity.” A fourth, perhaps appropriately, was allegedly nicknamed “Desperation.” The nicknames were said to be the brainchild of Flying Officer John Waters to honor St. Paul’s declaration following his shipwrecking on the island in February 60 AD. In reality, the naming of the Gladiators, like so much of the Malta story, was the product of wartime propaganda and myth. Evidence suggests that a Maltese newspaperman actually coined the names in 1941 — long after the Gladiators had vanished from the scene. Legend claimed that the Gladiator pilots had initial suggested naming the aircraft: “Pip,” “Squeak” and “Wilfred.”
By the morning of June 12, Malta was paralyzed. Streets were deserted. Shops and offices were closed as the Maltese refused to leave their homes. But then something unexpectedly happened. No Italian aircraft appeared that day and the Maltese began an great exodus. As many as 80,000 residents of the Grand Harbor area fled their homes for the countryside, justifying British fears that one of the biggest problems on Malta, aside from the threat an Italian invasion, was internal collapse.
Those Maltese with no relatives in the country sought refuge in recently opened shelters and vigorously embraced the task “of going to ground.”
The Maltese repurposed the island’s old tunnels for re-use as air raid shelters. Conditions were sparse. For children it must have been a world of initial adventure later punctured by intense tedium. (Everett Collection Inc./Alamy Stock Photo)
An Italian wartime propaganda poster shows Regia Aeronautica SM79 Sparviero (Sparrowhawk) bombers raiding Malta. (image source unclear)
When the biplane Gladiators once again failed to halt Italian bombers on the 13th, the island’s RAF chief, Air Commodore “Sammy” Maynard, cabled the Air Ministry in London, requesting modern fighters. The Air Ministry, however, was busy carrying out preparations to the defend the British Isles. German air units were gathering in France to mount what would become known as “The Battle of Britain.”
No aircraft are initially sent to Malta, but the Gladiator pilots finally began to show their mettle when they shot down a handful of Italian aircraft. Overnight, they were heroes, their photos gracing homes across the island, placed next to images of Jesus and Mother Mary.
Mussolini’s optimism over the course of war started to evaporate when the Regia Marina also began to suffer heavy losses in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, he proceeded with inane domestic policies framed with a short-war timetable in mind. Over half of the army was discharged so that they could return to the agricultural sector while thousands of skilled Italians who could otherwise be employed in the Italian armaments industry, languished without jobs.
By late September, despite his commitments in North Africa, Mussolini still had 80,000 troops available without a war to fight. Instead of commandeering every available ship and packing them with troops to invade Malta, Mussolini sent them east, into Greece, expecting a lightning victory to rival German military conquests in the west. When his son-in-law, Count Ciano, asked him why, he retorted: “Hitler keeps confronting me with accomplished facts. This time, I will pay him back with his own coin.” Malta, he hoped, would simply be acceded to Italy following the German defeat of Britain.
The arrival of General Irwin Rommel in North Africa created a crisis for the British-Commonwealth armies in Libya and Egypt. (Signal magazine)
Within six weeks, the Greeks counterattacked, driving the Italians back and hurling Mussolini’s reputation to new depths. In the deserts of Libya, Mussolini’s armies were cut-off and reeling under the blows of a British counteroffensive. Just when it looked as though Mussolini would also lose his Libyan colony, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, stripped the British desert army of its most experienced units and sent them to Greece.
This ill-timed decision coincided with the assembly of a German expeditionary force in southern Italy under an ambitious German General, Erwin Rommel, who was preparing to reinforce the beleaguered Italians in Libya. Malta, having no offensive weapons, was powerless to intervene.
Neglected by Britain and fast running out of supplies and aircraft, Malta was in crisis by mid-summer. London hastily dispatched a shipment of 12 Hawker Hurricanes, a relatively modern monoplane fighter, plus a three-freighter convoy codenamed MF2 to serve as the litmus test for future convoy runs.
The arrival of the Hurricanes allowed Maynard to form a new fighter unit (261 Squadron). The freighters, however, ran into Italian bombers and suffered damage. They nevertheless punched through to deliver 40,000 tons, which was only half of what is required. In June 1940, Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, the Lord Nelson-like chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet, had estimated that two 40,000-ton convoys were required each month to keep Malta up to its pre-war standard of life. A system of rationing should have been introduced at the declaration of war, but the governor and the ruling council had felt that it would not go down well with the population. Now, with just six to eight months’ worth of food left, the island would pay a price for their indecision.
Hawker Hurricanes of 261 Squadron at Luqa air base, at the heart of the island. (IWM CM 2270)
Under pressure from Churchill to knock the Italian Regia Marina out of the war before the Germans could enter the theater of operations, Cunningham intended to use a second Malta-bound convoy (codenamed MB5) to draw out the enemy. The Italians declined the challenge.
Emboldened by their lack of resolve, London began to stream reinforcements to Malta, including reconnaissance aircraft to monitor sea lanes and Italian harbors, medium bombers to bomb Rome and Naples in retaliation for the Italian invasion of Greece, coastal aircraft to hit their navy and more Hurricanes plus anti-aircraft batteries to defend the island.
These arrivals came at a time of declining air attacks (there were just 18 air-raid alerts on Malta in December 1940, compared to 53 in June). When a third supply convoy (MF3) arrived that November, bringing in additional weaponry and normalizing food stocks on the island, Cunningham was free to focus on a decisive strike against the Italian Fleet. He hoped this would render the British masters of the Mediterranean.
Dusting off an old attack plan first proposed in 1935 at the height of the Abyssinian Crisis (when it looked as though Britain might be in a shooting war with Italy), Cunningham moved his newest aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, 300 miles off Italy. The intention was to conduct a daring raid to sink Italy’s capital ships at their moorings at the great naval harbor of Taranto, on the heel of the Italian “boot.”
A reconnaissance image of Taranto harbor in 1941.
Two dozen Fairy Swordfish biplane torpedo-bombers launched from Illustrious after nightfall on November 12. Despite the fragile nature of the antiquated Swordfish, the raid was a spectacular success.
In a single night, three of Italy’s battleships were put out of action, one permanently. The Conte di Cavour lay beached in the shallows, her decks awash. The Caio Duilio was out of action for six months and the Littorio was partly sunk. She was destined to spend the next five months in a dry-dock. One cruiser, the Trento, leaked oil and two destroyers, the Libeccio and the Pessagno had their hulls fractured. Two auxiliary ships were also damaged. The seaplane base and the oil storage depot were in shambles. Overnight, a mere 20 obsolete biplanes had altered the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean. And the price for this endeavor was two Swordfishes lost.
In London, a cockney newspaper seller announced the news: “Eyeialian fleet done in. No more macaroni.” But the attack would prove not to be decisive. Two of the crippled battleships would return to active service in a year’s time.
The strike served as a glaring demonstration of the battleship’s supersession as the primary naval weapon by aircraft and aircraft carriers. The British Admiralty was slow to grasp this lesson, although the Americans and the Japanese had not. Days after the raid, amid the great scenes of destruction, a diminutive man could be found trawling the ruins, writing in a notebook, his face congealed in concentration and study. He identified himself as Lt. Takeshi Naito, assistant air attaché at the Japanese embassy in Berlin. The implications of the raid were clear to the Japanese who were ready to apply the same lessons to another shallow-water harbor on the side of the world — Pearl Harbor.
As 1940 came to a close, Malta was socked in by a rare snowstorm. This, coupled with a temporary cessation of Italian air raids in recognition of Christmas, prompted authorities to lift the curfew. Music halls, cinemas and bars across the island reopened for round-the-clock business.
Fliegerkorps X order of battle in March 1941. (Akhil Kadidal)
The Maltese thronged the streets of every village, town and city. Both sides were in such détente by the end of the year that an RAF intelligence officer on Malta regularly called his counterpart in Sicily to discuss the events of the day. New arrivals from Britain, especially new, battle-hardened veterans of the Battle of Britain, were unimpressed. Many were openly contemptuous of the casual nature of operations on the island.
“It is hardly a serious business or warfare like the Battle of Britain,” said one pilot, Sgt. Cyril “Bam” Bamberger.
A sense of contempt also pervaded Germany over the blitheness of their Italian allies. The German propaganda minister Josef Göbbels angrily wrote that the Italians were millstones around German necks, having “brought the entire military prestige of the Axis crashing down in ruins.”
A German air corps, Fliegerkorps X, was transferred from Norway to Sicily to help regain control of the skies over the central Mediterranean and allow Rommel’s command, the Afrika Korps, to reach Libya unimpeded. The fighting prowess of the Italians was already suspect, notwithstanding the fact that their existing fighters, notably the Macchi C.200, were out-matched by Malta’s new Hurricanes.
General Hans Geisler of Fliegerkorps X decorates one of his men in the Mediterranean. (Signal magazine)
Under General Hans Geisler, Fliegerkorps X began deploying to Sicily from 10 to 14 December. Over Greece, Italian fighter units had been able to claim a two-to-one victory-to-loss ratio. Over Malta, these ratio had slipped badly in favor of the RAF. The arrival of Fliegerkorps X prompted the Italian Regia Aeronautica to rest its crews. Many Italian aircraft on Sicily were withdrawn to the mainland. This was initially a setback to Fliegerkorps X. The Germans did not have enough short-range reconnaissance planes on Sicily and their strength was slow to build up. On 9 January 1941 — a day before Fliegerkorps X officially began operations against Malta — Geisler had only 156 planes on Sicily. By early March, however, aircraft strength had reached 510 planes, of which roughly 340 were combat ready.
Their presence made an immediate difference and escalated the scale of the combat against the island. Geisler used fast German Junker Ju88 medium bombers, backed up by Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM79s to bomb Malta from high-altitude.
The days of Malta’s private little war were about to become a thing of the past.
Aircraft Profiles from World War II | PDF | 47 Pages | 8 Megabytes
A collection of aircraft and naval digital artwork that I have done over the years, mostly to see whether I could, but a few are for as-of-yet incomplete books. Each piece is accompanied by a short history detailing the exploits of the pilot or the aircraft itself.
Achilles the Heel 