The Moscow Option (14 page)

II

This airborne assault was the culminating blow of a campaign that had already lasted four months. It had begun with the virtual doubling of Luftwaffe strength in the Mediterranean at the end of the previous November. Luftflotte X, whose responsibilities covered a vast area - including supporting Rommel, protecting the Axis Mediterranean supply-route, protecting Italian oil shipments en route from Roumania through the northern Mediterranean, and attacking the British rear areas in Egypt - had been joined by Luftflotte II, fresh from its successes in the skies above Moscow. The new Air Fleet, mustering some 325 planes, was deployed exclusively in Sicily, with orders to neutralise Malta’s capacity to interfere with Axis shipping and to weaken the island’s ability to withstand the planned invasion. It comprised five bomber groups of Ju88s, one group of Stukas, one of Me 110s and four of Me 109Fs.

This formidable force got off to an unfortunate start in January and early February, mostly due to the employment of mistaken tactics. Field-Marshal Kesselring, in overall command of the Mediterranean Luftwaffe formations, ordered continuous raids by small groups of planes. Such tactics, he felt, would give the defenders no rest. But Kesselring overlooked the fact that it would also give them the chance to concentrate their forces. German losses suddenly climbed alarmingly.

Nor were the raids doing much damage. Malta’s defences were highly dispersed, and the prevailing Luftwaffe gospel of pinpoint bombing ensured that each target destroyed exacted an inordinate cost in planes.

New tactics were called for, and in early February Luftflotte II’s Chief of Staff, Air-General Deichmann, decreed a changeover to area bombing by massed bomber formations. The areas chosen were not particularly large, but they were hard to miss. The first chosen were the Grand Harbour, with its naval installations, and the three principal airfields at Hal Far, Luqa and Takali. For three weeks practically the entire Air Fleet was engaged in attacking these targets.

The new tactics worked well. Enormous damage was inflicted, yet the cost to the Luftwaffe was negligible. The last remaining seaworthy ships were forced to evacuate Malta; the submarines had to remain submerged through the daylight hours. Dockyard work was brought to a virtual halt; even in the underground workshops it was continually interrupted by power breakdowns and light failures. The airfields were kept barely functional by civil labour and the local troops, but in any case the planes which used them were being slowly consumed by the battle above.

During the last fortnight of March the German bombers shifted their attentions to secondary targets - camps, barracks, store depots and roads. Anti-aircraft positions were subject to almost continuous attack, particularly those in the south-eastern corner of the island. It seemed to the Maltese garrison and population that the sky was rarely clear of the enemy for more than ten minutes.

The scale of the air assault, and the losses involved, naturally created enormous difficulties for the island’s political and military leaderships. None of the losses could be replaced. Not one convoy had docked in Valletta’s Grand Harbour since the previous September. Cunningham’s failure to win back the Cyrenaican airstrips in ‘Crusader’ had led to the cancellation of the convoy planned for early January; only one merchant ship, the
Breconshire
, had tried to slip through unescorted at the end of the month with a cargo of much-needed fuel oil. Caught by German bombers operating from those very airstrips, the ship had been severely disabled and now sat, leaking oil, in Tobruk harbour.

In mid-February another attempt had been made, this time involving three merchant ships, but it was no more successful. Mercilessly attacked by German planes from Crete and Cyrenaica for over four hundred miles, the three merchantmen went down one by one, leaving Admiral Vian’s destroyers to guard an empty sea.

By this time the situation on the island was serious, and was recognised as such in London. Churchill, as we shall see, was reluctant to pester Auchinleck into a desert offensive, but was ready to order Admiral Cunningham (the General’s brother) to push through a convoy ‘regardless of the cost in naval vessels’. This was easier said than done, though Cunningham was characteristically willing to try. The next convoy, containing six merchantmen and aptly-code-named ‘Essential’, would be protected by virtually the entire Mediterranean Fleet. Not that this, in March 1942, amounted to very much. Only three cruisers and seven destroyers could be found to protect the convoy against the battleships of the Italian Navy and the might of the Luftwaffe.

It was not enough. The Italian Fleet put in an appearance, but failed to bring the inferior British force to battle. Vian’s destroyers cloaked the convoy with smoke, and Admiral lachino, not for the first time, refused to expose his capital ships to the dangers of a British torpedo attack. The Luftwaffe was not so easily deterred. Once again the merchantmen succumbed to its bombs as their escort pumped flak into the clouds. The first ship was sunk due south of Cape Matapan, the last eighty miles short of Malta. A British destroyer went down with them. At nightfall on 17 March a disconsolate Cunningham turned back for Alexandria.

The failure of ‘Essential’ was a crippling blow. On Malta the situation deteriorated day by day. Flour, bread, sugar, coal, benzene and kerosene were either running short or not running at all. Even drinking water was in short supply. Rationing and the communal ‘Victory Kitchens’ ensured that the hardships were shared, but that was small comfort as they grew harder to bear. All in all, Malta’s life-support system was stretched to the limit. Although it was estimated that the island could hold out until the end of April, there is no doubt that its ability to resist an invasion had been growing steadily weaker since the middle of March.

In the purely military sphere the shortages were also taking their toll. The
Breconshire’s
failure in January had left the stocks of aviation fuel dangerously depleted, a situation only saved, ironically, by the shortage of planes to use them up. By the end of March only six Hurricanes remained of the island’s fighter force.

Ammunition was also a pressing problem. There was enough for small arms and the light anti-aircraft guns, but not for the vital heavy anti-aircraft weapons. Since these latter guns, together with the now largely non-existent air force, formed the backbone of the island’s air defence it was unlikely that any serious opposition could be offered an airborne assault while it was still in the air. Malta’s survival would have to be fought for on the ground.

Through 1941 the garrison had been steadily increased despite the calls of other theatres, and by August consisted of some thirteen infantry battalions and the King’s Own Malta Regiment, altogether some 23,000 men. It had been intended to raise the numbers still further but the Luftwaffe’s grip on the Central Mediterranean made reinforcement impossible.

Up until January 1942 the plans for thwarting an invasion rested, in the worst British tradition, on an almost exclusively static conception of defence. A line of fortifications - the Victoria Lines - was built from east to west so as to cut off the north-western corner of the island, and the coastline of the remaining two-thirds was fortified. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines were sown on and behind the beaches, wire was laid in profusion, and an anti-tank ditch excavated. Concrete and mutually-supporting pill-boxes were built in three parallel lines inland from the coast. Others were scattered around the all-important airstrips. Only a few companies were allotted a mobile role; these would counterattack in the event of an enemy threat to the airfields. The rest of the garrison was supposed to sit inside its defences and wait.

General Beak, who arrived in January to take over the military command, did not think much of these arrangements. He wanted a considerably enlarged mobile reserve. But at the end of the month the Luftwaffe offensive moved into top gear, and most of the garrison’s time was taken up with repairing damage done by the bombing. There was little time for training exercises, or for the implementation of Beak’s ideas. The island’s defence would have to rest, in the great tradition of Rourke’s Drift, on the thin red line and a wall to put it behind. Unfortunately the British were wearing khaki now, and the Ju52s would not be dropping Zulus.

III

The invasion of Crete the previous May had been a costly affair for Student’s XI Airborne Corps. Out of 22,000 troops committed over 6000 had been killed, and 3764 of those had been members of the Airborne Corps. The losses in experienced officers and NCOs had been particularly high. It seemed to many as if the
fallschirmjager’s
days of glory were now at an end.

Student had disagreed, and for several months had been awaiting the opportunity to prove the doubters wrong. Now, with Malta, he had been given his opportunity. The mistakes made during the Cretan operation - inadequate reconnaissance, wrong choice of dropping zones, the inadequate preparation of the Greek airfields - could, he believed, have been rectified. In the Malta operation they would be rectified.

This time round the
fallschirmjager
would be dropping with their Italian allies, a less disheartening prospect than might have been imagined by those used to decrying the efforts of the Italian infantry in the desert. Italy, like Germany and the Soviet Union, had taken an early interest in the possibilities of airborne assault, and experiments in the new form of warfare had been proceeding since the late ‘20s. The Italian parachute battalions raised during the previous decade - by 1942 expanded into the
Folgore
and
Nemba
divisions - were well-trained, and possessed of a high esprit de corps. If the Germans were to be let down by the Italians, it would not be by the airborne troops.

The preparations for ‘Operation C3’ (the Italian designation) had begun in late November under the overall supervision of Student. It was recognised that it would have to take place by mid-April at the latest, for both Rommel and the Army in Russia would be demanding the return of their air strength by that time. The invasion could not take place much earlier on account of the conditions at sea.

The forces available were certainly large. 30,000 men were to be lifted in by air and another 70,000 by sea; an invasion force which outnumbered the British garrison by four to one. Four hundred Ju52s and two hundred Savoia 82s would drop the paratroopers and bring in the other airborne troops once an airfield had been captured. There were also over five hundred gliders available, most of them either the standard DFS230s or the newer Gotha 242s. The former, which had been used in Crete, carried only ten men, the latter either twenty-five men or the equivalent in hardware. There was also thirty of the aptly-named Me321 ‘Gigants’; these could transport either two hundred men, a 75mm anti-tank gun, or a small tank. They had to be towed by a troika of Me 110s.

In Crete the gliders had gone in first, their silent approach maximising the element of surprise. But in the case of Malta surprise was considered highly unlikely, and in any case the nature of the terrain - most notably the stone walls which cut the island into tiny segments - made it impossible to land the gliders anywhere outside the airfield areas.

The one outstanding advantage Malta had over Crete was the short distance the troops would have to be carried. Each transport plane could be expected to make the thirty-minute run four times each way in the course of a day. In the two runs envisaged on the afternoon of the invasion some 12,000 troops could be dropped.

The amphibious operation presented more difficulties. For one thing the six Italian divisions involved were of dubious quality, for another it was doubted in some quarters whether the Italian battlefleet would defend their passage with sufficient resolution. There were also the usual anxieties about insufficient oil supplies.

But for all this, there was no lack of confidence in the Axis camp. The Prince of Piedmont, the conservatively competent nominal commander of the operation, expected it to be successful. Student was also optimistic. His subordinate, Major Rancke, had submitted glowing reports on the state of the
Folgore
Division; the size of the forces involved in the operation was almost overwhelming. Student saw no flaws in the plan. Kesselring did expect problems with the amphibious operation, but did not anticipate any with the more vital airborne invasion. Only the Italian generals commanding the six infantry divisions expressed deep pessimism, but their doubts were swept aside by Mussolini’s military supremo, Marshal Cavallero. He was hoping for the laurels.

One major source of all this confidence was the thoroughness of the reconnaissance operation. Every square inch of Malta had been caught by the camera’s eye; the type and position of all but the most expertly camouflaged defence positions had been noted and taken into account. As Student said later: ‘we even knew the calibre of the coastal guns, and how many degrees they could be turned inwards.’ The invaders had a very clear idea of what they were invading.

Armed with all this information the German-Italian Planning Staff in Rome had drafted their plan of attack. The area chosen for the initial assault was in the south-eastern corner of the island, for the coasts in this section, though rockier and steeper, was known to be less well defended. At around noon on the chosen day intensive attacks would be launched on the anti-aircraft positions in this area and, as the last bombs fell, the airborne troops would drop from their transport planes in the areas north and west of their primary objectives, Hal Far airfield.

By this time the amphibious operation would be getting underway. The spearhead force - 8300 men, artillery and tanks carried in self-propelled craft - would beach that night in the Marsa Scirocco Bay, within easy linking distance of the airborne troops. On the following day continuous flights of transport planes would bring in more troops to the captured Hal Far airfield, and the bulk of the invasion fleet would be pulling in to secured beaches. The Luftwaffe would be controlling the skies and, aided by the Italian Navy and German U-boats, the sea. Conquering the rest of the island would be no problem.