The Moscow Option (15 page)

IV

The initial drop went well. Over Crete the pilots had overcompensated for the strong offshore winds and dropped the troops too far inland, but here the winds were light and onshore and no such mistake was made. By 15.00 nearly 4000 German and Italian paratroopers had been dropped into the intended zone west of Hal Far. Only a dozen or so transport planes had been downed by the AA fire, and most of the troops had safely reached the ground. Once there they swiftly regrouped and, closely supported by the diving Stukas, began to consolidate and expand their bridgehead.

In the other major dropping-zone, between the Birzebbugia-Tarshin road and Hal Far, the Axis losses were heavier. The anti-aircraft positions, more numerous and better camouflaged, claimed a healthy number of the Ju52s, and the defenders’ machine-guns killed some five per cent of the 7th Airborne Division’s 3rd and 4th Battalions before they hit the ground. But again the drop was well concentrated, and soon the other ninety-five per cent was consolidating its position, one unit setting up a north-facing road-block as the others moved east into the rear of the coastal defences and south against the northern perimeter of Hal Far airfield.

As the invaders began to put down roots in Malta’s stony soil the island’s civil and military leaders were meeting in Sir William Dobbie’s office in Valletta’s Government House. For many weeks they had been expecting the worst, and here it was. The island’s air force was virtually non-existent, and no help could be expected from the Royal Navy until the following day. In any case the scale of naval assistance was unlikely to offer any panaceas. Vice-Admiral Syfret, commanding Force H at Gibraltar, had only the small carrier
Argus
, the battleship
Malaya
, the cruiser
Hermione
and eight destroyers available for the rescue mission. The US carrier
Wasp
was also docked in the shadow of the Rock, but her employment in such a dangerous undertaking required the assent of Washington. No one had thought to secure this permission in advance. It was the early hours of 13 April before Syfret could begin his thousand-mile journey east to the embattled island.

The enemy was at sea by dusk on the 12th, the Italian troop-carrying craft moving round Cape Passaro escorted by the Italian Battlefleet. They had a mere seventy miles of ocean to cross, and the only threat to their passage was that offered by British submarines. One of these, the
Upright
, had observed the invasion fleet assembling outside Syracuse harbour. It had radioed the information to Valletta and was now shadowing the convoy south.

On Malta itself darkness fell with the battle for Hal Far airfield well underway. Seven miles away in Valletta Generals Beak and Dobbie were struggling to make sense of the confused information at their disposal. Beak decided on caution. He would commit his small mobile reserve against the bridgeheads, but would not move any other units from their present positions until such time as he knew the landfall of the armada coming down from the north.

He had, like his predecessors on Crete, got the priorities wrong. It was the airborne threat that had to be countered, and immediately. If the Axis troops gained control of Hal Far they could bring in heavy equipment and large troop reinforcements by glider and transport plane. Sooner or later the respective forces would be equalised, and from there on the odds would rise against the defenders. Already, with the second mass-drop around 16.30, there were almost 9000 Axis troops on the island, over half of them German. And the battle for Hal Far was not going well for the incumbents.

By 21.00 the bridgehead west of the airfield was four miles wide and over a mile deep. The
Folgore
units on the northern and western flanks had taken the village of Safi and were ensconced in the outskirts of Imkabba. On the eastern flank the
fallschirmjager
of 7th Airborne’s 1st and 2nd Battalions had reached the western and southern perimeters of the airfields, and were working their way around the latter towards the Kalafrana road. To the north of the airfield the 3rd and 4th Battalions were holding, with some difficulty, the Tarshin road and closing in on Birzebbugia and the southern beaches of the Marsa Scirocco. The two bridgeheads were now less than a mile apart.

The fighting continued through the night. The German troops poured mortar fire into the 231st Infantry Brigade’s positions in and around Hal Far. In the early hours the airfield was the scene of bitter hand-to-hand encounters as the forces from the two bridgeheads squeezed the British defenders out to the north and east.

Another mile to the north-east similar struggles were taking place for the coastal stretch around Birzebbugia. The village itself fell just before midnight; further to the south the Kalafrana flying-boat base was overrun soon afterwards. The beaches between the two were cleared in the succeeding hours in circumstances which could only be described as chaotic, for it was at this time that the amphibious invasion force arrived in Marsa Scirocco Bay.

It had been realised by the Axis planners that their timetable was a tight one, and that Marsa Scirocco might not be cleared of the enemy before the first landings took place, but it was felt that leaving the amphibious operation any later would allow the Royal Navy time to intervene. So at 03.00 on 13 April the first Italian boats sailed into a hail of fire from the British guns on the northern arm of the bay, and soon afterwards those troops fortunate enough to survive this enfilade clambered on to mine-strewn beaches and into the British-German inferno raging above them. Not surprisingly the Italian losses were incredibly high; something in the region of forty per cent of the first wave did not survive to see the dawn. Much of the equipment, including most of the light tanks, followed the boats to the bottom of the bay. It was not an easy baptism of fire for the inexperienced Italian infantry.

Dawn brought relief to the invading force. As the sun rose the Stukas and Messerschmitts filled the skies once more. General Beak had received news of the Italian armada’s destination soon after 02.30; he had then issued the orders that a more adventurous spirit would have issued six hours before, thinning the garrison’s deployment across the rest of the island and moving his strength into the south-eastern sector. It was too late. With daylight the movement of troops became more and more hazardous, as the German planes launched strike after strike against the unprotected British columns. Though the leaders in Government House were loath to admit it, the battle for Malta had already been lost.

Hal Far had been finally cleared by the Germans just before dawn, and although the airfield was still under fire from the north and the runway in need of repairs, the Axis command could now begin to send in its gliders. Lieutenant Johnston, still holding out with two hundred others on the peninsula south of Kalafrana, watched them wafting in soon after 09.00, ‘sinister and silent’. He had seen the DFS230s in Crete, but not the enormous Gigants, ‘like bloated birds’. The gliders, score after score of them, belly-flopped down on to the grassy expanses of the airfield, disgorging their troops and - in the case of the Gigants - howitzers, several 75mm guns and seven Panzer IIs.

By mid-morning the Axis bridgehead comprised - Lieutenant Johnston’s party apart - the entire south-eastern corner of the island. The dividing line ran from the coast south of Sijuwi through Imkabba and Kirkop to the Marsa Scirocco coastline south of Zeitun. All along its eastern half fierce fighting was taking place as the British tried to force their way back into Hal Far and the Germans attempted to clear the northern arm of the bay. The latter were more successful. In Syracuse a satisfied General Student was preparing to leave for the bridgehead.

At 11.00 Syfret’s Force H was two hundred miles to the west of Malta. On the bridge of the cruiser
Hermione
, the Admiral was sifting through his apparent options. They seemed pitifully few. On paper his fleet was far inferior to that of the Italians; for contesting the skies with the all- powerful Luftwaffe he had sixty-five Spitfires aboard the
Wasp
and the slow
Argus
. If he attempted to interfere with the troop transports moving across the Malta Channel in daylight he was likely to incur what in any circumstances would be regarded as unacceptable losses. The Western allies could certainly not afford to lose a carrier like
Wasp
with the situation in the Atlantic so precarious. Yet the Italians were unlikely to be fool enough to shift their transports by night once they knew the Royal Navy was in the vicinity. Syfret could bombard the German bridgehead by night, but he doubted whether this would make much difference to the outcome of the land battle. Whatever he did the risks were likely to outweigh the benefits. Successful naval activity beneath an enemy-held sky was just not on the cards.

By noon the need for a decision was growing more acute. Rounding Cape Bon, Force H was spotted by long-range Axis reconnaissance planes. Surprise, always unlikely, was now out of the question. What, thought the Admiral, should he do?

In London, too, there was agonised indecision. The reports from Malta suggested that the Germans had already secured the airfield they needed. The Chiefs of Staff remembered only too well that the seizure of Maleme had proved the beginning of the end on Crete. Was the battle for Malta already lost? And, if so, was there any reason to risk Force H and the remains of the Mediterranean Fleet? Would it be better for Syfret to fly off his Spitfires and return to Gibraltar?

Churchill, with his usual never-say-die attitude, was extremely reluctant to abandon Malta if any hope still remained. But as the afternoon wore on, and as Syfret’s fleet sailed deeper into the jaws of the Luftwaffe, the situation reports coming from the island grew more and more alarming. The last of the Hurricanes had been shot down that morning, Marsa Scirocco was now ringed by the invading forces, the approaches to Hal Far were jammed with hovering German and Italian transport planes. General Beak estimated that over 25,000 Axis troops would be on the island by nightfall.

This was only a slight exaggeration. Minute by minute the Junkers, Savoias and gliders touched down to disgorge men and equipment. Two-thirds of the airborne component was now on Malta. The village of Imkabba had finally fallen to the
Folgore
division, and 7th Airborne, with its few light tanks, was more than holding its own on the Tarshin road. The Luftwaffe fighters and dive-bombers continued to pin the defenders to the ground. The battle was clearly going the invaders’ way. By nightfall the struggle for Luqa airfield was beginning.

At 21.15 Syfret’s Gibraltar Fleet rendezvoused with Vian’s cruisers and destroyers fifty miles south of the island. Both fleets had been heavily attacked throughout the afternoon, but no ship had yet been lost. The orders from London were to bombard the enemy disembarkation area under cover of darkness. If the enemy fleet intervened Syfret was to use his discretion; he was not, however, to be deterred by the threat of heavy losses should the situation ashore warrant them. But the carriers were not to take part in the attack. They were to return to Gibraltar; their planes would be flown off to Takali airfield at first light.

Syfret duly took his ships in to attack Marsa Scirocco, and the German-Italian beachhead was bombarded with the necessary vigour through the early hours of 14 April. The Italian Fleet did not intervene - it was back in Sicily, preparing to escort the day’s convoy - but the threat of air attack forced Syfret to withdraw his fleet a decent distance to the east in the hours before dawn.

And that, more or less, was that. Through the night the exhausted Axis airborne troops had been wresting most of Luqa airfield from the debilitated and despairing grasp of the British infantry. In London it was realised that the battle was lost, and Syfret was ordered out of the danger area. The Chiefs of Staff reached the unpopular but wise decision not to attempt an evacuation by sea. The experience with Crete had shown just how costly such an evacuation could be, and this time round the odds were stacked even more heavily against the British. It was a fact of life in April 1942 that ships were more precious than infantry.

As if to demonstrate the correctness of this British decision the Luftwaffe heavily attacked the two withdrawing carriers that morning.
Wasp’s
, flight deck was hit by several German bombs, and the resultant blaze was impressive enough to convince the Luftwaffe pilots that the American carrier was on her way down.

On the island the full-scale battle lasted several more days. In the caves, grottoes and underground workshops sporadic resistance was offered for several weeks. But, as with Crete, the issue had been decided the moment the invaders secured a functional airstrip. Malta had been a lost cause since the early hours of 13 April.

Student was promoted Colonel-General by a pleased Führer; Mussolini, not to be outdone, promoted nearly everyone who had set foot on the island. The Duce also toyed with the idea of a triumphal visit, but decided to wait for the more tantalising occasion of an entry into Cairo.