Malta

Messerschmitt Bf 109 escorting a Ju 87 over the Mediterranean
Bundesarchiv
(Source)

Wolfram and Decker were airborne for the second time today. Flying out of Comiso on the island of Sicily, they were well within their operational range. In 1941 they had been at Trapani, intercepting British naval units plying the Mediterranean between Gibraltar and Egypt. While they could reach Malta from there, the bomb load would have been minimal. So off to Comiso they went. The downside was, they could fly multiple missions a day.

"Hans, heads up, there's a lot of air activity over Valetta. F**k, they're Spitfires."

Decker cinched his harness a bit tighter, Hurricanes were bad enough, tough and maneuverable they had a lot of wood in their construction and could absorb a number of hits before going down. But the damned Spitfires, they danced in the sky, nimble and very quick.

"Ernst, we've got May Hundert-Neuns¹ coming in from 5 o'clock, up high. So we've got an escort."

The pilot looked over his shoulder to the right and up, sure enough, there was at least a Schwarm² of Messerschmitts moving forward. He almost felt pity for the English pilots, the Germans had an altitude advantage.

"Hans, looks like the Spits hit our first formation pretty hard, but it pulled them down low. We might yet come out of this alive."

Wolfram kept his scan going, but couldn't help watching the German fighters as they ranged ahead and fell on their enemies from altitude. Almost immediately he saw at least two of the English spin in, one crashing into the harbor, one into a pier alongside a rather big cargo ship. Checking his kneeboard, he smiled. The dying Spit had just marked their target for today, a ship bringing ammunition to the English in the Western Desert.

Flight Sergeant John Mayfield saw his wingman splash into the harbor, then he saw tracers streaking overhead. He was between a rock and a hard place. Too low to maneuver and perhaps too slow to outrun whoever was on his tail.

The aircraft shuddered as it was hit, but his Hurricane was tough and it would take more than a few machine gun rounds to kill his tough little bird.

He advanced the throttle and bunted the nose down, he needed speed and a miracle.

As his speed increased, he made little adjustments to throw off the enemy's aim. Up a little, down a little, then ...

He saw the miracle ahead, two harbor cranes near a large cargo ship, if he could just ...

"Gottverdammt!" Oberleutnant Klaus Bauer cursed as the enemy aircraft dashed between two big cranes. He pulled up, there was no way he was going to chance that. Gaining altitude he searched for the Englishman who had evaded him, nothing.

Banking around, his eyes were looking for another enemy when the Staffelkäpitan, Hauptmann Wolf Erhardt, radioed to break off the engagement, the Stukas were ready to roll in.

The aircraft was rocking a bit as the Flak began to explode close by, but Wolfram held the aircraft in its dive. As always Decker could be heard whistling over the intercom, he loved his job, though his squadron mates thought him quite mad.

Wolfram pulled on the bomb release and he felt the aircraft get lighter as the 500 kilogram bomb fell away. He pulled back on the stick and began to grunt, a technique which he had learned in training. By bearing down he kept the blood in his upper body from flowing down to his legs with the increased G-force of the pullout. More than one pilot of his acquaintance had blacked out after pulling out, killing themselves and their gunner.

"Scheiße!" Decker spat over the intercom, which Wolfram knew meant that an enemy fighter was on their tail. As Decker's gun began to spit rounds at their pursuer, Wolfram kept jinking the aircraft.

"Hold f**king still would you?" Decker bellowed. So for a brief moment, less than five seconds, Wolfram held the aircraft straight and level.

"Got you, you English bastard!" Decker bellowed again.

As he began to maneuver evasively once more and set his course back to Sicily, he glanced to the rear, sure enough, a Hurricane was heading to the ground, trailing smoke.

"Hhmm, I could have sworn those were Spitfires." he muttered.

Decker laughed, "Everything's a bloody Spitfire when you're in combat, Ernst!"

Not long after the island of Malta had slid beneath the horizon, the ship carrying O'Donnell and Frasier met the single destroyer which would escort them to Gibraltar.

"Hhmm, where are the other ships?" Frasier asked, looking around the sea.

"Looks like it's just us." O'Connell offered, then he saw the columns of black smoke rising from where Malta had been. The Jerries must be attacking the port.

"Maybe they got stuck in port when the air raid began," O'Connell told his assistant. "Maybe we got out just in ..."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Frasier screamed. At the same time, O'Connell felt the concussion of an explosion. There, not a thousand yards away, their escort was slipping beneath the waves, in two pieces.

"I think we're in for it, laddie." O'Connell said as he looked at Frasier. "And us with nothing to fight back with!"

Frasier pointed to seaward, in the direction where the destroyer was still going down. There was a streak upon the water, a trail of bubbles and it was pointed at them. "What's that then?"

Before O'Connell could turn, the deck jumped underneath him and their ship immediately lost way. Looking aft, he saw a tall column of water rising to the air. "We've been torpedoed, laddie! This ain't good!"

Then he collapsed in pain.

Hours later, the SS Empress³ limped into Valetta harbor. She was down by the stern, listing slightly to port, and couldn't make more than 5 knots. But she had survived being attacked by an Italian submarine. (Though the crew thought they'd been torpedoed by a German U-Boat.)

Both O'Connell and Frasier had suffered leg injuries when the ship had been torpedoed, the deck bouncing up had shattered Frasier's left ankle and badly sprained his right. O'Connell had a broken leg (right fibula) and his left ankle was also sprained. Upon landing, both men were transferred to a hospital ashore.

Pilot Officer Hugh Preston hurried to the local headquarters to try and get a report out about the remnants of his squadron. There was no way that was going to happen. Headquarters was a scene of mass confusion, a German bomb had exploded just to the rear of the building, destroying that which faced the alleyway at the back. But he did run into an old mate, Flight Lieutenant Oswald Bennington. Bennington told Preston that the squadron might as well set up camp on Malta. He'd make the arrangements to get them assigned there.

"There's not many of us, old boy," Preston said. "What good could we do here?"

"We're short of pilots, too many sorties are starting to take a toll. With your chaps, we could rotate men off the schedule to try and keep everyone fresh. Until we get a new shipment of aircraft, we're rather short of those as well." Bennington explained.

"Well, all right then. I didn't really fancy going back to Blighty now anyway, you know what the weather's like this time of year."

"Damp and cold!" Both men said at the same time.

Out at the pier, the big cargo ship meant for North Africa was burning fiercely and was sitting on her keel on the harbor floor. A lot of the ammunition aboard had detonated after the bomb had hit her amidships. But she had settled rapidly and the waters of the harbor prevented a larger catastrophe.

But the 8th Army would be short of ammunition as Rommel once more led Panzerarmee Afrika to the east. As both sides knew, logistics was the real king of battle.

Wolfram and Decker recovered safely at Comiso, but their wing had lost at least eleven aircraft. The mess was very quiet that night, many empty seats greeted the two airmen when they went to dinner.

"So Ernst, will the British run out of fighters before we run out of our kites?" Decker asked, an angry tone to his voice.

"I don't know, Hans. I just don't know."

¹ Me-109s. The "Me" is pronounced "may" in German.

² A schwarm was a four-ship element of German fighters. (Literally a "swarm.")

³ SS Empress is fictional, don't know if she was real or not. Finding the names of merchant ships in the Med ain't easy. The Navy gets all the glory, the merchies just do their job and try to get home after.