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Praetorium Honoris

Friday, August 4, 2023

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.

34 comments:

  1. Pilots on Malta were going through the wringer with the Axis raids on the island. Without bullets, bombs and gas hard to fight. Nice to be back in the Med Sarge.

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    1. Malta was a bone in the Axis' throat, it choked their supply line and they had to expend resources to try and suppress it. A magnificent story.

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  2. Sarge,
    Excellent! Loved it, especially two minor details. Bunting, exactly the correct term for the best way to regain speed. The anti G straining maneuver is also accurately described. I actually felt my legs and gut starting to strain as I read about him pulling out of the dive.
    VERY well done. Keep up the good work!
    juvat

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    1. I paid attention to your comments from my previous forays into the sky. I have a good teacher, neh?

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    2. Learned that in UPT. Fortunately never had to use it in BUFFs.

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    3. That would be just a tad too exciting in a BUFF!

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    4. The BUFF would suddenly get much faster if tried therein, when the flapping wings fell off!

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  3. I would think being a pilot flying multiple missions would be highly stressful, not just because of the missions themselves, but because of the fact that every time you make it back is another "opportunity" to risk it all again.

    Italian submarines. Surely they must have had such ships, although the thought had never occurred to me.

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    1. It is extremely stressful, but sometimes necessary.

      The Italian military was very active in the Med, after all, they considered to be "their sea." Had they been better led and better equipped, the world might have been reminded of the Legions of old.

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    2. I never thought of Italian submarines before.

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    3. The Italian navy was quite good, but limited. Optimized for use in the Med, heavy on weapons, light on extended power. Better a raid or short escort navy than a world-wide sailing fleet.

      They would have been more effective if their leaders weren't so scared of harming their precious boats.

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    4. The Med was 'quite' a fight for the RN. When you look at RN ship losses a lot were inflicted in the med. The Italian navy were tough opponents. The British CinC Adm Cunningham had a high regard for Italian arial reconnaissance and Italian aviators were known for pressing their attacks home. The Italians were also early exponents of the whole commando frogman idea, The Decima Flottiglia inflicted a lot of damage on the RN and you could say that in modern terms they were extremely cost effective. In all the war in the Med was a hard fought battle that doesn't get the attention in the UK it should as the Italians have been unjustly underrated. When Adm Cunningham was asked to withdraw his forces after suffering severe losses in the battle for Crete he said 'It takes three years to build a ship. It takes three hundred years to build a tradition'. All in all it was a tough battle. As Beans said Italian warships were good but very short legged. I saw a comment from an RN officer that said Italian warships were beautiful and it seemed their officers were unwilling to risk them.
      Retired

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    5. Excellent insight, Retired, thank you!

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    6. RN carriers survived some of the most vicious air attacks of the war. No US CV , and certainly no IJN one would sail away from getting jumped by 40 Stukas.
      Thankfully, Ark Royal and later classes had sturdy armored deck. As the downside, the air wing was smaller than on USN CVs , but Brits considered it worthy tradeoff, which proved again worthy at Okinawa when Bits sent their best to support USN in the closing days of war.
      Italians had some real hurdles to go against RN, between the crew quality and lack of radar (which provided one of most brutally oinesided beatdowns at nighttime part of Matapan), and to top it off Italains were always short on fuel...
      The Decima Flotilla was epic story in of themselves. They took out 2 BBs at Alexandria for many months. One team of captured divers was being interrogated onboard one of those battleships, they held their nerve, and some 10 minutes before scheduled explosion time they said to their captors: Gentlemen, we need to evacuate, for YOUR safety...

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    7. Between the wars there was one one of those inexplicable British decisions when it was decided that for some reason although the RN would have aircraft carriers the RAF would be in charge of the aircraft. That went about as well as you would imagine. Sometime in the mid 30's somewhat wiser heads prevailed and it was decided that the RN would be in charge of naval aviation. An RN admiral was sent out to look at USN naval aviation at that time and he strongly recommended that the RN switch to American aircraft. He was overruled and the RN entered WW2 with a few 'clunkers'.
      FTI Pawel RN carriers had armoured decks because it was anticipated that in the Med/North Sea they may encounter cruisers and the decks were armoured accordingly.
      Retire

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    8. Paweł - Armored flight deck, yes, yes, and yes. Royal Navy had a tough fight in the Med!

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    9. Retire - Some folks still don't get the difference between naval aviation and the land based birds.

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  4. "As both sides knew, logistics was the real king of battle."

    Without massive support the "sharp end of the lance" just falls to the ground, useless. Said that to an older gentleman who was somewhat embarrassed that he spent his WWII service in supply and logistics in Washington. He perked right up.

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    1. Bullets, beans, and bandages, without those you are doomed to fail.

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    2. And ever since motor vehicles started to drive the war, fuel...
      Germans were almost from the start running uphill fuel battle.
      Texas oil fields alone produced more than every well in German occupied Europe...

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    3. Ships too run on oil. The Japanese navy was severely hampered by the lack of fuel as the war went on. I think I read once that they were pumping unrefined light Borneo crude oil straight into ships bunkers. The volatile light hydrocarbon made the fuel a potential bomb if the ship was hit.

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    4. Everything mechanized runs on oil and its derivatives. Fuel, lubricants, etc. Yes, another problem the Japanese had was basing their ships near fuel sources like Borneo, didn't give them much flexibility in deploying their fleet.

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    5. There was a quote "God runs the Kingdom of Heaven. The kingdoms of earth run on oil.

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  5. Two Rotte to a Schwarm?
    Didn't Stukas have an automatic pull out device?

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    1. Yup and yup, but what pilot would really trust some automatic doodad in combat when you're in a steep dive and the entire world is shooting at you? Besides which, in the dust and the heat of the Mediterranean, the thing is probably broken anyway.

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  6. Malta and Gibraltar would prove to be the thorns in the Axis' side in the Med.

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Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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