Siege of Malta (World War II)

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Geographical location of Malta
Bomb damage in Valletta in April 1942; right behind the ruins of the Royal Opera House
Air raid shelter in Vittoriosa, carved into the rock

The siege of Malta in World War II was a sea ​​blockade of the island that lasted from 1940 to 1942 with permanent air raids by the Italian and later also the German air force ( Axis powers ). The island thus belonged to the Mediterranean theater of war . Referring to the costly siege of Malta in 1565 by the Ottoman Empire , the sea blockade in World War II is sometimes referred to as the Second Great Siege of Malta . The island was one of the most important British naval bases in the Mediterranean and therefore quickly became a strategic target for the Axis powers after Italy entered the war . On June 11th, just one day after Italy entered the war, the bombing of the island that was not prepared for it began. During the Africa campaign , Malta played a central role in disrupting supplies for the German-Italian troops in North Africa. After the Axis' defeat in the second battle of El Alamein , the siege ended in November 1942.

Strategic location of Malta

Malta had been occupied by Great Britain since 1800 and became a crown colony a little later . Due to the island's strategic location in the Mediterranean Sea, it had been the Royal Navy's central naval base since 1827 . Securing the Suez Canal route later increased its importance. With the rivalry between Great Britain and Italy in the 1930s, which had expanded its African colonial empire to include Abyssinia in 1935/36 , Malta's military importance continued to grow. The first vague Italian plans to take the island were formulated as early as 1936; after Italy entered the war on Germany's side in 1940, these plans became more concrete.

Initially, the British military assumed that the island, half an hour as the crow flies from the Italian airfields in Sicily, could not be held for long. Initially, only 4,000 soldiers and the Hal Far Fighter Flight defended the island with only six Gloster Sea Gladiator biplanes . In fact, the Italian Regia Aeronautica began bombing the island on June 11, 1940, just one day after Italy entered the war. However, these initial air strikes did limited damage and no actual invasion of Malta was attempted. By attacking Taranto , the British hit the Italian fleet on November 12, 1940. The Regia Marina lost half of its battleships in one fell swoop and the balance of power in the Mediterranean shifted in favor of the Royal Navy for several months.

At the beginning of 1941, the German Reich dispatched the newly founded Africa Corps to North Africa . Only a few months later, the Axis powers occupied all of eastern Libya (with the exception of the besieged city of Tobruk ) and the Egyptian border area. The success of the German-Italian troops in North Africa depended to a large extent on a constant supply of supplies across the Mediterranean. Against this background, control of Malta became even more important, as it allowed the British to repeatedly and decisively disrupt the supply routes to Africa. At the beginning of July 1941, after two offensives to expel the Axis powers from Libyan Cyrenaica with Operation Brevity and Operation Crusader had failed, the island's air forces were initially reinforced by four Hawker Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force . Another twelve hurricanes came with the HMS Argus in August. The consequent noticeable impairment of the supply of the troops in North Africa made the Axis powers considerations about the capture of Malta more concrete.

Siege of Malta

The flag of Malta with the George Cross

In 1941, when the supply situation for the Axis forces deployed in the African campaign became increasingly precarious due to the British disruptive maneuvers from the base in Malta, Hitler issued an order at the end of October 1941 to "hold down" the island with strong air forces and support from the sea in order to further allies Prevent operations. In December 1941, the German Air Force began the first night raids on the island. After the second reconquest of Cyrenaica by the Axis powers in February and March 1942, the British air bases there were lost and the air attacks on the island of Malta intensified again.

In the course of about 3,000 attacks on the island, around 14,000 tons of bombs fell, which destroyed almost 35,000 houses, among other things; Malta had the highest number of bombs per square meter during World War II. More than 1,000 residents were killed. In recognition of the courage and bravery during the attacks, the British King George VI. the Maltese population received the George Cross on April 15, 1942, which has since adorned the Maltese flag.

Fight for supplies for Malta

  • The naval battle at Punta Stilo was fought south of Calabria on July 8, 1940 , between the Allies (Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy ) and the Italian Navy ( Regia Marina ) and ended in a draw. There was only damage to individual ships without sinking.
  • The Battle of Cape Matapan took place on March 28, 1941 between British and Italian naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean between Cape Matapan and the island of Gavdos . An indirect consequence of this battle was that Malta could no longer be taken because the Italian Navy was no longer powerful enough for a sea attack and Hitler refused further airborne operations after the high losses in the airborne battle of Crete (→ " Operation Hercules ") .
  • The second naval battle in the Gulf of Syrte took place on March 22, 1942 north of Libya. Five cruisers and eleven destroyers were involved on the British side, and one battleship, three cruisers and ten destroyers on the Italian side. The British convoy traveling under the escort could not make a direct call to Malta because of the battle and had to retreat far south. This gave the German and Italian air forces the opportunity to launch an air raid on March 23: a merchant ship and a tanker were lost; there were also losses in Malta itself. Of the 25,000 tons of supplies, only 5,000 tons reached their destination.

Turn of 1942

Siege Bell Memorial in Valletta

After a six-month blockade , the first large supply convoy ( Operation Pedestal ) came through to Malta in August . The "Santa Marija convoy" (mainly with the Ohio tanker ) reached the archipelago that was about to surrender on August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary , and brought the rescue. This also included the 38 Spitfire MK Vs brought by the carrier Furious . From August to October around a third of all Axis powers' transports were lost; in October 1942 alone, four tankers destroyed 66% of the fuel supply. The British victory at El Alamein in Egypt (October 23 to November 4) then broke the blockade.

On December 1, the first convoy since 1941 with the code name Operation Portcullis arrived with no casualties. The convoy came with four freighters from Port Said with a total of 55,000 tons of urgently needed goods. The escort consisted of a cruiser, 18 destroyers and a mine-layer .

The Siege Bell Monument in Valletta, which is equipped with a huge bell inside ( bell of the survived siege ), commemorates those who died in the air raids .

There were various speedboat attacks on the ports of Malta. An important British command center ( Lascaris War Rooms - Operation Husky ) was located on the island . Allied bomber formations took off for Italy from additional airfields - Ta 'Qali , Ħal-Far , Safi , Qrendi , also from Gozo - of which the most famous was the Luqa Airfield (now Malta's airport ), and fighter pilots monitored the airspace over the waters of the Archipelago .

On June 1, 1943, King George VI visited. the island. After the conquest of Sicily, 10. – 17. August 1943, Malta was no longer involved in the fighting. It became a hospital and harbor island again.

See also

Movies

  • Malta Story , 1953 (war film, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst).
  • National Geographic : HMS Southwold: Malta's Hope. 2006 (reportage and documentation of the National Geographic series Die Seejäger II , part 12).

literature

  • Joseph Attard: The Battle of Malta: An Epic True Story of Suffering and Bravery . Progress Press Co Ltd, 1988. ISBN 99909-3-014-7 (English).
  • Charles J. Boffa: The 'Illustrious' Blitz: Malta in Wartime. Progress Press Co, 1995. ISBN 99909-3-042-2 (English).
  • Ernle Bradford: Bastion in the Mediterranean. The siege of Malta 1940–1943 . Munich: Universitas 1986.
  • Michael Galea: Malta Diary of a War 1940-1945. Publishers Enterprise Group, Malta, 1994. 307 pp., ISBN 99909-0-029-9 (English).
  • James Holland: Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege, 1940-1943 . Cassell Military Paperbacks. 2004. ISBN 0-304-36654-4 (English).
  • Anthony Rogers: Battle Over Malta. Sutton Books, 2000. (English).
  • Tony Spooner, Supreme Gallantry: Malta's Role in the Allied Victory, 1939-1945 . London, 1996. 360 pp., ISBN 0-7195-5706-2 (English).
  • Reinhard Stumpf : The war in the Mediterranean region 1942/43 - The operations in North Africa and in the central Mediterranean. In: The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 6. Ed. Military History Research Office , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-421-06233-1 , pp. 569-757.
  • Caroline Vernon: Our Name Wasn't Written - A Malta Memoir . Canberra, Australia, 1992 - 2nd A. ISBN 0-646-07198-X (English, on the living conditions of civilians).
  • John Wingate: The Fighting Tenth: The Tenth Submarine Flotilla and the Siege of Malta . London, Periscope Publishing Ltd. 1991 and 2003. ISBN 1-904381-16-2 (English, about the British 10th submarine flotilla).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Stump p. 589.