Three Kings

“He does, and Goering has agreed to provide us with any aircraft we need for the operation. Student’sFleigerkorps has just been formed and it is operational now. He is eager for an assignment, and Malta is the perfect choice. Malta now, Halder, with Raeder’s battleships to make certain the Royal Navy does not pay us a visit once we get there. Malta now-Crete later, after we finish in the Balkans and move the main army south along the Moldavian frontier. Once that is accomplished, then the final operation of the war begins, as we have discussed. And if we move decisively, we can finish the job before President Roosevelt and the Americans start thinking more seriously about intervention.”

Haldernodded. He could see that Keitel was correct. It was all a question of proper timing, and this next six months were a vacuum that must be filled with something that mattered. He looked at Keitel, placing his cap firmly on his head. “Very well,” he said with equal firmness. “You have my support.”

At the end of 1940 Malta was not the hard nut that it would later become by 1942. There was only a single brigade there, with plans to double this in size that had not yet been carried out. Another long time British holding like Gibraltar, it was the former headquarters of the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet, which had since been moved to Alexandria. Yet even if it was no longer the vital hub of the wheel of British sea power there, it was still a strong outpost at the edge of that power base, and the one means they had of projecting land based air power into the Central Mediterranean. Unfortunately, there were all too few planes there as 1940 ended. Measuring only eleven miles by nine, there simply wasn’t room to put very much in the way of men and material on the tiny island. Before the war the British had come to believe the island was indefensible. That said, its principle function as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” was well known, but ill served at the moment.

There were airfields atTakali in the center of the island, and atLuga, Safi andHalfar in the south, with plans to build more if the planes ever came. There had been no more than six old Gladiator fighters on the island, with a few more delivered in crates as reserves for a British aircraft carrier. Now, however, in January of 1941, the force had been built up somewhat with the arrival of 36 Hurricane fighters, but it was still a very thin shield considering the enemy could bring planes in their hundreds to the attack. The airfields on Sicily were within easy striking distance of the island, and they would soon be crowded with a flock of dangerous new crows as the Germans moved to execute the plan that had been brewing in OKWs kettle along with Operation Felix. It was to be code named Hercules, and it would involve the seizure of the island with thunderclap surprise, primarily an airborne attack led by Kurt Student’s elite 7th Flieger Division.

As with every operation of war they seemed to undertake, the Italians had approached the problem of Malta with a plan, but half hearted measures since the outbreak of the war. They had thought to use their air force as the primary hammer against the island, visiting it with eight air raids in the first day of the war before the British even had time to make their airfields fully operational. By June the British had organized 830 Squadron, comprised of Swordfish torpedo bombers to give them a little bite, and the planes demonstrated their utility by raiding Sicily, damaging an Italian cruiser and sinking a destroyer. They were soon joined by the Hurricane fighters hastily sent as a reinforcement and organized as 261 Squadron, R.A.F. By year’s end, however, a good number of the planes were grounded for lack of spare parts, but the few that had been kept operational had tallied 45 kills against Italian bombers.

Mussolini had dreamed up big plans for an invasion by 40,000 men, but this was a fantasy that would never be carried out, because it relied on the navy to get the troops safely ashore. The Italians had a superb navy, on paper, but without the fuel, experience, and will power to use it, it remained a timid coastal defense force in the first six months of the war. They had sent divers from submarines down to cut undersea telephone cables leading to Malta, but that had been the extent of their naval campaign. A Japanese admiral might have had battleships running out through the straits of Messina to make nightly bombardment raids on the place, just as they had done against Guadalcanal over far greater distances. But Regia Marina was not the Japanese Navy. It had fine ships, but lacked the skill and the will to use them effectively, particularly when faced down by an experienced and aggressive force in Cunningham’s fleet.