Malta Victory

  Malta Victory:

  Yeoman on the George Cross Island

  Robert Jackson

  © Robert Jackson 1980

  Robert Jackson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1980 by Arthur Baker Ltd.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter One

  It had been raining for two days, and although the sky was now clear except for a few freckles of high cloud the pine-woods still dripped with moisture. Drops fell from the branches and spattered the bonnet and windscreen of the gleaming Mercedes staff car that slid along the narrow road at a steady twenty kilometres per hour; a higher speed was strictly forbidden.

  The two occupants of the back seat both wore Luftwaffe uniform. One of them, a sinewy, sunburned man with the rank of general, whose uniform sported paratroop insignia, turned suddenly and glanced through the tinted, bullet-proof rear window. Behind the staff car came two BMW R75 motor-cycle combinations, the helmeted soldiers in the sidecars huddled purposefully behind MG-34 machine-guns.

  The general smiled to himself, and gave his companion a sidelong look. ‘I see they’re taking no chances, as usual Herr Feldmarschall,’ he murmured.

  The other made no reply. Privately, he thought: one gets used to the security, to the armed escorts, to the cold, impersonal inspections by SS guards that were an inescapable feature of every visit to the Wolfschanze, Adolf Hitler’s ‘Wolf’s Lair’ at Rastenburg in East Prussia, set in its gloomy, damp woods.

  There were no exceptions. Even the Führer’s closest friends were subjected to the same procedure. Yet there was no escaping the calculating logic behind it all; sometimes, one’s friends were the people one had cause to fear most.

  The Wolfschanze was a far from easy place to get into, and just as hard to get out of. The defensive perimeter that ran through the woods was built in three rings, each protected by minefields, pillboxes and electrified barbed-wire fences. Each ring was patrolled day and night by SS troops, all armed to the teeth and accompanied by savage Dobermann guard dogs. These were trained to attack and kill on a single command from their masters; they were not trained to respond to any attempt to call them off.

  The Mercedes and its escorts reached the last of the three defensive rings, the one surrounding the inner compound with its complex of buildings that made up Hitler’s headquarters, and drew to a stop. A heavy machine-gun mounted on a tower swivelled towards it as soldiers swung open the massive double gate that barred its way and motioned to the driver to pull over beside a low concrete building that served both as guardhouse and security police HQ.

  One of the officers in the car, the senior of the two, drummed his fingertips impatiently on the leather upholstery of the seat. It was always like this, he reflected. They always kept one waiting for at least five minutes at this point, as if to emphasize who the real bosses were.

  This time, however, the wait was slightly less. After only three minutes, a man in a black uniform and gleaming jackboots emerged from the police building. The occupants of the car recognized him at once as Oberführer Rattenhuber, commander of the SS Guard and SS Reichführer Heinrich Himmler’s chief of security. Rattenhuber, one of his deputies, always gave visitors to the Wolfschanze a personal scrutiny before allowing them to proceed into the inner sanctum.

  These particular visitors were already well known to the SS Oberführer; nevertheless, he peered intently at them through the open side window of the Mercedes and took a long time over examining their special passes as well as their personal identity cards. The passes were valid for one visit only, and had to be surrendered on the way out at the last checkpoint.

  As a matter of fact, Rattenhuber wasn’t paying much attention to the identity documents at all. He liked to keep right up to date not only with the conduct of the war, as seen from the vantage-point of the Führer’s headquarters, but also with the men responsible for waging it. Rattenhuber and his personal staff knew the whereabouts of every officer in the German Army and Air Force, from the rank of colonel upwards; the smaller fry were someone else’s business, and so was the Navy. Admiral Canaris, Head of Intelligence, insisted on the SS having nothing to do with the Navy, and one day, Rattenhuber thought grimly, Canaris was going to come a cropper.

  So Rattenhuber pretended to scrutinize the documents in minute detail, while his brain worked overtime. Something big, he thought, must be brewing in the Mediterranean, for these two to be summoned here at the same time. It had to be the Mediterranean, because Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, one of the men who sat twitching with impatience in the staff car, had been withdrawn with his entire staff from the central sector of the Russian front and designated Commander-in-Chief South, with his headquarters at Messina in Sicily, and now controlled all the Luftwaffe units in that part of the world.

  Then there was the man who sat next to Kesselring, General Kurt Student, paratroop commander of the XI Air Corps, who had lost half his men in the invasion of Crete a year ago, in May 1941. The paratroops hadn’t been doing much since then; in fact they hadn’t been doing anything at all in the way of their proper job, being used as infantry units in Russia instead.

  So, mused Rattenhuber, you put Kesselring and Student together, and what do you get? An airborne landing somewhere in the Mediterranean, that’s what. And, he thought, I’ll bet I know where. Cyprus. They’ll take off from Crete and drop on Cyprus. What a masterstroke! With Cyprus in the bag, we’ll be able to invade Palestine and then march on Egypt to link up with General Rommel’s Afrika Korps from the opposite direction.

  All these thoughts went through Rattenhuber’s mind in a matter of seconds. Yet again, he prided himself on his excellent grasp of military strategy. Why, it was almost as astute as the Führer’s. Positively glowing with self-satisfaction, he handed the passes back to the men in the car with a flourish, snapped to attention with a Nazi salute, and waved the vehicle on.

  Kurt Student let his breath escape in a long, exasperated explosion as the car drew away. These SS swine; he told himself, were fast becoming a state within a state, possessing almost unlimited power. One day, it would be the Wehrmacht’s duty to crush the lice. He was still fuming when the driver brought the Mercedes to a halt.

  SS orderlies, standing stiffly to attention, held the car doors open and the two officers got out, inhaling the fresh scent of the pine-woods that came to them on a light breeze. The Mercedes had stopped in front of a low, wooden building over which the Nazi swastika flew; apart from that, it was completely unadorned. This was the Lagebaracke, the place where Hitler held his daily military conferences.

  They were greeted formally by an SS Sturmbannführer — the equivalent of a lieutenant-colonel in the Wehrmacht, but possessing considerably more power and influence — who showed them into an anteroom and asked them with unexpected courtesy, if they wished for coffee. Both men declined. Student glanced at his watch; it was 11.30 a.m. Their meeting with the Führer was due to take place in fifteen minutes’ time. Student wondered who else would be present: certainly not the usual cluster of generals and field-marshals, for Hitler’s main staff conferences were held in the afternoon.

  At 11.45 on the dot, the paratroop general’s curiosity was satisfied. Carrying their briefcases, he and Kesselring were ushered along the short corridor that led to the conferen
ce room. The door was open, and as they entered both slammed to attention and gave the Nazi salute, right arms outstretched. Normally, both men would have given the ordinary Wehrmacht salute, but to do so on this occasion would not have been favourably received by the man who faced them across the heavy oak table that dominated the room.

  Adolf Hitler, wearing his favourite light grey tunic and dark trousers, nodded affably at the two officers and motioned to them to join him on his side of the table. He shook hands with both of them, and when he spoke his voice was soft, almost melodious, with none of the harsh overtones that characterized his Party speeches. For a minute or two he made small talk, enquiring after their health, and passed a few remarks on how the war on the Eastern Front was progressing. The Wehrmacht had opened a new offensive and was pushing on towards the Caucasian oilfields, with one army crossing the Don to thrust between the Black Sea and the Caspian and another advancing towards the Volga, where its objective was a city named Stalingrad. In North Africa, too, the situation was highly auspicious, with General Rommel on the point of launching another major offensive.

  While appearing to hang on Hitler’s every word, Student glanced covertly around the room. There was only one other occupant, a stenographer. Several windows permitted a view of the pine-trees beyond the fringe of the compound. Two or three were open and a breeze wafted into the room, lifting a corner of the large map which was spread over the table. The general’s eyes fixed on a wall calendar; the date it showed was 30 April, 1942. Someone had forgotten to alter it, for today was the first of May.

  Suddenly, Hitler’s voice took on an incisive quality and he slapped the map with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, to business. Operation Hercules. Kesselring, your report, if you please.’

  Field-Marshal Kesselring cleared his throat and looked at the Führer, meeting the latter’s piercing gaze directly.

  ‘Mein Führer,’ he began, ‘since I last reported verbally to you our air operations against the island of Malta have been greatly intensified. Up to the beginning of March, we were sending out our bombers in small numbers to make precision attacks on selected targets. I subsequently became convinced that such a course of action led only to too much diversification of effort, and decided that the real solution lay in using all our bombers as one unified force for large-scale attacks.’

  Student raised an eyebrow. That decision had been reached some time ago by Colonel Paul Deichmann, Chief of Staff of II Air Corps, and it was only recently that Kesselring had agreed to implement it.

  ‘Our revised plan,’ Kesselring went on, ‘encompassed a threefold task. The first priority was to knock out the British Air Force’s principal fighter base on Malta, that is to say Takali airfield; next to attack the bomber and torpedo-bomber bases of Luqa, Hal Far and Kalafrana; and, thirdly, to destroy the dock and harbour facilities of the Valletta naval base.’

  The Field-Marshal paused and glanced down at a report he had taken from his briefcase. Then he continued:

  ‘The first major attack on Takali was carried out at dusk on 20 March, and we followed it up with a second maximum-effort raid the next day. In both cases, we were able to mount some two hundred sorties over the island. The effort was maintained almost non-stop over the next five weeks, and, if the Führer desires, he may gauge the result from the figures contained in II Air Corps’ latest situation report.’

  Kesselring handed a sheet of paper to Hitler, who peered at it short-sightedly. Classified ‘Streng Geheim’ — Top Secret — it was dated 28 April. ‘During the period 20 March until 28 April 1942,’ it read, ‘the naval and air bases of Malta were completely put out of action. In the course of 5,807 sorties by bombers, 5,667 by fighters and 345 by reconnaissance aircraft, 6,557,231 kilograms of bombs were dropped. Our air reconnaissance indicates that only twenty Spitfires and Hurricanes remain serviceable on the entire island ...’

  ‘Six and a half million kilos of bombs,’ Hitler mused. He looked up at Kesselring. ‘That is almost as much as we dropped on England in August and September 1940, is it not? And still this mound of dirt in the Mediterranean continues to survive.’

  Kesselring nodded. ‘But not for much longer, mein Führer. Our bombers have destroyed almost every transport attempting to run supplies through to the island, and reports from our agents indicate that the population is starving. More important, the third phase of our offensive, against the British naval bases on Malta, was highly successful. Their destroyers and submarines have been driven away, as have the bombers of the Royal Air Force. The supply convoys for the Afrika Korps can now cross the Mediterranean to Tripoli and Benghazi without being molested.’

  Hitler’s gaze switched suddenly to Student. ‘General,’ he said, ‘how are the preparations of XI Air Corps progressing? Report, please.’

  Student phrased his sentences carefully, conscious of Hitler’s eyes boring into him and aware of what was passing through the Führer’s mind. Whenever airborne operations were proposed these days, the shadow of Crete and the heavy losses sustained during that operation always lurked in the background. Somehow, Hitler had to be convinced that Operation Hercules, the airborne invasion of Malta, could and would succeed.

  The paratroop general spoke quietly, and with no embellishment. ‘Mein Führer,’ he said, ‘Operation Hercules has now been in the throes of preparation since last December, and our intelligence on the enemy’s defensive positions is excellent. We have information on every flak emplacement, every machine-gun post. We have prepared models of every fortified point; we know the calibre of the weapons that defend them, and their field of fire.’

  He paused to let the words sink in. Hitler looked at him without expression, and he went on:

  ‘As the Führer is aware, the operation will be a joint German-Italian venture and will be under the command of Marshal Count Cavallero. I have the utmost confidence in his ability. He has a total of thirty thousand men at his disposal, a number equal to the entire British garrison. Besides my own XI Air Corps, the force includes the Italian paratroop division “Folgore”, which was trained by my friend and colleague Major-General Bernhard Ramcke, and the glider-borne Division “Superba”. Ramcke reports that he is very impressed by “Folgore’s” standard of efficiency. In addition, six Italian divisions totalling seventy thousand men are ready to carry out a seaborne invasion in the wake of the airborne assault. All in all, the force is six times stronger than the one we assembled for the operation against Crete.’

  ‘And aircraft?’ Hitler interjected impatiently, as though wishing to make the conference as brief as possible. ‘How many aircraft has Conrad assembled for Hercules?’ Major-General Conrad had been responsible for the armada of transport aircraft and gliders which had carried out the air-drop on Crete the previous year; now he was faced with an even greater task.

  ‘In this respect also,’ Student continued unhurriedly, ‘we are very well situated. Conrad has been allocated ten groups, totalling five hundred Junkers 52 transports, and since their bases are less than one hundred and twenty kilometres from Malta they should be able to make four round trips during the first day of the invasion. As far as gliders are concerned, there are three hundred DFS 230s, the same type that we used in the Cretan operation, and two hundred Gotha 242S. The former can carry ten fully-equipped men, the latter twenty — five. In the glider operation alone, therefore, we can put eight thousand men into the combat zone in one drop. The gliders, of course, will go in first immediately after the air bombardment. The first wave will consist of DFS 230s, which will use their special parachutes to make —’

  ‘Special parachutes?’ Hitler interrupted. ‘What special parachutes? Be good enough to explain.’

  ‘Two hundred of the 230s,’ Student informed him, ‘have been fitted with special braking parachutes. These are deployed just before touchdown, enabling the glider pilots to make very short and precise landings close to key points such as flak positions, command centres and some rather mysterious caves our
reconnaissance aircraft have detected. We do not know exactly what is inside them, but we think they are dumps for fuel and ammunition. Immediately after the glider assault, six Junkers 52 groups will drop their paratroops over selected targets on the island, one of which is the airfield of Luqa. Once this is in our hands, four more Ju 52 groups will land there with the remainder of the airborne force.’

  Student fell silent, and now Kesselring spoke again.

  ‘Mein Führer,’ he said, ‘Operation Hercules cannot possibly fail. Malta is even now within our grasp. Our bombers will sweep the seas around the island, preventing the British Fleet from interfering with our seaborne invasion force. The island is starved of supplies of every kind, its will to resist seriously undermined. We must strike soon.’

  Hitler stared at him for a moment, then gazed at the map on the table, his long fingers toying with a pencil. After a minute or two he crossed to one of the windows and stood with his hands behind his back, taking deep breaths of the pine-fresh air. Then, abruptly, he swung round on his heel and faced the two officers.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I wish it were as simple as that. In fact, it is not. In the Libyan desert, General Rommel reports that the British Eighth Army is making preparations for a new offensive at Gazala. Rommel must attack with Panzerarmee Afrika before the British offensive has time to develop, and he must do it soon.’ The Führer smiled briefly.

  ‘Thanks to the efforts of your bombers, Kesselring, Rommel now has sufficient supplies of ammunition and fuel to last four weeks. He is confident that in that time he can smash through the British defences at Gazala, capture Tobruk and drive on to the Egyptian frontier.

  ‘I have to tell you, gentlemen,’ Hitler continued, ‘that three days ago I reached agreement with Mussolini on the order of priority. First, in June, Tobruk must be captured. Then, in July, we will turn our attention to Malta. Besides, Kesselring, the Duce does not share your belief that Operation Hercules cannot fail. He expressed the opinion to me that the preparations have been too hasty, that too much has been left to chance. He wishes for more time, for further air attacks on Malta.’