The attack on HMS Illustrious

Shortly after midday on 10 January 1941, west of Malta, several dozen German Junkers Ju 87 dive-bombers fell out of the sky on the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. Within a few minutes the ship, whose aircraft had attacked Taranto two months earlier, had taken six heavy bombs. On fire and steered by her engines alone, she limped into the Grand Harbour at Valletta that evening. 126 members of her crew were killed and 91 wounded. It was the first appearance in the Mediterranean of the German X Air Corps under General Hans Geisler, just transferred to Sicily, and the beginning of the hardest period yet of the siege of Malta. Over the next two weeks the Germans tried to finish the carrier off in harbour, and the bombs meant for her fell on the dockyard and on the Three Cities crowded around it. On 23 January Illustrious, patched up by Maltese dockyard workers, slipped away by night to Alexandria.

The Luftwaffe comes south

Until the end of 1940 the British had fought only the Italians in the Mediterranean, and were faring better and better. After the night of Taranto the Italian fleet avoided battle, the Italian air force bombed from high altitude and rarely hit ships under way, and in North Africa General Richard O’Connor’s army had routed the Italians at Sidi Barrani and entered Libya. Five days before the attack on Illustrious the Australians took Bardia. Admiral Andrew Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet moved about the central Mediterranean almost at will.

In Berlin this was watched with growing unease. In December the Italians asked the Germans for help, and Hitler decided that he could not allow his ally to collapse. The first response was air power. X Air Corps (X. Fliegerkorps), a formation specialising in attacks on shipping, which since the autumn of 1939 had been attacking the British fleet in the North Sea and during the Norwegian campaign, was sent from Norway to Sicily and southern Italy. Its commander, General Hans Geisler, was by origin a naval officer. The first units reached Sicily at the turn of the year. By about 12 January, according to German returns, the corps had some 80 Junkers Ju 88 bombers at Catania, about 80 Ju 87 dive-bombers of I Group, Dive-Bomber Wing 1, and II Group, Dive-Bomber Wing 2 (I./StG 1 and II./StG 2) at Trapani, several dozen Heinkel He 111s adapted to drop torpedoes at Comiso and several dozen Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters at Palermo. The Stukas, carrying 250 kg and 500 kg bombs and soon even 1,000 kg ones, had a clearly designated target: the British carriers, and above all Illustrious, the author of Taranto. The pilots reportedly practised attacks on the outline of a flight deck marked out on the water.

The British were not entirely unaware. According to the British official history of intelligence, decrypted Luftwaffe signals had revealed the presence of X Air Corps in Sicily as early as 4 January. The information did not, however, reach the Admiralty or Cunningham in time, and some historians believe that had it done so, the fleet would not have approached so close to Sicily without stronger fighter cover.

Operation Excess

The carrier was not sailing to Malta, as is often stated. She was covering a large and complex convoy operation codenamed Excess. Convoy MC 4 left Gibraltar on 6 January: three ships with cargo for Greece, bound for Piraeus, and the Essex, carrying to Malta some four thousand tons of ammunition, twelve crated Hawker Hurricane fighters and three thousand tons of seed potatoes. As far as the strait between Sicily and Tunisia it was covered by Admiral James Somerville’s Force H from Gibraltar with the carrier Ark Royal. In the east it was taken over by the Mediterranean Fleet, which had left Alexandria on 7 January with the battleships Warspite, flying Cunningham’s flag, and Valiant, with Illustrious and destroyers. At the same time two supply ships were sailing from Alexandria to Malta, and nine empty ships from Malta to Egypt. The cruisers Gloucester and Southampton carried several hundred soldiers and airmen to the island. Aboard Illustrious, commanded by Captain Denis Boyd, was also the commander of the fleet’s carriers, Rear Admiral Lumley Lyster.

On 9 January the convoy and Force H beat off ineffective attacks by Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers from Sardinia, after which Somerville turned back for Gibraltar. At dawn on 10 January, near the island of Pantelleria, the convoy was attacked by the Italian torpedo boats Circe and Vega. Vega was sunk by the cruiser Bonaventure and the destroyer Hereward, but a moment later the destroyer Gallant struck a mine that blew off her bow. Towed by Mohawk, she reached Malta, but never returned to service. In the morning the convoy and the main body of the fleet joined up west of Malta.

Ten minutes over Illustrious

Before noon Fairey Fulmar fighters from Illustrious shot down an Italian reconnaissance aircraft shadowing the fleet. At about 12.30 two Italian SM.79 torpedo bombers came in low over the water, below radar cover, and launched torpedoes at Valiant, which avoided them. The patrolling Fulmars came down low and chased the Italians far from the fleet. They were left without ammunition and fuel, and some had to land on Malta. Whether it was a deliberate ruse or chance, the fleet was left without fighters overhead at the worst possible moment.

At 12.35 radar detected a large formation approaching from the north at high altitude. It consisted of Ju 87 dive-bombers of I./StG 1 and II./StG 2, led by Hauptmann Paul-Werner Hozzel and Major Walter Enneccerus, escorted by Bf 110 fighters and accompanied by He 111s. Sources give the number of Stukas variously, from twenty-odd to more than forty. Illustrious managed to fly off a few relief fighters, but they could not gain height before the attack began. The Germans split into several groups, which dived on the carrier from different directions from a height of about 3,500 metres, and some pilots did not release their bombs until they were a few hundred metres up, lower than the top of the ship’s funnel. The anti-aircraft fire of the whole fleet could not stop them.

Within a few minutes Illustrious had taken six hits, and several bombs exploded close alongside. The first bomb pierced the unarmoured after aircraft lift and exploded beneath it. Others destroyed a pom-pom position beside the island, went through the forward end of the flight deck and exploded just above the water, holing the hull. The most dangerous, a heavy bomb, penetrated the armour of the flight deck forward of the after lift and exploded in the hangar. The blast started a violent fire among the fuelled aircraft, wrecked the sprinkler system, bent the forward lift like a hoop and tore the steel fire curtains into splinters that killed many mechanics. Hits aft jammed the rudder. At 13.20 another wave of Stukas scored a further hit in the after lift well, and the ship’s speed fell to about 15 knots. Warspite was lightly damaged the same day.

Cunningham watched the attack from the bridge of Warspite. In his memoirs he admitted that, for all the horror of the moment, he could not take his eyes off the precision with which the Germans pressed home their attack, and that he understood at once that he was dealing with real professionals – an entirely different opponent from the Italian air force.

The road to the Grand Harbour

Illustrious fell out of line and, steered by varying the revolutions of her screws, made for Malta, several dozen miles away. The fire in the hangar raged for many hours, and the flames threatened the magazines. In the afternoon the ship was attacked again by Italian Ju 87s and SM.79s and by more German aircraft. According to British figures one more bomb hit the carrier at that time, and at least two exploded nearby. The Fulmars that had managed to refuel and rearm on Malta returned over the ship, but there was little they could do. At 9.04 p.m. Illustrious, still burning, passed the Grand Harbour breakwater and was moored at Parlatorio Wharf in French Creek, in the heart of the naval dockyard, at the foot of Senglea.

The day’s toll was heavy. 126 officers and men were killed and 91 wounded. Nine Swordfish and five Fulmars were burnt out or destroyed. The Fulmar pilots claimed five Ju 87s shot down, and the fleet’s gunners three more. According to German records the Luftwaffe lost three Stukas that day, and a fourth made a forced landing. The ship was saved by the design that set her apart: Illustrious was the first carrier with an armoured flight deck and an armoured hangar. The 76 mm armour did not stop the heaviest bomb, but it kept the explosions from reaching the machinery spaces, and the ship did not lose the ability to steam. The British naval historian J. D. Brown later wrote that no other carrier took such a blow and survived.

The next day, 11 January, X Air Corps made itself felt once more. The cruisers Southampton and Gloucester, returning from Malta to the fleet, were surprised in the afternoon east of the island by twelve Ju 87s of II./StG 2 diving out of the sun. The bomb that hit Gloucester failed to explode. Southampton took at least two hits, and fire engulfed the ship from stem to stern. About eighty men were killed. The cruiser, without power, had to be sunk by torpedoes from her own side’s ships. The convoy ships themselves, however, reached their destinations without loss.

The “Illustrious Blitz”

The Germans knew where the ship was: reconnaissance aircraft photographed the Grand Harbour every day. On Malta everyone understood that sooner or later they would try to finish her off. The dockyard workers laboured day and night to restore the carrier’s ability to steam on her own: they patched the holed hull, repaired the rudder and the engines, and cleared away the burnt-out wrecks of aircraft. The anti-aircraft artillery around the harbour prepared a plan for a massed barrage that was to hang an “umbrella” of shells over the dockyard. The population of the Three Cities – Birgu (Vittoriosa), Senglea and Bormla (Cospicua), lying on the creeks of the Grand Harbour opposite Valletta – for the most part nevertheless stayed in their homes.

After a lull of several days, during which X Air Corps replenished its stocks of bombs and fuel, at about 2 p.m. on 16 January more than seventy aircraft, according to Maltese records, came over Malta: a dozen or so Ju 88s and several dozen Ju 87s escorted by Italian Fiat CR.42 fighters. The Stukas dived one by one, straight into the wall of barrage fire. The carrier took one hit aft, which did no serious damage. A heavy bomb did, however, strike the engine room of the nearby Essex, still loaded with ammunition. By some miracle the cargo did not explode, but more than a dozen members of her crew and several dockyard workers were killed. The Australian cruiser Perth was damaged by a near miss.

The houses around the dockyard suffered most. According to Maltese tallies several dozen civilians were killed that day. In Birgu a bomb hit the church of St Lawrence, in whose sacristy and crypt several dozen people had taken shelter; only a few survived. In Senglea the parish church of Our Lady of Victories was destroyed, and most of the little town’s buildings were reduced to rubble. There were also victims in Bormla and in Valletta itself, where a house in Old Mint Street collapsed. According to the same records some two hundred houses were destroyed and several hundred damaged. The defenders claimed eleven aircraft shot down. These and later claims, as usual in such fighting, were inflated, but the Stukas, diving low into the gunfire, did indeed suffer losses.

On 17 January the raid was repeated. On 18 January the Germans changed their target: some eighty dive-bombers in two waves attacked the airfields at Hal Far and Luqa in order to destroy the fighters that were hampering the attacks on the harbour. Luqa was rendered completely unusable, several hangars were left in ruins, and on the ground a Wellington bomber, a Hurricane and three Swordfish, among others, were burnt out. On 19 January more than eighty aircraft in two raids struck the harbour again. Illustrious received no direct hit, but near misses buckled the hull plating, the seating of the port turbine cracked, and the ship listed and settled by the stern. Several more civilians were killed in the Three Cities. The defenders had only a handful of Hurricanes in the air, flown to the island off carriers since August 1940, and the carrier’s Fulmars, which had moved to the island’s airfields; on 19 January, according to British figures, only one Fulmar was serviceable.

Those few days changed life on Malta. The Three Cities, where all the targets converged, emptied: residents fled to the countryside with their belongings on carts and wheelbarrows, to relatives or to makeshift quarters in schools and convents. By May 1941, according to British estimates, close to 60,000 people had left the harbour towns. The authorities, which until then had protected mainly military targets, began to cut public shelters into the limestone rock on a larger scale. The Maltese called these days the “Illustrious Blitz”. It was their first encounter with the Luftwaffe, whose raids proved incomparably heavier and more accurate than the Italian ones.

The escape of 23 January

The dockyard workers won the race against time. On the evening of 23 January, after dark, Illustrious, with no aircraft aboard – her Fulmars stayed on Malta to defend the island – left the Grand Harbour escorted by four destroyers. Despite the damage the ship made good speed, the Germans failed to track her down, and on 25 January she reached Alexandria. It is usually written that she went there for repairs. In Alexandria, however, it was only possible to prepare her for the onward voyage. On 10 March Illustrious moved to Port Said and, after a delay, passed through the Suez Canal – blocked by mines dropped since the end of January by aircraft of X Air Corps, of all units – into the Red Sea. After her underwater hull had been inspected in dock at Durban, she sailed to the United States and on 12 May 1941 entered the navy yard at Norfolk, Virginia. Repairs in still-neutral America were one of the first forms of help the United States gave Britain. The carrier did not return to service until the end of 1941.

In the Mediterranean Fleet Illustrious was replaced by her sister ship Formidable, which reached Alexandria in March by way of the Cape. Illustrious’s former captain, Denis Boyd, promoted to rear admiral, took over command of the fleet’s carriers from Lyster in February.

Did the Luftwaffe win command of the air?

Popular accounts claim that after 10 January it was already clear that the Luftwaffe commanded the air over the Mediterranean. That view needs qualifying. Over the central Mediterranean, within range of the Sicilian airfields, X Air Corps did indeed change the balance of forces. Cunningham found that his fleet could not remain in the Sicilian Narrows and near Malta without strong fighter cover, which he did not have. For the following months British convoys avoided those waters or passed through them at great risk. The Luftwaffe began bombing Malta systematically, and in February German Bf 109 fighters appeared over the island. In March British bombers and surface ships had for a time to stop using the island as an operational base. Thanks to this, Italian convoys were able to carry units of the German Afrika Korps, which began arriving in Libya in February, to Tripoli almost unhindered.

The Luftwaffe’s command of the air had its limits, however. In the eastern Mediterranean, beyond the range of the Sicilian airfields, the Mediterranean Fleet continued to operate, and at the end of March 1941 it smashed the Italian cruisers at the Battle of Cape Matapan. The Italian air force, the Regia Aeronautica, remained less dangerous than the German, and X Air Corps could not be everywhere. As early as the spring most of its strength was moved to the Balkans and Greece, and for the rest of 1941 it was again mainly the Italians who fought over Malta. Malta survived this first “blitz” and in the summer once more became a base for attacks on Axis shipping. It would be more accurate, then, to say that 10 January 1941 showed that whoever had strong land-based air power could deny an opponent access to narrow waters – and that a fleet without its own fighter cover was defenceless against it.

Place in the war

The attack on Illustrious was Germany’s first blow in the Mediterranean and a sign that the war in this theatre was ceasing to be a duel between the British and the Italians. In the same weeks Hitler decided to send ground troops to Libya, and in February General Erwin Rommel arrived there. From then on German land-based aircraft became the greatest threat to the Royal Navy: in May 1941 off Crete dive-bombers sank several cruisers and destroyers and damaged Formidable, and in December Japanese aircraft sank the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya. For Malta, 10 January was indeed the beginning of a long ordeal. Its hardest months were yet to come, in the spring of 1942, when the Luftwaffe returned to Sicily in far greater strength. Illustrious herself survived the war, fighting again off Madagascar, at Salerno, in the Indian Ocean and off Okinawa, although the propeller shaft damaged at Malta was never fully repaired. The armoured deck that had saved her in January 1941 became the model for the British carriers that followed.