Convoy Stoneage

According to some chronologies, on 11 November 1942 convoys from Alexandria reached Malta and an official communiqué announced that the island had been “relieved from siege”. That is not what happened that day. On 11 November only one ship was on its way to Malta from Alexandria – the fast minelayer Manxman, carrying food – while in Libya the RAF was just discovering that the Axis forces were evacuating Bardia and Tobruk, which opened the way for a large convoy. That convoy, designated MW 13 and known as Operation Stoneage, did not leave Port Said until 16 November, and its four merchant ships entered harbour at Valletta on the night of 19–20 November. No formal proclamation of the end of the siege can be confirmed in the sources; nevertheless the arrival of Stoneage was taken on Malta, and later by historians, as the end of the island’s two-year blockade.

Malta in the autumn of 1942

In the summer of 1942 Malta was close to being starved into surrender. The June convoys Harpoon and Vigorous had brought it a mere two ships, and of the fourteen merchantmen of Operation Pedestal in August five got through, among them the tanker Ohio. Their cargoes made it possible to survive the autumn, but no longer. The governor, General Lord Gort, kept bread, fuel and ammunition under strict rationing, and the islanders were largely fed in public “Victory Kitchens”. By British calculations, stocks of basic foodstuffs would run out at the beginning of December 1942.

At the same time Malta was fighting again. Thanks to the Ohio’s fuel, its submarines and Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers, guided by signals intelligence from Bletchley Park, were sinking the ships and tankers bound for Libya. In September, by British estimates, the Axis failed to deliver some 90,000 tons of supplies to Africa, including more than 20,000 tons of fuel. In October Field Marshal Albert Kesselring threw the Luftwaffe’s last great offensive against the island, but the Spitfires of Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, intercepting the bombers over the sea, inflicted such losses that the raids stopped after a week.

The route remained the problem. Convoys from Gibraltar had to pass Sardinia, Sicily and Tunisia; convoys from Alexandria had to run along the coast of Cyrenaica, whose airfields were used by German and Italian aircraft. As long as the Axis held those airfields, every convoy from Egypt would end like Vigorous – turned back or massacred.

Lone ships and ruses

Before a large convoy could sail, the British tried to smuggle supplies in by other means. Submarines, among them Parthian, Clyde and Rorqual, carried aviation spirit, food, lubricants and torpedoes to Malta; they made several such runs in October and early November. At the end of October another 27 Spitfires flew off to Malta from an aircraft carrier in the western Mediterranean (Operation Train). The merchant ship Empire Patrol, loaded with fuel and food, left Alexandria on 1 November with orders to pose first as a Turkish and then as an Italian vessel. The next day a German bomber and a submarine periscope appeared near the lone ship, and her master turned back to Famagusta in Cyprus. Two ships sent from Britain disguised as civilian vessels (Operation Crupper) were fired on by French coastal artillery off Cape Bon and interned at Bizerte.

After these failures the Royal Navy turned to the fastest ships it had: the Abdiel-class minelayers, capable of nearly 40 knots. On 10 November Manxman left Alexandria with powdered milk, cereals and meat. On 11 November she was at sea, and on 12 November she reached Malta, unloaded and sailed for Gibraltar the same day. Her sister Welshman, which had detached from one of the Operation Torch convoys, reached the island on 18 November. These were small cargoes, however. Only a full convoy could save the island.

The Cyrenaican airfields

The way for the convoy was opened by victory at El Alamein. On 4 November Erwin Rommel began his retreat, and General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army set off in pursuit along the coast. On 8 November the British retook Mersa Matruh, and the same day the Allies landed in Morocco and Algeria. On 11 November Desert Air Force reconnaissance aircraft spotted the Germans and Italians abandoning Bardia and Tobruk, and decrypted Enigma signals indicated that Rommel’s army had fuel for four or five days. For the planners in Alexandria this was the signal that the airfields of eastern Cyrenaica would soon be in British hands. Bardia was taken on 12 November, Tobruk on 13 November.

The plan required that the convoy should not sail until the landing grounds around Tobruk and Martuba could receive fighters. Everything depended on them: single-engined fighters from Egypt and Cyrenaica were to cover the ships as far as a line some 40 nautical miles west of Benghazi, where aircraft from Malta would take over. The landing grounds near Ain el Gazala received British aircraft on 17 November, and the airfield at Martuba near Derna was operating from 19 November. At the same time the landings in North Africa drew off the Axis air forces: from 9 November the Germans were airlifting troops into Tunisia, and Kesselring had to send there the aircraft that had previously been attacking Malta. The Italian fleet remained a threat. On 11 November the three modern Littorio-class battleships moved to Naples, further from British bombers but still within reach of the route to Malta, and five cruisers lay at Messina. In the end none of these ships came out against the convoy.

A convoy from Gibraltar that was to sail simultaneously was cancelled: the First Army, which had landed in Algeria, was advancing along the coast more slowly than expected and could not provide cover for it.

The voyage of MW 13

Convoy MW 13 consisted of four fast merchant ships: the British Denbighshire, the Dutch Bantam and the American Robin Locksley and Mormacmoon. To mislead enemy intelligence, two of them were loaded at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and their bridges and gun positions were protected with sandbags. Cover was provided by Rear Admiral Arthur Power’s 15th Cruiser Squadron – Arethusa, Orion and three Dido-class anti-aircraft cruisers, Cleopatra, Euryalus and Dido – with seven destroyers of the 14th Flotilla. The close escort consisted of ten Hunt-class escort destroyers, among them the Greek Pindos.

The ships passed through the Suez Canal on 15 and 16 November, took on additional ammunition at Port Said and put to sea on the evening of 16 November. On 17 November the escort destroyers joined them off Alexandria. The convoy sailed some 40 nautical miles off the coast of Cyrenaica under continuous air cover: South African, Australian and Fleet Air Arm aircraft patrolled around the ships hunting for submarines, while at dawn and dusk Beaufighter heavy fighters circled overhead. When a raid of Junkers Ju 88 bombers came in before noon, it was driven off by the Kittyhawks of No. 450 Squadron RAAF.

At dusk on 18 November Axis torpedo bombers attacked both the merchantmen and the cruisers, which had detached from the convoy for the night. The merchant ships were unharmed, but a torpedo struck Arethusa forward of the bridge. The explosion and fire killed 156 of her crew and badly burned many others. The destroyer Petard took her in tow stern first and, escorted by two other destroyers, brought her back to Alexandria. On the morning of 19 November the cruisers rejoined the convoy, and Beaufighters and Spitfires from Malta appeared over the ships. Some 80 nautical miles from the island the main force turned back for Alexandria; Euryalus and the escort destroyers accompanied the merchantmen the rest of the way. At 1.30 a.m. on 20 November the convoy entered Valletta’s Grand Harbour to the cheers of the population and the garrison. Unloading began an hour and a half later. Axis aircraft still tried to bomb the ships in harbour, but more trouble was caused by a fire in petrol vapour aboard Denbighshire, which was brought under control.

Place in the war

According to Richard Woodman, the four Stoneage ships brought some 32,000 tons of supplies, mainly food and fuel. This did not end the shortages at once, but it removed the threat of surrender through starvation, and by 26 November the island’s situation was considered markedly improved. British losses were limited to the damaged Arethusa, 156 sailors killed and five aircraft, three of them Spitfires. Compared with Pedestal, which had cost an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and nine merchant ships, it was an almost bloodless operation – and that in itself showed how much the situation in the Mediterranean had changed.

The Royal Navy’s official historian, Stephen Roskill, regarded the convoy’s arrival as the end of the two-year siege of Malta, and that date, 20 November 1942, is accepted by most historians. Some authors move it to December, when further convoys were arriving unopposed. At the beginning of December the next convoy from Alexandria (Operation Portcullis) arrived without loss, and thereafter ships began sailing to Malta regularly, often without a separate covering force.

Malta quickly went over to the offensive. The submarines that had spent months carrying supplies returned to attacking Axis shipping. At the end of November a squadron of Fleet Air Arm torpedo bombers moved to the island, and Force K was re-formed with the cruisers Dido and Euryalus and four destroyers; a flotilla of motor torpedo boats soon joined them. From 1 December ships from Malta and from the Algerian port of Bône could attack from two directions the convoys sailing from Italy to Tunisia, where the Axis was sending ever more troops. The island that for two years the enemy had tried to starve became a base from which in 1943 the Allies supported the fight for Tunisia and then the landing in Sicily.