Operation Harpoon

On the night of 11–12 June 1942 six ships carrying supplies for Malta passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. This was the convoy of Operation Harpoon, the western half of a great double attempt to save the island. On the same day the first group of ships of the second convoy, Vigorous, left Port Said; it was to reach Malta from the east, from Egypt and Palestine. Both carried what the besieged island needed most: flour and other food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts. Over the next five days the convoy from Gibraltar fought its way through attacks by Italian and German aircraft, submarines, an Italian cruiser squadron and minefields. Only two ships entered the Grand Harbour at Valletta on 16 June, and right off Malta the Polish destroyer ORP Kujawiak was sunk by a mine.

War chronologies link four dates with the operation: 8 June (the arrival of Spitfires on Malta), 11 June (the departure of both convoys), 14 June (the first attacks on Harpoon) and 16 June (the arrival of two ships at Malta). The fate of the Vigorous convoy, which turned back to Alexandria, unfolded separately.

Spitfires ahead of the convoy

The convoy could stand a chance only if Malta was able to give it air cover on the last stretch of its voyage and to protect the ships in harbour while they were unloaded. In March convoy MW 10 had reached the island after the Second Battle of Sirte, but its ships had been bombed in the roads and in harbour before they could be unloaded. Since May, after Operation Bowery, the defenders once again had several dozen modern fighters, and deliveries of aircraft continued.

Some accounts state that a squadron of Spitfires reached Malta on 8 June. No aircraft arrived on the island that day, however. In June the old carrier HMS Eagle twice sailed from Gibraltar with Supermarine Spitfire fighters on board. In Operation Style on 3 June, 31 or 32 Spitfires, according to various tallies, flew off her. On the way they were intercepted by German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters from Pantelleria, which shot down four, so 27 or 28 aircraft reached the island. In Operation Salient Eagle sailed from Gibraltar again and on 9 June flew off another 32 Spitfires to Malta, all of which, according to the pilots’ accounts, arrived. The date of 8 June, a day earlier than the actual arrival, most probably refers to this second delivery. After both voyages the defenders had, according to British figures, some 95 serviceable fighters.

The plan for Operation Julius

The British command had known since the spring that the June convoy would decide the island’s fate. On 5 May the bread ration on Malta was cut to about 300 grams a day, and at the end of April the Chiefs of Staff had concluded that no convoy would get through in May without the cover of battleships and carriers, which were not available. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, pressed General Claude Auchinleck into an offensive in Libya that was to draw off the Axis air forces precisely at the time of the June convoy, during the moonless nights around 13–14 June. If the Eighth Army regained the airfields in western Cyrenaica, fighters could cover the ships from Alexandria for most of the way.

The whole undertaking was named Operation Julius. Ships were to sail simultaneously from both ends of the Mediterranean – six from Gibraltar (Harpoon) and eleven from the eastern ports (Vigorous) – and reach Malta on successive days. The British reckoned that the Axis would be unable to strike both convoys at once with full force. The Italian fleet would have to choose, and the air forces would have to split between Sardinia and Sicily in the west and Crete and Libya in the east. In the popular version, the enemy was supposed to concentrate on whichever convoy was detected first and let the other through. That is indeed what happened, though with the opposite result to the one intended: the main forces of the Regia Marina, with two battleships, sailed against the stronger eastern convoy, while two light cruisers and aircraft from Sardinia and Sicily were sent against Harpoon.

The Axis knew British intentions earlier than the British supposed. For months Italian military intelligence had been reading the cipher in which the American military attaché in Cairo, Colonel Bonner Fellers, sent detailed reports on British plans to Washington. According to most studies, the Germans and Italians also learned from his telegrams about the preparations for the June convoys.

From the Clyde to Gibraltar

Five ships of the convoy, designated WS 19z, left the Firth of Clyde in Scotland at the beginning of June (5 June is the date most often given). They were the British Troilus, Burdwan and Orari, the Dutch Tanimbar and the American Chant. Off Gibraltar they were joined by the American tanker Kentucky with some 10,000 tons of fuel, including the aviation spirit that Malta needed most. Altogether the ships carried some 43,000 tons of cargo. To save time they did not put into Gibraltar. Only the escorts refuelled there, and on the night of 11–12 June the convoy, now designated GM 4, passed through the strait and headed east at 12–13 knots.

The close escort (Force X) was led by Captain Cecil Campbell Hardy in the anti-aircraft cruiser Cairo. He had five fleet destroyers – Bedouin, Marne, Matchless, Ithuriel and Partridge – and four smaller Hunt-class escort destroyers: Blankney, Middleton, Badsworth and the Polish Kujawiak under Ludwik Lichodziejewski (PL). In addition there were four minesweepers and six minesweeping motor launches, which were to stay on Malta after arrival and clear the approaches to the harbour. Also sailing with the convoy was the fast minelayer Welshman, carrying several hundred tons of cargo to the island. Distant cover as far as the entrance to the Strait of Sicily was provided by Vice Admiral Alban Curteis’s Force W: the old battleship Malaya, the carriers Eagle and Argus, three cruisers and eight destroyers. The two carriers, however, had only about twenty fighters between them: Sea Hurricanes (PL) and Fulmars.

The first two days passed quietly. The Italian naval command even suspected that the western convoy was merely a diversion.

14 June: the first attacks

Chronologies record that on 14 June Harpoon was attacked for the first time, while Vigorous had been under air attack almost from the moment it left port. That is correct. Shortly before 3 a.m. the Italian submarine Uarsciek fired torpedoes at the convoy, without result, and at dawn Italian reconnaissance aircraft spotted the force. The convoy came within range of the bases on Sardinia, where the Italians had assembled, according to British figures, some 175 serviceable bombers and fighters, more than had been expected.

Before noon the first large raid by the Italian air force (the Regia Aeronautica) arrived: fighter-bombers, high-level bombers and Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 torpedo bombers. Torpedoes sank the Dutch ship Tanimbar, with the loss of 23 lives. The cruiser Liverpool, hit by a torpedo, lost propulsion and was towed back to Gibraltar by the destroyer Antelope, still under air attack. In the afternoon German Ju 88s from Sicily also struck the convoy. The carrier fighters and the ships’ guns beat off attack after attack, but the escort used up a large part of its anti-aircraft ammunition. Kujawiak alone fired off more than half her stock on that one day.

In the evening, at the entrance to the Strait of Sicily, Force W turned back to Gibraltar as planned. The big ships could not enter the narrow waters between Sicily and Tunisia. From there the convoy sailed on with only the cruiser Cairo, nine destroyers and the small craft. Welshman broke away and raced alone to Malta at nearly 30 knots; there she unloaded her ammunition and the next morning sailed out to meet the convoy.

The Battle of Pantelleria

At dawn on 15 June, south of Pantelleria, the convoy encountered the Italian 7th Cruiser Division under Admiral Alberto Da Zara: the light cruisers Eugenio di Savoia and Raimondo Montecuccoli, armed with 152 mm guns, and five destroyers. The force had assembled at Palermo and put to sea from there on the evening of 14 June. The British had not a single ship in the escort that could match them in firepower. Cairo had 102 mm guns, and the Hunts, armed mainly for anti-aircraft work, had no torpedo tubes.

Hardy did what Vian had done at Sirte. The Hunts and minesweepers screened the merchant ships with smoke and led them away towards the Tunisian coast, while Cairo and the five fleet destroyers went for the Italians. Bedouin and Partridge, leading the attack, came under accurate fire from the cruisers and were disabled. Cairo took two hits. The other destroyers hit the Italian destroyer Ugolino Vivaldi, which caught fire and stopped, but the Italian ships managed to tow her away. Da Zara himself recalled that the British laid smoke screens masterfully. The action broke off at about 8 a.m., when the two sides lost sight of each other.

While the destroyers were fighting the cruisers, German Ju 87 dive bombers from Sicily struck the merchant ships, now deprived of part of their escort. The American Chant sank after three direct hits, and Kentucky was disabled. Later, bombs also disabled Burdwan. Both ships were taken in tow, but the convoy could then move only very slowly, and the Italians were still circling on the horizon. Hardy decided to sacrifice the damaged ships to save the two sound ones. Kentucky and Burdwan were to be scuttled by the escort. Before this could be done, the Italian cruisers returned and finished them off with gunfire and torpedoes. Hardy later wrote in his report that without the Italian warships both ships could probably have been brought into Malta.

The disabled Bedouin was taken in tow by Partridge. When the Italians reappeared, the tow was slipped. Partridge managed to escape and reached Gibraltar, while Bedouin, listing after a dozen or more hits from 152 mm shells, was finished off in the afternoon by a torpedo from an Italian SM.79, which the gunners of the sinking ship shot down at the last moment. Twenty-eight of her crew were killed, and more than two hundred sailors were taken prisoner by the Italians, mainly by the hospital ship Meta.

The action went down in Italian history as the Battle of Pantelleria, and the whole of the fighting against both convoys as the “Battle of Mid-June” (battaglia di mezzo giugno). British and Italian historians agree that it was one of the few clear tactical successes of the Italian navy in a surface action in this war. The convoy was not stopped, but the fate of three ships was sealed by the combination of attacks from the air and from the sea.

The minefields off Malta

In the afternoon the convoy came within range of Spitfires from Malta, which beat off further raids. According to the plan, the two surviving ships were to reach the island while it was still light, so that the minesweepers could clear the channel in daylight and unloading could take place at night. The delay caused by the fighting meant that the force approached Malta after dark. The cruiser and destroyers, which were to have turned back west immediately, had to enter harbour because they had run out of ammunition.

On the approach to Valletta, despite the minesweepers’ work, the warships and merchant ships ran into a minefield. Orari struck a mine; she stayed afloat but lost part of her cargo. Mines also damaged the destroyers Badsworth and Matchless and the minesweeper Hebe, and the small trawler Justified, sent out to meet the convoy, sank. Kujawiak was sailing last and approached the disabled Badsworth, which had some 120 survivors from the sunken ships on board. At 12.53 a.m. on 16 June a mine exploded under her port side. The Polish destroyer quickly heeled over and sank at about 1.20 a.m., before a tug from Malta could pass her a line. According to Polish studies 13 members of her crew were killed (some sources give 12 names, Italian studies more). For their part in the operation Lichodziejewski and the gunnery officer, Lieutenant Jerzy Łukaszewski, were awarded the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari.

Early in the morning of 16 June Troilus and Orari berthed in the Grand Harbour. They were unloaded within five days, with every available docker and soldier put to work, and the cargo was dispersed among many stores so that a single bomb could not destroy everything. On the evening of 16 June Cairo and the four undamaged destroyers left Malta and, despite further air raids, reached Gibraltar on 18 June.

The toll

Of the six Harpoon ships, two reached Malta. According to the British official historian Ian Playfair, they brought in some 15,000 tons of supplies, about a third of the convoy’s cargo. Together with Welshman’s cargo and given a good harvest, this was to feed the island until August or September. Italian authors reckoned that the June deliveries prolonged Malta’s resistance by roughly eight weeks. The loss of Kentucky hurt most. Without her fuel, the command on Malta had to husband its aviation spirit: fighters were given priority, aircraft staging through the island and attacks on distant targets were curtailed, and fuel began to be brought in by submarine.

The escort paid a high price for the two ships. The destroyers Bedouin and Kujawiak were sunk, while the cruiser Liverpool, the destroyers Partridge, Badsworth and Matchless and the minesweeper Hebe needed long repairs. According to the British Staff History, the carrier fighters and the ships’ guns shot down 29 Axis aircraft during the operation. Of the Italian warships, only Vivaldi was seriously damaged. The eastern convoy, sailing during the same days, delivered nothing to Malta. Between them, therefore, the two convoys lost six of their seventeen ships, nine turned back, and only two reached their destination.

Its place in the war

Operation Harpoon saved Malta for a few weeks, but it did not break the blockade. During those same days the Eighth Army was losing the Battle of Gazala, the airfields in Cyrenaica were passing into Erwin Rommel’s hands, and the Axis air forces in Libya and on Crete could freely attack convoys from Alexandria. The drop in air raids on the island, on the other hand, was largely due to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring having moved some units from Sicily to Africa and to the east. When, after the fall of Tobruk, the plans for a landing on Malta were set aside, the island’s fate depended on whether another convoy could be brought through before its stocks ran out. The island’s governor, John Vereker, Lord Gort, set a date after which Malta would have to surrender through starvation. After June it fell at the end of August or the beginning of September.

In July Eagle brought more Spitfires, and Welshman and submarines carried in fuel, ammunition and food. The next big convoy came only in August: in Operation Pedestal five of fourteen ships reached Malta, including the tanker Ohio, while Eagle, among others, went to the bottom. The lessons of June were not wasted, however. The British understood that without strong carrier cover and without airfields in Libya, convoys to Malta would lose most of their ships. The siege was lifted only by the victory at El Alamein and the recapture of the airfields in Cyrenaica in November 1942.

For Poles, Operation Harpoon remained one of the most important episodes in the Polish Navy’s service in the Mediterranean. In 2015 a plaque commemorating the sinking of Kujawiak was unveiled in Valletta.