Operation Hurry

Between 31 July and 4 August 1940 the British Force H from Gibraltar, commanded by Vice-Admiral James Somerville, carried out an operation in the western Mediterranean code-named Hurry. Its purpose was to deliver modern fighters to Malta, under siege since June. At dawn on 2 August twelve Hawker Hurricane fighters, led by two Fleet Air Arm aircraft, took off from the old aircraft carrier HMS Argus south-west of Sardinia. After a flight of more than two hours, all of them landed on Malta. At the same time aircraft from the carrier Ark Royal bombed the Italian airfield near Cagliari and laid mines in the harbour there (Operation Crush), while in the east the Mediterranean Fleet drew Italian attention away with feints.

Hurry is sometimes called “the first of the Malta convoys”. That is a simplification. Not a single merchant ship sailed for Malta in the operation, and no supplies were carried. It was a ferrying of aircraft from a carrier deck, the first of a long series of such missions that sailors called “Club Runs”. The first supply convoy reached Malta only at the beginning of September, during Operation Hats. Hurry nevertheless opened the route by which hundreds of fighters reached the island over the next two years, and without them Malta would not have survived the siege.

An island without fighters

When the first Italian bombers appeared over Malta on 11 June 1940, the island was defended by a handful of Gladiator biplanes assembled from crates left behind by the navy. At the end of June a few Hurricanes passing through Malta from France to Egypt were held back on the island. After the French capitulation that route closed: short-range fighters could no longer land on the way at airfields in France and French North Africa. From then on aircraft could be shipped to Egypt round Africa, which took almost three months, or to Takoradi on the Gold Coast and then flown across Africa. Malta, in the middle of the Mediterranean, had neither option.

As late as June the British Chiefs of Staff believed that little could be done for the island. Every Hurricane and Spitfire was needed at home, where the Battle of Britain had been under way since July. Reinforcing Malta was, however, urged by Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, who wanted to use the island as a forward base, and by the Admiralty. The first weeks of the war also showed that the Italian air force was less dangerous than had been feared and that Malta was holding out better than expected. When on 12 July the Admiralty asked whether twelve Hurricanes for Malta, due to be shipped to Gibraltar, could be carried further, Somerville proposed using a carrier. The aircraft would take off from its deck at a distance from which they could reach the island while avoiding the Italian bases on Sardinia, Sicily and Pantelleria.

Argus and the airmen of 418 Flight

The ship chosen for the task was Argus, converted from an unfinished liner during the First World War and the first aircraft carrier in history with a flat, unbroken flight deck. In 1940 she was used mainly to train pilots in deck landing. The Fleet Air Arm had no pilots trained on modern fighters, so in July a group of RAF airmen, most of them sergeants, who had previously been trained in carrier take-offs, was assembled. It was named 418 Flight. The airmen collected their Hurricanes and embarked with them in Scotland aboard Argus, which put to sea on 23 July escorted by four destroyers. According to participants’ accounts, the pilots for a long time did not know where they were going and were convinced that after delivering the aircraft they would return home.

Because the fighter pilots had no experience of navigating over the sea, each of the two groups of six Hurricanes was to be led by a two-seat Blackburn Skua carrier aircraft carrying a navigator. The flight was to be accompanied by Short Sunderland flying boats, ready to rescue any pilot forced to ditch. Two of them carried to the island some of the spare parts and the mechanics who were to service the new aircraft. The rest of the ground equipment was sent in two submarines.

Force H at sea

On the morning of 31 July almost everything Somerville had sailed from Gibraltar: the battlecruiser Hood, the battleship Valiant (some accounts also list the battleship Resolution), the carriers Ark Royal and Argus, two cruisers and more than a dozen destroyers. It was the same force that less than a month earlier had opened fire on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. In July, during the Battle of Calabria (Punta Stilo), Somerville had already once tried to attack the airfields on Sardinia, but had turned back under heavy attack by Italian bombers. This time he was better prepared: in the preceding weeks he had had his anti-aircraft gun crews drilled intensively, and Valiant carried radar that detected approaching aircraft.

On the morning of 1 August fighters from Ark Royal shot down an Italian aircraft shadowing the force. In the evening, when the ships were north of the Algerian coast, two waves of Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers came in from Sardinia. Sources differ on their number, from a few to a dozen or more. Some turned back in the face of the fighters; the rest dropped their bombs from high altitude. None hit. Skuas from Ark Royal shot down one bomber, and according to Italian sources it carried Brigadier General Stefano Cagna of the air force, commander of an air brigade based on Sardinia, who in the 1920s and 1930s had been the companion and co-pilot of Italo Balbo on his famous transatlantic flights.

The same day the Italians scored the only success that can be linked to these operations. Off the coast of Calabria the destroyer Ugolino Vivaldi rammed and sank the British submarine HMS Oswald, which had earlier reported Italian cruisers passing through the Strait of Messina. Three sailors were killed and more than fifty taken prisoner. The Italian naval command also deployed two lines of submarines off the Algerian coast, but by 9 August they had not detected the British.

2 August: Cagliari and the flight to Malta

During the night of 1–2 August the force divided. Ark Royal, with Hood and destroyers, steamed north-east, while Argus, with Valiant and an escort, headed for the fighters’ flying-off point. At about 2.30 a.m. twelve Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers began taking off from Ark Royal: nine with bombs and three with mines. One crashed on take-off, and its three-man crew was killed. Somerville later recorded how, in complete darkness, he watched a small shadow detach itself from the great shadow of the carrier and thought of “those incredibly gallant lads” flying a hundred and forty miles over the sea to attack an enemy base.

A change of wind pushed the Swordfish off course, and instead of arriving at dawn they reached the target in daylight. They attacked Elmas airfield near Cagliari through heavy anti-aircraft fire. According to British assessments, the bombs set two hangars on fire and destroyed several aircraft and buildings. Three aircraft laid mines in the harbour. One damaged Swordfish made a forced landing on an Italian airfield and its crew was captured. The others returned to the carrier between 6.30 and 7.20 a.m. under fighter cover.

Meanwhile, aboard Argus, preparations were under way for the most important part of the operation. According to some accounts, the commander of the RAF airmen judged that the designated flying-off point was too far from Malta, and after consultation with London it was moved closer to the island, to about 360 nautical miles (some 670 kilometres). Take-off was delayed because one of the Skuas would not start. When it finally got airborne, it sank dangerously low over the water at the end of the short deck and gathered speed only above the waves. The Hurricanes, with their more powerful engines, took off without difficulty. Both groups skirted Pantelleria and after about two hours and twenty minutes in the air reached Malta. All twelve fighters landed at Luqa airfield, although two had accidents on landing. One pilot, over-confident after the successful flight, performed aerobatics over the airfield, lost engine power on the approach and his aircraft flipped onto its back; he escaped with mild concussion.

A surprise awaited the airmen. They had expected to return to Gibraltar by flying boat, but instead learned that they were staying on Malta. For the next few days they sat at readiness in their cockpits, but the Italians sent only reconnaissance aircraft. On 6 and 8 August the submarines Pandora and Proteus delivered spare parts and ground equipment. According to some sources, on the night of 13–14 August the new Hurricanes shot down their first Italian bomber, and in the middle of the month 418 Flight was merged with Malta’s existing fighters to form No. 261 Squadron RAF, the first fighter squadron based on the island.

Force H, its two groups reunited, steamed west. Italian bombers approached the ships once more but turned back a dozen or so miles short of them. On the afternoon of 4 August Somerville was back in Gibraltar. He had lost two Swordfish and three airmen killed, and three more had been taken prisoner. The cruiser Enterprise, which had detached from the force earlier, transmitted dummy radio traffic near Minorca to mislead the Italians about the direction of the operation (Operation Spark).

Feints in the east

The other half of the plan was played out a thousand kilometres away. Cunningham was to convince the Italian command that the main action would take place in the eastern part of the sea. His ships simulated preparations for a landing on the Italian island of Kastellorizo off the Turkish coast, cruisers passed through the Aegean and made a show of moving west, and battleships with the carrier Eagle left Alexandria in the direction of Crete. An engine breakdown on the battleship Malaya forced this group to return early. Even so, the aim was achieved: the bewildered Italian naval command kept the main forces of the Regia Marina in port and made no attempt to intercept Force H.

Place in the war

Operation Hurry ended in complete success at little cost. Malta received its first real fighter squadron, and the British learned that the Italian air force and fleet could not close the western Mediterranean to them, that a carrier could safely approach to within a few hundred kilometres of Sardinia, and that Italian bases could be attacked with impunity. For Somerville and his force it was the first operation against Italy in the Mediterranean to go as planned, after the grim episode at Mers-el-Kébir.

Immediately after returning, Argus, with Hood and Valiant, sailed for Britain. At the end of August the carrier took thirty Hurricanes to Takoradi, from where they flew across Africa to Egypt. At the same time, in Operation Hats, Valiant and the new carrier Illustrious passed through the Mediterranean to Alexandria, and the first supply convoy reached Malta. In September some of the ships of Force H took part in the unsuccessful expedition to Dakar.

Later ferrying operations did not always end happily. On 17 November 1940, in Operation White, Somerville had the fighters flown off Argus further from Malta than in August, because he feared the Italian fleet. Of the twelve Hurricanes only four reached the island; the rest ran out of fuel and came down in the sea. Despite such failures, the Club Runs continued until the autumn of 1942. They involved Ark Royal, Furious and Eagle, and in the spring of 1942 also the American carrier Wasp, which brought the first large batches of Spitfires to Malta. According to frequently cited tallies, between August 1940 and August 1942 some 670 Hurricanes and Spitfires took off for Malta from carrier decks in the western Mediterranean. It was they, together with convoys such as Pedestal in August 1942, that enabled the island to survive the heaviest bombing by the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica. The start of that road was marked by the twelve fighters that took off from the deck of the old Argus on 2 August 1940.