Malta’s Role in WWII: A History

In the summer of 1942, Malta was in dire need of food and fuel to continue its struggle against the Axis powers. As the Maltese prayed to Santa Maria, who fest day was due on August 15, Britain sent a convoy of 14 merchant ships under armed escort. As the ships neared Malta they came under massive air and sea attack. Nine merchantmen were sunk, the five remaining included the tanker Ohio, with 11,000 ton of fuel critical to Malta’s survival. On August 13, four vessels limped into Grand Harbour. More prayers were offered to Santa Maria and on the morning of the 15th the Ohio reached Malta.

It took the Allied assault on Sicily in 1943 to effectively end Malta’s close involvement in the war. The island acted as a fighter base during the operation to capture Sicily’s airfields and once this had been achieved the Axis powers were unable to continue their harassment of shipping in the central Mediterranean. For Malta, three years of war had been intense. The islands had endured some of the most ruthless bombing of World War II and it was primarily because the buildings were of stone that huge sections of the towns were not destroyed in the air raids. Nearly 1500 Maltese civilians were killed in the air raids.
The clearing up operations lasted for years. Valletta’s bombed seaboard was still in rubble into the 1950’s and the rebuilding of town around Grand Harbour, now collectively known as the Three Cities, took nearly a decade.

Today there are many reminders of World War II in Malta. Among them, one can visit the Lascaris War Rooms in Valletta where the military operations were carried out. An animated commentary vividly evokes Operation Husky (the invasion of Sicily) and other pivotal events planned in these subterranean passages.

The National War Museum in Valletta is a small museum full of World War II items. There are black-painted Italian torpedo boats, “Faith” (the only surviving biplane of the trio that defended Malta, and the George Cross awarded to the Maltese people.

The three most bombed cities in Malta in World War II were Cospicua, Vittoriosa and Senglea. The Malta at War Museum in Vittoriosa shows a great deal of what happened at that time. Under a deluge of bombs dropped on the Three Cities, the residents cowered, sometimes for weeks on end, in a claustrophobic warren of underground tunnels and honeycombed rooms in the bedrock underneath the landward fortifications of Vittoriosa. Today these underground shelters have been furnished with period props and original artifacts-communal dormitories, private cubicles, birth room , warden’s office and an entire exhibition offering a fascinating and grim insight into wartime life in Malta. The museum screens a documentary about the Maltese resistance made in 1942 with the aim of bolstering the nation’s morale at the height of the German campaign to bomb Malta into surrender.