Malta Garrison 1942

[waterloo]

Is it Fort Musta that is the more - constructed,
I was obviuosly looking at fortifications somewhere near valetta.

thanks for replays

[sallyg]

Mosta is close to Valetta than is Targa, 6.5 km versus 5.5 km. Both are part of the Victoria Lines. Mosta was completed, it sits on top of a long hill with open sight-lines.

See it here:

http://wikimapia.org/2097223/Fort_Mosta

I hope you have a LOT of mortar ammunition.

[waterloo]

thank you. the link is very good, If you scroll across you can even pick out fort targa. I see what you mean about it just being overgrown earthworks.
I shall amend the battleplan.

still a tough nut to crack , especially in daylight. without artillery support.

[Ironmachine]

If you have 112 guns to cover an area, overlapping fields of fire is what may allow you to fire 80 of them to a point in the area. But if you fire 80 to a point, you are left with only 32 to cover the other points in the area at the same time.

So what? In practical terms that is irrelevant. It is not as if Axis planes are suddenly to appear as if by magic over all parts of the island. They will be flying in formation over a given route[...]

Will they attack only one point of the island at a time? Will they travel to the island flying in formation over one unique route?

Well, yeah, so far as I have heard that's pretty much what they did. Do you know otherwise?

Although it was theoretically possible to stage an attack where different formations appear from many points of the compass simultaneously, as a practical matter it would have been next door to impossible to stage with any reasonable degree of confidence and I doubt that it would have even been attempted for such a critical mission as this involving the coordination of two different air forces of two different nationalities.

The following comes from an intelligence report on German bombing of Malta published in Tactical and Technical Trends, No. 6, August 27, 1942:

The early attacks were by successive waves all approaching from the same direction and attacking the same objective. As the attack developed, the tactics varied, and synchronized attacks by waves of bombers approaching the same objective from different directions were common. The synchronization became markedly better with practice. Alternatively, heavy attacks were made simultaneously on two targets, the object in either case being to confuse the defense. Later "wingers" would peel off from the main attack to make individual attacks on heavy antiaircraft gun positions on the lines of approach or close to the target, or small formations would make deliberate diving attacks on gun positions, synchronizing these attacks with the main attack.

(emphasis mine)

(The full report is available at http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/malta.html)

[waterloo]

I think your observation on german airtactics acknowledges that the single attack , in waves, from the same direction , was unhealthy due to the heavy concentration of AA.

Splitting up the attacks into two big attacks and other little ones has two effects.

it splits the anti-air defence up increasing your survivability

it splits up the bomb damage on the island , lessening the effect of the bombing.

Bearing in mind the germans only had medium bombers, so to create the damage required is going to need a heavy concentration of bombers. The AA succeded in splitting this up.

[Ironmachine]

I think your observation on german airtactics acknowledges that the single attack , in waves, from the same direction , was unhealthy due to the heavy concentration of AA.

It acknowledges the fact that the less AAA fire you have to endure, the better. Whether the AA concentration was heavy or not, that's another point.

it splits up the bomb damage on the island , lessening the effect of the bombing.

This may be true in the second case:

heavy attacks were made simultaneously on two targets

but obviously not in the first one:

synchronized attacks by waves of bombers approaching the same objective from different directions

Bearing in mind the germans only had medium bombers, so to create the damage required is going to need a heavy concentration of bombers. The AA succeded in splitting this up.

Only if the Germans had to inflict all the damage in one unique attack. With plenty of aircraft, not so many targets to attack in Malta, and a relatively large span of time to do the damage, your argument loses much of its weight.

[JonS]

Only if the Germans had to inflict all the damage in one unique attack. With plenty of aircraft, not so many targets to attack in Malta, and a relatively large span of time to do the damage, your argument loses much of its weight.

Which parallel universe are you living in, then?

[Ironmachine]

Would you be so kind as to explain to me what part of my statement makes you wonder about my location in the omniverse?

[JonS]

In this universe the Germans failed to reduce Malta. Your post makes it appear that you believe they successfully conquered Malta with their scatteed air raids.

[Ironmachine]

In this universe the Germans failed to reduce Malta.

Just like in my universe, what a coincidence! :roll:

Your post makes it appear that you believe they successfully conquered Malta with their scatteed air raids.

Perhaps using whatever twisted logic you employ my post could make it appear that way, but if only you read it without leaving your imagination free, you could see that my post only indicates that:
1) They did not conquered Malta; there is no way to do it with only air attacks. They did not conquer Malta mainly because they did not even try...
2) There is no way to tell whether they could have conquered it or not, should they have tried.
3) Unlike what waterloo said, the Germans had the capacity to do more than enough damage from the air... and they did it... not that it served them much...

There is a diference between reducing (reducing to what?) and conquering. I have never said that the Germans conquered Malta. I can not really understand how you can deduce that idea from my post.
On the other hand, there is some indication that the German could have done (and actually did) as much damage as it could be possibly be done with their "not so scattered" air raids. For example:

Hitler recalled Kesselring from his winter H.Q. in front of Moscow, and in December General Loerzer and the staff of II Air Corps followed him to Messina. With the original Geschwader decimated in Russia, the Corps had to be reorganised. Fitting it out for sub-tropical warfare consumed further time. Five bomber Gruppen, all equipped with the Ju 88 A-4, finally arrived one after the other in Sicily, plus one Ju 87 and one Me 110 Gruppe. Fighter protection fell to the lot of the top-scoring JG 53, with four Gruppen of Me 109Fs. Altogether they represented a force of 325 aircraft. But of these only 229 were serviceable.
The units had hardly arrived before they were thrown into the battle. Single aircraft or formations of up to squadron strength patrolled the sea lanes or escorted the transports as they ran the gauntlet to North Africa, and after the long months of quietness bombs fell again on Malta. But while things became tougher for the British the Germans, though their operations were so far small in scale, were also finding them disproportionately costly.
The experience of the night-fighter Gruppe, I/NJG 2, was typical. Two months previously it had been carrying out “intruder” operations against British bomber bases in England—till Hitler personally cancelled this form of warfare. Though now based at Catania under Captain Jung, it had frequently to detach squadrons to North Africa and Crete, so that in Sicily itself there were seldom more than ten aircraft available at any one time. None the less, they flew day and night, and one crew after another failed to return.
On December 3rd Lieutenant von Keudell sighted a rubber dinghy in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and promptly summoned a rescue craft. By doing so he saved the life of the German air attaché in Rome, Major General Ritter von Pohl, who had come to grief while flying to join Kesselring for an initial conference on operations. Eight weeks later Keudell himself was missing after a mission against Malta.
Shortly after Christmas Lieutenant Babineck, youngest pilot of the Gruppe, was claimed by light flak over Valetta, after he had said over the radio: “Am diving through 10/10 cloud at 1,500 feet.” Lieutenant Schleif, on a night intruder operation over Malta, shot down a Blenheim bomber in flames just as it was landing. Attempting to repeat his success on January 18th, his guns failed, and on the following night, over Luca, the flak got him at 600 feet, and his Ju 88 went down like a flaming torch. Lieutenant Haas never returned from his night pursuit of a British bomber. Lieutenant Laufs failed to find his airfield, obscured by darkness and clouds, and crashed into the slopes of Mount Etna. The adjutant, First-Lieutenant Schulz, was last seen diving into the sea just off the coast, and Corporal Teuber hurtled from 4,000 feet to destruction on Benghazi airfield after engine failure.
So it went on, day after day, week after week. To Colonel Deichmann, II Air Corps’ chief of staff, the losses—especially those of the bombers over Malta—seemed almost incomprehensible. Perhaps the targets were too dispersed, with each having to be dive-bombed separately. For pin-point bombing was still the gospel according to Jeschonnek, Luftwaffe chief of general staff. It was an obsession both with him and the other Luftwaffe leaders. And over Malta it was finally exposed as a false conception.
Under Kesselring’s direction Deichmann worked out a plan of his own. According to this, apart from identified anti-aircraft batteries and a few special targets, the whole tactic of dispersed dive-bombing was abandoned. In future the bombers would act as a united force, with the following programme:
1. Hit the British fighters on the ground by a surprise attack on their base, Ta Kali.
2. Attack the bomber and torpedo-plane bases of Luca, Hal Far and Calafrana.
3. Attack the docks and harbour installations of Valetta naval base.
After strong discussion this plan was approved at the beginning of March, 1942, and preparations were started. Then there was a hitch: matrixes used for multiplying copies of the orders, instead of being burnt, were found by a security officer in the act of being carted off by a dealer in a sack of waste paper. Who could be sure that the British had not already got wind of the coming operation? So the attack was delayed to see whether they changed their dispositions. But no; aerial photography showed the Spitfires and Hurricanes still concentrated at Ta Kali—that being the necessary precondition for surprise to succeed.
By March 20th the Germans were ready. As darkness fell the British fighters landed from the day’s concluding sorties. Suddenly German bombers were again reported approaching over the sea. The Englishmen listened: it was not the usual high-pitched whine of just a few Ju 88s. It was the deeper, throbbing tone of a large formation.
As the first wave arrived, closely followed by the second, bombs rained down—more and more of them, all on the same target, Ta Kali. Workshops and other buildings went up in flames. For this twilight assault II Air Corps had called upon every crew with night-flying experience, and the force amounted to about sixty bombers, with an escort of Me 110s and other night-fighters.
But there was another thing. Stereo photographs had revealed a ramp on the airfield’s boundary, leading downward. Beside it was a huge heap of earth and rock. It presumably meant that the British had blasted out an underground hangar!
To cope with such an inaccessible target a number of Ju 88s had been fitted with 2,000-lb. armour-piercing rocket bombs. In this case the planes had once more to dive, for with a high starting velocity the rockets could penetrate such rocky ground up to forty-five feet. Meanwhile other machines attacked the ramp itself with incendiary bombs, in the hope that the burning oil would set on fire the fighters supposedly parked inside.
To this day the Germans do not know whether this attack with special weapons was successful, or indeed whether the underground hangar ever existed. The British still remain remarkably reticent about the matter. It is only on record that when the bombers attacked again next morning, they encountered no fighter opposition. With Kampfgruppen 606 and 806 from Catania, I/KG 54 from Gerbini, two Gruppen of KG 77 from Comiso, plus the fighters of JG 53 and II/JG 3 (”Udet”) and the Me 110s of III/ZG 26, over 200 German aircraft were over Malta within a short period. Again Ta Kali was the target, as if no other existed on the island. It was the first example of “carpet bombing” in the whole war, and by the evening the British fighter base looked as if it had been subjected to a volcanic eruption.
On March 22nd it was the turn of the other airfields, in accordance with “phase two”. But on the fourth day the “Deichmann Plan” was interrupted by the British attempt to bring a new supply convoy through to the hard-pressed island. With the Germans again in control of the air, it was a desperate attempt, and the convoy—four transports carrying munitions, fuel and victuals—had been constantly shadowed since leaving Alexandria four days earlier.
On the 22nd the Italian fleet tried to attack it, but was driven off by the strong British escort of four cruisers and sixteen destroyers. The Italian intervention meant, however, that instead of the convoy reaching Malta that night, it would only do so the next morning.
It thus fell victim to the Luftwaffe. Twenty miles off the island the transport Clan Campbell was sunk by a direct hit. The naval supply ship Breconshire was towed in a crippled condition to Marsa Scirocco bay, where further attacks finished her off. The remaining two transports foundered three days later, in Valetta harbour. Before then, during the rare pauses between raids, the British managed to rescue 5,000 tons of their valuable cargo. It represented, however, a bare fifth of what the four transports were carrying, and hard times for Malta lay ahead.
The third phase of the bombardment began at the end of the month with Valetta’s harbour and docks as main target. In April the attack intensified, and Britain’s destroyers and submarines were forced to depart, as the last of her bombers had done already. The mortal danger confronting the sea lanes to North Africa had been successfully combated. As his supply transports steamed into Tripoli and Benghazi unmolested, Rommel could breathe again.
In mid-April his enemy played another card. The American aircraft-carrier Wasp left Gibraltar and penetrated the Mediterranean to longitude five degrees east. Forty-seven brand new Spitfires took off from her deck and reached Malta with the last of their fuel. But though the Wasp remained out of range of the German Sicilian-based bombers, II Air Corps was kept fully informed of the enemy project by Captain Kuhlmann’s radio monitoring service. Even the Spitfires’ landing times could be calculated.
Twenty minutes after they had done so, and before they could be serviced, the bombs hailed down once more on Hal Far and Ta Kali airfields, after which only twenty-seven Spitfires remained serviceable. In the next few days even these were reduced by combat with JG 53’s Messerschmitts.
By the end of the month the Germans hardly knew where to drop their bombs. So far as could be judged from the air, every military target had been either destroyed or badly damaged. In an order of the day II Air Corps summarised its successes: “During the period March 20th till April 28, 1942, the naval and air bases of Malta were put completely out of action…. In the course of 5,807 sorties by bombers, 5,667 by fighters, and 345 by reconnaissance aircraft, 6,557,231 kilograms of bombs were dropped. . . .”
It was, in fact, almost as much as had been dropped on the whole of Britain during the zenith of that battle in September, 1940.
Malta’s airfields had been reduced to deserts, the quays and dockyards to wreckage and the warships themselves had been driven out. Only the crowning achievement remained: the occupation of the island prepared under the code-name “Operation Hercules”.
Grand-Admiral Raeder had been pressing for this for a long time. Field-Marshal Kesselring also tried to get Hitler to sanction the plan. But the latter prevaricated, saying merely, “I shall do it one day!”
Meanwhile Mussolini and his chief of staff, Marshal Count Cavallero, declared that they would not advance another step in North Africa till Malta had fallen. Rommel even offered to lead the landing himself. But Hitler wanted to leave the conduct of the operation to the Italians.
However, on April 29th at the Führer’s Obersalzberg H.Q. near Berchtesgaden, Mussolini stated: “To concert the plans for such a landing we need another three months.”
In three months a lot could happen.

Taken from http://warandgame.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/target-malta (from the wording, I would say it comes from a book; maybe someone could identify the title and author)

So at the end everybody and his dog (but not you apparently) may be able to understand that the post that so much troubled you was only an answer to waterloo's statement:

Bearing in mind the germans only had medium bombers, so to create the damage required is going to need a heavy concentration of bombers. The AA succeded in splitting this up.

that seems to me fairly inacurate. Where in my post did you see that I believe the Germans successfully conquered Malta with their air raids still wonders me.

P.S. By the way, should you still be interested, I can usually be located on Earth-616 .

[waterloo]

whats the source of this? (gorings diary's? - how we won the war.) - no seriously, if what you say is correct , and what I have read of malta thier certainly was a period were everyone lived like moles. and starved

what a complete waste of effort if a sea borne invasion with an airborne pre-landing wasn't planned for immediately afterwards. - maybe the army didn't beleive the airforces ability to ko the british navy?

Ta Kai airfeild having suffered a "volcanic eruption " was back in service just 1 month later (mid march to to mid april when the spits landed)

Valetta harbour was never closed.

and it makes no mention of german losses during these massive raids of mid march.. why wasn't this feat of bombing ever tried again on malta?

why were the germans still bombing and attacking it in mid-april? if thier bombing had been so devastating as to have totally destroyed all the military targets on the island. -

interesting statistic - given total kilogramme load dropped divided by the number of bomber sorties , it equals each bomber dropped the equivalent of 2.2 500kg bombs.
considering how many 500kg bombs the us airforce dropped on sweinfurt - an the resulting damage - one does wonder how Totally destroyed maltas harbours , military installations and airfields really were.?

[Ironmachine]

whats the source of this? (gorings diary's? - how we won the war.) - no seriously, if what you say is correct , and what I have read of malta thier certainly was a period were everyone lived like moles. and starved

I don't really understand what you are trying to say? If you agree that there was a period were everyone lived like moles and starved, then it seems that, contrary to your previous believe, the AA had not much of a success, at least during this period.

what a complete waste of effort if a sea borne invasion with an airborne pre-landing wasn't planned for immediately afterwards. - maybe the army didn't beleive the airforces ability to ko the british navy?

Don't know, and it really doesn't matter me, as it has nothing to do with the point I was trying to probe.

Ta Kai airfeild having suffered a "volcanic eruption " was back in service just 1 month later (mid march to to mid april when the spits landed)

Ever heard about a concept called "repair"? Now seriously, leaving apart the poetic descriptions of the damage, what I was trying to probe was that the Germans, contrary to your opinion (i.e., with only medium bombers, and forced by the AA to split up the attacks), where more than able to do a suitable amount of damage. As even you acknowledge the fact that the airfield was closed for a month, it is clear the AA did not have much of a success with your "splitting up" theme.

Valetta harbour was never closed.
and it makes no mention of german losses during these massive raids of mid march.. why wasn't this feat of bombing ever tried again on malta?
why were the germans still bombing and attacking it in mid-april? if thier bombing had been so devastating as to have totally destroyed all the military targets on the island. -

I have seen in many sources that there was a period during which there were neither fighters nor surface ships based in Malta, and this was caused by German air attacks. Seems like good pre-conditions for an invasion.
Why wasn't it ever tried again? Don't know, maybe because there was no reason for it, as the invasion was not taking place. Do you know the cause?
Why were the Germans still attacking in mid-april? This seems to me like asking why were the Allies still bombing in 1945.

interesting statistic - given total kilogramme load dropped divided by the number of bomber sorties , it equals each bomber dropped the equivalent of 2.2 500kg bombs.

This amazing proof of your calculus ability was not necessary. I was sure that you knew how to make a division.

considering how many 500kg bombs the us airforce dropped on sweinfurt - an the resulting damage - one does wonder how Totally destroyed maltas harbours , military installations and airfields really were.?

Leaving aside the fact that damage is not only function of tonnage of bombs dropped, but also of accuracy of the bombing, if we are still talking about an hypotetical invasion of Malta it is clear that there was no need to utterly destroy the island. Obtaining air supremacy was enough to give good odds for such operation, and this the Germans managed to obtain once. Whether they could be able to repeat it is open to debate, but can not be discarded from the start. Of course, this would not be enough to assure the success of the invasion, but it was feasible.

[Ironmachine]

Oh, by the way, if I'm not wrong the source "of this" is The Luftwaffe war diaries by Cajus Bekker.

[waterloo]

I agree , the circumstances for an invasion were created, the only element missing was hitlers will to do it.

I thought the question was on air defence. you have demonstrated the germans did overwhelm the air defence of the island.

but they did not destroy it. - bombing alone was not going to defeat the island,but then hitler may have though nutralising it was all the was necessery.
If he had have invaded I reccon the germans and italians would have won. and if Malta was german, could we have invaded sicily ? and moral effect along with the loss of tobruk would have been crippling. for if you loose malta you loose the med.

my point about bomb loads was , accuracy and weight of bomb is everything, the germans relied on dive bombing to get the accuracy as they could not deliver the weight of bomb.

[Ironmachine]

I am not so sure as you that an Axis invasion would have been a success, but for the rest of your post I think we have reached a complete agreement. Nice!