...for there were questions raised on the original thread about the Germans' ability to put airlanded troops onto Malta.Once France falls the Paratroopers should have sent to take Malta.
The German paratroopers needed to go after Malta and the sooner the better.
During the research for the above incidents and attacks by Fliegerkorps X, I came across a lot more detail about the three 1940 airfields on the islands. The issue with the FJ taking defended enemy airfields - see events in Holland, Norway AND Crete - was that the runways rapidly filled with damaged or wrecked aircraft when they EITHER attempted to take the airfield by main force from airlanded troops brought in by Ju52s rather than paratroops OR attempted to land heavier-equiped troops from the airlanding divisions as 2nd wave reinforcements. In Norway, as wrecked and bogged-down aircraft began to block runways, others attempted to land on boggy aprons and then similarly filled these with wrecks...and the same happened in Holland - and Crete. In Holland, the Luftwaffe attempted to get round the problem by making makeshift landings on stretches of motorway and the beach at Zandvoort...incidently leading to more damaged aircraft; In Crete, they eventually cleared enough damaged aircraft out of the way to land support troops at Maleme, under fire from the defenders...by forcing POWs to move wrecked aircraft under "friendly fire" at gunpoint and shooting those who refused, a clear war crime.
However - difficulties landing in a similar manner on Malta in 1940 would NOT be as easily dealt with. Hal Far at the time was a long but very narrow runway with virtually no apron to either side; instead, mere feet from the edge of the runway, the land began to fall away to either side in ravines. There's no room to land aircraft if even a single wreck should block the runway, one of the main reasons why the RAF planned for three airfields on the island just before the outbreak of war. Room for an apron was at such a premium that the RAF had to use nearby roads connecting the airfields as makeshift dispersals.
Luqa was for most of 1940 a VERY rough strip; it was only flattened and levelled and finally tarmac'd virtually by hand by local civilian volunteers in the absence of earthmoving machinery. Which is why it wasn't operating heavy aircraft - it's Wellingtons and later Marylands - until November of 1940.
As for Ti'Qali - similarly, the RAF didn't have the labour resource to improve it either for heavy aircraft; being a "dry" lake bottom, apparently aircraft were very prone to "bogging down" in the very soft earth when it was a grass strip. That's why the RAF blocked it for all of 1940 - all their available earthmoving efforts were going into Luqa. Once heavy aircraft were able to fly out of Luqa, only then were the obstacles cleared from the lake bed and work begun on Ti'Qali.