Word: malta
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...doubtful jury: "Hitler's back is his weakest spot-he should be struck there with all the might at our disposal." Famed Russian Correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg cabled to the London Evening Standard: "In his recent speech Churchill said that it was the Crimean campaign that helped to save Malta from the continuation of mass bombing. All our men have read this by now. . . . It is timely to tell our Allies of the scale of fighting and of the seriousness of the situation. Let every reader of these lines draw his own conclusions...
...range fighters and bombers against Rommel's lifeline, he might have been beaten before he started. Instead, the British did what the Axis expected them to do. They tried, and failed, to hold the Mediterranean primarily with warships, and they concentrated their Mediterranean aircraft on the defense of Malta. Even now, properly used in the Mediterranean, as many bombers as the British sent over Bremen might make Alexandria and Suez secure...
...Mediterranean attack was part of a larger sea & air action. By heavily escorted convoys from Gibraltar and Alexandria, the British tried to get supplies into battered Malta and to the retreating Eighth Army at Tobruk (see p. 20). Italo-German warships, planes, submarines and torpedo boats grabbed their chance, tried to knock out the bulk of Britain's remaining Mediterranean Fleet. Thanks partly to Colonel Halverson's roving bombers, the Axis failed in its main objective. But the British lost heavily, were able to claim only a limited success in getting the convoy through...
...fill their offensive pool of men and arms in Africa, the Germans had had to get their convoys past the tiny, bristling island of Malta. Their constant raiding had kept Malta busy protecting itself while the convoys got by, but they had lost hundreds & hundreds of planes. Their weakness in the air now made it look as if they had paid almost too much...
Already Germany had destroyed Malta's value as a main operating base for the British Fleet. It had worn down the island to the point where, by British accounts, bomber raids from Malta into Italy had come to an end. All that was left was the island, and the Axis wanted that...