'Operation Pedestal' dubbed by the George Cross Islanders as the 'Santa Marija Convoy'

Tuesday, 15 August, 2006

Known as the most fateful of all the Malta Convoys, Operation Pedestal sought to end the desperate plight of the besieged Island Garrison during the summer of 1942, only days away from an inevitable surrender.

Pedestal was to have far reaching consequences however, on the outcome of the war in North Africa and the battle for Suez the Middle East, making this epic Mission one that paved the way for the Allies' final onslaught at the Battle of El Alamein where Rommel's supplies and replenishments were successfully depleted just in time by attacks from a regenerated RAF and Royal Navy submarines based on Malta.

History has not acknowledged this epic's formidable contribution beyond Malta's shores.

This formidable armada consisting of 4 Aircraft Carriers, 2 Battleships, 7 Cruisers and 34 Destroyers deployed to escort 14 Merchant Ships was poised against an onslaught of 21 enemy submarines, 23 E-Boats and 540 aircraft.

During this Convoy, more than 23,000 brave Royal and Merchant Navy sailors ran the gauntlet between Gibraltar and Malta, epitomised by the fateful days between August 11 and 15, where 360 of these gallant men would meet a fiery and cruel end.

In Churchill's words after the mission, "The loss was grievious. The reward justified the price exacted. Revictualled and replenished with ammunition and vital stores, the strength of Malta revived".

The story of the American tanker "SS Ohio" formerly owned by Texaco, achieved legendary status and is now a mainstream part of Maltese folklore. For the ship, broken backed and sinking but mirroring the same dogged determination of the men that sailed in her and those on board the ships which brought her in, did not allow the enemy to succeed in relinquishing her oil cargo more precious to Malta than its weight in gold.

With Rommel's forces halted at El Alemein by the Montgomery's 8th Army since July 5, both sides prepared for the crucial North African offensive that would deny Rommel's chance of reaching Suez and so, effecting the outcome of the Middle East campaign that signified in Churchill's words: "the end of the Beginning" or the beginning of the End and a major turning point in WWII.

With the June convoy's cargoes consumed, Pedestal brought 35,000 tons of fresh supplies including 11,500 tonnes of fuel that quickly replenished the glorious 10th Submarine Flotilla, the various RAF Squadrons and the fleet of the Royal Navy that quickly scrambled into action against Rommel's Convoys. 'Ultra' intelligence from Bletchley Park intercepted Rommel's frantic plights for fresh supplies.

During the next two months after Pedestal, the Royal Naval Air Squadron and the 10th Submarine Flotilla on Malta would sink almost 80,000 tons of Axis convoys destined for North Africa, guided in their search by more desperate 'Ultra' transmissions intercepted at Bletchley Park, including the sinking of a 5000 ton tank and motor transport freighter on September 2, 1942.

On September 13, favourable conditions prevailing in Malta permitted that the George Cross, originally awarded by King George VI on April 15, early that year, be presented in a public ceremony on Palace Square. It had a huge effect on the Islanders' morale.

On October 11, in a last attempt to save Rommel's plight, Field-Marshall Kesselring ordered a new Luftwaffe 8-day onslaught on Malta averaging 250 sorties per day that saw 600 enemy planes used with 132 shot down by a revived RAF, 8 by the Malta Guns and 64 'probables' that most likely did not make it back to Base.

On October 23, the 8th Army attacked at El Alamein when Rommel, hastily recalled from his rest in Austria discovers, in Rome, that his Afrika forces were down to only 3 petrol rations per vehicle. Kesselring radios Rommel informing him about the arrival of a 5 supply ship convoy at his African supply ports within 72 hours. The signal was picked up and relayed to Hut 3 in Bletchley Park. A copy of it was on the desk of the Chief of the Air Department of the British Secret Intelligence Service in London about the same time that Rommel was reading the original in Africa.

Churchill, under risk of the 'Ultra' secret being blown, orders the attack. All five ships are sunk between October 27 and 28, including tankers Tripolino, Ostia and Brioni, the latter sunk by USAC Liberators in Tobruk port before she could unload her petrol.

Rommel's replenishments reduced to a trickle with his supply ports falling one by one, retreated through Cyrenaica.

On November 10, the 8th Army entered Benghazi and 4 supply ships arrive in Grand Harbour unscathed.

The Siege of Malta relents as Rommel's forces are driven further back to Tripoli, then Tunisia. The battle for the Axis' Tunisian convoys went on from February till May '43. Operation Torch is launched by the Allies whose aircraft and destroyers decimated, but at a high cost, Axis destroyers and supply ships which fought back bravely. Tunis and Bizerta eventually fell to the Allies on May 7, 1943 and all organised German and Italian Resistance in North Africa ceased two days later on May 9, 1943. Months later, word spreads fast in Malta that the Italian Navy is ordered to sail to Malta to surrender on September 8, 1943, the Feast of Our Lady of Victories, just as the Senglean population parade the return of their Patron Saint's statue in their debris littered streets, which prized Statue had been kept in storage far away from the danger of the relentless air attack bombings that had diminished considerably after the Axis's loss of North Africa.

Operation Pedestal is dubbed by all Maltese as the Santa Marija Convoy due to the gallant 'Ohio's arrival on August 15 coinciding with the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Patron Saint of Malta invoked during wartime by all Islanders, which Saint was also considered to have interceded in the miraculous sparing of many lives when, in April that year, a German 1000lbs ariel bomb that hit the Mosta Dome - a church dedicated to Santa Marija, failed to explode.


Operation Pedestal and SS Ohio save Malta

In mid-1942, the war was going badly for the Allies. During the first six months U-Boats sank 3,250,000 tons of shipping in the Atlantic (an average freighter was 7,000 tons). Rommel rolled through Northern Africa, threatening the Suez Canal, but stopped 35 miles short of Alexandria, Egypt, because of a shortage of supplies. The Nazi war machine reached Stalingrad, with plans to head through the Caucasus for the Middle East oil fields. The Allies had Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt. The Axis controlled France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and most of northern Africa. A few countries were neutral (Turkey), or pro-Axis (Spain).

Malta's strategic airfield was key to holding the Mediterranean, but food and oil had to get through past German and Italian bombers. The 250,000 Maltese and 20,000 British defenders were dependent on imported food and oil.

In September of 1941, 8 of 9 merchant ships arrived in Malta bringing 85,000 tons of supplies.
A February 1942 convoy of 3 ships from Alexandria was unsuccessful - no supplies reached Malta.

A March 1942 convoy of 3 merchant ships plus a Navy oiler, was accompanied by 4 cruisers and 16 destroyers, while another cruiser and its covering force sailed from Malta to meet them. This escort succeeded in keeping an Italian battleship carrying nine 15-inch guns, 3 cruisers and 10 destroyers away from the convoy, but the freighters faced Germans bombers near Malta. One ship was sunk just 20 miles from Malta. The oiler sank within 8 miles of Malta. The remaining two ships arrived to cheers by the Maltese, but were sunk in the harbor with only a fraction of their cargo unloaded.

SS Ohio and SS Kentucky
Great Britain had no tankers capable of 16 knots, so President Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned over the SS Kentucky and SS Ohio to Britain for use in supplying Malta.

The tanker SS Ohio was launched on April 20, 1940 at Sun Shipbuilding Yard in Chester, Pennsylvania for Texas Oil Company (now Texaco). In anticipation of war and due to unofficial conversations between the American military and the oil company, the Ohio was the largest tanker built at that time. At 9,263 tons, 485 feet long, she and her sister ships, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, Montana, Georgia, Delaware, Indiana held 170,000 barrels of oil. With 9,000 shaft horsepower Westinghouse turbine engines, they were rated at 16 knots, but in sea trials Ohio made 19 knots.

A June 1942 convoy sent 6 ships including SS Kentucky, escorted part way by a battleship, 2 aircraft carriers and 4 cruisers east from Gibraltar, Simultaneously, 11 merchant ships escorted by 8 cruisers and 40 others headed west from Alexandria. The capital ships withdrew before the narrow channel between Sicily and Africa, leaving the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Cairo and 13 escorts. The results: 6 merchant ships sunk, 3 damaged, 7 turned back to Alexandria, 2 supply ships arrived in Malta; British Navy - 5 cruisers damaged, 4 destroyers sunk and 1 damaged. No fuel oil got through.