Wise Owl Publications have just launched two new publications: Destination Malta by Joe Caruana and Screwball Beurling by Brian Cull and Frederick Galea.
Brian Cull flew to Malta especially for the occasion and the authors signed copies of the new book with the Aviation Museum’s original Supermarine Spitfire serving as a backdrop. A Spitfire features on both book covers.
Guests welcomed this invitation, which included a free entrance to the Malta Aviation Museum, an opportunity to be the first to view the aircraft, as well as other exhibits closely and to meet the authors.
Destination Malta: The Surrender of the Italian Fleet, September 1943 by Joseph Caruana.
For three long years the Mediterranean was the battle zone between the British Mediterranean Fleet and the more powerful and numerically superior Regia Marina. The conflict at sea ranged from the attempts by the Royal Navy to fight convoys to Malta and the efforts of the Mediterranean Fleet to sink the ships taking supplies and troops to the Axis forces in North Africa. As the war progressed and expanded in the southern region of Europe, the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, undoubtedly the greatest British naval commander since Nelson, both sides sustained heavy losses although the Royal Navy assumed an aggressive role and the Italian Navy a cautious one.
With Malta so closely connected with the British Fleet, it was natural that the fortunes of its ships, in which many Maltese were serving, were in the forefront of their thoughts. But nothing had prepared the Maltese, barely recovering from the siege, for the amazing sight of the Italian warships approaching over the horizon to surrender in September 1943.
A few days earlier a secret armistice had been signed in Sicily under which the Italian warships were to sail to an Allied port to surrender. Cunningham never hesitated that this should be Malta. In the space of two weeks, nearly 80 ships ranging from battleships to submarines and motor-launches moored off Malta and in its various ports and bays.
Caruana recalls that episode of the Second World War in detail, describing how the Italian admiral appeared to be ignoring the terms of surrender by instead taking the squadron from Spezia to a destination other than Malta until he died when his flagship, the battleship Roma, was blown up by German aircraft. Thus it was the Germans who finally contributed to the arrival of the Regia Marina to Malta.
Caruana lists all the ships that reached Malta and how these were later disposed of after Britain, the United States and France decided to waive transfer of the ships as war reparation, conditional on these being scrapped in Italy. But the Soviet Union, never involved in the fighting on land, sea and air in the Mediterranean, commandeered a substantial number of the warships for their navy, giving them Russian names.
Screwball Beurling Malta’s Top Scoring Fighter Ace by Brian Cull and Frederick Galea.
In June 1942 among the 30 Spitfire pilots who flew to Malta from the carrier HMS Eagle was a 21-year-old Canadian, George Beurling, who in the short time of 14 days flying during the four months he fought over Malta, shot down 27 enemy aircraft, a record toll. The authors not only detail his various fights but also reveal what a complex character he was, arrogant, rebellious, blood-thirsty, unfriendly and lonely, as described by those who came in contact with him. Several books have been written about him but this is perhaps the one that most graphically shows who Beurling really was. He was shot down twice over Malta and shot up some five times and survived the crash of a Liberator at Gibraltar while returning to the United Kingdom when his Malta tour expired. But destiny caught up with him as in 1948 he was killed in a crash at a Rome airport while ferrying an aircraft to Israel.
Beurling was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Flying Medal twice.
