I have already had an opportunity to write about this historical research when reporting a lecture by the author held at Din l-Art Helwa some months ago.
On that occasion, maybe due to the constraints of time, the author, in my opinion, presented his research in a more summary and organic form than in this book. However, a second glance at the book offers a wealth of detail that may be lost on a first reading.
There is a secret held by Malta during World War II which not only helped the island withstand the innumerable air raids but ultimately helped Malta survive unbeaten.
This secret is what we today know as radar, unknown before the war began when its primitive progenitors were in an experimental state.
Far from the British being resigned to losing Malta to the Germans, this book shows how the British gave Malta whatever they were experimenting upon. Malta was then a prime location to experiment with radar.
And, quite strangely, it was kept as a secret so that the Germans and the Italians never knew why the Allies seemed to know so well their location and their sorties to attack Malta thus coming under attack themselves before their targets were attacked.
This secret weapon was the result of much hard work by a small number of British soldiers (Maltese were let in only in the later stages, except for cooking, guarding, and other duties) many of whom have now died and the very few still alive are in their 90s. They have never been given adequate recognition by the Malta they helped to save.
At the war's outbreak, radar was not properly invented yet. Experiments were going on and two forms of experimental systems were tried. Both were also tried in Malta, the first base to get them after the UK.
The first system was what was called Sound Mirror, large reinforced concrete structures also known as ears. This system of acoustic mirrors was also planned for Gibraltar, Malta and Singapore but only one was built - the one still existing at Maghtab, built in 1934 but never actually used especially after an embarrassing failure during a visit by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the "ear" was already out of use by May 1937.
The next system to be experimented was the chain home network, a series of enormous towers, 300 feet high, first tried on the Suffolk coastline and successfully detecting a plane at a range of 17 miles (the normal ear can hear a plane at a distance of five miles).
Malta, once again, was given the highest priority and one was planned to be sited near Rabat. The site was about half way on the road from Rabat to Dingli on the right hand side where even today it is shown on Google Earth as a patch of bare land, no soil and no vegetation. This was first switched on during March 1939, before the outbreak of the war.
Later a number of mobile systems were brought to Malta and located at Dingli Cliffs, where today there is the golf ball radar. Other systems were located nearby, and also at Fort Maddalena, Fort Tas-Silg, later at Ta' Dbiegi in Gozo and also at Fort Delimara and near Fort Campbell.
The acronym radar (Radio Detection and Ranging) was coined by the US Navy in 1940 so the systems by then operating in Malta predated the name.
Apart from the name, one principal difficulty in tracing the history of the development in Malta derives from the fact it was all very experimental and still very secret. So much documentary evidence was burnt or shredded (in case Malta surrendered to the Axis).
What was experimental in Britain soon faced additional problems in Malta - the intense heat affected the radio parts, and high winds and gales many times brought down the high antennae put up. Another difficulty was getting a plane or two to test the system, not easy in times of international tension.
The first British soldiers to man the system were billeted at Djar il-Bniet, in Dingli, an improvement on the RAF Barracks in Valletta from where they were ferried by taxi daily. It was a very short walk from Dingli village to the units on the cliffs. Incidentally, many of the buildings which housed the first radar units are still standing today, in many cases, transformed to villas and country houses.
The new experimental system came to be accepted when three Blenheims, ferrying to the Middle East, got lost near Malta but were tracked from Dingli and brought safely home.
Later with the onset of the war, radar became a winning weapon. The Maltese civilian population never came to know how they were getting 15 minutes warning of an air raid. The Italians never found out how, after they had climbed to 18,000 feet, they were attacked by Allied planes flying even higher. Had the Italians changed over to a low level approach, they would have been invisible to the radar of that time.
The Italians were unlucky in a very ironical way. Just before war broke out, one unit needed urgently a new supply of transmitter valves, since it was down to its last one. The fresh supply was ferried in on one of the last Ala Littoria (Italian civil aviation airline) flights to Malta since the valves had been shipped as air freight. Had the Italians realized the importance of the cargo they carried, maybe that supply would have never arrived.
Strangely, when the Axis bombardments were at their peak, the decision was taken to relocate a unit from Dingli Cliffs to Ghar Lapsi (where today the Reverse Osmosis plant stands). No reason has been found for the decision and the move took an awful time to be completed.
Whatever the reason, Malta now had an eye guarding all sides, a 360 degrees overview.
Although, as said, the move from Dingli Cliffs to Ghar Lapsi took more than one year to be accomplished, it soon proved its worth. For while previously, the Axis powers had established air superiority over Malta and many days one could count up to 80 raids by lunchtime, slowly more and more German planes were being destroyed. New, faster, better armed Spitfires proved more than a match to the Messerschmitts and in May 1942 alone, 122 German planes were shot down by fighters apart from others brought down by anti-aircraft.
Radar played an important part in following and helping the progress of the Santa Marija convoy from the West, although most of the damage to the convoy was done out of range of plane cover from Malta.
At the same time, in these most grim months, life in the Ghar Lapsi camp carried on as normal as could be. Religious services were held and two concert parties entertainments were held with vastly popular shows being held. Meanwhile, nearby Ghar Lapsi was always popular for swimming and a Swimming Gala was organised.
Christmas Day was something else, and the units' record lists not just the traditions that were observed, such as the officers serving breakfast to the soldiers but also the kind of fare they managed to get for the Christmas Day lunch.
From being, for so many months, on the defensive, radar in Malta now went on the offensive. Radar in Malta proved to be very helpful in aiding the Allied effort in the North Africa campaign. Later on, in July 1943, the Allies landed in Sicily and the radar units were heavily involved in preparation for that event.
In fact, this marked the end of the war and the units were soon closed down and dismantled.
The book also has some personal stories to tell. At dawn on 11 July 1942, three German airmen approached the Ghar Lapsi unit and gave themselves up. They had been shot down by Spitfires at 6am the previous morning and had paddled all the way to reach Malta. They had landed from a dinghy at around midnight and had spent the rest of the night on the rocks.
In March 1943, a Maltese workman was accidentally shot dead. The man who fired the shot, AC2 Zammit was sentenced to three months in jail but later released on bail.
On 9 May, an explosion rocked Lapsi Cave resulting in one Maltese boy being instantly killed and another boy badly injured. The boys had probably been playing around with an anti-personnel bomb among the rocks.
Major Tony Abela
Malta's Early Warning System during World War II
SKS
2014
542pp