Diary: Malta Story 2 Part 1

If you were to say ?OK, so who won the European war??, the answer is multi-faceted. Firstly militarily, of course, the Soviets, as they faced three quarters of the total strength of Nazi Germany. Financially, the Americans won, as they came out unscathed and able to buy up the rest of the world. Britain, the unconquered ?Aircraft Carrier?, lost its empire, but kept its dignity. Despite all these claimants, try asking the people of Malta who won the war.

I had not realised, until I visited, just what they achieved. I knew the history, or so I thought, but the Maltese are quite up front, yet blase' about it. ?We won the war! Isn?t it obvious?? I had known about the George Cross, but school books conveyed nothing of the drama.

I had seen the film with Alec Guinness, so cool. As he faced 3 enemy fighters, he said, ?Now here comes the tricky bit? and was gloriously lost, having saved the day. Well, yes, the Brit pilots were brave, but the tricky bit was suffering bombing every day for years.

It is a tiny island but with a harbour that has been famous for a thousand years. The Axis tried everything to destroy it. The film The Malta Story was not very good and could have better emphasised the struggle.

As the war in Africa climaxed, a convoy was sent to Malta, with an oil tanker, which could have supplied some newly-arrived, but out-of-fuel Spitfires and balanced the fight a little. This was after years of the lumbering Swordfishes being shot out of the sky, by modern Axis planes.

The people of Malta had not previously been protected by the fabled Spitfires, because of red tape, (the red tape part is probably not totally true but, in my film, some arrogant, racially abusive Air Commodore would deny them these beautiful machines.)

Part 2 Scotty bashes the Bosh!