Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942

Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942 by Max Hastings

It was August 1942, and Malta, a longtime British bastion, was within weeks of enforced surrender to the Axis as its population starved. Once a strategic base for the Royal Navy, the island had since been bombed by the Luftwaffe more heavily than London had been during the Blitz. A succession of British attempts to supply and reinforce the island by convoy during the spring and summer of 1942 had failed. British submarines and surface warships were withdrawn, and the remaining forces were on the brink of succumbing to hunger. But Britain's morale was flagging, so Winston Churchill made a personal decision that, at all costs, the "island fortress" must be saved -- not as a matter of strategy, but of national prestige.

And so the largest fleet that the Royal Navy had ever committed to any operation of the war was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand miles of sea, an expanse defended by six hundred German and Italian aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo-craft. The Mediterranean battles that ensued between August 11 and 15 were the most brutal of Britain's war at sea. The losses were appalling; defeat seemed to beckon.

Operation Pedestal is the nail-biting story of the British mission to save the troops on Malta, as only Max Hastings could tell it. German and Italian forces faced off against British air and naval fleets in one of the fiercest battles of the war, while ships packed with supplies were painstakingly divided and dispersed. In the end, only a handful of the Allied ships completed the mission to Malta, most important among them the SS Ohio, carrying the much-needed fuel to the men on Malta.

As Hastings makes clear, while the Germans claimed victory, it was the British who ultimately prevailed, for Malta remained a crucial asset that helped lead to the Nazi's eventual defeat. While the Royal Navy never again attempted an operation on such a scale, Hastings argues that without the August convoy, the British on Malta would not have survived. In the cruel accountancy of war, the price was worth paying.

Harper, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021