The Siege of Malta in WW2 - My Dad's Story
My Dad was on Malta for 2 years during WW2 while it was under siege by Italian and German forces. In 2 years they made 3,000 bombing runs over the island.
My Dad and his buddies slept in caves which made perfect bomb shelters. But my Dad had trouble. He could sleep in the caves during the day, but at night he found it claustrophobic. So he came up with a simple solution. He volunteered for the night shift on the anti aircraft guns and then slept during the day.
The overnight shift was action packed.
The gun was the Bofors 40mm anti aircraft gun. This was much bigger than the Vickers Machine gun, but still smaller than the heavy artillery. It usually had a 5 man crew and 2 sat in small seats on the gun itself and swiveled it all over the place trying to hit the target. It fired 2 lbs shells and it shot 2 shells per second. They were loaded in clips of 4, so once the gun was firing the loaders went frantic loading a clip every 2 seconds. Each shell produced a flash of light and smoke as it left the barrel. The barrel then recoiled and the recoil energy was used to eject the spent shell casing and load a new round. The casings bounced all over the place and had to be collected. Firing was started with a foot pedal.
The gun was designed to fire in automatic mode. This was when a special box calculated range and direction and automatically swiveled the gun into position. But experienced gunners would take the gun out of automatic mode and fire it in manual mode. The reason was simple, it was more fun. Much of the fun came from special shells. Every 4th shell was a tracer. These had a small chamber containing flare powder. Once the shell was in the air this power burned and showed the gunner exactly where the shells were going. It was like firing a stream of light bulbs. In manual mode the gunner could direct this stream anywhere he wanted.
My Dad did this for 2 years. Some of his buddies were killed by the constant bombing, but he survived.
The Italians bombed Malta from high altitude and were almost impossible to see. The German bombers came much lower and often their fighter escorts would go down to street level and strafe while flying just a few feet off the ground. If the plane ran out of ammunition the pilots would lean out of their cockpit and shoot at people with their hand guns. They were pretty serious about killing.
One time my Dad was gunning with his buddy in the second seat. A bomb dropped very close and blasted the gun with shrapnel. When the dust cleared my Dad looked at his buddy. He was still sitting, but had lost his head. I was a young boy when my Dad first told me the story and I remember asking if the man ever found his head.
Content written and posted by Ken Abbott abbottsystems@gmail.com