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8 The auGuST ConVoy The enemy will no doubt proclaim this as a great victory at sea, and so it would be but for the strategic significance of Malta in view of future plans. Winston S. Churchill to Joseph Stalin, 14 August 1942 London appreciated the need for another Malta convoy even before Admiral Curteis sighted Gibraltar’s rock. On 17 June, Churchill, on his way to Washington to meet with Roosevelt, wrote to the deputy prime minister , “I am relying upon you to treat the whole question of the relief of Malta as vitally urgent, and to keep at it with the Admiralty till a solution is reached.” The same document revealed his continued hope of restoring the situation by means of a decisive naval victory. “Now that the Italians have shown a readiness to bring their battlefleet down to arrest a convoy . . . an opportunity of bringing them to battle might be found, which would have far-reaching effects .” Meanwhile, the Admiralty appraisal concluded that the mid-June operations failed because the escorts were too weak. “Next time [the convoys] would have to be given priority over all other demands, for on the success or failure of [the next operation] . . . would hang the fate of Malta and hence in all probability of the Nile valley.”1 The British situation on the ground continued to deteriorate. The 8th Army, which had retreated into Egypt on 13 June, left Tobruk strongly garrisoned with a division and three brigades. Nonetheless, Axis tanks penetrated the defenses on 21 June. Admiral Harwood immediately signaled the Admiralty, “Tobruk has fallen and situation deteriorated so much that there is a possibility of heavy air attack on Alexandria in near future, and in view of approaching full moon period I am sending all Eastern Fleet units south of the Canal to await 175 176 In Passage Perilous events.” The same day Malta’s Governor Gort announced that rations were being cut to four ounces a day. On 29 July the New Statesman editorialized that the “military situation of the [Allies] is graver than at any time since 1940.”2 On the Axis side the situation seemed correspondingly positive, although Malta remained a concern. Mussolini wrote to Hitler reiterating the importance of capturing the island and asking for the fuel oil needed to ensure the fleet’s full participation in the planned operation. Moreover, air forces needed to be redeployed from Africa before the end of June for the invasion to proceed . Rommel, who was under orders to halt his advance on the Egyptian frontier , saw in the fall of Tobruk a grand opportunity to take Cairo—perhaps even Suez. Further encouraged by intercepted reports from the pessimistic American military attaché in Cairo, which said that the British would crack under one last blow, he wrote his own letter to Hitler requesting command of all troops and freedom to continue the offensive. This was agreeable to Hitler, who had long since abandoned the idea of invading Malta. On 23 June the Führer urged the Duce to authorize the African army’s advance to the full destruction of the enemy’s forces. Rommel already knew what the answer would be. In a 22 June meeting he invited his titular Italian superiors to lunch in Cairo. The next day the field marshal crossed the border, and by the end of June he had advanced to El Alamein, sixty miles short of Alexandria.3 A British historian wrote, The end of June 1942 saw the entire Mediterranean strategy pursued by Britain since 1940 dead in the water. All the huge investment in shipping round the Cape, in the equipment, supplies . . . weaponry and military ration-strength poured into the Middle East in that shipping over the last two years, all the swaying Desert campaigns, had ended with a routed 8th Army preparing a last stand in defence of Egypt at El Alamein, only 60 miles west of Alexandria: with the Mediterranean Fleet’s pre-war main base, Malta, neutralized; and with the Fleet itself having lost control of the Mediterranean, and even defeated outright in Operation Vigorous.4 However, at the high-water mark of the Axis advance, the pitiless reality of logistics intervened, and despite a strenuous effort to crack the British position in early July, Rommel was unable to advance beyond El Alamein. On 27 July Comando Supremo indefinitely postponed the Malta invasion operation and focused on supplying the army in Africa by landing materiel as close to the...

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