Inferno - Max Hastings [190]
Pedestal’s agony now began in earnest. Within an hour of Syfret parting company, the Italian submarine Axum achieved a brilliant triple success: in a single attack, it sank Burrough’s flagship, Nigeria, and the antiaircraft cruiser Cairo, also hitting the tanker Ohio. These losses wiped out the convoy’s fighter direction capability, for the two cruisers carried the only radio sets capable of voice communication with Malta-based planes. Then, as the light began to fade, with British ships losing formation and huddling into a scrum, the Luftwaffe came again. Ju-88s sank the merchant ships Empire Hope and Clan Ferguson and crippled the Brisbane Star. Soon afterwards, a submarine torpedo damaged the cruiser Kenya. In darkness in the early hours of 13 August, German and Italian motor torpedo boats launched a series of attacks which persisted for hours. The defence was feeble, because Burrough decided that to illuminate the battlefield with starshells would help the enemy more than his own gunners. The cruiser Manchester was fatally damaged, four more merchantmen sunk and a fifth hit. The only compensation for suffering such losses in the Mediterranean’s warm summer waters was that far more survivors could be rescued than in the Arctic or even the Atlantic.
At daybreak the Luftwaffe returned, sinking another merchantman. The Ohio suffered further damage, but limped onwards until renewed attacks later in the morning stopped her engines. Two more merchantmen were crippled, and had to be left behind with a destroyer escort. At 4:00 p.m., in accordance with orders, Burrough’s three surviving cruisers turned back for Gibraltar. Three merchantmen—the Port Chalmers, Melbourne Star and Rochester Castle, the last with its deck almost awash—struggled to cover the final miles into Malta shepherded by small craft from the island. At 6:00 in the evening on 13 August, as cheering crowds lined the old fortifications, they steamed into Grand Harbour. The Germans set about demolishing the stragglers, sinking the damaged Dorset and hitting Ohio yet again. By a miracle attributable partly to its rugged American construction, the tanker maintained way, towed by a destroyer and two minesweepers. On the morning of 15 August, the Catholic Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, the Ohio reached safety and began to offload. Her master, Capt. Dudley Mason, was awarded the George Cross; the Brisbane Star also completed the passage.
The Pedestal convoy delivered 32,000 tons of stores, 12,000 tons of coal and two months’ supply of oil; five merchantmen survived out of fourteen. The navy’s aggressive posturing dissuaded the Italian fleet from joining the battle. Mussolini’s battleships were immobilised anyway by lack of fuel, and RAF aircraft dropped flares over five cruisers which put to sea, convincing them that they faced unacceptable risk if they persevered. Lt. Alastair Mars, commanding the submarine Unbroken, extracted some revenge for British warship losses by torpedoing the cruisers Bolzano and Muzio Attendolo. But after the Pedestal battle was over, Cmdr. George Blundell of the battleship Nelson looked back in deep gloom: “Most of us felt depressed by the party. Operation ‘M’ for Murder we call it. ‘The navy thrives on impossibilities,’ said the BBC. Yes, but how long can it go on doing so?”
The three-day drama of Pedestal was almost matched by the experiences and sufferings