“Churchill was determined to show that the British could fight”
In August 1942, a huge British fleet entered the Mediterranean. It was heading to the island of Malta, which had been enduring relentless air attacks from German and Italian forces and was running desperately short of food, fuel and ammunition. Fourteen merchant vessels were guarded by an armada of warships. But Operation Pedestal, as the action was known, still represented an enormous risk as the fleet would have to navigate waters infested with German and Italian ships and submarines, while enemy bombers circled overhead.
Several days of fierce combat in the Mediterranean saw numerous British ships sunk and disabled, with hundreds of lives lost. Yet enough supplies made it through to Malta to enable the island fortress to hold out and remain in British hands for the remainder of the conflict.
Rob Attar: You’ve previously written about some of the most well-known campaigns of the Second World War, but here you’re covering a relatively obscure naval operation. What drew you to Pedestal as a story you wanted to tell?
Max Hastings: Whenever I start on a book, I think about what I might be able to tell readers that they don’t know already. And although I’ve written about the armies and air forces in the Second World War, I’ve never written a full-length book about the Royal Navy. Now, I believe that the Royal Navy was Britain’s most effective fighting service of the war, and what I wanted to do was to explore one episode that reflected not only the navy’s great virtues but also some of its weaknesses and failures.
August 1942 was a fascinating moment because
