AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
1942 Operation Pedestal - The sinking of HMS Eagle
By mid-August 1942, the fortress island of Malta, vital to Britain in supporting her armies in North Africa, was under siege. Eight times already, HMS Eagle had brought in a shipload of Spitfire fighter aircraft, but now she was tasked with helping to protect one of the most important convoys of the whole war, as part of Operation Pedestal.
SAVING MALTA
Eagle served in the Far East after her refit. She carried out anti-raider sweeps and escorted convoys in the Indian Ocean until March 1940, when she was severely damaged by an internal explosion. Repaired at Singapore, she joined the Mediterranean Fleet and mounted bombing raids on enemy positions in North Africa. She was to have been involved in Operation Judgement, a text-book carrier action the RN mounted against the Italian fleet in Taranto harbour which sank one battleship and severely damaged two more, but having suffered damage in an air raid some weeks before, she was represented by five of her Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers, transferred to HMS Illustrious for the raid. For much of 1941 she operated in the Atlantic, on convoy escort duty, but early in 1942 she became a supply vessel herself, of a sort, returning to the Mediterranean time and again, bringing with her a total of 183 Spitfire fighter aircraft to be based on the strategically vital island of Malta. These aircraft were to turn the course of one of the most furiously-fought campaigns of the entire war, as German and Italian aircraft tried to bomb the island and its garrison into submission, but without continuing re-supply with fuel and ordnance, not to mention food, the defenders were helpless.
The only way to provide those supplies was by sea, and it proved impossible to get a convoy through to the island in July 1942. That, combined with the disaster which overtook Convoy PQ17 that month off northern Norway, convinced the British Government to temporarily halt the convoys taking supplies to the Soviet Union by way of the Arctic, and instead to concentrate all its available assets in an attempt to fight through to Malta with supplies sufficient to last for some months.
OPERATION PEDESTAL
The escort force was to comprise two modern battleships: the Nelson and the Rodney; three carriers: Eagle, Indomitable and Victorious (and the old Furious, carrying a load of fighter aircraft to further reinforce the islands air defences); seven cruisers and twenty four destroyers, and they were to protecting 14 merchant ships including the American fuel tanker Ohio. The Pedestal convoy pass through the Straits of Gibraltar in thick fog on August 10, while the rest of the Mediterranean Fleet staged a diversionary operation off Egypt. The next day, by now some 550 miles from the island, Furious flew off her Spitfires, all of which landed safely, but in mid-morning, Axis reconnaissance aircraft spotted the convoy and its mass of escorts. The sailors knew that attack from the air would not be long in coming. In fact, the first assault, when it came later that day, was not from above but from below. Just after 1300 hours, the German Type VIIB submarine U73 under the command of Kapitanleutnant Helmut Rosenbaum, put four torpedoes into her, sinking her in less than five minutes. Happily, the waters of the Mediterranean are warm in August, and most of the Eagles crew survived the experience and were picked up by destroyers.
U73 got clean away, but was sunk by depth charges from the US destroyers Trippe and Woolsey off Oran on16 December. In all, the Pedestal convoy was to lose nine of its merchant ships, but the tanker and four others got through. The Royal Navy lost two cruisers Cairo, to the Italian submarine Axum and Manchester, to a German E-boat and a destroyer.
