Nelson knew that the French had a large garrison of over 7,000 men at Toulon, and all they wanted was one day when his watch might falter. In that single day, they could be quickly ferried to Sardinia, and Napoleon would have the place. Yet to be here, off Toulon, also meant that he could not have his ships at La Maddalena, which was his preferred roosting place. So on this night, he was petitioning Lord Melville for more ships, carefully prefacing this letter with a dispatch listing the dispositions of his entire fleet.
He had 15 ships off Toulon, two on either side of the straits of Gibraltar, six at Malta, five in the Adriatic protecting the trade ship routes, four more at Naples courting the favor of the Monarch there. That left him with only a handful of ships elsewhere, carrying messages and dispatches, under repair, provisioning, or limping back to Gibraltar after storm damage. Then he made his pitch….
“I can barely keep a sufficient force at sea to attend to the French Fleet. I have no ships to send to Maddalena, but not less, my Lord, than ten Frigates, and as many good Sloops, would enable me to do what I wish, and what, of course, I think is absolutely necessary…. If I were at your Lordship’s elbow, I think I could say so much upon the subject of Sardinia, that attempts would be made to obtain it; for this I hold clear, that the King of Sardinia cannot keep it, and if he could, that it is of no use to him; that if France gets it, she commands the Mediterranean; and that by us it would be kept at a much smaller expense than Malta. From its position alone, it is worth fifty Maltas.”
One had only to look at the map to see what Nelson knew implicitly. Sardinia sat between the Tyrrhenian Sea to the east, and the Central Med. It had good ports and anchorages at Cagliari in the south, where a squadron of frigates could vex and harry ships approaching the Sicilian Narrows, or attempting to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea. There was a bay that served as a good anchorage at Oristano on the west coast of the island, and Porto Torres was north near Sassari. From there ships could get out into the Central Med easily, and patrol the waters between Sardinia and Mallorca.
Lord Nelson’s favorite haunt was in the northeast, which would later become the Italian naval base at La Maddalena. It was an excellent anchorage and commanded the Bonifacio Strait, which Nelson could close any time he choose. This would force the enemy over the tip of Corsica if they wished to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea, and went a long way towards denying the French access to the Eastern Med. From that anchorage, Nelson’s fleet could also send out patrols to survey the coast of Italy, including the ports at Livorno, La Spezia, and Genoa, and the French ports of Nice, Toulon and Marseille.
Malta could do none of that. In fact, it could do nothing at all, for as the Allies now contemplated where to go after Tunisia decades later, in 1943, it was still in enemy hands.
“Malta,” said Montgomery. “It sits like a steel barb south of Sicily, right astride the sea lanes from Benghazi and Tripoli, which means our plan to invade Sicily simply cannot proceed unless we first reduce and occupy that bastion. It is as important now to the Germans and Italians as it once was to us, and we simply must have it.”
He was addressing a large and distinguished audience, which included Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, Brooke, O’Connor, Alexander and Wilson; Admirals King, Tovey and Mountbatten, and Generals Arnold and Tedder for the respective Air Forces. Dubbed the TRIDENT conference, which had originally been scheduled to take place in Washington D.C., it was now happening in London, and on the 25th of May 1943, even while the last embers of the fighting in Tunisia were cooling. The group would meet to review the many plans put forward for future operations, and then reach a consensus that would go to Churchill and Roosevelt for final approval. Montgomery was called to give his front row seat military appraisal of how the Allies should now proceed, and Patton would do the same.
“Yet consider the time involved in planning such an attack,” said Eisenhower.
“It’s been in the works for some time,” Montgomery countered. “The Germans took the place with a lightning quick airborne drop.”
“Yes, but that option is simply not on the table for us any longer.” Eisenhower had conferred with the Air War Planning Division over the prospects of an Allied airborne operation over Malta, and the report he had received was discouraging. When the Germans took the place, they had liberal air cover flying from bases on Sicily, under 100 miles away. Malta was now 250 air miles from fields around Tunis and Bizerte, and 220 miles from Tripoli.
Malta already had a strong Luftwaffe presence, which had been too far off to do much in the battle for Tunisia, except cover the eastern outlet of the Sicilian Narrows, but was a real threat to any airborne operations, particularly when backed up by fighters from Sicily.
“Malta will have to be taken by sea,” said Eisenhower, “just like the Operation Corkscrew plan for the seizure of Pantelleria. We’ll have to clear them both before we contemplate any serious invasion of Sicily—unless we scrap your plan altogether and revert back to the Operation General Patton proposed against Palermo. Frankly, I have my doubts about that one as well. In the meantime, some of the planners, including your own British team, are still advocating Sardinia as an alternative. In fact, you folks drew up plans for the invasion of Sardinia in 1941—Operations Yorker and Garroter.”
“Circumstances were entirely different back then,” said Montgomery. “In my opinion, Malta might be reduced by a combined naval and air bombardment, followed by a quick landing staged from Tunis and Tripoli. In effect, we use our naval/air power to clear the way for the sea based invasion General Eisenhower now suggests. As for Pantelleria, we can neutralize that this very month, and at least have commandos there by June 1st. The operation against Malta could then be launched as early as June 15th.”
“Perhaps Admiral Tovey could speak to the possibility of reducing Malta by sea power.”
Tovey spoke in response: “It would mean that our heavy ships would have to run the Sicilian Narrows, and under threat of air attack from Sicily the whole while. We’ve achieved dominance in the air over Tunisia, but that may soon be contested. The Germans are already strengthening the Luftwaffe in southern Italy and Sicily, and Sardinia as well. A further consideration is that Admiral Raeder’s fleet remains a clear and present danger. A major naval operation against Malta would invite Raeder’s fleet to sortie—not against Malta, but towards the Sicilian Narrows, effectively threatening our naval line of communication back to Algiers, Oran and Gibraltar. Unless Raeder is decisively defeated, that threat would persist in any operation aimed at Sicily, particularly the southeastern tip of that island as in General Montgomery’s plan. In that light, I might propose that Admiral Cunningham lead this attack on Malta, with my squadrons waiting northeast of Algiers to deter any such move by Raeder—in effect, forcing him to transit the Tyrrhenian Sea if he sought to intervene.”
“His fleet would have to run the Straits of Messina again,” said Admiral King.
“True, but he’s already done that once, and might attempt it again. If I might make an outlandish proposal at this point, the whole problem we are now discussing could be simply bypassed.”
“Bypassed?”
“Correct. We are debating the preliminaries for an invasion of Sicily. Might I suggest that we have another look at Sardinia? At present, the Sicilian Narrows remain contested waters. The combination of enemy minefields, submarines, air attacks from Sicily and even a possible Naval sortie by the enemy as I have described are very real. Nor can we cross those waters off Sicily with an invasion fleet without first reducing and occupying Pantelleria and Malta. However, at present we are masters of the Balearic Sea. We have strong airfields at Barcelona, and can also make that a good naval supply port. We occupy Mallorca, and have been developing and expanding the facilities at Palma there, and we have Algiers. All these bases are beyond the effective reach of the Luftwaffe, and all three can be used to launch an invasion of Sardinia that can pass over seas I can control, and this requires no preliminary attack on an outer bastion such as Malta.”