"The 85th Anniversary of Operation Malta 2" by Carlo Coppola
articolo di Carlo Coppola apparso in lingua italiana sul periodico "La Fiaccola" diretto dall'avv. Paolo Scagliarini:
July 25 marks the 85th anniversary of the military operation known as "Malta 2."
On the night between July 25 and 26, 1941, the 10th MAS Flotilla, the Regia Marina's assault unit led by Junio Valerio Borghese, attempted to force the harbor defenses of Valletta using a remote-controlled explosive craft, before launching slow-running torpedoes ("maiali") and explosive-laden motorboats against the British vessels moored there. The action failed: the explosion meant to open a breach instead brought down the San Elmo swing bridge, effectively blocking the passage. British coastal defenses, alerted in time, intercepted the Italian raiders. Among the fallen was Teseo Tesei, a pioneer of underwater assault craft, later awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor.
Beyond its negative tactical outcome, the episode reveals the island's strategic weight. Malta, a British air and naval base just a few hundred kilometers from the Italian coast, was the hub from which London struck the Italo-German convoys bound for Libya, constantly endangering the supply lines of the Axis forces engaged in the North African campaign. Neutralizing Malta would have granted Italy near-uncontested control of the routes to Tripoli and Benghazi, greatly easing the logistical burden of supplying Rommel's troops.
The operation's failure, instead, confirmed the resilience of the British defensive system and exposed the limits of Italy's innovative, yet ultimately insufficient, assault craft when faced with a well-defended and forewarned target. Malta thus remained unconquered, and its stubborn resistance weighed on the entire course of the war in the Mediterranean, indirectly contributing to the logistical difficulties the Axis would pay dearly for, up to the turning point of El Alamein.
Operation Malta 2, as remembered by naval historiography, should therefore be read not so much as an isolated episode, but as one piece of a broader struggle for dominance over the central Mediterranean — a theater in which Malta's geographic position proved decisive for the outcome of the entire North African campaign.
