Chapter 521: Malta

A dense formation of strategic bombers suddenly appeared over the Mediterranean Sea, which was clearly a disaster for the British Mediterranean garrison. The struggle for the British mainland had come to an end, and the German army’s massive bomber fleet no longer had a clear strategic objective. Thus, ensuring the absolute safety of the supply lines for the army in North Africa became a matter for the German Air Force to consider.

A large number of medium bombers appeared over the Mediterranean. Their main bombing target was Malta. This was an important British air force base in the Mediterranean and also the main base from which Britain could threaten the Italian-North African shipping lanes. The German and Italian air forces bombed this place day and night to ensure that no large-scale British air power could emerge here.

Although the bombing was not small in scale, the German landing that the British garrison had expected was slow to arrive. Seeing the situation on the North African front take a sharp turn for the worse, the strategic use of Malta became smaller and smaller.

The British government had not heard any news of the German paratroopers for a long time. Many departments speculated that the German airborne forces had suffered huge losses in the airborne operation on the British mainland and had been ordered by the Führer himself to be used with caution.

However, today, at this very moment, with the roar of the Ju-52 transport plane’s engines, a familiar Borol pulled open the aircraft’s door and, staring at his men, commanded loudly, “Jump!”

One after another, the paratroopers jumped from the plane. Their parachutes formed a straight line in the sky, and in the distance, many such straight lines were scattered across the sky, a beautiful sight to behold.

With the whistling of the wind, a huge impact came from Borol’s feet. He was familiar with this state; it proved that he had once again made contact with the ground alive. He quickly unfastened his parachute safety buckle, then crawled out from under the parachute that was covering his head like a tent.

Sporadic gunfire came from all around. Borol held his assault rifle and crouched by a thicket, waiting for his troops to gather. Soon, more than 70 paratroopers had gathered around him. This airborne mission was not as difficult as imagined. The enemy’s return fire was not strong, so they were able to calmly gather their forces in the wilderness and then advance towards the nearby objective.

A glider landed on the ground not far away. At a glance, this was not an ordinary paratrooper glider, but another new type of aircraft, a much larger one used for carrying heavy loads.

Borol saw that the glider was a bit unstable when it landed, so he quickly took his men over to help. They established a temporary defensive position nearby and set up covering fire before they began to help unload the cargo from this huge glider.

The glider pilot was helping an army soldier in the co-pilot’s seat to jump out of the tall cockpit. They were clearly relieved to see Borol and the others who had come to help and expressed their thanks.

“Thank you for coming to help! To be honest, if it were just the few of us, it would have taken a lot of effort to unload this huge guy,” the soldier from the co-pilot’s seat said to Borol, pointing to the glider’s cargo bay.

Borol frowned, looking at the huge glider with some shock. From a distance, it had not seemed so large. It was only on closer inspection that he discovered this glider was even bigger than a Ju-52 transport plane.

“What is this big thing?” he asked the pilot behind him, pointing to the transport glider. The pilot proudly patted the fuselage of the aircraft and replied, “Inside is a tank!”

Yes, a tank! To Borol’s astonishment, the German soldiers struggled to open the rear cargo door of the glider, and what they saw was a tank secured to the aircraft’s frame with steel cables—the new weapon of the German paratroopers, the “No. 1 Paratrooper Fighting Vehicle.”

This vehicle had been designed on the chassis of a Panzer I, with simplified armor and the turret removed. Although the frontal armor of this tank could only stop 7.92mm machine gun bullets fired from a long distance, it did provide the German paratroopers with a self-propelled weapon support system.

Although the 75mm short-barreled cannon on top was a bit weak against armored targets, it could complete combat tasks such as fire support and covering the infantry. In a crisis, it could also be used as an anti-tank weapon. This multi-purpose vehicle had indeed proven its practical value in exercises.

The only drawback was that this vehicle only had a crew of three. The radio operation had to be handled by the loader, and the commander also doubled as the gunner. This flaw had clearly been proven to be very fatal, at least in an engagement with regular armored forces, as it directly affected the rate of fire and command and control.

But at least it solved the problem of whether they had one or not, and it was a qualitative leap for the German paratrooper force. It also made this German airborne unit more and more like a regular infantry unit, rather than the traditional, air-dropped light infantry of the past.

Before the excited eyes of the soldiers, the tank drove out of the cargo bay. There were originally two soldiers in the tank. The soldier from the co-pilot’s seat was clearly the commander of this tank. After nodding his thanks to Borol, he jumped onto his own weapon and began to conduct a joint operation with Borol’s infantry.

Picking up his binoculars, Borol carefully observed the surrounding situation. His objective was a marked anti-aircraft gun position. Because the enemy’s defensive fire was very weak, Borol’s paratrooper company had never assembled so smoothly before. Of the 120 paratroopers, they had quickly found more than 100. And for this objective, it was a low-threat, secondary combat target.

Without the slightest hesitation, under the cover of a paratrooper fighting vehicle, Borol’s company began its attack on their target. The opponent had only a squad of guards near the anti-aircraft gun position. As a result, after their machine-gun nest was suppressed by the German MG42, the other side immediately became ineffective.

By the time the German paratroopers had closed to within grenade range, they had quickly captured the British squad’s machine-gun nest. First, two hand grenades, and then a few soldiers charged up and raked the wounded in the trench with a burst of fire—a very basic attack procedure.

Then Borol led his soldiers into the British anti-aircraft gun position and found that there were only four pitiful Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns inside. He pouted and waved over the radio operator.

Grabbing the radio on the operator’s back, Borol began to call the battalion headquarters not far away. “Battalion command, this is Borol from 1st Company. I have captured the planned objective, killed 12 British soldiers, and captured about 50… Yes, they were not the large-caliber anti-aircraft guns that the reconnaissance troops had speculated, but Bofors 40s. Yes, indeed, Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns.”

The British defense was very weak. The entire island of Malta was only garrisoned by a pitiful British foreign legion division. They only had a small number of anti-aircraft guns and machine guns, and only four tanks on the entire island. Compared to the 13,000 German paratroopers and 50 No. 1 Paratrooper Fighting Vehicles, this defensive force was almost negligible.

However, the British defenders still had no intention of surrendering. These British soldiers hid in the towns and resisted stubbornly, but they were annihilated one by one by the Germans due to the overwhelming disparity in numbers. What was even more heartbreaking was that the newly repaired Malta airfield had not been destroyed by the defenders and was practically handed over to the German airborne troops.

The battle lasted from morning until noon. Although the British defenders created a lot of trouble for the German paratroopers in some local areas, overall, the German operations on the island of Malta were relatively smooth. They quickly took control of the vast majority of the island, compressing the British into a relatively narrow peripheral area.

In the afternoon, the German army captured a port here. Italian transport ships arrived an hour later and began to unload cars and a large amount of ammunition. The attack seemed to be incredibly smooth; the entire operation had not encountered any fierce resistance from the defending forces. Arriving with this cargo ship was the overall commander of the German airborne forces, General Student.

Only when he learned that most of the areas here had already been controlled by the German paratroopers did he finally feel relieved. The defenders here had clearly not been reinforced due to the time factor, and the large-scale losses of the airborne troops that the Führer had been worried about had not occurred. It was obvious that the German army had gotten ahead of schedule and had completed this important airborne operation.

The airborne assault on Malta was the most important operational plan of the German army to support Rommel in North Africa. With this successful surprise attack, the transport lines of Germany and Italy in North Africa would be much safer. Ships departing from many ports would no longer have to take a detour to reach Tunisia.

A few hours later, the garrison accepted the order from the Northern British government and laid down their arms to surrender to the German army. This was a microcosm of the fighting of the British troops at that time: when they fought, they often followed the orders of the Iceland British government as their standard. If they were lucky enough to win, they would become heroes of the British people. After losing, they would obey the orders of the Northern British government and, as a matter of course, lay down their arms and surrender to the Germans.

Student was very satisfied with the performance of his airborne troops. These paratrooper units had once again become the vanguard of the German attack force. They had independently parachuted onto the island of Malta and had occupied this important island at a relatively low cost.

And their efforts had not been in vain. On the contrary, the effect was immediate. That month, Rommel received the amount of supplies that had previously taken a month and fifteen days to transport. This meant that Rommel’s supply speed had been increased by a third at once. For this matter, Rommel personally wrote a letter to the airborne commander, Student, praising his men as the bravest of warriors. This was also the highest praise an armored commander could give to the paratroopers.

Published: 2025-09-02T03:30:17.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-10T19:49:27.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c521-malta-137920295

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com