Illustrious Blitz: The People Remember

FOR THE DIARY OF EVENTS OF 16 JANUARY 1941 CLICK HERE

Luftwaffe bombs hit Illustrious

MONSIGNOR EMMANUEL BRINCAT, PRIEST IN SENGLEA

“People rushed into the shelter in such a hurry as never before, pressing each other down the steps of the underground. But were the shelters safe enough?  Was there room enough to house the population of Senglea, which by now had swelled to saturation point?  We had an overcrowding, but everyone managed to get in.  Until then, I was not in a habit to take cover in a private shelter.  My refuge was the church…but when the air raid started, I soon realised that the church was not a safe place.  So Mr Julian Camilleri and I ran together to…a wide space in the wall leading to the sacristy [where] we had placed the statue of Our Lady, Our Bambina for security purpose…

The air raid was an experience we never had the like before. It was so terrifying.  Bombs fell in succession and exploded with a deafening sound causing the ground to tremble under our feet, blinding us with their flash and making everything totter around us.  It seemed the end of everything…When the signal of the ‘Raiders Passed’ was given, we emerged out of our hiding place…Many people were killed…

In my diary I wrote: ‘The 16^th January 1941 a day of mourning; at 2.15pm the alarm was given to warn us that an air raid was starting.  The planes and the raiders were German.  Habitations and the church were severely hit and heavily damaged.  Twenty-one people were killed…That very day, or perhaps the following morning, the regional protection officer came to Senglea and [said] it was imperative and very urgent that we make people leave Senglea, using every means of persuasion. A group of military English officials came to Senglea to organise a hurried evacuation.” (1)

TEACHER AT FLORIANA SCHOOL

“The teachers had barely reported [for afternoon school] when the sirens started wailing at 1.55pm. We all went quietly down to the shelter in the basement and, as usual, Miss M A Quattromani started reciting prayers and invoking God’s mercy on the boys clustered around us…We in the Housecraft School basement were at our wit’s end. Miss Quattromani had exhausted her knowledge of prayers and, although we attempted to distract the boys in some way, they all looked badly shaken by fear; they were simply terrified… When the Raiders Passed sounded at 3.15pm I did not wait for the All Clear but I told the boys they must run in full speed to the Railway Tunnel Shelter…in the wink if an eye they were gathered again around us in…absolute safety.” (2)

JOSEPH ATTARD, SON OF A DOCKYARD WORKER, COSPICUA

Young Joseph Attard, in Cospicua on an errand for his father, had stopped to look at the stricken Illustrious when the air raid alert sounded. He watched as the dockyard workers ran for shelter, fascinated by the prospect of a German air raid:

“There seemed to be more than a hundred of them… the noise was so shattering that even from that height it felt as if it was going to rupture my ear drums. I stood where I was, intent on the straight-moving formations, as I had never seen anything like it and I was wondering how long those planes could endure the steel and explosive that was going up at them…

First one, then the rest of the Stukas one at a time peeled off from the formations and dived straight on to the Dockyard below…a noise broke in from the guns which began firing to meet them half way.   It takes a brave heart to dive from an inferno such as they had been in, straight into another one.  But the Stukas did not falter and kept to their dive nothwithstanding the one or two that were hit and exploded in mid-air.  When they were past the second barrage of murderous fire they went straight into the third barrage put up by the Bofors and Pom Poms.  But after that there was the whistling of bombs and whining planes pulled out of the dives, followed by tremendous explosions.

I still think that on that day I learned what hell is like.” (3)

PHILIP PULLICINO, ADJUTANT, SPECIAL CONSTABULARY

“Hordes and hordes of dive-bombers came over in big waves for over an hour and dived from all angles in a suicidal manner to within a hundred feet of the harbour, where they let go their enormous bombs.  The anti-aircraft barrage was as terrific as it was awe-inspiring. Bofors guns banged and crashed at a determined height, above them burst pom-pom shells and the heavier shells, below them spluttered the rifle and machine gun bullets, till the whole sky was one mass of boiling bubbling explosions completely blotting out the blue canopy above.  The prolonged din merged with the continuous echo to produce an eerie mumble which rose and fell but never slackened…The show never seemed to end, but when the last plane had gone, and the thunder of guns changed into an echo and then, too, disappeared, a pall of white smoke covered the whole harbour area, and we at once knew that the Three Cities had been badly wounded…

Senglea January 1941

Immediately after I went to Valletta where a big bomb had hit and demolished eight houses in Old Mint Street. Many people were buried alive here but all except five were saved.  I then proceeded to Cottonera and, after being caught in another raid on the way, entered Senglea City.  Pale people of all ages, carrying bundles of clothing; the dismal banging of doors and windows forced open by blast; the frequent shattering of glass and the continuous stream of dust and stones from demolished houses; all this greeted me and made me pause as I entered Senglea…

Approaching the top of the long broad stretch that was Victory Street with its gentle inviting slope, I beheld little else but stones, dust and debris blocking the entire roadway at different places. As I walked down the street, climbing over high piles of shattered masonry littered with broken furniture, I glanced down the side streets and noticed with sullen anger and amazement that these too were blocked to a height of one storey…and all the while the sickly smell of gas touched my nostrils…

At the Wharf the scene was still bad. Great voids in blocks of houses marked the trail of the bombs.  The promenade was littered with balconies, broken dghajsas, shop signs and goods… (4)

MANWEL GATT, BLACKSMITH AT THE DOCKYARD

“I warned my mother that should there be any air raids during the day she was not to leave the house, with its unusually thick stone walls, the house itself was as safe as any shelter…I then returned home:

“I yelled but there was no answer. I rushed up to the rooftop and saw that what used to be the vestry of the Church of St Lawrence was now a pile of rubble.  I rushed down again and hurried towards that place.  In the large crowd which had assembled, I caught sight of my married sister sobbing uncontrollably.  She mumbled that our mother was buried under that rubble.  I grabbed my sister and her son by the arm and hurried them to [safety].  Luckily my other sister had gone to Qormi to visit some acquaintances; if she had not done so she would almost certainly have been with my mother. 

I went back and stood with a lot of other people, including Fr Paul Galea, the parish priest, watching servicemen and ARP personnel going about the rescue operations…I stayed there through the bitterly cold and wet night until my sixty-year-old mother was brought up lifeless in the early morning. That was a cruel, tragic, unforgettable night.” (5)

(1) Senglea During the Second Great War 1940-1944, Monsignor Emmanuel Brincat, Progress Press

(2) Floriana in Wartime, Emmanuel Tonna, Malta 1969

(3) The Battle of Malta, Joseph Attard, Hamlyn Paperbacks 1980

(4) The Road to Rome, Philo Pullicino, MPI Publishing 2012

(5) The People’s War, Malta: 1940/43, Laurence Mizzi, Progress Press 1998