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The Siege of Malta was a military campaign in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II.
From 1940—1942, the fight for the control of the strategically important island of Malta pitted the air forces and navies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany against the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.
In February 1941, the Deutsches Afrikakorps (German Africa Corps, or DAK) commanded by Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel was sent to North Africa to prevent an Axis rout.
Malta became a strategic and logistically vital base which could influence the outcome of the North African Campaign.
From Malta, British air and sea forces could attack Axis ships transporting vital supplies and reinforcements from Europe. Rommel recognised its importance quickly.
In May 1941, he warned that "Without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa".
The Axis resolved to bomb or starve Malta into submission by attacking its ports, towns, cities and Allied shipping supplying the island.
Malta was one of the most intensively bombed areas during the war.
The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the Italian Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) flew a total of 3,000 bombing raids over a period of two years in an effort to destroy RAF defences and the islands' ports.
In the end, Allied convoys were able to supply and reinforce Malta, while the RAF defended its airspace, though at great cost in material and lives.
By November 1942, the Axis had lost the Second Battle of El Alamein and the United States of America landed United States Army forces in Vichy French Morroco and Algeria under Operation Torch.
The Axis diverted their forces to the Battle of Tunisia, and attacks on Malta were rapidly reduced.
The siege effectively ended in November 1942.
In December 1942, air and sea forces operating from Malta went over the offensive.
By May 1943, they had sunk 230 Axis ships in 164 days, the highest Allied sinking rate of the war.
The Allied victory played a major role in the eventual Allied success in North Africa.
The chandelle (which is the French word for candle) is a precision aircraft control maneuver, and not strictly speaking an aerobatic, dogfighting, or aerial combat maneuver.
It is rather a maneuver designed to show the pilot's proficiency in controlling the aircraft while performing a minimum radius climbing turn at a constant rate of turn (expressed usually in degrees per second) through a 180 degree change of heading, arriving at the new reciprocal heading at an airspeed in the "slow-flight" regime, very near the aerodynamic stall.
The aircraft can be flown in "slow-flight" after establishing the new heading, or normal cruise flight may be resumed, depending upon the purposes of the exercise or examination.
A barrel roll is an aerial maneuver in which an airplane makes a complete rotation on its longitudinal axis while following a helical path, approximately maintaining its original direction.
It is sometimes described as "a combination of a loop and a roll".
The G-force is kept positive (but not constant) on the object throughout the maneuver, commonly not more than 2-3 G, and no less than 0.5 G.
A fleet of many ships is seen in this episode most noticeably the battleships Bismarck, Prince Of Wales and Loritto(*3)as well as a large number of destroyers of various classes a Fletcher Class Destroyer is seen in close proximity to the Prince Of Wales and a Japanese I-400 class submarine is also seen carrying Hartmann and Hanna.
The Fletcher class (named for Admiral Frank F. Fletcher) was the largest class of destroyer ordered, and was also one of the most successful and popular with the destroyer men themselves.
Compared to earlier classes built for the Navy, they carried a significant increase in anti-aircraft (AA) weapons and other weaponry, which caused displacements to rise.
Their flush deck construction added structural strength, although it did make them rather cramped.
Throughout the course of World War II, the number of AA weapons increased resulting in five twin-40 mm Bofors plus seven 20 mm weapons by 1945.
Fifty-one were further modified beginning in 1945, replacing the forward torpedo tubes and midships 40 mm twin Bofors with quad mounts for a total of 14 barrels, and the seven 20 mm singles with six 20 mm twins.
Three (Pringle, Stevens, Halford) were built (six planned) with aircraft catapults, resulting in the deletion of one 5-inch mount and the after set of torpedo tubes. This alteration was not a success in service and was not repeated.
The three destroyers were later converted to the normal Fletcher-class configuration.
Nineteen were lost during World War II; six more were damaged and not repaired. Postwar, the remainder were decommissioned and put into reserve.
HMS Prince of Wales (pennant number 53) was a King George V-class battleship of the Royal Navy, built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, England.
The King George V-class battleships (KGV) were the penultimate battleship design completed for the Royal Navy (RN).
Five ships of the class were commissioned: King George V (1940), Prince of Wales (1941), Duke of York (1941), Howe (1942), and Anson (1942).
The Washington Naval Treaty limiting both the quantity, size (in tonnage), and armament of post First World War battleship construction had been extended by the First London Naval Treaty, but the treaty was due to expire in 1936.
With increased tension between the various major naval nations, it was expected by planners that the treaty might not be renewed and the King George V-class was designed with this loss of restriction in mind.
All five ships served in the Second World War.
Prince of Wales was the only one lost when she, along with the battle cruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese air attack near Singapore.
The surviving ships were broken up in the late 1950s.
The Prince of Wales had a brief but active career, helping to stop the Bismarck and carrying Winston Churchill to the Newfoundland Conference; however, her sinking by Japanese land-based bombers in the South China Sea on 10 December 1941 was the primary event that led to the end of the battleship being considered the predominant class in naval warfare.
