The Sunday Times bestseller ‘One of the most dramatic forgotten chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max Hastings’ DAILY MAIL

Originally published: Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2004.

The extraordinary drama of Malta's WWII victory against impossible odds told through the eyes of the people who were there. In March and April 1942, more explosives were dropped on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta - smaller than the Isle of Wight - than on the whole of Britain during the first year of the Blitz. Malta had become one of the most strategically important places in the world. From there, the Allies could attack Axis supply lines to North Africa; without it, Rommel would be able to march unchecked into Egypt, Suez and the Middle East. For the Allies this would have been catastrophic. As Churchill said, Malta had to be held 'at all costs'. FORTRESS MALTA follows the story through the eyes of those who were there: young men such as twenty-year-old fighter pilot Raoul Daddo-Langlois, anti-aircraft gunner Ken Griffiths, American Art Roscoe and submariner Tubby Crawford - who served on the most successful Allied submarine of the Second World War; cabaret dancer-turned RAF plotter Christina Ratcliffe, and her lover, the brilliant and irrepressible reconnaissance pilot, Adrian Warburton. Their stories and others provide extraordinary first-hand accounts of heroism, resilience, love, and loss, highlighting one of the most remarkable stories of World War II.

During World War II, Malta played a key role in the Mediterranean campaign, its submarines, light surface forces, and aircrafts destroying supplies desperately needed by Rommel's forces in North Africa. The price the Maltese paid for this effort was the most sustained and intensive bombing campaign in the war, enduring over 130 tons of bombs per square mile. This, compounded by the Axis blockade that attempted to starve Malta into surrender, set the stage for numerous convoy battles, the most dramatic being Operation Pedestal, remembered on Malta to this day as the Santa Marija Convoy. In this book, Dennis Castillo uses published histories as well as interviews and oral histories to explore the experiences of the Maltese and how their faith sustained them through this dark period of Malta's history.

In this gripping, page-turning account, Sam Moses has told a story in the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s A Perfect Storm, Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, and Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers. It’s a story about the heroism of two men in battle at sea during World War II, and one woman fleeing Nazi Norway with her child. It’s about how courage can change the course of history. AT ALL COSTS: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Marines Turned the Tide of World War II is the astonishing untold account, with original historical reporting, of how two men faced unfathomable danger to help save the island of Malta, Churchill’s crux of the war. In 1942, the tiny island of Malta was the most heavily bombed place on earth. Hitler needed Malta as a stepping-stone to get to the oil in Iraq and Iran (Persia at the time). Blockaded by sea, Malta was running on empty, in food, fuel and ammunition. Axis U-boats and dive-bombers made supply convoys to Malta more like suicide missions. In this last-hope convoy, 50 warships escorted 13 freighters carrying aviation fuel, and a single critical tanker, the SS Ohio, with 107,000 barrels of oil from Texas. Winston Churchill had traveled to Washington and asked FDR for the tanker–his prime ministership was at stake over this mission to Malta. Relentlessly dive-bombed and repeatedly torpedoed, the Ohio suffered huge hits and was abandoned. Two young American merchant mariners– pulled from the sea after their own ship went down in flames–boarded the ravaged tanker, repaired her guns and fought off German and Italian dive-bombers, as the sinking Ohio was towed at 4 knots toward Malta with a tiny crew of volunteers. Sam Moses’ AT ALL COSTS is a triumphant story of human bravery: fearless, selfless acts by men determined to save a ship and win a war; profound communal courage from an island under brutal siege; and leaders who understood the cause of freedom.

In 2002 the wreck of a British cruiser was located by divers off the coast of Tunisia. The stunning photographs of the wreck inspired Dr Richard Osborne to delve into the controversy surrounding the loss of one of the Royal Navy's proudest ships HMS Manchester. After taking part in the Norway campaign of 1940, Manchester was sent to the Mediterranean, where she was involved in the dangerous Malta convoys. On her first convoy she was struck by a torpedo and badly damaged. In danger of sinking at any minute, her skipper, Captain Harold Drew, managed to save his ship.Her next operation was to prove her last. In Operation Pedestal, the vital Malta relief convoy, Manchester was again hit by a torpedo. This time, rather than risk the lives of his crew Drew decided to scuttle his ship. For this Drew was court-martialled in what would become the longest such case in the history of the Royal Navy.Using the testimony of those involved, the highly respected naval historian Dr Osborne pieces together one of the most intriguing stories to emerge from the Second World War. Coupled with photographs of the wreck and a detailed account of its discovery, The Watery Grave: The Life and Death of HMS Manchester, will shed new light on this remarkable tale.

From the day Mussolini's Italy declared war on Britain in June 1940, the island of Malta was under siege. Its strategic importance was obvious to both sides, blocking as it did the supply route across the Mediterranean from Italy to the Axis armies in North Africa. It had to be bombed out of existence by the Axis powers and preserved at all costs by the British. That Malta survived was due to the courage and fortitude of her people and to the dauntless determination of the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy. Here Richard Woodman tells the full, terrifying story of how - at fearsome cost - the impossible was achieved.