A marble plaque was recently unveiled in the Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta, dedicated to those who served in Royal Air Force Air Sea Rescue and Marine Craft Section units from bases in Malta over a period of almost 60 years.
The noon-day ceremony was conducted by Fr Paul Attard OFM, Malta Port Chaplain, and was attended by senior officers of the Armed Forces of Malta, including Lt Col Wallace Camilleri, commanding officer of the Maritime Squadron.
After a brief message of welcome by Jack Graves, president of the Air-Sea-Rescue veterans group, Alexiei Dingli, mayor of Valetta, unveiled the plaque.
Following the blessing of the new memorial by Fr Attard, Air Marshal Sir Christopher Coville, president of the RAF Association, delivered a concluding message. The ceremony terminated with a bugle alert by AFM trumpeters and a gun salute.
A large contingent of RAF veterans from the UK, some of whom had served at marine bases in Malta during their military careers were in attendance. Also participating was one veteran who had served in the Air-Sea-Rescue Marine Craft Unit through most of the World War II siege at both the Kalafrana and St Paul’s Bay bases. I traveled over 11,000 kilometres from Vancouver, Canada, to participate, at 91 years of age, believed to be the only remaining active veteran of the R.A.F’s wartime crews.
For John Parsons, executive member of the Air-Sea-Rescue Marine Craft Services Club, the unveiling of the plaque marked the culmination of several years of planning in conjunction with the Malta Heritage Trust. Their efforts ensured that the dedication of those whose motto was The Sea Shall Not Have Them will not be forgotten, even though their branch of the RAF was disbanded in 1978.
Between 1940 and 1943, the air-sea rescue craft operating from Malta rescued 123 downed Allied airmen, 34 German and 212 Italian aircrew.
During the war, I served in the RAF Marine Branch. After a short while on an air-sea rescue high speed launch (HSL) operating from Newhaven, in the English Channel, I was posted to Malta in the summer of 1941. This involved travel in a Malta-bound convoy, in the cargo hold of a merchant ship, the Clan McDonald.
We slept on top of the cargo, which comprised large aerial bombs, depth charges and aviation petrol in five-gallon cans. We consoled ourselves with the thought that if we were hit by a torpedo, it would be a quick end!
Coming through the narrows between Sicily and Tunisia, the last day before arriving at Malta, we fought a running battle with high-level bombers and torpedo-bombers of the Regia Aeronautica. We lost the Imperial Star, the next ship in line astern of us, which carried the new high speed rescue launch (HSL 148) which we expected to crew in Malta. Two other launches – HSL 128 and 129 – however, did make it through.
For the next two years my time was divided almost equally between the main RAF base at Kalafrana and Sunderland House, behind the jetty at Tal-Veċċa, St Paul’s Bay. In 1942, I was promoted from deck-hand to coxswain, responsible for the actual boat handling.
In June 1943, I was permanently on rescue launch P.1254 and took the launch up to Dwejra in Gozo in preparation for the Sicily invasion, in which we were supplying air-sea-rescue support for the US invasion force which landed in the Licata/Gela sector. I spent the rest of my overseas service in Sicily until I was flown back to Britain in June 1944. Later I was Commissioned and sent to France as a laison officer – no longer with the RAF’s marine service.
In addition to participating in the unveiling of the memorial plaque in the Upper Barakka Gardens, a very important event for me was the visit to St Paul’s Bay and the opportunity to once again walk through the rooms at Sunderland House, which I remembered so well from almost 70 years ago. St Paul’s Bay holds many happy memories for me and this visit renewed them.
Since it was no longer possible to visit the Kalafrana station, now buried under the Malta Freeport container terminal, the fact that Sunderland House still stands, made the visit to St Paul’s Bay all the more important.
There was one other task I was determined to undertake. I have visited Malta on other occasions but regretted that I never made the journey to the Capuċċini Cemetery in Kalkara, to visit the graves of my comrades who died on February 4, 1942 – AC1 Gerry King, LAC Thomas Griffith and Cpl Thomas Nielsen, and the skipper, Fl Lieut Victor Nicolls who was mortally wounded. This was when HSL 129, out on a rescue mission near Filfla, was attacked by Luftwaffe Me109’s and virtually destroyed. All three crew members, now lying in the same Kalkara grave, were from my native county of Norfolk. The second coxswain, Cpl Cooper, also a native of Norfolk, with one hand severed at the wrist, managed to bring the damaged launch back to Kalafrana with the other hand. He later had to be invalided out of the service.
After I left the cemetery and began the long journey back to Canada, it was with a satisfying sense of “mission accomplished”.