Original subtitles

Narrator: A beautiful and historic island

In the heart of the mediterranean...

A mecca for tourists from across the globe...

And in world war ii the most bombed place on earth...

An entire country under siege.

So how did tiny malta hold back the might of the axis war machine?

World war ii was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Narrator: But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

Pete: That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.

Man: That's it.

Man 2 (over radio): Congratulations.

Narrator: Now, technology expert pete kelsey...

Pete: I've gotta scan this...

Narrator: And military historian marty morgan...

Marty: Oh my god, look at this view!

Narrator: Are using 21st century technology to strip away the present and reveal

The buried secrets of world war ii.

This time: Can a deep-sea wreckage reveal how malta fought off the luftwaffe?

Marty: That's a stuka!

Narrator: Will pete unravel the mystery of how malta's

Civilians survived constant bombing?

Pete: I have got to scan this!

Narrator: And, can the latest lidar technology

Rediscover general eisenhower's lost airfield?

Military historian marty morgan and tech expert pete kelsey are traveling straight

Into malta's main harbors.

Past the huge fortifications of its capital valletta.

Pete: Everything about this harbor says don't even think about coming

In here without permission.

There's walls and cannons and stuff everywhere.

Marty: And the presence of these fortifications testifies to the

Island's strategic importance.

Pete: Fortress malta.

Narrator: When world war ii began,

Malta had been held by the british

For more than a century.

Marty: Pete, look right there.

That observation position was constructed during the second world war.

And there's another one.

And there's another one behind.

Narrator: So why did this apparently insignificant island,

Miles from any major frontlines,

End up at the heart of one of the bitterest

Campaigns of the war?

Pete and marty want to use 21st century technology to find out.

To start their investigation, they are setting up their tech hq inside malta's wartime

Command center; the lascaris war rooms.

Their first task is to see whether malta's location affected its fate.

A satellite map shows that malta is situated at the very center of the mediterranean;

Just sixty miles from the italian island of sicily.

Marty: This is all starting to make sense to me.

We got up this map of the western mediterranean and it's helping me now

To recognize the situation.

Narrator: In June 1940, as France and north africa were falling to hitler,

Mussolini wanted to extend his own empire.

Allied-held malta suddenly found itself isolated;

Surrounded by the huge axis war machine.

So why did this tiny island in particular fall into mussolini's crosshairs?

Pete: Well, I have the lidar, why don't we switch to that.

Marty: There we go.

Narrator: Using geodata gathered by the maltese government,

Pete has created a 3d lidar map of malta's islands.

He thinks he's found a promising lead.

Marty: Wow!

This is, this is your best work.

Look at this.

Narrator: It clearly shows the distinctive valletta peninsular flanked

By malta's main harbors.

And one area shows particularly bad bomb damage.

It's called manoel island.

This is a pre-war picture that shows a building on manoel island

Known as the lazzaretto.

Built in the 17th century,

It was originally a plague hospital.

Now overgrown and deserted,

It's hard to see what is decay and what is war damage.

Contemporary accounts say it was a huge target for axis bombs.

But why?

Records show that in world war ii

These buildings were used by the british royal navy.

Marty has secured special access to the dangerous ruins.

He's looking for any remaining traces of the royal navy activity.

Man: Okay, just check your wind.

Narrator: Taking a different approach,

Pete is joining a specialist dive team

From the university of malta.

They want to show him something extraordinary in the waters beside

The lazzaretto and scan it.

Timmy: Gas is on.

Pete: 3,000 pounds.

Timmy: Perfect.

Narrator: The divers are led by marine archaeologist professor timmy gambin

Who has spent decades diving the waters around the island.

(inaudible chatter)

Pete: This is the perfect camera rig for doing underwater photogrammetry.

Now what the heck is that?

Photogrammetry allows anyone with any camera to take a series of pictures of

Anything, including things underwater, and create exceptional,

Three-dimensional, photo realistic models of that thing.

Narrator: Pete follows the divers into the murky waters.

The first thing he sees is yet more traces of the bombing.

Pete (over radio): Whoa, look at all this rubble.

Narrator: Back inside the lazzaretto,

Marty is hunting for clues about what the royal navy were doing here.

To help him navigate this deserted building, marty is joined by conservation

Architect edward said.

Edward: We've got this massive complex of buildings,

The old quarantine establishment of malta

And it served such a purpose right until the early 1940s,

When the war broke out.

And in fact, there is quite an interesting labyrinth of spaces just behind here.

Marty: Could we see them? Edward: Absolutely.

Narrator: Records show that these tunnels were carved into the bedrock by

Royal navy engineers.

Marty: What are these chains for?

Edward: These supported the beds.

Marty: Oh, there were bunks in here?

Edward: There were bunks in here.

Marty: So what's in here?

Oh my god.

There's something you don't see every day.

Edward: What is it, marty? We think it's a torpedo.

Marty: It looks like the center section of a torpedo.

There's a tank here.

You've got these extra compressed air tanks, for powering it.

Edward: There are twelve of these, in fact lying around.

Marty: Wow.

That, that's amazing to see it's still here after all these years.

Narrator: Pete's investigation in the waters just outside

Is also showing positive results.

Timmy (over radio): We should be coming up to the wreck anytime now.

Pete (over radio): Yeah, the visibility's not great, but I see something.

Wow, it's big!

Sitting on this crazy forty-five-degree angle slope.

Timmy (over radio): I want to show you something a bit further down, pete.

Follow me.

You can clearly see big structural damage on this side here.

Can you see these twisted pieces of metal right here?

Pete (over radio): That's from a blast.

That steel is peeled back.

Timmy: The rest of the structure is pretty intact.

Pete (over radio): This is really going to be amazing in the photogrammetry model.

Narrator: Finally, back on dry land in the tech hq,

Cutting edge software is stitching

Together thousands of photos from the dive.

Pete hopes they can help reveal why the lazzaretto was such a prime target

For axis bombers.

Pete: Timmy, the dive we did the other day on the ship.

Let's have a look.

Timmy: Oh wow.

I mean during the dive the visibility was pretty dismal,

But at least now through this model we can see the entire site.

Pete: Clearly something really bad happened there.

Timmy: It looks to me as though it's a direct hit from a dive bomber and the reports

Tell us that this must have happened sometime in the spring of 1942.

Narrator: The vessel is clearly not a warship; it has no guns or torpedo tubes.

So why would the luftwaffe have targeted it?

Marty: So what kind of vessel is this?

Timmy: It looks to as though as if it's a supply barge.

You can see that from the shape.

Narrator: The scan has identified the wreck as a fueling barge

Called the x-127.

It was used by the royal navy for a critical purpose in world war ii.

Supplying fuel for submarines.

Timmy: They needed vessels like this to supply oil, water and whatever else the crew and

The submarine needed to run.

Narrator: Added to the find of the torpedo in the subterranean tunnels,

The presence of this barge points to one explanation.

This was a royal navy submarine base.

Timmy: So this wasn't just a building, but also these vessels and this sort of

Marine complex that would have also been the target for the germans.

Narrator: Pete has also used laser scanning technology to map

The lazzaretto's interiors.

Now for the first time ever,

The team combine the scans with the underwater scanning.

Timmy: This is the first time that I'm able to see the entire base,

Because if I'm working from out at sea, I just see the arches,

If I'm standing in a courtyard I'm surrounded by four walls,

But this is absolutely incredible.

Marty: Well the structure itself was incredible.

Narrator: All the essentials for a submarine base were in bomb proof tunnels,

Carved into the hill behind the lazzaretto.

Timmy: So this warren was just a hive of activity.

Marty: At first the germans didn't realize that this was a submarine base.

But then they put two and two together.

Narrator: Records show that over a million tons of axis shipping was sunk by the

Twenty-six allied submarines which operated from the base.

Marty: This was the beating heart of the most concentrated

Submarine campaign in military history.

Pete: Wow and no wonder it was so heavily bombed.

Narrator: The allies had turned malta into a thorn in the side of axis shipping,

Which stopped their domination of the mediterranean.

Hitler and mussolini were desperate to destroy it.

Over the next two years,

They would drop 15,000 tons of bombs on the island.

How could this tiny country fight back?

How the tiny island of malta survived the

Most concentrated bombing campaign of world war ii.

He is trekking to a location that commands the entrance to valletta's harbors.

Pete: I love this bit of my job,

Where all the signs say risk of injury or death.

Brings out the adventure in it.

And it's the perfect spot for a drone.

Narrator: Today this area is completely overgrown and closed off to the public...

In world war ii this spot guarded valletta's harbors and submarine

Bases from axis planes.

Pete's searching for evidence of lost allied air defenses.

Pete: I've got the drone up in the air.

And it's flying a photogrammetry mission.

Now that's a mouthful.

But all it really means is we can make really rich 3-d models from photographs.

Narrator: Within hours pete has a photogrammetry model of a huge area.

And straight away pete spots an array of concrete platforms;

Barely visible on the ground.

He heads to the largest one.

Pete: This is a gun emplacement.

I'll bet everything I own that's an anti-aircraft gun emplacement.

Because it's perfect, for the entrance to the harbor.

Because, if I'm the germans, I'm coming in this way.

The entrance to the harbor,

Which means I gotta get right by that which is going to be murder.

Narrator: The guns may have gone, but as an ex-us artilleryman,

Pete identifies traces of the air defenses everywhere.

Pete: Yeah.

We're on the high ground.

We've got 360 view here.

And here you would expect an ammunition elevator.

Meaning you'd keep the dangerous stuff, the shells and the powder somewhere safe.

Way down there.

And now this is great.

This is really great.

So, what you've got here are sectors.

This sector is 206 degrees, that's sector d.

Sector e, 210 degrees.

Fuze type, powder type so how this would work.

Oh my god there's incoming germans.

Sector e!

And they would know.

Fuze 8.4.

Charge whatever.

And could let fly in no time.

Because it's all about speed.

Narrator: Pete has found the site of a massive 3.7-inch anti-aircraft gun.

Records show that, extraordinarily, it was just one of

1,400 located across the island.

But how effective were these defenses?

To find out, the team are heading to one place where traces of the air war still

Lie undisturbed more than 70 years later.

These waters are directly under the enemy flight-path from sicily.

Just 2 miles from malta's coast, timmy has located an unexplored wreck.

It's 350 feet below sea level,

Far deeper than any typical scuba diver can descend.

Dave: So, we're doing the new wreck.

We're not sure what it is, or how it's going to lie.

Maximum depth is 104 meters.

Pete: That is impossibly deep.

I mean these guys are technical divers, which means it's a bit dangerous.

It is far beyond my capabilities as a scuba diver.

Narrator: Because of the extreme depth, the divers have to carry an

Unusual amount of gear.

The wreck is so far down, they use a line to guide them to it.

Pete: At this depth they might have twenty minutes, maybe, tops.

Then they have to come up.

Narrator: Ascending to the surface too quickly could be fatal for the divers.

They will need at least two hours to decompress as they return.

Pete: There he goes.

Might as well be going to the moon.

Narrator: This team are one of the very few in the world with the skills

To perform photogrammetry at this depth.

It takes them over twenty minutes to descend to the site of the wreck.

Very little light can penetrate this far down.

But amazingly, out of the gloom, a tangled wreck emerges.

It's almost unrecognizable, but the team spot a propeller.

A tail fin is also clearly visible.

Having completed their scans, the team will return to the surface.

But two hours later, they are still underwater.

Pete: There's only one reason that they would have taken this long

To decompress and that's that they stayed longer on the bottom.

Which I hope means they found something really interesting.

Defended itself against two years of daily bombing raids.

Having processed the data from the sunken wreck,

They hope the first ever virtual model

Will provide some clues.

Pete: Timmy, considering this aircraft wreck is so deep,

Look at the fidelity of this model.

It's just great.

Narrator: Marty recognizes it instantly.

Marty: That's a stuka.

That's a ju-87 stuka.

Look the horizontal stabilizer,

The very distinctive square boxy shape?

That's a stuka.

Narrator: The stuka was one of the luftwaffe's most infamous planes.

Diving at almost 400 miles an hour, it delivered a bomb with deadly precision.

It even had what was called a 'jericho trumpet'

Which emitted a terrifying howl as it dived.

But can the scan reveal why this one crashed?

Timmy: One of the incredible things that we can tell from this

Crash site is that it's got no bombs.

Narrator: The stuka carried a single, easily identified bomb,

Measuring almost seven feet and slung under its fuselage.

The scan shows that the plane had delivered its payload.

Timmy: So, this means that the bombs were dropped over the harbor area and,

This thing was, this pilot was trying to get home.

Something dramatic happened because this plane clearly hit the water

At terminal velocity.

Marty: How can you tell?

Timmy: Well, one of the key indicators is this propeller here.

You can see that it's bent back which means that

This propeller was spinning and

The plane hit the sea out of control.

One can only assume that either the pilot bailed out, or was dead

Inside the cockpit.

Narrator: The fact that the plane crashed having dropped its bomb leads

Marty to one conclusion.

Marty: He's pulling out at low altitude,

Where his speed had been chopped and he's most vulnerable.

He's trying simultaneously to gather speed and altitude,

While passing through one of

The most heavily defended air defense zones in the entire war.

The area over the grand harbor at malta.

Narrator: As pete's scan revealed,

Malta was bristling with anti-aircraft guns.

Mapping this stuka alongside other axis wrecks he's located,

Timmy has shown that they could be deadly effective against the enemy.

No wonder luftwaffe pilots called the island,

“the hornet's nest.”

Timmy: Although malta was heavily bombed,

This is evidence that the island did fight back.

Marty: This was a tough target and this cracked up ju-87 is proof of that.

Narrator: Even so, this stuka, had managed to deliver its payload.

In 1942 alone, the island was bombed for more than 150 days straight.

(explosions)

Yet malta survived with relatively few civilian casualties.

Marty wants to find out how they evaded the relentless axis bombing.

He's tracked down local world war ii expert mario farrugia.

Mario: Here we've got a unique document.

It was made by a london based engineering firm, which specialized in mining,

As a plan to provide the island with an extensive,

Underground air raid shelter system,

Which would have offered protection for nothing less than 140,000 people.

Narrator: Mario's plan is from early 1940.

It shows the british authorities were already planning for the attack.

Marty: So, these red lines are the tunnels they proposed.

Mario: Yes, they are.

If you happened to be around the main gate of the city and there was a raid on.

You could rush down into one of the exits.

Narrator: But was this unbelievably ambitious plan ever realized?

Was there time before the bombing began?

Using the plan, marty and pete locate one entrance in the heart of valletta.

How much lies beneath?

They are guided by local engineer marc zimmermann.

Marty: Whoa.

We're going into that?

Pete: Now, I know what the boots are for.

Narrator: Directly under the bustling streets of valletta the team discover

Long forgotten tunnels,

Virtually sealed off since the war.

Marty: Oh god, look at that!

Marc: That would have been one of the typical tools of the time.

Marty: So all of this is hand dug then?

Marc: Almost all of it was hand dug.

Narrator: Was this amazing tunnel network big enough to save malta's civilians?

Marty and pete descend deeper underground to find out.

A,

Marty morgan and pete kelsey are exploring tunnels that have

Been sealed off to the public for more than seventy years.

They want to discover the real extent of these underground air-raid shelters.

Over time the limestone has become unstable.

Marc: And sometimes the bedrock just doesn't hold up.

Narrator: Their guide through these dangerous caverns is engineer marc zimmermann.

Marty: My god, this place just goes on and on and on, doesn't it?

Narrator: Because the tunnels are so unsafe to access,

They're also a time capsule, virtually untouched.

Pete: Wow, this looks like a crossroads.

Marc: One of the major intersections here that matches the roads above.

Pete: Wow, is that the same name as the street?

Marc: It is exactly, santa lucia street.

So, you have merchant street heading in this direction, and santa lucia street here.

Pete: Lined up the same way over our heads.

Marc: Exactly.

A city under the city, following the street grid above.

Narrator: Coming off these underground streets are dozens of small cubicles.

Marc: And just like now there's very limited lighting, in 1941, 42,

There wouldn't have been electricity, so it would have been kerosene lamps,

Some candles.

Maybe just an empty tin with oil and a wick.

Narrator: One cubicle in particular grabs pete's attention.

Pete: Wow, look at that.

Marc: It's quite amazing really.

These tiny cubicles would have been made much more homely and comfortable

By individual families living in there.

Pete: I want to see, I want to see.

Marc: It's amazing that, you know, such a small dash of color would just give people a

Bit more hope and tell them, you know, this is where we live and have to shelter from

The incessant air raids.

Pete: And if you've got time to make your home beautiful that suggest

You're gonna be down here a while.

Marc: For some time,

Air raids were so incessant and so intense

People barely had time to get up top

To breathe before they had to dash down again and often spend the

Night in these shelters.

Narrator: But not all of this subterranean city was dug during

World war ii.

Pete: Wow.

Marty: Oh my god, look at this thing!

This is like a gothic cathedral!

Narrator: These forty-foot-high water cisterns date from the late 1500s.

But in the war, they were incorporated into the shelters.

Marc: Picture a time when these were at their most intense.

People leaning against the walls.

Sitting here in small groups.

Children crying.

Some people trying to find some respite and sleep.

Prayer going on.

Pete: I have got to scan this.

Marty: Yeah, for sure.

Pete: This is right out of a movie.

Narrator: Pete has been granted exclusive permission to produce a high-resolution

Scan of these tunnels, the first ever of its kind.

Using a handheld lidar scanner, he can instantly generate a 3d model of the

Shelter complex.

The data in pete's scans reveals an extraordinary underground network.

The medieval cisterns are connected to passages which perfectly mirror

Valletta's street grid.

Coming off the streets are 80, 9 by 5 feet cubicles.

These were numbered individually, so every family would have

Their own designated space.

There are 6 entry and exit points, some to the street,

Some even into government buildings.

The data reveals that these shelters measured well over 5,000 square feet...

Enough space for countless families.

And this was just one shelter in valletta.

Across the whole country, the people of malta dug in wherever they could.

Railway tunnels were turned into air raid shelters, caves carved into the cliffs;

Malta was honeycombed with tunnels.

30,000 buildings were destroyed, whilst malta's people huddled underground.

But air raids weren't the only threat to their survival.

The germans were hell-bent on starving islanders into submission.

Dependent on convoys to bring in food, fuel and munitions.

Allied ships crossing the mediterranean were relentlessly

Attacked by the axis.

By summer 1942, the island was close to surrender.

But the germans weren't just using planes and ships to blockade malta's ports.

Pete kelsey has found evidence of how the nazis deployed one of the war's

Most feared naval weapons.

Pete: Here is a german chart of minefields that we've actually overlaid over a

Terrain model of malta that shows all these minefields right offshore.

Marty: Yeah, they've turned the sea lanes approaching valletta into a very

Inhospitable place.

Timmy: Absolutely, there's a massive, massive concentration of minefields,

Which focus on the entrance to the two main harbors.

The grand harbor and marsamxett harbor.

Narrator: But marty and pete have already discovered that the

Harbor was bristling with allied defenses.

How could the germans have laid mines so close to the shore?

The team are heading to a new wreck site that may hold an answer.

Timmy: The site's about a nautical mile northeast.

And as you can see the shipwreck is actually very close to the coast.

Narrator: With sonar locating the site, timmy's team prepare to descend over 200 feet.

They'll use deep sea photogrammetry to scan the wreck.

In clear mediterranean waters, they make their way to an eerie shipwreck.

It must have had a wooden hull, which has now disappeared,

Leaving a metal skeleton.

The divers identify a distinctive feature.

A set of torpedo tubes, one of which amazingly is still loaded.

There's even a depth charge on the deck.

Too dangerous to approach closely they scan the 115 foot hulk.

Back at the hq, the team start to piece together a virtual model of the wreck.

Marty: D'oh my gosh!

Timmy: You can clearly see that she's broken and with

You know, evidence for a catastrophic explosion.

Right here in the middle.

Marty: But what caused it?

Timmy: If you look at the deck and superstructure,

That have actually been separated,

You can see this powerful explosion coming up from the sea and exactly

Breaking the ship upwards,

Before she sunk to the seabed.

To me, everything points towards a sea mine.

Narrator: This is a victim of the german sea mines.

But, confusingly this is a german ship.

Marty and pete have identified it as a schnellboot,

Or speed boat,

Capable of traveling at speeds of over 40 miles per hour.

Records show that the wreck was known as s31 and sunk in the early hours

Of may 10th 1942 and now they can see exactly where.

Timmy: The s-31 sunk right here.

In this, in this minefield, or in this area.

Right, right here.

Pete: That's right in the thick of it.

Narrator: The only conclusion is that this lightly armored

Torpedo boat must have been laying mines.

Pete: Does that mean it would have hit its own mine, a german mine?

Timmy: Or one of the mines of her fellow ships.

Pete: That's bad luck.

Marty: And that can happen,

Maneuvering in a minelaying operation in the pre-dawn darkness.

Narrator: S-31 was a speed boat designed for hit and run attacks.

But in a desperate move, the germans were using it to offensively deploy sea mines.

For two years, the allies had clung onto this tiny rock, desperately holding off the

Axis onslaught.

As the siege drove malta to the brink of surrender,

The united states came to the rescue.

In August 1942, a severely damaged american ship, the ss ohio,

Maneuvered through the minefield to malta.

The blockade was over.

Now, with american help, it was time for malta to go on the offensive.

America's entry into the mediterranean was turning the tide of war.

Now the allies wanted to take the fight to the axis in Italy;

The soft underbelly of europe.

That July, malta would be the launchpad for the biggest amphibious assault

Of the war so far:

Operation husky and the invasion of sicily.

The allied armies desperately needed air cover

For a mammoth invasion force of 2,700 ships.

But where on malta's rocky and crowded terrain could the us army

Possibly build an airfield?

Marty has found one clue inside malta's national library.

It's a 1961 recording of none other than the

General dwight d. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower (over computer): The americans needed a new fighter field, right close by.

The only spot that was possible to use was an island, and I think it was named gozo.

This was nothing but a mountain.

From the time the equipment reached there, thirteen days later our first fighter flew

On and off the field.

Marty: Okay. This is incredible.

Here we have the former president of the united states,

Dwight d. Eisenhower,

The former supreme commander of the allied expeditionary force in

World war ii, and he's talking about the construction of an airfield

To support the allied invasion of sicily in 1943.

The army needed more fighter strips,

So they built one on the island near malta called gozo.

I wonder if there's anything left of that airfield today.

Narrator: Marty and pete head four miles northwest from the

Mainland to the island of gozo.

They're on the hunt for eisenhower's airfield built by the americans in

Just thirteen days.

Pete: So where do you put on airfield on an island like this?

Marty: That's a good question.

Because, if you want to fly high-performance fighters,

You're gonna need at least 5,000 feet...

Pete: Of flat runway.

Marty: Yeah. Pete: That's not flat.

Narrator: Where on gozo could the us army possibly build an operational airfield

In less than two weeks?

Marty can't find any allied film or aerial photographs of the airfield.

But in the winding streets of gozo's capital,

Victoria, he's meeting a historian called

Charles bezzina.

Charles: Here is the projected plan of the airfield in gozo.

So, these were two airfields of 4,000 feet by 200 feet.

Narrator: The two runways were just earth,

And records show that the us air force flew

75 spitfires from here for just five weeks.

Marty: So, was the airfield built just to support operation husky?

Charles: That was all.

On 6th of August 1943,

The airfield was abandoned.

Marty: So, there's nothing left, not a trace?

Charles: Nothing.

Narrator: It will be a challenge finding an airfield that was never tarmacked and

Which was only operational for five weeks in 1943.

They'll have to rely on local knowledge.

John: Yes, it was back over here.

Behind my house.

Over here behind my house.

Narrator: All that's visible today are ordinary fields and a few buildings.

But by using modern remote sensing technology,

Pete hopes to peel back 80 years of history and

Discover if this really is the site.

He combines his scans of gozo with lidar data gathered by the

European union and the maltese government.

As the data is processed, pete creates a digital terrain model.

But what will it reveal?

Pete: You remember, we went to gozo,

Trying to find this mysterious airfield.

All we need is proof and I've got this cheshire cat grin on my face

Because here it is.

That is irrefutable evidence...

Marty: You can still see it, look at that.

Pete: From two runways.

There's no doubt that is manmade earthworks going in this axis and

One in this axis.

Marty: That's grading and earth moving from 1943 that is still only visible to

Technology in the 21st century.

Pete: I have to say, this feels good, because this is actual discovery.

Marty: You found the missing runway.

Pete: We did, we did.

Narrator: For the first time in almost eighty years the lidar has revealed the

Footprint of gozo airfield's two lost runways.

From here, in 1943 american fighters provided vital air support

For the successful invasion of Italy.

Three years after mussolini dropped the first bomb on malta,

His fate was sealed by an operation launched from the very same island.

It was the beginning of the end for the axis.

Marty: In July 1943, seventy-five british spitfires flown by american pilots,

Took off from this airfield to be a part of the

Air support for the invasion of sicily,

Which opened the road to rome,

Which opened the road to berlin and brought about the

Final collapse of the third reich.

Narrator: Malta fought a war on all fronts...

On land, in the air, on water and even underground.

Its people had been tested like nowhere else.

Pete: What I love about the story of malta in world war ii

Is that this tiny little island nation,

Stopped the german juggernaut in its tracks.

You know, what a great testament to the spirit of these people,

Who just refused to give up.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.