FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY
KENNETH POOLMAN
In April 1940 Italy seemed to be about to enter the war and Malta, key to the Med-terranean, had no fighter defence. The A.O.C. Malta, Air Commodore F. H. M.
Maynard, asked the C.-in-C. Mediter-ranean, Admiral Cunningham, for the use of four Sea-Gladiator fighters left behind by the carrier Glorious, as a local fighter defence unit. Permission was granted. They were biplane fighters, obsolete by modern standards and there were no fighter pilots on the island to fly them. From the volunteers that came forward six men were chosen, all flying-boat pilots, to form a Station Fighter Flight.
The first siren went off on June II. A large formation of Italian bombers was met and driven off by three of the Gladiators, the fourth being kept as a spare. From this time on constant raids were met by the three old aircraft, now christened Faith, Hope and Charity by the Maltese. Against overwhelming odds, and with maintenance parties desperately patching and repairing the worn out machines under a rain of bombs, they scored a big bag of victories, even shooting down the modern fighters of the much vaunted Italian Air Force.
Some
Hurricanes arrived to join the Gladiators, and, chanks to "These Three" , this defence
was later turned into glorious victory. Hope and Charity were destroyed, but the survivor Faith now stands in the Royal Palace of Valetta.
Mr. Poolman's narrative not only tells the story of the three aircraft but it also graphically describes the epic of the siege of Malta and the immortal page of history written by that island from 1940 to I943•
Illustrated