ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapter attention was focused on Malta's increasingly precarious position in the spring and early summer of 1941 under the weight of German air attack. Soon after AVM Lloyd arrived in Malta in late May, bearing Portal's instructions, ‘Your main task at Malta is to sink Axis shipping sailing from Europe to Africa’, 1 he learned of the departure of Fliegerkorps X from Sicily. The campaigns in Greece and Crete, and the need to support Rommel in Cyrenaica, had already reduced the number of German aircraft in Sicily, but, in early June, Enigma decrypts revealed that the remainder had flown to bases in Greece and North Africa. 2
