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Matthew Vella
85-year-old Les Wright is back in Malta, 62 years after leaving the island and ending up in Lampedusa when he last flew in the Swordfish in June 1943.
 Now he’s at the Malta Aviation Museum in Ta’ Qali, hosted by the non-governmental foundation that has spent hundreds of thousands of liri to get Malta’s winged history on the ground and into a hangar in Ta’ Qali.
It’s a labour of love that has been going on since 1996 – engineers and volunteers are reconstructing a genuine WWII Hurricane. In the room adjacent is the Swordfish, an unrecognisable metal skeleton waiting to be saved from its rusty twilight, brought over to Malta by the foundation from Canada. They will rebuild the Swordfish, probably back to flying condition, just as they are doing with the Hurricane they fished up from the Zurrieq seabed. Another hangar, a memorial for the aircraft involved in the air battle of Malta, will be inaugurated in September this year.
Wright is celebrating one of the least known stories in WWII history – the capture, practically by accident, of Lampedusa, the tiny Sicilian outpost northwest of Malta, when a RAF crew composed of gunner Les Wright, navigator Sgt Peter Tait, and pilot Sgt Sid Cohen flew out on a search for a German pilot.
Another Swordfish pilot, this time a Royal Navy officer who saw action in Palestine, is chatting with Les Wright. Ken Yale confesses to having been moved to tears to once again see the Swordfish back in Malta.
But Wright has a greater story to recount, and that is the surrender of Lampedusa’s 3,000 inhabitants and troops after a botched Air Sea Rescue flight over the Mediterranean.
“Searching for a German pilot, we took off from Hal-Far, we eventually spotted the fallen pilot, dropped emergency packs, reported his position and then started off again back to Malta.”
But on their return, with visibility dropping, problems cropped up. The Swordfish’s flight instruments started playing up. Over the intercom, Sid Cohen asked, “Does that look like Malta?”
In the distance, the crew noticed US Lightnings attacking what they assumed was Lampedusa – for months now, the Allies had been trying to soften up the small Italian island of Linosa, Pantelleria and Lampedusa.
Operation Corkscrew was the Allied invasion of the Italian island of Pantelleria on 10 June 1943. Following a ten-day bombardment, the Italian garrison surrendered when the British forces landed on the island. In fact, the Italian garrisons on other nearby islands quickly fell, clearing the way for the invasion of Sicily a month later, soon after followed by the coup that drove Mussolini away from Rome.
“So we knew it wasn’t Malta and we had the choice of landing on one of the three islands, but as far as we knew they were still in Italian hands despite the raid. We were completely disorientated. We tried to work out a way of how to fly from Lampedusa back to Malta, but the poor visibility and our instruments forced us to land on Lampedusa and take our chances as prisoners of war.”
On the ground however, Wright and his two co-pilots were prepared for capture. As soon as they landed they were approached by Italian officers. Wright swung the Vickers gun towards them but it proved unnecessary. “It turned out the entire island wanted to surrender, thinking that after the raid we had come to sort out things.”
The day was 12 June, 1943 – 62 years to the day – and Wright is now standing by the ‘trusty’ Swordfish that was to secure one of the first landings on Italian land for the Allied forces.
Ken Yale says it’s the first time he has ever met a RAF officer who flew a Swordfish, an unusual crew for the plane. The two talk animatedly about the joys of seeing so much of Malta’s wartime heritage under one roof.
After Lampedusa, Wright was never to set foot in Malta again until today. “In Lampedusa, the navigator and I decided to make an in-depth appraisal of our situation and we found we were 108 miles from Malta, and 85 miles from Tunisia, so we thought our best bet was Tunisia. It turned out all we had to do was turn west and follow the sun to get to Malta.”
Ken Yale laughs. “You know what… I’ve heard about four versions of that story.”
“Well, I tell you something,” Wright says. “There is only one version, and you will only hear the true version from me.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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