{"id":99214,"date":"2026-02-23T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=99214"},"modified":"2026-02-22T10:53:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:53:05","slug":"qotd-faith-hope-and-charity-defended-malta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/02\/23\/qotd-faith-hope-and-charity-defended-malta\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: <em>Faith<\/em>, <em>Hope<\/em>, and <em>Charity<\/em> defended Malta"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>June 1940.<\/p>\n<p>France has collapsed, Hitler is eating Europe alive, and Mussolini doesn&#8217;t want to miss out. He wants birthday cake without bringing a present.<\/p>\n<p>Poor show<\/p>\n<p>So he looks at a map and asks the Italian Air Force:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Who can we bomb that&#8217;s really close?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Answer: Malta, 49 miles away.<\/p>\n<p>The Italians begin their great wartime contribution by flying at 14,000 feet and dropping bombs with the accuracy of a man throwing darts after fourteen pints. Half land in the sea, a few hit fields.<\/p>\n<p>But accuracy wasn&#8217;t the point. They just wanted to show Berlin they were &#8220;in the war&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>For the Maltese, who had never seen modern bombing, even bad Italian bombing was terrifying.<\/p>\n<p>And unfortunately for them, this was only the warm-up act.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maynard&#8217;s Defence: <em>Faith<\/em>, <em>Hope<\/em> and <em>Charity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Air Commodore Foster Maynard is given the job of defending Malta with basically nothing.<\/p>\n<p>He had been promised four fighter squadrons.<\/p>\n<p>Zero have arrived. Typical early war British brilliance.<\/p>\n<p>His only aircraft were some slow, ancient Fairey Swordfish.<\/p>\n<p>Great for torpedoing ships, hopeless for intercepting bombers.<\/p>\n<p>These were the famous &#8220;Stringbags&#8221;. We will hear from them later on.<\/p>\n<p>Then like an archaeologist opening a cursed tomb the British discover 18 Gloster Gladiators in crates on the island. They were meant for <em>HMS Glorious<\/em> and <em>HMS Eagle<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What followed was peak British wartime admin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Maynard asks the Navy to release some Gladiators.<\/li>\n<li>He gets permission.<\/li>\n<li>The ground crew assemble several.<\/li>\n<li>THEN the Navy says &#8220;No actually, stop, pack them back up.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>THEN the decision gets reversed again.<\/li>\n<li>So they unpack them, reassemble them &#8230; again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After all this faffing, <strong>three Gladiators<\/strong> emerge ready to fight.<\/p>\n<p>Next problem: no fighter pilots.<\/p>\n<p>Big problem I feel, anyway &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Maynard asks for volunteers. Eight bomber men step forward, either heroic or mildly insane.<\/p>\n<p>Problem solved.<\/p>\n<p>A journalist on the island, Harry Kirk, watching these three lonely biplanes scramble day after day, nicknames them <em>Faith<\/em>, <em>Hope<\/em> and <em>Charity<\/em> after his mother&#8217;s brooch.<\/p>\n<p>The names stick. The legend begins.<\/p>\n<p>On 21 June 1940 Pilot Officer George Burges shoots down a Savoia-Marchetti bomber over Valletta, the island&#8217;s first air victory.<\/p>\n<p>The Maltese take it as a sign from God.<\/p>\n<p>(It wasn&#8217;t, but let them have the moment.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/home\/post\/p-179137012\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;MALTA: PART 1, Foreboding&#8221;, <em>WWII Matters<\/em><\/a>, 2025-11-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 1940. France has collapsed, Hitler is eating Europe alive, and Mussolini doesn&#8217;t want to miss out. He wants birthday cake without bringing a present. Poor show So he looks at a map and asks the Italian Air Force: &#8220;Who can we bomb that&#8217;s really close?&#8221; Answer: Malta, 49 miles away. The Italians begin their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,339,5,41,663,230],"tags":[123,145,1064,30],"class_list":["post-99214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-italy","category-military","category-quotations","category-weapons","category-ww2","tag-aircraft","tag-airforce","tag-malta","tag-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pOe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99214"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100993,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99214\/revisions\/100993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}