Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive character, quiet speech and has penetrating

brown eyes. He is over six feet in height and like most submariners in wartime sports a beard.

He married his wife, Elspeth Kinlock, in Malta and has a two-year-old son Ian now staying at

Ellen Gowan and Mygill. He is a Scot by birth, but best known in Cheltenham.

Asked what quality was most needed in submarine warfare for success. Britain's submarine

ace replied, hmm, that's a nasty one, so I'll use a long word. Imperturbability.

That was an interview with Lieutenant Commander David Wanklin. In the Times of Malta on the 24th December

1941, and we'll get to why he's being interviewed a little bit later on. But it's a favourite bit

of journalism for me, I have to say that. So welcome to We Have Ways of Make You Talk with me,

Al Murray and James Holland for the second episode in our Siege of Malta series titled

The Thorn in the Axis side, because the thing to remember is that any place like Malta,

you need to hold it, but you holding it is a problem for the enemy as much as the enemy attacking

you is a problem for you. That there's a plus one minus one here. The Germans don't just want it

for themselves. They need it denied to the

British because of what the British can do in the Mediterranean if they hold Malta. And in our last

episode, we laid out the rather parlous state of defences, the inertia from the pre-war provision

made in Malta, and then the extremely aggressive spirit of the Royal Navy,

the Mediterranean Fleet under ABC, under Admiral Cunningham,

which I think is a key note throughout the history of the Second World War in the Mediterranean,

until it sort of stops when it stops.

And I think what's really striking is that when we've talked about the Navy before,

if we've touched on it, we've talked about the Navy before, if we've touched on it,

...