Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com slash we have ways.

Spitfires over Malta.

Spitfires engaging. These dramatic two words that have chilled the hearts of many German pilots again made history today. They came through the earphones at the RAF fighter controller in the operations room of Malta at 1103 this morning. For the first time since the war began, Spitfires are in battle over this tiny island fortress and the central Mediterranean,

and they met with success in their first engagement. A flight lieutenant had the honour of the

first kill. He shot down into the sea an Emmy 109 fighter. The successes of the fighters and

the guns during the last 48 hours has been a great tonic to the Maltese people who have suffered

cheerfully the intense bombing attack since the Lufua returned to Sicily during the middle of December.

The word has gone round for several days that Spitfires, the magic fighters that won the Battle of Britain, had arrived on the island.

That was, of course, the Times of Malta from Thursday the 12th of March, 1942.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray

and James Holland and our third part of our Fortress, Malta

series, that's stirring stuff, isn't it, Jim? That's what you want to hear.

It's absolutely splendid. The Maltese people, cheerfully accepting being bombed.

Oh, more bombs then? Oh, well.

Thank God, how we are part of the British Empire.

Yes, exactly.

Anyway, I mean, it's all stirring stuff.

The Spitfires have arrived at long last, but will it be enough?

Yeah, because in our previous episodes, we left on rather, well, well, with trouble to come,

but with rather a sort of pleasant autumn, with the Royal Navy and the Fleet Air Arm getting out there and bashing up the Reggie Marina and the Reggie Aeronautica, and once the Lefotherhood would drawn its single staff old and Balter under its heel, which is the shocking part, really. 42-0, by the way, just to remind everyone. Yeah, I mean, as scores go, but always lurking in the background. It's like the eye of Sauron, isn't it, in The Lord of the Rings, the film. The Eye darts around looking for where to direct its attention. And then once it's focused on where it thinks the Ring is, so Malta, it sends the orcs. And the Orks, in this instance, are led by Albert Kesselring.

Yeah, who we obviously, we're all big fans of Kesselring. Not, not my favourite person. And we've covered his career, his varied career, in very, I mean, Medeufne he crops up, isn't it? You know, there he is in Sicily, there he is in the Battle of Britain, there he is in Italy. Now here he is again in Malta.

Holy moly.

...