This year, we celebrate 50 years since the foundation of the National War Museum, and what began as a collective effort by a local group of passionate war history and aviation enthusiasts is now one of the nation’s most popular museums.
A new book, The National War Museum, 50 years: 50 artefacts takes a look at the museum’s collection describing choice exhibits that have been gathered over the years. With illustrations and accompanying explanations, it offers an engaging and digestible taster of a visit to Fort Elmo where the museum is located, and tantalising insights into the island’s wartime history.
The book begins with a potted summary of the history of the museum from its conception and inauguration in 1975 to the present day. It includes five firsthand accounts of several key people involved in this process, including Joe Mamo, who was working as a technician for the RAF in the early 1970s when he was ‘enthralled’ by a newly-recovered Spitfire which had been salvaged from Gozo’s Marsalforn. As a result he became part of the National War Museum Association, formed in 1974. Its aim was to establish a War Museum to take over from where the Palace Armoury display ends (just before the invasion of Malta by Napoleon in 1798).
“We fashioned a museum out of nothing – struggling and fighting for what was needed along the way,” he explains, describing “the satisfaction of seeing what we built together”.
The recollections also include those of the first woman in the association, Mary Attard, then a 19-year old student.
The majority of this new beautifully-illustrated publication guides the reader through Malta’s twentieth-century history with a focus on 50 of the exhibits now housed within the museum’s walls. They range from large to small and from military might to personal papers, to give a rounded view of both the big elements at play and the inconveniences and challenges of daily life. The artefacts include trucks and planes, motorbikes and an exploding ‘e-boat’ alongside varied uniforms, a tin helmet, flags, medals and The National War Museum’s Book of Remembrance. Each has its own story, and presented together in this way, these brief tales offer an excellent way to absorb facts and further information about the World War 2 in Malta, and other episodes, in beautifully bite-sized chunks for the casual reader.
The Gloster Sea Gladiator N5520, FAITH, the only surviving Gloster Gladiator from the Battle of Malta, is arguably the piéce de resistance in the museum, and it is no surprise therefore that it appears in these pages. It is an example of a single-seat plane designed in 1933 with a Bristol Mercury VIIIA engine, enclosed cockpit, cantilever landing gear and – originally – a wooden two-blade propeller. Reader will learn how this type of place first flew in 1934 and entered service in 1937, and that FAITH was one of a trio defending Malta until it lost its wings after a bomb fell on a nearby hangar. Having been unceremoniously dumped in a quarry at Kalafrana, it was later salvaged, repaired, decorated and presented to the people of Malta.
Other vehicular artefacts include a durable Bedford MWD 15-cwt General Service Truck in camel and brown patterning, a military vehicle with ‘rubble stone camouflage’ brought to the island from North Africa between 1939 and 1942 with British regiments, and the remnants of a Messerschmitt Bf109 F-4, a piece of painted fuselage which shows a bomb hitting a Malta emblem.
There’s also a ship’s bell, a reminder of the HMS Maori which was recovered in 1969. HMS Maori was launched in 1937 and commissioned in 1939, readers learn. In December 1941, she took passage to Gibraltar and joined the 14th Destroyer Flotilla and the following month, she was deployed as escort for Convoy Operation MW8B during passage from Alexandria to Malta during which, she was attacked by a u-boat off the coast of Libya. Then, on 12 February 1942, she was hit by a bomb during a night air raid in Malta, causing fire and an explosion in the Torpedo Head magazine. She sank at mooring and was raised and scuttled off Fort St Elmo on 15 July 1945. The ship is now a popular dive site.
Smaller pieces photographed and described in The National War Museum, 50 years: 50 artefacts
include an example of the tiny bronze plaque, known as the ‘Dead Man’s Penny’, which was issued after WWI to the next-of-kin of all British and Empire service personnel who were killed in the war. Interestingly, I discover, the design by sculptor and medalist Edward Carter Preston, which includes an image of Britannia holding a trident and standing with a lion, was chosen from 800 submissions in a public competition. The legend reads “He died for freedom and honour”, or “She” in the case of the 1500 plaques issued to commemorate women.
The book describes a variety of exhibits that offer insights into the personal lives of the population during this period. These include sketchbooks by Peter Cummings that document not only the damage inflicted by the enemy, but also life in shelters and women wearing the ‘għonnella’ and wartime magazines, letters and personal papers, and photographs giving insights into the daily life and work of Norris who served as a confidential clerk in the personal staff of the Governor of Malta under Dobbie, Gort and Campbell. There is also mention of a set of wartime scrapbooks, photographs, ration coupons, shelter plans, posters and labels fixed on merchandise donated to Malta by Philip Vella one of the fathers of the National War Museum and one of the most well-known historians of Malta’s wartime history.
The Bentley Diaries, penned in three-volumes by Joseph Bentley, a Lance Bombardier in the Royal Artillery 10th Malta Regiment, offer a vivid first-hand account of life in Malta between 1940 and 1943, tracing the author’s personal experiences of WWII in one on the most heavily bombed warzones.
There is also a page dedicated to a manuscript diary that details the story of aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious’ in Italian despite the language having been banned since 1934. Its handwritten entries explain that the ship was part of a strong naval escort for the first convoy that sailed to besieged Malta from Gibraltar in January 1941. The text accompanying the image explains, however, that she was hit from the air and suffered extensive damage: many crew members were killed and injured. Much damaged she headed for Malta with German bombers in pursuit. and reached Parlatorio Wharf just prior to the first Luftwaffe blitz over Malta in which HMS Illustrious was a target once more.
Other fascinating back-stories, each told in only a paragraph, include that of The Cross of Honour of the German Mother: or as it more informally known, the Mother’s Cross, a medal instituted by Adolf Hitler to encourage German mothers to ‘champion traditional German values’ by having large families. The Mother’s Cross came in three grades: in gold for mothers with eight or more children, silver for mothers with six or seven, and bronze for mothers with four or five!
And last but not least, one of the top artefacts is an interview with Mabel Strickland who both founded the Times of Malta – a newspaper which boasts of never missing an issue, not even during the very worst days of the Malta siege – and was an influential figure in Maltese politics. The transcript, dating back to the year in which the National War Museum opened, is, readers will learn, one of the items most requested by researchers.
Fifty years on, this book – which is now available at the National War Museum and other Heritage Malta sites – is a fitting and accessible summary of the island’s wartime past and the efforts made to record it, and a wonderful introduction to the exhibits held in Fort Elmo as a result.