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and have his debts repaid. It was also SIME’s chance to convey SENTINEL , a deception plan designed to encourage a German offensive in the period 10–20 August when the 8th Army supposedly would be in an especially advantageous position, with plenty of anti-tank artillery and minefields, to resist the attack. The objective, of course, was to delay the enemy’s impending attack until after 20 August when Auchinleck would have the benefits of reinforcements. In the event Rommel, with only 200 panzers and conscious of his supply line back to Tripoli stretching a thousand miles, significantly over-estimated the British strength and postponed his attack until the night of 30 August, but it failed at Alam Halfa. His plan had been betrayed by ULTRA , thus allowing the 8th Army to reinforce the precise focus of attack, the Alam Halfa ridge with 400 tanks, 300 anti-tank guns, 350 field-guns and huge minefields. In terms of strategic deception, ‘A’ Force invented RAYON , a supposed plan to invade Crete which required Greek troops in Egypt to be mobilised. The intention, at the very least, was to prevent Rommel from drawing reinforcements from the German forces on the occupied island, and this certainly happened, as demonstrated by an Afrika Korps assessment of the Allied order-of-battle which included the fake 74th Armoured Brigade joining the genuine 7th Armoured Division.
    The other ‘A’ Force strategic objective was to apply maximum pressure on Rommel’s supply route from Italy, which in turn meant support for Malta, then besieged by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Regina Marina. The four submarines of the 10th Flotilla operating from HMS
Talbot
in Valetta’s Grand Harbour, HMS
Unbroken, United, Unruffled
and
Unrivalled
took a heavy toll of Axis shipping, up to half of the cargo ships and two-thirds of the tankers, on which the Afrika Korps was wholly dependent for food, ammunition, fueland replacements, so Malta’s survival was a high priority for the Allies. The Royal Navy, with the benefit of well-protected submarine pens and high-grade intelligence derived from ULTRA , proved so successful in handicapping the enemy’s supply line that the Germans developed a plan, codenamed HERKULES , to bomb the island into submission and execute a joint paratroop and amphibious assault, thereby eliminating the menace. However, the project was abandoned when it was realised that such an undertaking would siphon off too many resources from the increasingly hard-pressed Afrika Korps. By the end of the war the 10th Flotilla had fired 1,289 torpedoes, with an estimated hit-rate of 10 per cent.
    Allied attempts to deliver vital supplies to Malta, from Gibraltar in one direction and Alexandria on the other, had failed. Both convoys, HARPOON from the west and VIGOROUS from the east, had been disasters. HARPOON was under attack for two full days, and four of the six cargo ships sunk, along with a cruiser and five destroyers. VIGOROUS was an even greater catastrophe, and returned to Alexandria after the loss of a cruiser, HMS
Hermione
, and five destroyers.
    A third mission, codenamed PEDESTAL , was planned for August 1942, in the knowledge that another failure would leave the island, which had endured 3,000 air raids in two years, undefended from the air because of a lack of aviation fuel for the island’s Spitfires operating from Luqa and its satellite fields. Surrender was contemplated, so PEDESTAL ’ S fourteen merchantmen were protected by a huge escort on an unprecedented scale, which included two battleships, three aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and thirty-two destroyers. The Italians attacked in force, but suffered heavy losses, and HMS
Unbroken
severely damaged the German tanker
Regina
, the heavy cruiser
Bolzano
and the light cruiser
Muzio Attendolo
with torpedoes, putting all three permanently out of action.
    The assembly and departure of such a vast concentration of navalforce was next