Pedestal under continuous attack

12th August 1942: The convoy and her escort ships take further casualties as they plough on towards Malta

12 August: Air attacks: An Italian aerial reconnaissance photograph of the convoy.

Inevitably as the Pedestal convoy got closer to Italy, and the air bases on Sicily and Sardinia, the air attacks on it intensified. Enemy aircraft now had much longer time to spend over their targets and time to co-ordinate their attacks. The U-boat threat had not diminished and for a period the destroyers were firing depth charges merely as a deterrent.

16-inch guns on the battleship HMS RODNEY open fire whilst she is steaming in the Western Mediterranean. In the foreground can be seen one of the battleship's 4.7 inch guns in an open turret. Note how the barrels of the 16 inch guns are of uneven length, due to the recoil of the gun after firing.

L. Myers¹ was on board the battleship HMS Rodney. He recalls that they were in almost continuous action for three days starting with the sinking of HMS Eagle. It was the following day that things started to get really busy for them:

The action, when it started, was a fairly gentlemanly affair with a few high level bombing and submarine attacks. But on the second day things got really hectic with combined high level bombing, torpedo bombing, dive bombing and submarine attacks.

The action diary for this day as recorded by Kenneth Thompson, the ship's Chaplain in his book 'HMS Rodney at war' lists some 80 plus entries between 0745 and 2015.