A detailed look at “Faith”, the only surviving Gloster Gladiator from the Battle of Malta
Photo gallery, WW2By Pierre Kosmidis
All photos © www.ww2wrecks.com except stated otherwise
One of the interesting exhibits on display at the National War Museum, Fort St Elmo, Valletta, Malta, is the fuselage of Gloster Gladiator N5520, popularly known as “Faith”.
“Faith” was one of the three Gladiators that are the source of the myth, that only three aircraft, named “Faith”, “Hope”, and “Charity” (N5519, N5520, and N5531) formed the fighter cover for Malta in 1940.
Actually, six aircraft were operational, though not always at the same time, while others were used for spare parts.
The names “Faith”, “Hope”, and “Charity” (N5519, N5520, and N5531) were only applied to the aircraft many months later, by a Maltese newspaper.
Mussolini’s air force—the Regia Aeronautica—launched its first assaults on the Maltese islands on June 11, 1940.
The harbour of Valletta received special attention. Unfortunately for the Maltese people and the small British garrison, nothing seemed available to counter the constant Italian air attacks. What planes were available had been relegated to the defense of Great Britain, or to Egypt.
Scrounging around, however, Air Commodore Foster Maynard discovered a number of packing crates that had been left behind by a visiting aircraft carrier earlier in the war. Inside, disassembled, were some Gloster Gladiator biplanes.
With a design dating all the way back to 1934, this single-seater fighter was by 1940 already obsolete.
With a maximum speed of only 257mph, the plane was much slower than the monoplane fighters that dominated most air combat in Europe. Still, the Gladiator was a durable aircraft, and it was maneuverable while also being easy to fly.
Maynard’s mechanics eventually were able to assemble six of the Gladiators, but this only allowed them to put three aircraft in the air at any one time, with the other three being used as backups and for spare parts.
Still, the British were desperate to be able to put anything into the air against the Italians—not just to interfere with their bombing raids, but to prove to the people of Malta that somebody was fighting to defend them against enemy bombs.
Over the 10 days from June 11-21, 1940, these three Gladiators (really six aircraft used interchangeably) and their dedicated volunteer pilots formed Malta’s only defense against enemy bombing raids. Later in June a few Hurricane fighters bolstered the island’s defense; but still the old Gladiators had to take to the air.
“You would take off in a Gladiator with some of the few Hurricanes we had on the island and head up towards the Italians,” Flight Lieutenant James Pickering remembered many years later. “Sometimes there would be a hundred plus—clouds of bombers and fighters swarming above. And then, in a moment, you would be on your own—everything else had overtaken you.”
Incredibly, the Gladiators managed to shoot down several Italian aircraft against the loss of only one British plane shot down at the end of July.
The intrepid British pilots managed to disrupt the Italian raiders, forcing them to emphasize self-protection rather than accuracy, and sometimes to drop their bombs off-target.
The Gladiators’ most important role, however, was in bolstering the confidence of the people of Malta and their small, ragged crew of British defenders.
They would need that confidence in the years ahead, as the German Luftwaffe joined in the bombing to the point that by 1942 Valletta became the single most heavily bombed place on earth. In April of that year, King George VI awarded the George Cross to the entire island “to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history.”
Source of info: Forgotten Fights: Malta’s Faith, Hope, and Charity, 1940