Lascaris War Rooms & Gun Salute

On Wednesday 10 May Nicky applied a coat of varnish to the areas she is touching up and also got an enormous load of washing done. That took all morning and so it wasn’t until after lunch that we took the ferry across to Valletta to visit the Lascaris War Rooms .

Located 40m under the Saluting Battery, the Lascaris War Rooms were one of Malta’s best kept secrets in Word War 2.

RAF Fighter Control Room with the fighter readiness tote board above   

This ultra-secret complex housed an operations room for each of the 3 services including the vital RAF Fighter Control Room from where the air defence of the island was conducted.

Supporting it was a Filter Room where all of the radar traffic information was channelled and checked, as well as an Anti-aircraft Gun Operations Room from where artillery fire was coordinated and deconflicted from friendly fighter traffic.

Air Vice Marshal Keith Parks was crucial to the success of the air defence of Malta. He completely re-organised the approach, using his experience and techniques from the Battle of Britain. Rather than waiting for the enemy aircraft to approach the island, Parks used the information available to the operations room to identify enemy attacks as soon as the aircraft got airborne from Sicily. He could then launch friendly aircraft early so that they could intercept the enemy attack much further out, crucially, before they were able to bomb the island. The intercept was controlled from the air operations room by fighter controllers. [Ed: to be fair to Parkes’ predecessors, in the early stages of the siege of Malta there were so few aircraft and pilots on the island that the commanders felt that they could not risk losing them to ditching in the sea, hence the order to remain over the island.]

Radar was very crude and so the staff had to be clever and fuse all of the information that they had to try to gain a proper picture of the attacks. The 3 radar sites gave a bearing for contacts and the table above was used to plot these bearings and, where the 3 bearings intercepted, show the location of the attacking aircraft. There was also a very effective team of observers reporting enemy aircraft sightings and bomb drops. The information passage was so fast that the ops room team routinely knew that bombs were being dropped whilst they were still falling towards their targets.

This large map in the Combined Operations Room was opposite the open commanders’ offices (below) so that they could monitor progress of operations   

In July 1943, the War Rooms were used by General Eisenhower and his Supreme Commanders Admiral Cunningham, Field Marshal Montgomery and Air Marshal Tedder as their advanced Allied Headquarters for Operation HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily.

Following the end of the war, the complex became the Mediterranean Fleet HQ. In 1967, it was taken over by NATO to be used as a strategic Communication Centre for the interception of Soviet submarines in the Med. It remained in that role for the next ten years when it was finally closed down.  The War Rooms played an active part in the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956 and went into full alert for a number of days during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when a Soviet missile strike against Malta was expected.

Since 2009, the Lascaris War Rooms have been in the hands of the Malta Heritage Trust. Restoration of the complex is still very much ongoing.

Malta War Memorial   

Commonwealth Air Forces Memorial   

After visiting the War Rooms, we had a little time before our next event, so we walked out beyond the main walls of Valletta to the war memorials.

The War Memorial was built in 1938 to commemorate the dead of World War I but in 1949 was rededicated in memory of those killed in both World Wars. The eternal flames were added in 2010. Interestingly, it is located on the site that the Order of St John used for public executions!

Nearby is the Commonwealth Air Forces Memorial, which was unveiled by the Queen on 3 May 1954. It commemorates almost 2300 airmen who lost their lives during World War II serving with the Commonwealth Air Forces but who have no known grave. The airmen flew from bases in Austria, Italy, Sicily, islands in the Adriatic, Malta, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, West Africa, Yugoslavia and Gibraltar but because of its pivotal contribution to the air war in the Mediterranean, Malta was the chosen location for the memorial.

Maintaining a centuries long tradition, a canon on the Saluting Battery is fired every day at 1200 and 1600. In the past this provided a necessary city-wide time signal (noonday gun) and the guns at sunrise and sunset (now just at 1600) indicated the hour at which the town gates were to be opened and closed. Included in our War Rooms ticket was access to the Saluting Battery for the 1600hrs firing. Staff talked us through the history of the Saluting Battery and showed us the breach loading canon used today. Whilst we waited we took the opportunity to look at the interesting displays about the canon and their ammunition…

… before taking our place, with just a few others, right behind the guns being used. Above us the Upper Barrakka Garden balcony was crammed with spectators and so we very much felt that we were getting VIP treatment being so close.

1600hrs exactly   

The gun was loaded with a powder charge and then, at exactly 1600, fired. We can confirm that standing so close, it was very loud!

The Saluting Battery provides a great view across the harbour and down towards the very elaborate Victoria Gate. We practically had the place to ourselves and so took a few moments to enjoy the view before returning to the ferry back to Dockyard Creek.

Valletta, Malta