'I Wish I Had Your Wings'

A Spitfire Pilot and Operation Pedestal, Malta 1942

In August 1942, British launched Operation Pedestal in an attempt to deliver supplies to the stricken island of Malta, an Allied base which had been under Axis blockade for months

August 1942, British forces launched Operation Pedestal in an attempt to deliver supplies to the stricken island of Malta, an Allied base that had been under Axis blockade for months. From 9 to 15 August, a convoy of some fifty ships ran the gauntlet of Axis bombers, submarines, E-boats and minefields. Of the original fourteen merchant vessels, only five reached Malta Grand Harbour.

In ‘I Wish I Had Your Wings’, Angus Mansfield relates the experiences of two men involved in Pedestal, Captain David Macfarlane of MV Melbourne Star and his nephew John Mejor, one of the Spitfire pilots who fought to protect the convoy. Told using their log books, letters and papers, and illustrated with images from the family archive, this is the story of one family’s contribution to a relief operation that cost over 400 Allied lives, but has gone down in history as one of the most important British strategic victories of the Second World War.

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