Secret tunnels, a pigeon war hero, a miraculous bomb, and an invasion bigger than D-Day. Small Malta is big on riveting stories from World War II that expanded my knowledge about the island nation’s key role in that conflict.
When you occupy a strategic location, guarding who passes through the eastern Mediterranean Sea, you’ve gotta expect hordes of people to seek control. Surely that’s a lesson Malta has learned over the centuries. Invaders (like the Knights of Malta and Ottomans) always came by ship until World War II, when the Germans and Italians aerial-bombed the bejesus out of Malta.
I must confess my previously complete ignorance about Malta’s role in World War II. I’d never even heard of Operation Husky until we visited this intriguing country. We explored the mazes of tunnels still burrowing under Maltese cities – air raid shelters and the Allied war headquarters – as well as a church protected by the Virgin Mary from a bomb. And I wondered how I would have fared during those harrowing war years, especially during the relentless bombings.
Lascaris War Rooms

The movie “Malta Story” takes place partly in the formerly top-secret Lascaris War Rooms.
We stopped first at the Lascaris War Rooms – famous for being the headquarters of Operation Husky, the successful 1943 invasion of Sicily that sped up the fall of fascism in Italy. Operation Husky was even bigger – in terms of the number of ships, aircraft and ground troops – than the Normandy D-Day invasion that happened a year later.
From Malta’s bright sunshine, we descended into tunnels and chambers lit by flickery fluorescents, with moisture bubbling the wall paint. The Lascaris War Rooms reminded me of London’s Churchill War Rooms and the Diefenbunker, near Ottawa in Canada. Cramped and crowded, with hundreds of people working there, the Lascaris War Rooms would have been humid and smelly, like crawling through intestines. Today, they’re clean, but still humid.
After the British ousted Napoleon’s boys from Malta in 1800, it became a British colony (officially after 1813, but in practice since 1800) until it won independence in 1964. So, when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Malta waded into the conflict too.

The huge map of Sicily, with small Malta to the south, faced the commanders (photo below) plotting the Operation Husky invasion.

Poor Malta became the embattled sandwich filling between Europe and North Africa. Britain defended it for several reasons: being just south of Sicily, Malta could bedevil enemy ships carrying war supplies to Italian-held Libya; Malta’s dockyards serviced and refueled ships headed for the Suez Canal; and losing Malta would have cut communications between Gibraltar and Alexandria in half.
Italy and Germany commenced non-stop bombing raids (3,000 raids over two years – nearly four a day) and torpedoing ships, trying to starve Malta (literally and figuratively) into submission.
“By 1942, Malta had become the most bombed place on earth,” said an info panel.
Secretly huddled 40 metres underground, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the U.S.A. had finally joined the party after Pearl Harbor) and British General Sir Harold Alexander plotted Operation Husky. On the night of July 9-to-10, 1943, British, American and Canadian troops successfully invaded Sicily by boat and plane. This opened another fighting front for Germany and Italy, dividing their resources. After six weeks of battles on land, Italy exited from the war, stage right.

Map rooms, where the locations of all ships and planes were plotted, were central to the Allies’ headquarters.
The War Rooms were manned by servicemen and womanned by civilian women around the clock, all sworn to secrecy. There were commanders, map room officers, plotters, intelligence staff, typists, cypherines, telephonists, shorthand note takers, orderlies and guards.
It could sound glamorous, like some exciting spy movie, except it was not.
Fold-down bunk beds along the corridors allowed people to get in a quick snooze between shifts. The exhibits described relentless working hours, crowded conditions, terrible food and not enough of it, poor water and air, and continuous air raids. Many were depressed and some committed suicide.
However, there were some uplifting stories – like Winkie the pigeon.

People working long shifts keeping track of ships and planes on the map table could grab a quick nap on fold-down bunk beds in the halls. You’d have to be pretty exhausted to find comfort on those tarp-like beds.
Long before computers, wartime communications included carrier pigeons. They carried home SOS messages if a radio was shot up. A pigeon named Winkie won the Dicken Medal in 1943 for helping rescue an aircrew. Like a Victoria Cross for animals, the bronze Dicken Medal honoured animals who helped in World War II.
We learned a lot about communications and keeping track of where ships and planes were. As we wandered through the operations rooms, offices, communication stations, staff dorms, and crypto rooms, we read as many of the information panels as we could. I love a good info panel, but even I was overwhelmed by the extensive detail. True World War II buffs would revel in it.
Several posters advertised the 1953 movie “Malta Story” starring Alec Guinness. This wartime drama (we watched it later on YouTube) is set during the bombings that preceded Operation Husky. The love story between a British pilot and a Maltese woman working in the war rooms includes some romantic scenes of them walking amongst the prehistoric temples Mnajdra and Hagar Qim, which we visited. The film includes historic archive footage of the aerial attacks.

The Lascaris War Rooms, deep under the Upper Barrakka Gardens in Malta’s capital city of Valletta, are a rabbit warren of tunnels and chambers.
We also later watched a related movie on Netflix called “Operation Mincemeat.” Starring Colin Firth, the 2021 film chronicles a true British operation that used fake documents on a dead body to convince the Nazis that the Allies were planning to invade Greece, not Sicily, thus diverting enemy attention. The ruse worked, allowing Operation Husky to succeed.
Named after Grandmaster Lascaris of the Knights of Malta, the War Rooms continued to be used during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Cold War, when British and NATO forces watched Soviet navy movements in the Mediterranean.
The complex finally closed in 1977. During the 1980s, it underwent renovations and reopened briefly as a museum. After even more extensive renovations, sections reopened again in 2012 and still more opened in 2018.
Mosta Dome: the Miracle of the Bomb

The Mosta Dome church, aka the Rotunda of Mosta, was modeled on Rome’s Pantheon.
The Mosta Dome is a stunning church in the town of Mosta. The beautiful dome – amongst the largest unsupported domes in the world – is worth visiting just to gape at its splendour. We climbed up spiral stairs and looked down into the church, then admired paintings in the eight chapels.
But the other visitor draw is a bomb, now located in the sacristy, and the Miracle of the Bomb story.

Winding steps (below) led up to a catwalk around the dome’s base. We stood gazing upwards at the beautiful dome, pierced by a bomb that miraculously did not explode.

On April 9, 1942, at 4:40 p.m., a German bomb pierced the Mosta Dome, smacked Jesus on the nose (in a painting of him teaching the Apostles), then hit the floor and rolled, coming to rest near the pulpit… all without exploding! A miracle! None of the 300 people in the church at the time was injured, even from falling debris. Truly a miracle! Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, had protected the church and its parishioners.
Royal Engineers defused the bomb with extra care lest it contain a delayed-action fuse but, fortunately, it was a regular old general-purpose bomb with an impact fuse. They dumped the bomb in the sea.
We trooped through to the sacristy to examine the replica bomb on display, as well as a sculpture behind it that showed Mary protecting the church.

The bomb on display is a replica, the original having been dumped into the sea by the disposal squad. The sculpture behind it shows Our Lady protecting the church.

A photo (left) from the Mosta Archives shows the hole left by the bomb. In Bill’s photo (right) note the plain diamonds at about 8 o’clock. We think that’s where the hole was repaired, and purposely left plain, but I couldn’t confirm that.
We listened to the excellent audioguide while touring the church, but the only reason given for the bomb’s failure to detonate was Mary’s intervention. However, a Google search included a more plausible theory (to my mind) that Czech workers, forced by the Nazis to assemble bombs, may have sabotaged the bomb by filling it with sand instead of explosives.
Every year on April 9 at 4:40 p.m., the church bells toll and people sing songs of thanksgiving to God (not Mary?) for sparing the church from heavy damage or collapse.
Mosta Dome air raid shelter

Steep, narrow steps led down into the air raid shelter below the plaza in front of the Mosta Dome.
The day after Italy’s Mussolini followed Hitler to war, the first bombs dropped on Malta. And they kept on coming.
After seeing the Mosta Dome, we went down steep steps under the church’s entry plaza to explore its World War II air raid shelter. It was just seven metres underground – not deep at all compared with the Lascaris War Rooms – but it was dug quickly by hand by men desperate to create safety as bombs fell around them.
Indeed, the Maltese people dug air raid shelters everywhere – many public and some private shelters under homes. In Mosta alone, 37 public shelters for 6,667 people were dug from the limestone.

German Luftwaffe pilots wrote “iron greetings to Malta” on a bomb.
As we made our way along the main tunnel and peered into side chambers, I found it difficult to envision how awful it must have been to take shelter in these cramped quarters. At the time of the Miracle Bomb, the Germans and Italians were bombing Malta up to three times a day. Imagine gathering your children and racing, holding their hands, to the shelter when you heard enemy planes approaching. No wonder there were beds, metal washstands, and crosses on the wall in some rooms – people spent a lot of time underground in those war years.
Along the tunnels, we examined display cases filled with the tools people had used to dig the tunnels – pickaxes, shovels, hammers and metal rods. Nary a pneumatic drill in sight. Photos along the walls showed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill amongst the rubble of Valletta in 1943, the hole in the Mosta Dome, and German pilots gathered around a bomb on which they’d written “iron greetings to Malta.” Nice.
Wignacourt Museum air raid shelter

The Wignacourt air raid shelter, lit now by electricity, would have been even dimmer when lit with lanterns during the war. One family’s room was personalized with a tile floor.
In the town of Rabat, the Wignacourt Museum sits atop an interesting underground complex that includes the cave where St. Paul holed up while shipwrecked on Malta in the year 60 AD, Roman catacombs, and the tunnels and rooms of an air raid shelter.
When people in Rabat were looking for places to protect them from aerial bombings, they used, as a starting point, an existing water cistern that had been dug for the Knights of Malta. They expanded the tunnels from there, using the displayed pick axes, helmets and lanterns.
While the government paid for the tunnels to be dug, families paid for their own rooms to be dug. We poked our heads into some of the 50 chambers, many of them personalized with homey touches such as wooden doors and painted walls. One had a pretty ceramic tile floor. Lanterns, oil lamps and candles provided light. Electricity was not widespread on Malta, especially during the lean war years. Lanterns were set into niches along the corridors.
The shelter saved thousands of people during the intense bombings. Despite the horrors, they hung on. In 1942, all the Maltese people were awarded the George Cross (the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross) for their heroic resistance.
Red Tower

On a windy day at the Red Tower, we learned how this Knights-of-Malta tower had also been used during World War II.
Built by the Knights of Malta to watch for invaders, the Red Tower also served as a watchtower during World War II. A Maltese battalion used it as company headquarters as they scanned the north end of Malta for signs of an enemy invasion.
Volunteer reserve airmen also used the roof as an observation post. They reported all aircraft approaching the island to fighter control headquarters in the Lascaris War Rooms, stating whether they were friendly or hostile.
When I stood atop the Red Tower, the guns (albeit cannons) were still pointing towards Sicily. I admired the view, wide and far-ranging. To the west were a pillbox built in 1940 and a gun post.
Although the Red Tower was never directly bombed, attacking Messerschmitt 109s strafed the tower’s facade in 1942. Other watchtowers built by the Knights were used during World War II as well.
Other World War II places to see

World War II pillboxes rise like meerkats from the Fort St. Elmo walls built by the Knights of Malta.
Wherever you go on Malta, you’ll see passing references to places that were bombed or used during World War II:
- The auberges built to house the Knights of Malta suffered bomb damage.
- The magnificent St. John’s Co-Cathedral was bombed. Fortunately, most of the artwork and holy hardware had been moved to safety beforehand.
- The Royal Opera House received a direct hit but was eventually rebuilt and opened in 2013 to performances.
- During our guided boat tour of the Grand Harbour, we rounded the point on which Fort St. Elmo sits and saw concrete pillboxes perched atop the old stone walls, looking like meerkats scanning for danger. Dozens of other World War II pillboxes are scattered across Malta’s islands. Bombs had obliterated most of the dockyards along the Grand Harbour; we cruised past some that had been rebuilt and still service ships headed for the Suez Canal. Manoel Island’s fort had been a naval base. A submarine net had guarded the narrow entrance to the Grand Harbour.
- During our boat ride to the Blue Grotto, we saw the deserted islet of Filfla, which the British used for target practice until 1971.
- The Ta’ Qali Crafts Village was built into a former World War II military aerodrome. Next door is the Malta Aviation Museum that includes a Spitfire and a Hawker Hurricane.
We spent just two days exploring Valletta but should have spent more. We didn’t have time to see these other places that examine Malta’s wartime experiences:
- National War Museum: Housed in the Old Drill Hall of Fort St. Elmo, the museum’s World War II highlights include the George Cross awarded to the Maltese people, three planes that defended Malta, and a Jeep used by General Eisenhower and President Roosevelt in Malta.
- St. Peter’s Galleries: Near the Lascaris War Rooms are more tunnels that had been intended to replace the cramped Lascaris tunnels but after the success of Operation Husky, the work stopped. They’re preserved as they were when abandoned, with mining carts and rails intact.
- Malta at War Museum: Across the Grand Harbour in Birgu, this museum also illustrates World War II. Included is an air raid shelter equipped with a surgery and birthing room.
Before visiting Malta, I’d thought of it only in association with the Knights. I left with my ignorance bombed; my knowledge about World War II had exploded.
We visited Malta for two weeks in September and October 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.