At the point when we were airborne, the flak had already opened up and only then I realises how late the air raid warning was given.
Four SM79 Sparviero twin-engine bombers were already flying over Valletta. There was no way we could have catched them if Valletta
would have been their target. Luckily, they were after an convoy, just north of Valletta.
As we were closing in on them, our flak scored direct hit to the rightmost Sparviero, which started to spin violently and few seconds
later crashed to the harbour area, no parachutes were spotted, poor bastards.
Slowly, we made our way to the firing distance and I gave the order over radio to attack freely. It seemed that they didnt see us at
first as I was allowed to close in from behind without any trouble. I sprayed a long burst to the leftmost bomber, hitting it on it's
right wing which started to leak fuel all over my canopy, I climbed, rolled to my right and dived to the #2 bomber. The crew on this
bomber was awake and started to pepper me with it's reargun, fortunately not hitting me and I sent away a string of bullets to it's
right wing, which caught on fire.
As I climbed away, I saw my mates pepper the lead bomber, with no significant results. I rolled my plane over to it's back and waited
for the last diving Gladiator to clear away from the leader and dived in from straight above, spraying the fuselage and cockpit.
The Sparviero banked slightly to it's left side and crashed to the sea.
Meanwhile, my wingman had scored hits to the #2 bomber, which was forced to ditch to the sea. One more to go and we're done here. The remaining
Sparviero had almost reached the convoy and was now flying at 200-250 meters, preparing to attack. I pushed my nose down to gather
speed and after under a minute I was on it's tail. I pushed the trigger and the recoild gently shook my plane as the plane infront of
me was filled with sparks as the bullets struck it. The Sparviero started to roll over, when suddenly I saw a flashing light and my
plane became sluggish to control - I was hit.
The last bomber crashed to the sea below me and as I was about to radio the RTB order, my engine went dead. Without any warning, it just
died. Must have been the last burst from that bomber. Yet again, I was forced to bail out.
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