After the air raid, the huge Valletta airport was almost completely filled with pungent gunsmoke, some of the more than 200 fighters deployed by the Italian army here have been burned to a pile of scrap metal, some are lying in the nest with missing arms and legs, and only thirty or forty are still able to take to the air to fight, including two C2 in a semi-mothballed state Ten years ago, their performance was relatively advanced, but time has passed, new "aircraft" have emerged one after another, and the main fighters in service equipped by the European and American powers have thrown them out of several streets. Despite this, the pilots of the Italian Air Force did not hesitate to board these "big noses" (the most striking feature of the C2 is the round fairing that does not match the lines of the fuselage, so it is nicknamed "big noses"), half of them are on guard over the airport, and the rest are on standby on the runway.

Even if the pilots of the Italian Air Force had the courage to fight to the death against their opponents, the incompetence of the generals gave them no chance of creating a miracle. Because of the fear that the new United Kingdom Navy would bomb the ships and military installations stationed in the Valletta military port, General Siciletti, the commander-in-chief of the Italian army in Malta, not only did not strengthen the defense force of Valletta airport, but instead transferred a group of mobile air defense forces from the airport, and the Germans installed self-propelled air defense combat vehicles twenty years ago. In addition, a considerable number of stationary anti-aircraft guns were replaced with such cheap wheeled anti-aircraft combat vehicles, which ostensibly increased the overall utilization rate of anti-aircraft weapons and enriched tactical options, but in fact weakened the conventional air defense forces of airfields and ports.

Only half an hour later, two R-44T carrier-based fighters of the new United Kingdom Navy approached the island of Malta from the east, preparing to conduct combat reconnaissance of Italian ports, airfields, and transportation hubs. Upon receiving the report, General Siciletti, who was in command in Valletta, immediately ordered the remaining fighter units to meet them. Two C2s, three C22s, three C25s and two G55s went in batches. Although the Italians had a 2-to-2 numerical advantage in this large-scale aerial battle and had the advantage of being at home, they were once again severely humiliated by their opponents. In the air battle, which lasted less than two minutes, the Italians lost 9 fighters, another 4 were damaged, and many fighters "did not encounter" enemy aircraft, and their results were only to shoot down the aircraft and damage 3 aircraft. After this battle, General Siciletti seemed to realize at once that his air force was like a chasm between his air force and his opponent, and in order to avoid the depletion of the remaining strength of the air force stationed on the island, he then ordered all the surviving fighters to be transferred to the Palermo military airfield in Sicily.

The Italian insignia soon flew away from the island of Malta, and the entire Maltese air defense entered a "vacuum" that lasted 38 hours. It was not until noon the next day that the Italian General Staff decided to send a new fighter unit to Valletta airfield, but due to delays in the repair of runway facilities, the arrival of the first fighters was not until the early morning of the third day......

As dusk approached, the carrier-based aircraft groups taking off from the "Fenian", "St. Patrick" and "Togist" launched a second round of heavy air raids on Malta. Contrary to General Ciciletti's judgment, instead of focusing their attacks on the port of Valletta, they continued to bomb the radar stations and aviation facilities of the Italian army, and the Valletta airport alone was under the heavy care of more than 30 carrier-based aircraft. Without the interference of Italian fighter jets, and in the face of only a small amount of ground anti-aircraft fire, the pilots of the new United Kingdom Navy were able to blow up the airport's modern control tower costing tens of millions of dollars into a pile of rubble, destroying the well-equipped ground hangars, even the more concealed underground hangars, and even destroying an oil depot located under the rock mass!

Before the new United Kingdom and Austria-Hungary jointly launched a war against Italy, three modern combat aircraft carriers had gathered in the Mediterranean, and such a grand occasion certainly aroused the vigilance of the Italian Navy, but their operational deployment came too late and the progress was too slow, and more than ten years of peace had made the officers and men at the grassroots level neglect their combat readiness, so that in just one day, they were beaten by their opponents in the mouth of the Otranto Strait and Malta in succession, and lost two valuable aircraft carriers and a large number of naval and air force fighters. You must know that the total number of carrier-based aircraft put into the battlefield by the new United Kingdom Navy on that day was only 264!

In the face of such a defeat, the generals of the General Staff of the Italian army were incredulous, and the cabinet members of the Italian government were even more glasses shattered. Probably feeling that the two defeats had come too suddenly and too dismal, they unanimously decided to report to the king the next morning, and whether their honour and future could be saved depended on the next night's war. As a result, high hopes were placed on the light ship units of the Navy deployed in Malta and Sicily.

At sunset, several groups of torpedo boats, led by several destroyers, sailed out of Malta's ports of Valletta, Sicily's ports of Catania and Sicily's ports of Syracuse. They formed a magnificent marching column on the turquoise sea, galloping away with a loud roar and rolling waves, like knights......

As night fell, about 5 kilometres southeast of Malta, three combat aircraft carriers of the New United Kingdom Navy were safely moving westward under the cover of six combat vessels. The Italian General Staff and the Italian Naval Command had very different views on the whereabouts of this fleet, the former believing that it would continue to stay in the Eastern Mediterranean, to meet the main fleet of Austria-Hungary to break through the Italian blockade in the Strait of Otranto, and then join forces to sweep the important ports of southern Italy, cut off the main sea routes of Italy, destabilize Italy, and even induce a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Italian crown, the latter insisted that it was in no hurry to join the main fleet of Austria-Hungary, Nor will it remain for long periods of time in the supply-starved Eastern Mediterranean, and its most likely base will be Spanish ports, although Spain is likely to choose neutrality, given the new United Kingdom-Austro-Hungarian-Spanish economic triangle, it is likely that the Spanish government will allow it to enter the port for a short time to resupply or to receive supplies by sea outside the port.

According to the inference of the Italian General Staff, the new British naval fleet should return to the Strait of Otranto, and even launch a night attack on Taranto, although the Italian naval command sent torpedo boat groups to the Malta Strait and the Straits to set up ambushes and intercept them despite the intervention of the General Staff, but it was unable to send the main fleet, which had no specific combat mission for the time being, to respond, and thus missed an opportunity that could change the course of the war.

At about 2 o'clock, the modernized and modified Danu-class heavy cruiser "Farr" and the destroyer "Balor" quietly sailed to the southeast waters of Valletta Harbor. This powerful battleship with a full load displacement of more than 20,000 tons faces Malta House on the starboard side, two 6x diameter 23 mm guns pointed obliquely at the moon, and the sharp bow cut a deep water mark in the calm sea. With the captain's order, the battleship let out the rumbling sound of cannon resounding across the sea, although the target was 29 kilometers away, only a few kilometers closer than the effective range of the main gun, thanks to the mature use of radar positioning technology, the long-range shelling of the "Farr" showed a surprising accuracy to the opponent, several rounds of artillery fire, Valletta city was already in flames.

While the "Farr" was feinting to lure the enemy with a hundred steps through the Yang, the New United Kingdom Navy's Mediterranean Task Force Combat Fleet with "Fenian," "St. Patrick," and "Togaster" as the core gathered its formation and bypassed the island of Malta and the relatively narrow Straits of Malta from the west under the cover of night. After nearly three hours of high sailing, it sailed into the strait after midnight.

It is located in the strait between the Great 6 of North Africa and Sicily, at its narrowest point of 48 kilometers. In the era when aviation and radar technology were quite mature, it was not easy for a fleet to sail quietly through such a strait, but the radar and aviation facilities of the Italian army in Malta had completely lost their capacity, and although the military facilities on the Sicilian side had suffered minor losses, the Italian airfields in Palermo and Catania were far away from the Strait of Malta, which was not conducive to the implementation of an air blockade of the strait, and the only radar station on the west coast of Sicily was subjected to electronic interference from the other side. If it weren't for the Italian Navy destroyer "Favarella", equipped with an old-fashioned shipborne radar, which detected the enemy fleet passing through the strait due east and west, the Italian army would probably have received another resounding slap in the face!

At 2:25 a.m., 245 kilometers northwest of the port of Valletta in Malta Province and 3 kilometers southwest of the port of Trapani in Sicily, four large Xingchen-class torpedo boats belonging to the 7th Torpedo Boat Detachment of the Royal Italian Navy and a Type 933 high torpedo boat belonging to the 4th High Torpedo Boat Detachment took the lead in attacking the enemy fleet in the dark. Three years ago, it would have been a thrilling night battle at sea, in which the Italians could swing their torpedo boats with high maneuverability and concealment, and possibly even a very low cost and a great victory, as the German torpedo boats that had secretly supported Turkey during the Turkish War had done. Three years can make a toddler grow into an experienced scholar, but also allow the budding technology to evolve into mature and reliable equipment, Italian torpedo boats in the strait face not only a group of sharp-toothed opponents, even the lowest-level submarine hunters are equipped with alert and fire control radars, not to mention destroyers and light cruisers that play the role of saber escorts, all shipborne radars are undisturbed to monitor Italian torpedo boats approaching from a distance, All of the ship's weapons were aimed at their respective targets under the guidance of precisely located fire control radars, and in any case, it was not a miracle night that awaited the Italians......