I Passage Perilous; Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xv, [3], 265, [5] pages. List of Tables. List of Maps. Tables. Maps. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Vincent P. O'Hara is an independent historian with a specialty in Second World War naval history. He is the author of eleven books or edited volumes, most recently, Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory (2015), and Clash of Fleets (with Len Heinz, (2017). He has written extensively about naval warfare in the Mediterranean in works including Torch, Struggle for the Middle Sea (2009) In Passage Perilous (2013) and Dark Navy and Black Phoenix (both with Enrico Cernuschi). He was assistant editor of World War II at Sea: an encyclopedia (2012) and has contributed to other encyclopedias published by ABC-CLIO. O'Hara has also published articles in many magazines and journals including Naval War College Review, Naval History, Warship, MHQ, Storia MILITARE, World War II, and others. O'Hara was the Naval Institute Press author of the year for 2015. He represented the United States at 75th Anniversary ceremonies for Operation Torch held in Algiers and Oran, Algeria in November 2017. He has presented papers or spoken at venues including the Institut National d'Etudes Strategiques, Algiers; the Harold C. Deutsch WWII Round Table, Minneapolis; the USS Midway Museum, San Diego; the U.S. Navy Hampton Roads Museum, Norfolk; the U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Association, San Diego; and the Center for Maghreb Studies, Oran, Algeria. O'Hara holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California. By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria. Just two of seventeen merchant ships that set out for Malta reached their destination. In Passage Perilous presents a detailed description of the operations and assesses the actual impact Malta had on the fight to deny supplies to Rommel's army in North Africa. The book's discussion of the battle's operational aspects highlights the complex relationships between air and naval power and the influence of geography on littoral operations.