For his actions defending the convoy, considered one of the most important British strategic victories of the war, he was awarded the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal.

There were acute food shortages, but even more serious was the lack of aviation fuel, needed to sustain the dozens of fighter aircraft defending the island against German Luftwaffe and Italian Regia Aeronautica bombing attacks.

The British conceived a plan to resupply Malta using fourteen merchant ships escorted by a vast armada of Royal Navy warships; four aircraft carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers and thirty-two destroyers.

The Ohio, a 9,263 ton tanker, was built on the River Delaware at Wilmington in the United States for the oil giant Texaco, but had been requisitioned and manned by a British crew.

[6] Malta was critical to the Allied war effort in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, with submarines and aircraft based there responsible for inflicting huge losses on supply convoys from Europe to Rommel's Axis army facing the British in the Western Desert Campaign in Libya and Egypt.

In summer 1942 the Axis forces had advanced far eastwards into Egypt, threatening to reach the Suez Canal and thereby cut Allied communications with India and the Far East.

Commanding an anti-aircraft gun on top of the bridge,[1] the most exposed position on the ship with no cover available[8] he took part in the initially successful defence against three days of heavy attacks while steaming eastwards from the straits of Gibraltar towards Malta.

[5] Seeing that one of the Ohio's anti-aircraft guns could be repaired, another survivor from the Santa Elisa, junior third officer Frederick August Larsen, boarded the ship.

[2] With the Ohio now critically damaged and her deck awash, they inched within range of the protection of British Spitfire and Beaufighter fighters flying from Malta.

[1] Dales was interviewed in connection with the 60th anniversary celebration of Operation Pedestal in 2002, and said that he would always remember the Maltese people's grateful response to his actions on board the Ohio.

[7] At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Mariners Turned the Tide of World War II, Sam Moses, Random House, 2007.