While costly for the Allies, it was a strategic victory; the arrival of Ohio justified the decision to hazard so many warships; its cargo of aviation fuel revitalised the Maltese air offensive against Axis shipping.

The Allies waged the Western Desert Campaign (1940–43) in North Africa, against the Axis forces of Italy aided by Germany, which sent the Deutsches Afrika Korps and substantial Luftwaffe detachments to the Mediterranean in late 1940.

In August a mass slaughter of livestock began on the island to reduce the need for fodder imports and to convert grazing land for crop growing; the meat being supplied to the public through Victory Kitchens.

[11] Admiralty planning for Operation Pedestal began in late July 1942, under the direction of Vice-Admiral Neville Syfret, Rear Admirals Lumley Lyster and Harold Burrough and the Naval Staff.

Reinforcements were sent temporarily from Egypt, raising the maximum number of operational aircraft to a hundred Spitfires, thirty-six Beaufighters, thirty Beauforts, three Wellingtons, two Liberators, two Baltimores and three FAA Albacores and Swordfish.

The operation took place between the Azores and Gibraltar from 6–9 August and included exercises with the merchant ships in anti-aircraft gunnery, emergency turns and in changing cruising formations, communicating with signal flags and short range wireless telegraphy (W/T).

The ships were to be disguised with Italian deck markings and sortie from Malta, to 30 nmi (56 km; 35 mi) to the south of Lampedusa, then sail past Kelibia on Cap Bon, keeping close to the Tunisian coast as far as the Galita Channel and from there make for Gibraltar.

[24] The Regia Marina had four battleships, three heavy and ten light cruisers, twenty-one destroyers, twenty-eight torpedo boats and sixty-four submarines but most of the capital ships were non-operational for lack of fuel and air cover.

Reports from the Abwehr on 5 August convinced Kesselring that the Allies were preparing a big operation to supply Malta from the west, in conjunction with a simultaneous attack on Mersa Matruh in Egypt.

During the morning Kesselring reported that the Luftwaffe was fully committed to bomber escort sorties, could not provide air cover for Italian ships and suggested laying mines but the Regia Marina had already laid one.

By the afternoon of 10 August, Kesselring and Supermarina were aware that a convoy of forty to fifty ships, including possibly two carriers and nineteen freighters, was in the western Mediterranean, sailing on an easterly course at a speed of 13 to 14 kn (24 to 26 km/h; 15 to 16 mph).

The RAF at the Malta Operations Room sent orders in plain language to a Wellington bomber that dropped flares and sent messages in clear, supposedly guiding a fictitious B-24 Liberator force, to bluff the Italian ships away from the convoy.

Defensive measures were also taken in the Benghazi–Tripoli area of Libya, where a squadron of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and the long-range bombers based at Derna were alerted to move to Benghazi or Tripoli, supported by Ju 52 transport aircraft.

The Italian cruisers and destroyers rendezvoused 60 nmi (69 mi; 110 km) north of Ustica off Palermo at the west end of Sicily, some of the ships being short of fuel and then moved south in two squadrons, preceded by the torpedo-boats Climene and Centauro.

On Malta, Park was not disturbed until the convoy and escort losses of the day, which depleted Force X; five Wellington bombers were sent to find the Italian cruisers and 15 Beaufort torpedo-bombers and fifteen Beaufighters stood by.

The Axis air forces had flown 180–220 escorted bomber sorties during the day and the Germans claimed that they had damaged an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, a destroyer and a large merchant ship.

Rodney was having boiler trouble which slowed Force Z to 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph) but because of the number of aircraft involved in the Axis attacks, Syfret thought that there could be no more before dark and that the danger at the Skerki Bank would come from after dawn.

About forty minutes after the turn a Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft reported the new course; Pedestal was about 250 nmi (290 mi; 460 km) from Malta with no local air cover, because of the four Fulmars left for the convoy, one had been shot down and one damaged by Bf 109s.

Ashanti and HMS Penn laid a smokescreen to cover the light western horizon, the sun having set at 20:10 but the reduced anti-aircraft firepower of the convoy and escorts failed to prevent the attack.

[72][73][l] Between 03:15 and 04:30 about 15 nmi (17 mi; 28 km) off Kelibia, the torpedo boats hit and sank Wairangi, Almeria Lykes (US), Santa Elisa (US) and Glenorchy, as they took a short cut to catch up with the convoy.

Dawn brought an end to the torpedo boat attacks and at 07:30, Burrough sent Eskimo and Somali back to help Manchester but they arrived too late, took on survivors who had not reached the shore and made for Gibraltar.

[73][69] An attack by the Italian cruisers appeared imminent, after air reconnaissance had sighted them the previous evening, heading south about 80 nmi (150 km; 92 mi) from the west end of Sicily, on course to reach the convoy at dawn.

Bolzano was struck amidships, six engine rooms and a magazine flooded and a fire started, the commander of the 11th Destroyer Flotilla being ordered to tow the ship and run it aground on Panarea.

[49] German aircraft had spotted the movements and early on 12 August, Kesselring informed Fliegerkorps X that four merchant vessels, six cruisers and an unknown number of destroyers were at 33° 40' N, 28° 34' E, sailing north-east at 12 kn (14 mph; 22 km/h).

During the day, the RAF attacked Maritsa airfield on Rhodes and a British submarine landed Commandos on the east coast of Sicily (a False Nose Job) at Simeto south of Catania, to sabotage electricity pylons.

Supermarina reached the same conclusion and Generale Giuseppe Santoro, deputy chief of staff of the Regia Aeronautica, wrote that the British had achieved a strategic success by bringing Malta back into action "in the final phase of the struggle in Egypt".

The Allies could not risk such losses again and another large convoy to Malta was not attempted until November 1942, when the re-capture of airfields in Egypt and Libya after the Second Battle of El Alamein made it much easier to provide land-based air cover.

Chariot manned torpedoes began to operate from Malta that month and from late December to January 1943, four convoys, Quadrangle A, B, C and D, with pairs of merchantmen in each, delivered 200,000 long tons (200,000 t) of stores without loss; empty ships were retrieved from the island.

Syfret was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for his "bravery and dauntless resolution in fighting an important convoy through to Malta in the face of relentless attacks by day and night from enemy submarines, aircraft, and surface forces".

[106] The master of the tanker Ohio, Dudley Mason, was awarded the George Cross for showing "skill and courage of the highest order and it was due to his determination that, in spite of the most persistent enemy opposition, the vessel, with her valuable cargo, eventually reached Malta and was safely berthed".