Operation Pedestal — The Convoy That Saved Malta

Saturday Night Theatre • BBC Radio • 31 August 1974 • 1 hr 28 min

In August 1942, Malta was running out of food, fuel, ammunition—and time.

Britain’s answer was Operation Pedestal: a desperate attempt to force a heavily defended convoy through the Mediterranean while German and Italian aircraft, submarines and warships tried to destroy it.

This remarkable Saturday Night Theatre production tells the story from inside the convoy, among the Merchant Navy sailors and Royal Navy men who knew that getting through could mean the difference between Malta surviving or falling.

And there is something that makes this drama especially powerful.

Writer Frederick Treves was there.

As a young Merchant Navy cadet, Treves took part in the real Operation Pedestal. His own ship was bombed, and many of the men aboard were killed. Decades later, he transformed those memories into this extraordinary radio drama.

It is not simply a war story.

It is a survivor remembering the men who sailed with him.

Turn down the lights, settle in, and return with us to August 1942—when a battered convoy fought its way toward Malta.

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