The Admiralty is furious, the HMS Southhampton is now another victim of this deadly Mediterranean trap and once again, the English wake up to another horrible tragedy at sea. Escorting Destroyers picked hundreds of Sailors from the Sea covered in oil after a JU88 delivered its payload and crashed into the sea. The fire that raged forced the men to abandon ship.
But all is not lost. RAF High Command has determined that 22 JU88s have been shot down along with 13 of the new dangerous Macchi 202's. 54 109's were shot down in yesterdays fighting. The RAF still suffered some fairly heavy losses though 57 Hurricane Mk Is were lost to enemy fighters or bombers.
Extremely high Luftwaffe Bomber losses may spell and end to the campaign. 43 Ju 88s have been lost in two days of fighting. If RAF can hold another day and destroy the Luftwaffe in it's attempts to siege Malta, the Luftwaffe will have no choice but to hold and wait for reinforcements.
Likewise if the Luftwaffe can breakthrough and shut down the RAF airfields. It could force the RAF to hunker down and wait for another convoy and with no airfields that could be a very long wait.
The fate of Malta may hang in the balance.
FRAME 2 SCORES:
ALLIED: 620 Points
AXIS: 645 Points
Orders to follow shortly for:
Allied: VMF-101 Nightmares
Axis: Fighters Inc