Page 61 - ABA Salvoes 1999-2024

FILFLA
By JMTF
I have often wondered whether there was any truth in the story which I first heard around thirty years ago concerning 3 Troop in Malta. Can anyone confirm or deny? In essence the story goes that on the Maltese mainland opposite Filfla there was a little beachside bar with a large mirror, and when sitting at the bar it was possible to see Filfla in the mirror. Therefore it was possible, with a headset extension from the vehicle outside, to conduct an NGS shoot onto Filfla from the congenial surroundings of the bar – so long as one remembered to reverse one’s left and right corrections!? I would love to think it was true.
FIFLA Follow Up – by Miles Thomson I am delighted to report that as a result of my little piece in Salvoes about NGS shoots being carried out on to Filfla using the mirror of a bar as an observation device, I have received encouraging responses from Major Peter Higgins, and Capt Bob Lumb. Peter Higgins reports that during his service with 166 and subsequently 148 AO Btys in Malta from ’58 to ’61 the story of shoots using the mirror was in circulation. However he confesses (is that the correct word?!) that during his time the mirror method was not used. He suggests that some of the older hands” from the early ‘50s could provide more information, and even names messrs Corrigan, Dance, and Shallcross as individuals of sufficient gravitas as to perhaps know more
at first hand. He also mentions such evocative locations as the Ghar Lapsi OP, “amongst the scrub and rocks on high ground some half a mile above and inland from the Lapsi Bar which was down at almost sea level.” He even sent me a photocopies of pictures of the mirror in a bar at the Weid I Zurrieq which might, just might, have been used, and a telephoto shot of Filfla from the Ghar Lapsi OP. A little later I received a letter from Bob Lumb which confirmed that the mirror method was actually in use in early ’53. Bob was serving in 266 AO Bty in Trieste, but was redeployed to Malta in order to embark in HMS Newfoundland, but didn’t, if you know what I mean. Later he served in the Leeds Troop of 881 AO Bty RA (TA). Sadly space precludes reproduction of the whole of Bob’s hugely interesting letter, but the key extract goes like this: “ During an exercise with 3 Tp I went with one of their OP parties in order to fire on Filfla. The OP officer, a captain whose name I cannot remember, installed the party in a bar on a small cliff, just for our usual lemonade I thought, but no! The angle was correct for viewing Filfla and he duly carried out bombardments using the large mirror opposite the widow – I was astonished and impressed, but understood he’d done it several times before!” Well, what style – I particularly like “but understood he’d done it several times before.”
Amphibious Bombardment Association | 59