On May 9, 1940, the destroyer HMS Kelly, captained by Lord Louis Mountbatten, was torpedoed by German motor-torpedo boat S31 off the Dutch coast (see my article in The Sunday Times, May 27).
The bomb went right through the deck and exploded in the Kelly's vitals, blowing half her bottom out and raising a blast of smoke and flame, pieces of steel and human bodies
- Alfred Conti Borda
Kelly was then repaired at the Tyne, and Mountbatten assembled a new crew comprising former survivors of the torpedoing. These included two Maltese, Petty Officer Joe Micallef and Leading Steward Domenico Aquilina.
In January 1941, Kelly joined the destroyers Kipling, Kashmir and Jersey at Plymouth on the Channel patrol. When Greece fell and the Germans tightened their grip on the Mediterranean, the Fifth Flotilla was ordered to Malta, so Kelly sailed from Plymouth in April 1941. Although the narrow waist of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia had been almost closed to British ships by the Luftwaffe, Kelly's flotilla safely reached Malta.
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