Fortunately for the Allies, Cunningham was recalled to the Mediterranean to command the fleet during Operation Torch. Cunningham had met Eisenhower in Washington that sum­mer, and their mutual admiration led to the admiral's commanding role; Ike's chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, approached Cunningham about the job.

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While primarily a no-nonsense fighting man, Cunningham understood and practiced public diplomacy, particularly when dealing with world leaders, both military and political. He understood men and their motivations, which likely explains his popularity on the many ships he commanded. The admiral might have loved a scrap, as he put it, but not an unnecessary one, and he didn't shoot from the hip, or the lip — except in his diary, which didn't become public until after his death in 1963. He didn't even begin to keep a journal until 1944, but after the war ended, he really cut loose in the diary. On July 23, 1945, during meetings of the Big Three in Berlin, he wrote:

PM said the U.S. did not want the Russians to come in against Japan. PM now most optimistic & placing great faith in the new bomb. He now thinks it a good thing that the Russians should know about & may make them a little more humble. [Clement] Attlee [soon to be PM] has written what appears to be a damned silly letter to the PM saying we ought not oppose a great country like Russia having bases anywhere she wants them. What an ass!! Attended a banquet at PM's house. Mostly a military affair….[Fleet Admiral William] Leahy [FDR's chief of staff] got very bottled & [Admiral] King very mellow, fell on my neck & besought me to call him Ernie!!…RAF band played very nicely & made an interlude to the nonsense being talked….Truman looked & talked like a successful small grocer. The PM was not at his best.

It is fair to ask how Cunningham, a consummate warrior, diplomat and naval strategist, could have failed to anticipate the Luftwaffe's threat to his fleet and its ability to safeguard Malta. But if the bombing of the aircraft carrier Illustrious was a blunder, it was a shared blunder. The admiral's real mistake, in the end, may have been listening to Chief Air Marshal Arthur Tedder.

Malta was under siege and blockade by the Axis, so intense that Allied convoys to the islands were suicide runs. Luftwaffe bombers and fighters, submarine wolfpacks and big Italian warships ruled much of the Mediterranean. That did not deter the admiral. "We never gave a thought to the strength of the Italian fleet," he said. "We were perfectly confident that the fleet we had at Alexandria could deal with them if they chose to give battle."

Just before Christmas 1940, Cunningham had fought his way to Malta aboard the battleship Warspite, escorting a small convoy carrying food and ammunition to the besieged island, which hadn't been supplied since May. Writing about his "touchingly overwhelming" reception, Cunningham recalled, "I had difficulty in preventing myself from being carried around."

But a more concerted German effort to strangle Malta was underway. Thousands of Luftwaffe personnel were headed south through Italy on trains, showered with candy and fruit at each stop. Italy's Comando Supremo had invited the Luftwaffe to Sicily to obliterate Malta. So Air Marshal Göring had eagerly begun moving the cream of the Luftwaffe, X Flieger­korps, down from Nor­way. Warplanes arrived by the dozens in daily flights, and by January 8 there were 96 German bombers on Sicily — Junkers Ju-88s, Ju-87s and Heinkel He-111s — with hundreds more on the way, along with squadrons of Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters. Stuka pilots practiced dive-bombing a floating mock-up of the carrier Illustrious, with its 620-by-95-foot flight deck.

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