Club Run was an informal name for aircraft ferry operations from Gibraltar to Malta during the Siege of Malta from 1940 to 1942 during the Second World War. Malta was half-way between Gibraltar to Alexandria and had the only harbour controlled by the British in the area. Malta had docks, repair facilities, reserves and stores, which had been built up since the cession of the island to Britain in 1814. Malta had become an important staging post for aircraft and a base for air reconnaissance over the central Mediterranean.
HMS Argus in the 1920s.
Operation Hurry was the first British operation in a series that have come to be known as Club Runs. The goal of the operation was to fly twelve Hurricane Mk I fighters from HMS Argus to Malta, guided by two Blackburn Skuas. Force H, based in Gibraltar, took the opportunity to raid Elmas airfield in Sardinia and conduct a deception operation with HMS Enterprise. The Mediterranean Fleet conducted diversions in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea.
HMS Argus, photographed in the late 1920s
HMS Argus, photographed in 1942
Photograph of a Blackburn Skua, similar to the two in Operation Hurry