1940. Romania decides to defend Bessarabia and resist the Soviets.

[Slowpoke]

Throughout the war, Royal Romanian Air Force flight and support crews exhibited a level of professionalism and dedication equal to their Luftwaffe counterparts.

To believe that the Red Air Force's mission would have been a cakewalk is a considerable mistake.

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the ground forces.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Slowpoke

Throughout the war, the Royal Romanian Air Force flight and support crews exhibited a level of professionalism and dedication equal to their Luftwaffe counterparts.

To believe that the Red Air Force's mission would have been a cakewalk is a considerable mistake.

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the ground forces.

I never said anything about a cakewalk, just that it won't be grounded for reasons of weather anything so repetitively as with regard to Finland. OTOH this would cause the Soviets to realize their concepts of air-land co-operation are for lack of a better phrase a sick joke and they'd start reforming them as much as possible. Which could be very bad for the Nazis in the long term.

[b12ox]

whatever Hitler does, he has to thread carefully. The Soviets don't need to invade Romania. They took Besarabia to position themselves within easy bombing distance of the romanian oil fields. One of the goals of Barbaossa was to secure these fields form soviet air assults. In the secenerio this thread suggests, the Germans are on on the mercy of the SU. If the SU decides to attack and take Romania and it comes to a prolonged hold on the front line while Germans redeploy, the Soviets bomb the Romanian oil industray out of existance and call it a day. It wouldn't be a permananet fix, but again, The Soviets ground force was not reliable enough at that time to fix things permanently.

[Slowpoke]

Given that US efforts to destroy the refineries (which is generally what you want to attack, instead of the wells themselves) were ultimately a failure (in the end, only decreasing well output and Soviet ground assault cut the flow), I really can't see the Red Air Force faring any better.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by LOTLOF

How in the hell does the Romanian air force have 12 Hurricanes?

It isn’t as strange as it sounds. Between the wars the principal investors and developers of Rumania’s oil fields were British, Dutch and American companies. Prior to 1940, Britain and France were the principal customers of Romania’s oil exports.

[von Adler]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

Romania also has strong disadvantages. Weather in the summer will favor the Soviet Air Force much more than the winter of 1939 did. Romania will face troops with much greater reserves of manpower and armored forces, which even if they get smashed smashing them will take casualties and expenditure of ammunition to achieve. Unless they have very strong anti-armored forces they might well be stupid enough to use their armor for tank-on-tank clashes, while in 1941 the Nazis were smarter than to do this. Romania likewise is going to sustain quite a few losses in this fighting, enough to damage its effectiveness in any Soviet invasion, while Hitler is phenomenally likely to overreact and to put much more of Germany's strength right where the Soviets expect it to be, which means that where the Soviets are weaker, so will Army Groups North and Center be.

All this is assuming that this doesn't wind up causing the German war machine to start sputtering and grinding when, not if, increased German hostility to the USSR cuts it off from a lot of vital material it needed to prepare its invasion of the USSR in the first place.

The Soviets were also very bad at actually getting anything done with their air attacks, as the early part of Barbarossa and the Winter War shows. Despite having more than 3880 planes commited to the Finnish front at one point or another, and more than 100 940 combat missions, dropping 25746 tons of bombs - in three months failed to achieve both total air superiority (the Finnish air force operated throughout the war, first with one fighter squadron, later with two and 1/3 of a squadron from Sweden) and any real tactical or strategic result - even if the Finns had problems gathering for tactical briefings in larger groups towards the end of the war - the Red Airforce was always present on the front and pounced larger Finnish groups immediately.

Note that the Romanian air force, which might not have been as well trained as the Finnish (which was superb, they invented fighting pair-finger four/rotten-schwarm tactics in 1932, 5 years before the Germans), it was still very good. And they have more than 5 times the planes, most of which are way better than the Finnish Fokker D.XXI.

[b12ox]

Originally Posted by Slowpoke

Given that US efforts to destroy the refineries (which is generally what you want to attack, instead of the wells themselves) were ultimately a failure (in the end, only decreasing well output and Soviet ground assault cut the flow), I really can't see the Red Air Force faring any better.

Depends on how well that oil was shielded from Soviet possible bombings. The Soviets need one massive assault both ground and air on the romanian oil industry if the bombers alone fail. Still, no need for a country wide operation.

[Easterling]

Just a few thoughts:

- I remember seeing this topic discussed on the worldwar2.ro forum some time ago. I don't remember the details very well, but it was said that the Romanian army only had ammo for a few days (or even a few hours, my memory is hazy). The point was that there was not enough ammo for an effective resistance.

- The ultimatum was on 28 June, after the end of the Battle of France, so if Hitler wants to get involved, the Wehrmacht has nothing better to do anyway.

- There is a Romanian historian (Neagu Djuvara) who has mentioned this scenario several times in his books. He claims that Romania should have resisted, and if things went bad in Bessarabia, the Romanians should have convinced Hitler to occupy the rest of the country so Stalin does not take it all. His overall point was that fighting in Barbarossa was futile because it accomplished nothing in the end, and that Romania would be better off if Germany and the SU would have divided it among themselves in 1940, just like Poland. After the war hopefully the country would be restored by the allies, without the loss of international prestige caused by being an axis country, and without the losses of the war.

- if the whole thing escalates into an early Soviet-German confrontation, I think the Germans should be slightly favored, and the Soviets loose some of their advantages.

[Magnum]

Originally Posted by von Adler

The Soviets were also very bad at actually getting anything done with their air attacks, as the early part of Barbarossa and the Winter War shows. Despite having more than 3880 planes commited to the Finnish front at one point or another, and more than 100 940 combat missions, dropping 25746 tons of bombs - in three months failed to achieve both total air superiority (the Finnish air force operated throughout the war, first with one fighter squadron, later with two and 1/3 of a squadron from Sweden) and any real tactical or strategic result - even if the Finns had problems gathering for tactical briefings in larger groups towards the end of the war - the Red Airforce was always present on the front and pounced larger Finnish groups immediately.

Note that the Romanian air force, which might not have been as well trained as the Finnish (which was superb, they invented fighting pair-finger four/rotten-schwarm tactics in 1932, 5 years before the Germans), it was still very good. And they have more than 5 times the planes, most of which are way better than the Finnish Fokker D.XXI.

according to wiki, the finnish fighters achieved at least a 9:1 kill ratio on the soviets. Even if the Romanian airforce only does half as good, that will still mean upwards to a thousand downed soviet aircraft by fighters alone (plus the inevitable losses to AAA, accidents and mechanical failure). This should severely hamper the effectiveness of soviet air operations, although, like others said, it would also probably give them a good lesson from which to learn. (btw, how much did the soviet airforce learn from the winter war ?)

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by von Adler

The Soviets were also very bad at actually getting anything done with their air attacks, as the early part of Barbarossa and the Winter War shows. Despite having more than 3880 planes commited to the Finnish front at one point or another, and more than 100 940 combat missions, dropping 25746 tons of bombs - in three months failed to achieve both total air superiority (the Finnish air force operated throughout the war, first with one fighter squadron, later with two and 1/3 of a squadron from Sweden) and any real tactical or strategic result - even if the Finns had problems gathering for tactical briefings in larger groups towards the end of the war - the Red Airforce was always present on the front and pounced larger Finnish groups immediately.

Note that the Romanian air force, which might not have been as well trained as the Finnish (which was superb, they invented fighting pair-finger four/rotten-schwarm tactics in 1932, 5 years before the Germans), it was still very good. And they have more than 5 times the planes, most of which are way better than the Finnish Fokker D.XXI.

Given that in the first part of Barbarossa the Germans destroyed so many planes on the ground, where in Barbarossa did the USSR exactly have the planes to *launch* large-scale attacks with after that for any duration of time? The better example here is Kursk where the USSR went for the stupid-ass decision to try to win the whole battle in the air at one go, which hurt them for the first phase of the fighting.

[Slowpoke]

Y'know, I was thinking about an AHC/WI: Romania performs better in the first two decades of the 20th century. A more cautious policy regarding alliances and treaties, no taking of Southern Dobrudja from Bulgaria (thus, no direct casus belli from them in the 1st WW), no handing over of the Royal Treasury and the National Bank Reserve (plus private reserves) to the Russians in early summer 1917 for safekeeping (we all know how that ended) etc.