Bypass Sicily and Italy?

VirginiaHistoryTeacher · Jul 6, 2015

A series of questions, really.

Would World War II in Europe be shortened by the western allies bypassing Operation Husky and all subsequent operations on the Italian Peninsula in favor of pursuing an invasion of France akin but not identical to Operation Overlord? Some believe that the western allies weren't entirely ready for an invasion of France by the middle of 1943, but had they pulled off that scale of invasion in France, using all of the resources expended in Sicily and Italy, would the course of the war substantially change? Would the invasion even be successful? Would we see western allies taking Berlin in early 1945 or even late 1944 depending on where the invasion took place? Can we predict what German and Italian units stationed in Sicily and on the Peninsula, prepared for a direct invasion, would do if British and American soldiers land anywhere in France in the middle of 1943?

Carl Schwamberger · Jul 6, 2015

A often posted subject. making it easy to draft suggestions.

Early in the Symbol Confrence (Casablanca January 1943) a planing staff wrote up a list of follow on operations to the just execute Torch operation. At the top of the list was a seizure of the islands of Sardinia & Corsica, operations Brimstone & Firebrand. March was the proposed date & the Brit 1st Army would be responsible.

Brooke choose to oppose this, arguing instead for a attack on Sicilly, the second proposal on the list, & convinced Churchill. Churchill prevailed in the Allied strategy sessions @ the Symbol Confrence. This eventually led to the execution of Operation Husky against Siclly in July 1943. Had Roosevelt backed Marshal more strongly & taken a closer interest in the details of Mediterranean strategy he might have brought about the earlier Brimstone/Firebrand operations.

As the Sicillian conquest played out the question came up before Eisenhower again. Again the Sardinian/Corsican operations was proposed for September. However the Italians were known to be collapsing and the attraction of completely knocking Italy out of the war became very attractive. Brimstone/Firebrand were regulated to secondary follow up operations & not executed until October/November

Capturing the ill defended Sardinia/Corsica islands in March would have allowed fighter coverage and tactical air support the entire length of the Italian west coast. allowing invasions as far north as Genoa (or France) in the summer of 1943. That has the potential to bypass most of the Italian penennsula. Even if there is no invasio of italy it places the Allied medium bombers in range of Italian industry and transportation, more than doubling the weight of the Allied air attacks on Italy.

Alternates are operations like capturing Crete for use as a heavy bomber base, with a follow up to some Greek port near Athens or Salonika. Norway is another. Those have their pros and cons, tho personally I prefer the Brimstone option.

VirginiaHistoryTeacher · Jul 6, 2015

A Corsican Campaign does make the most sense. Does an Operation Anvil/Dragoon-esque attack mean the war ends about the same time following an Operation Brimstone?

Paul V McNutt · Jul 6, 2015

If a successful Normandy invasion happened on July 10, 1943, then I could see Germany surrendering in June 1944. We could have June 6, 1944, as VE day, The WAllies could liberate Warsaw and Prague. The Soviets would attack Manchukuo on September 6 1944. WAllies European veterans get to the Pacific in October 1944, just in time for the invasion of the Philippines. The bombing of Japan is much more intense. I could see VJ day on May 8, 1945. After the war China is a Soviet satellite. There is no Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. West Poland and The Czech Republic are the frontline NATO nations.

Look More Closely Later · Jul 6, 2015

Hmm

VirginiaHistoryTeacher said:
A series of questions, really.

Would World War II in Europe be shortened by the western allies bypassing Operation Husky and all subsequent operations on the Italian Peninsula in favor of pursuing an invasion of France akin but not identical to Operation Overlord? Some believe that the western allies weren't entirely ready for an invasion of France by the middle of 1943, but had they pulled off that scale of invasion in France, using all of the resources expended in Sicily and Italy, would the course of the war substantially change? Would the invasion even be successful? Would we see western allies taking Berlin in early 1945 or even late 1944 depending on where the invasion took place? Can we predict what German and Italian units stationed in Sicily and on the Peninsula, prepared for a direct invasion, would do if British and American soldiers land anywhere in France in the middle of 1943?

The problem is the resources in the Mediterranean are in the Mediterranean, not the UK. You cannot use troops and tanks in Tunisia to invade Normandy. Not without doing a lot of shuffling things around, which takes time - and take too long and you run out of (likely favourable) summer weather in which to actually cross the Channel.
Now you can use the things you have in the Mediterranean for doing things in the Mediterranean. The problem here is that Sicily makes a lot of sense as a first target, from the point of view of making Allied shipping routes along North Africa much safer, thereby cutting journey times (the Suez Canal can be used as a shipping route with relative safety once Sicily and all those nasty Axis airfields there are dealt with) and effectively increasing Allied shipping capacity.

Aber · Jul 6, 2015

Look More Closely Later said:
The problem is the resources in the Mediterranean are in the Mediterranean, not the UK.

The bigger problem is that there are few US resources in the Mediterranean, and even fewer in the UK.

An invasion of France will probably not happen until there is a US Army Group available (say 15+ divisions, plus appropriate logistics troops and supporting air forces). These have to be trained, shipped across the Atlantic and unloaded in the UK with bottlenecks all along the way, with a minimum lead time of at least 9 months from making a decision to getting the resources in the right place. Therefore a "GO" decision for a 1943 invasion needs to made before the end of 1942, probably before the results of Torch and El Alamein are known.

VirginiaHistoryTeacher · Jul 6, 2015

Aber said:
The bigger problem is that there are few US resources in the Mediterranean, and even fewer in the UK.

An invasion of France will probably not happen until there is a US Army Group available (say 15+ divisions, plus appropriate logistics troops and supporting air forces). These have to be trained, shipped across the Atlantic and unloaded in the UK with bottlenecks all along the way, with a minimum lead time of at least 9 months from making a decision to getting the resources in the right place. Therefore a "GO" decision for a 1943 invasion needs to made before the end of 1942, probably before the results of Torch and El Alamein are known.

One could conceivably argue that the Afrika Korps was doomed when American troops landed in Morocco, if not before then. Italian contribution to the Axis cause was minimal at best, that's why I'm wondering if the whole country: Italy proper, Sicily, and Sardinia, could just be bypassed altogther. Rather than a Normandy invasion, what if the invasion took place near the Franco-Italian border? Tunis to Marseilles isn't as big of a leap as Tunis to St. Lo.

Look More Closely Later · Jul 6, 2015

?

VirginiaHistoryTeacher said:
One could conceivably argue that the Afrika Korps was doomed when American troops landed in Morocco, if not before then. Italian contribution to the Axis cause was minimal at best, that's why I'm wondering if the whole country: Italy proper, Sicily, and Sardinia, could just be bypassed altogther. Rather than a Normandy invasion, what if the invasion took place near the Franco-Italian border? Tunis to Marseilles isn't as big of a leap as Tunis to St. Lo.

Air interdiction of shipping.

Even if you're heading for the south of France, it makes little sense not to mop up the airfields first which are otherwise going to be attacking your shipping heading to/from the south of France, day-in, day-out.

VirginiaHistoryTeacher · Jul 6, 2015

Look More Closely Later said:
Air interdiction of shipping.
Even if you're heading for the south of France, it makes little sense not to mop up the airfields first which are otherwise going to be attacking your shipping heading to/from the south of France, day-in, day-out.

Seize Corsica. That should take no longer than a week or two at the most. Fighter escort screen to protect the landing force. Nothing the Italians can throw at the western allies will be able to do much damage at all.

Much of the Italian population did not want war, and by this point, people had turned against Mussolini. Invading tied up too many resources that you could ram down Hitler's throat and use to keep Stalin contained.

Carl Schwamberger · Jul 6, 2015

Look More Closely Later said:
Air interdiction of shipping.
Even if you're heading for the south of France, it makes little sense not to mop up the airfields first which are otherwise going to be attacking your shipping heading to/from the south of France, day-in, day-out.

The Germans tried this during the Tunisian & Sicillian campaign. They won some tactical victories & blew up some ammunition ships. And, the were shot out of the air in each campaign. Operationally and stratigicaly Axis or German efforts to fight the Allies in the air in the Med were defeats. Eight weeks after capturing Cosica the USAAF had facilites for over 1,000 aircraft on Corsica and more on Sardinia. Six medium bomber wings & a similar number of interceptors were based there by January 1944. Its a easy ferry flight from Algeria to Sardinia & during Op Dragoon in 1944 the US/French AFs were able to surge the sortie rate from those two islands.

Bottom line is a effort to execute a sustained interdiction of Allied shipping near those two islands is going to accelerate the destruction of the Axis airforces.

VirginiaHistoryTeacher · Jul 6, 2015

Imagine though, forgetting Normandy entirely and just invading around Marseilles or Nice. A drive to Paris would seem almost like a diversion. How many Heer divisions are in Normandy in June of 43 that the western allies would need to guard Paris against? I still think that seizing Corsica and bypassing all Italian possessions post-Tunis would be a better course of action than going for Messina and Rome.

Look More Closely Later · Jul 6, 2015

Also...

Also, regarding the South of France, whilst there are flattish bits along the coast, west of Marseille, and in the immediate vicinity of the Rhône, there are also a lot of hills and mountains to complicate life if you happen to be trying to dislodge dug-in enemies.

phx1138 · Jul 6, 2015

Look More Closely Later said:
The problem is the resources in the Mediterranean are in the Mediterranean, not the UK.

No. And the supplies to keep them fighting in Italy aren't in Italy--they're in North America, & have to be shipped all the damn way to Italy, which ties up shipping (& supplies!) that could better be used preparing for the ultimate objective, to wit, actually winning the damn war.

Look More Closely Later said:
The Sicily makes a lot of sense as a first target.

It does, & I wouldn't oppose it being invaded. Especially if it leads to Mussolini's fall.

Actually invading the mainland is stupid & wasteful & should never have happened. It tied up twice as many Allied troops as German & enough tonnage to make invasion possible in 1943--or, rather, make it impossible before 1944.

And that's without taking anything from MacArthur (or just pushing him under a Jeep

).

Tell me again how invading Italy was a good idea.

LHB · Jul 6, 2015

phx1138 said:
Actually invading the mainland is stupid & wasteful & should never have happened. It tied up twice as many Allied troops as German & enough tonnage to make invasion possible in 1943--or, rather, make it impossible before 1944. And that's without taking anything from MacArthur (or just pushing him under a Jeep).

Tell me again how invading Italy was a good idea.

If the Allies had been smart about it, used their naval superiority to its fullest extent, and went for the Brimstone option first a series of landings up and down the Italian coast would have been very doable. The problem with the Italian campaign was the whole, "Hey let's slog our way up a narrow, mountainous peninsula from the bottom to the top!" strategy that was used OTL. A more amphibious Italian campaign would have probably ended the entire theater far sooner and put Allied fighters and bombers just on the other side of the Alps from Germany.

bsmart · Jul 6, 2015

Come on this has been debated many times before

1) Operation Sledgehammer was one the early plans for a Cross Channel Invasion. It would have been a disaster, the U.S. Army didn't have enough experience and there was not enough mass (operational forces, logistics, etc) in place to support it

2) Going anywhere other than Sicily and then Southern Italy was out of the range of effective air cover, Even Salerno was a stretch.

3) Capturing Sicily made the shipping route from Gibralter to Suez fairly safe which cut thousands of miles off the routes to Iran (a major supply route for Soviet LL) and India/Australia.

What should have been done was capture Italy up to Monte Cassino than stop and dig in. That gives you the good airfields of Foggia for the 15th Air Force and ties down German troops.

phx1138 · Jul 6, 2015

LHB said:
A more amphibious Italian campaign would have probably ended the entire theater far sooner

And would still have tied up thousands of tons of shipping supplying the troops, not to mention thousands supplying Italian civilians (instead of forcing the Germans to do it...), not to mention absorbing numbers of LC that were already in short supply for Neptune (or for SWPA).

So have you got a Jeep to throw MacArthur under?

Or are you going to bugger Neptune to have Italy?

The idea is to win the war, not liberate Italy. This is up there with the stupidity of MacArthur's insisting on clearing the P.I.

bsmart said:
Operation Sledgehammer was one the early plans for a Cross Channel Invasion. It would have been a disaster

Sledgehammer was scheduled for 1942. TTL, Neptune can go off in 1943.

bsmart said:
Going anywhere other than Sicily and then Southern Italy was out of the range of effective air cover

Have you looked at a map?

Notice how close Corsica is to Sicily. Notice how close Sardinia is. Notice how long the coast of Italy is. Imagine defending it against raids by MTBs, MGBs, fibos, & commandos.

bsmart said:
Capturing Sicily made the shipping route from Gibralter to Suez fairly safe

Which is why it should precede conquest of Sardinia & Corsica.

bsmart said:
What should have been done was capture Italy up to Monte Cassino than stop and dig in. That gives you the good airfields of Foggia for the 15th Air Force and ties down German troops.

Isn't that OTL?

And didn't it waste thousands of men & thousands of tons of shipping that would have been better employed actually liberating France & ending the damn war?

deathscompanion1 · Jul 6, 2015

phx1138 said:
The idea is to win the war, not liberate Italy. This is up there with the stupidity of MacArthur's insisting on clearing the P.I.

Saving millions of American citizens (well whatever Filipinos were classed as) and tens of thousands of American POWs from starving to death. Such a waste.

TBH Japan wasn't going to quit until either the bombs dropped or the Soviets invaded so what would a few weeks/months extra bombing do that would compensate for months to a year extra of an American territory remaining in foreign hands and the IJN remaining a going concern a while longer? The hate MacArthur gets seems to make anything he supported automatically the idiotic notion.

phx1138 · Jul 6, 2015

deathscompanion1 said:
Saving millions of American citizens (well whatever Filipinos were classed as) and tens of thousands of American POWs from starving to death. Such a waste.

TBH Japan wasn't going to quit until either the bombs dropped or the Soviets invaded so what would a few weeks/months extra bombing do that would compensate for months to a year extra of an American territory remaining in foreign hands and the IJN remaining a going concern a while longer? The hate MacArthur gets seems to make anything he supported automatically the idiotic notion.

Saving millions? I wasn't aware the Japanese were systematically slaughtering anybody.

An earlier end to the war, by my estimate about a year, saves lives as surely as clearing the P.I., with fewer battle casualties on all sides. I'm not sure it means fewer Japanese civilian casualties...

I am, however, satisfied fewer Philppino civilians get killed.

Carl Schwamberger · Jul 6, 2015

Look More Closely Later said:
Also, regarding the South of France, whilst there are flattish bits along the coast, west of Marseille, and in the immediate vicinity of the Rhône, there are also a lot of hills and mountains to complicate life if you happen to be trying to dislodge dug-in enemies.

On the game board that mass of rugged ground, mountains actually, the Central Massif, can be a good bit of defense terrain. As bad a Italy. Tho I have noticed the railroads favor a attacker from the south based on Marsailles & not a defender facing south with his supply base either on the Rhine or depots in north west France. Odd that & I had to check the game maps against the 1944 Michilien map of France (US Army edition).

If the Germans choose to defend south France the Central Massif favors them, more so than the Bocage favors them in Normandy. The underlying problem is the 57 German divisions of 1944, or 40 odd divisions of 1943 are not enough to do both, defend the western coast, and defend the south. In 1944 OTL they failed badly at both, being run out of France in less than four months, or 3-4 months ahead of Allied expectations. So, a defense strong enough to pin a Allied 6th Army Group in the extreme south probablly means a defense too weak in the north. Even if there is not a full blown Overlord or Neptune operation.

deathscompanion1 · Jul 6, 2015

phx1138 said:
Saving millions? I wasn't aware the Japanese were systematically slaughtering anybody.

An earlier end to the war, by my estimate about a year, saves lives as surely as clearing the P.I., with fewer battle casualties on all sides. I'm not sure it means fewer Japanese civilian casualties... I am, however, satisfied fewer Philppino civilians get killed.

They were commandeering all the food whilst wrecking infrastructure and murdering any resistance fighters. Things were at the tipping point OTL another year or so completely blockaded is going to send the death count spiralling.

What is the estimate based on? The Japanese were staring a famine in the face had lost their empire and were preparing for an invasion and it still took nuclear bombardment and a Soviet invasion for them to try and surrender and even then the military attempted a coup to fight on. The Soviet Invasion isn't happening until WWII in Europe is over and the Atomic Bomb isn't coming sooner which leaves OTL bombing efforts which didn't break Japan even if they did shatter its ability to resist materially. The only thing that will come sooner is Operation Downfall until that gets scrapped and blockade is instituted.

Well done millions of starved Japanese civilians thrown in with higher American civilian and POW losses.