A Better Decade - a British TL.
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
Will the British raid Taranto like they did in OTL WW2? Of course, this time the Royal Navy will probably deploy more carriers and planes. They damaged three battleships with just one carrier's worth of planes, will they sink the entire fleet with four?
Thanks! They are coming up slowly. As hinted in the past chapter, one knock on effect is that Germany *slightly* spooked out has militarized faster. Other Great Power's are coming slowly.
Well......let's just say Cunningham's cunning (Kill me now) is going to be off great use.
And of course, the Japanese will take great interest in this raid like OTL.
Some sailor or admiral at Pearl Harbour, "Why do I have this sense of foreboding? There's no way the Japs can hit us this far from their islands?"
Well they did do it OTL, with harder resistance ITTL, they would do it even more and frivolously.
Apparently a Taranto style raid was always part of the RN's plans for war with Italy.
The British can probaly win in Africa, I am not sure if they can force a landing
Remember the Italian army of 1937 is still not the years of bogged down Italian army in 1940. Not saying anything, but it will be a tough fight.
At least with the infantry.
Win at sea and cut off any hopes of the Italians resupplying their army in Africa with men and equipment. Dominate the skies with RAF fighters and bombers, sweeping away the lower quality Italian ones. It won't end the war immediately, but it's definitely something I can see the British doing.
How does the equipment of Britain and Italy compare anyway?
I would like to emphasize infantry. I am not saying anything else about the rest. Though do give credit to the Italians a little bit; the logistics with which they invaded ethiopia at first was very first rate.
Italys big problem in OTL WW2 was that they started to rearm earlier than most so in the mid 30's their equipment was first rate but by 1940 becoming hopelessly obsolete. Worse for Italy was their small industrial base made it impossible to improve the situation. ITTL the British are just starting to get into the full swing of their rearmament. I therefore think this will be closer on the ground than Italys OTL performance suggests. I think this will be won at sea and in the air.
On quibble is I feel that a BEF of three hundred thousand men is optermistic. In OTL the BEF in France didn't reach those numbers until after six months of war. The only way for the British to field that many men would be to deploy the Teritorial Army. Those part time enthusiasts would take at least six months of training to be ready to deploy. Also does the BEF need to be that strong OTL suggests this to not be the case. Especially as many of the Italian troups in East Africa are either still engaged against the Ethiopians or lines of communications troups. North Africa is in theory more menacing. However as someone mentioned up thread Italy is light on trucks which would make any sizeable attack on Egypt very difficult to pull off against any serious oppersition.
All of this was known to the Italians. I'm therefore surprised that Benny the Moose didn't play nice and negotiate his way out of a loosing war when he had the chance.
The 300,000 number is total. Around half of them are in Egypt due to past deployments over 5 months.
I feel obligated to say that, at this point, Britain has an obligation to drag out their gas stocks and use them. British policy was retaliate in kind, despite the existence of a treaty banning usage. Unless you can find an excuse to have Britain not do that, then the Italians are going to experience Mustard Gas for the first time in 20 years.