A much more ambitious Torch

Hyperion

Banned
This scenario basically assumes any U-boats near southern France and whatever Italian forces are available sit in their butts and no nothing at all.

This also assumes that the Luftwaffe does precisely nothing against the Allied fleed setting off Toulon.

The Allies have enough logistics to move 107K of their own troops. How many thousands of French troops are they picking up in the process of this mission to France? They can't allow warships to dock and pick people up, that would make perfect stationary targets for Luftwaffe dive bombers.

This also assumes that German ground forces in France, along with any Vichy units that wouldn't support the allies will basically sit on their butts and not move an inch when the allies are coming.

This also places the allied fleet off Toulon hundreds of miles out of range of any fighter cover not coming off carriers, of which the allies aren't going to have a lot of. Maybe 100 or so fighters vs however many hundreds of German and Italian fighters can be thrown at the carriers, not counting German bombers that will kill ships.

Comparing Luftwaffe effectiveness in OTL at Salerno and Anzio to this proposal is weak as hell also. OTL by 1943 the LW had been ground down quite a bit by several years of fighting, while US and British forces had more experienced pilots, and had aircraft that where equal and in some cases superior to what the Germans had.

That and in OTL at Salerno the allies had hundreds of fighters and bombers stationed very close by on Sicily, and by the time of Anzio the allies also had large numbers of aircraft stationed on various airfields throughout southern Italy.
 
Despite US wishes, there were no fight in the Vichy French. You need to adress this problem before anything else.

I specifically stated in the original post that I have no idea what kind of political POD(s) are needed for this to work, nor do I care (although if someone has any ideas in this area, he's more than welcome to share them). This isn't a TL or anything, just a thought experiment.

Regarding their willingness to fight bloody battles: they don't have to. They just have to not get in the way and allow allied forces to use Tunisia as a springboard into Lybia and the cutting off of Rommel's supplies. In Corsica, they just have to sit tight and look scary. The Italians are in no position to launch any kind of sustained naval invasion, and, given their OTL unwillingness to risk their battleships, they probably won't either.


This scenario basically assumes any U-boats near southern France and whatever Italian forces are available sit in their butts and no nothing at all.

this is according to wiki:
The Second Battle of El Alamein prompted a concentration of U-boats in the western Mediterranean in anticipation of Allied amphibious invasion. Five U-boats made contact with Operation Torch convoys, and two wolfpacks assembled near the invasion points. U-73, U-81, U-458, U-565, U-593, U-595, U-605 and U-617 assembled around Oran as Gruppe Delphin (Dolphin); while U-77, U-205, U-331, U-431, U-561 and U-660 assembled around Algiers as Gruppe Hai (Shark). Five U-boats were sunk opposing the invasion.[39]

Going by the article, they managed to sink 85k tons of shipping untill the end of the year, with most of that tonnage coming from 3-4 bigger transports.

Here, however, Second El Alemain is delayed, and the U-Boats are send only later, as a reaction instead of in anticipation.

Going by how they fared in the Med against shipping or near Casablanca, I'm inclined to say that the impact of U-Boats will be marginal.



This also assumes that the Luftwaffe does precisely nothing against the Allied fleed setting off Toulon.

The LW has a grand total of 130 serviceable bombers based in Italy and Greece at this time.

How on earth do they stop (instead of just harras) the landings ?

Mind you, they will no doubt bomb Toulon, and might even sink a big ship or two docked there. I'm skeptical however that they'll send everyone to Davy Jones.


They might use planes sationed in northern France, of which I don't know how many they have. However, again, it will be some time untill they organize the whole thing, giving the allies precious time. No doubt, they will cause damage. Will it be THAt severe, though ? Weren't most of those planes used for area night-bombing of british cities, not precision naval strikes ?

The Allies have enough logistics to move 107K of their own troops. How many thousands of French troops are they picking up in the process of this mission to France? They can't allow warships to dock and pick people up, that would make perfect stationary targets for Luftwaffe dive bombers.

Well, I was thinking that a lot of those Frenchmen would simply board their own (war)ships already docked there. Packed with men, the French warships are in no condition to engage an enemy fleet, but they don't have to either.

Alternatively, the allies would bring along some transports. Assuming the French crammed half the infantry on their own ships, you would need 40 of the small-ish Liberty ships to fit the rest. Maybe 30, if you use up space and don't mind the conditions on a short trip. Using bigger troop transport ships, that number could probably be halved. You can also transfer people on other ships once you're out at sea and safe.

Do the allies have, say, 20 Liberty ships and 5 bigger troop transports to spare (or any combination thereof) at this stage ? I honestly don't know, but I'd guess they do.


This also assumes that German ground forces in France, along with any Vichy units that wouldn't support the allies will basically sit on their butts and not move an inch when the allies are coming.


Well, the Germans are coming. However, given their OTL speed, and with the allies/French sabotaging the rivers across the Rhone, they won't make it to Toulon in time.


This also places the allied fleet off Toulon hundreds of miles out of range of any fighter cover not coming off carriers, of which the allies aren't going to have a lot of. Maybe 100 or so fighters vs however many hundreds of German and Italian fighters can be thrown at the carriers, not counting German bombers that will kill ships.

By the time the axis musteres up and organizes hundreds of bombers in the area, the fleet will have been long gone.


Comparing Luftwaffe effectiveness in OTL at Salerno and Anzio to this proposal is weak as hell also. OTL by 1943 the LW had been ground down quite a bit by several years of fighting, while US and British forces had more experienced pilots, and had aircraft that where equal and in some cases superior to what the Germans had.

That and in OTL at Salerno the allies had hundreds of fighters and bombers stationed very close by on Sicily, and by the time of Anzio the allies also had large numbers of aircraft stationed on various airfields throughout southern Italy

Like I said before, the allies can station fighters near Tunis and Byzerta, from where it's an equal distance to Calgiari compared to axis airfields in Sicilly. They can also station fighters on captured airfields on Sardinia itself, or on Corsica. This will only matter in the closing stages of the battle for Sardinia though.

Remeber, however, that the axis too will be in the same situation, having to supply and reinforce an island that isn't exactly close to their ports. They too will suffer interdiction form the allies.


.

The idea of loading mostly green Allied troops onto some ships and sending them to fight Germans without heavy equipment, air superiority and above all trustworthy allies is sending them to death or a POW camp.

The only Germans they would be actually fighting would be the small garrison of Tripoli for control of its surrounding area, and, only much later, units the Germans would rush to Sardinia.

I have my doubts that the Germans will be able to send so much stuff to Sardinia weeks after the landings in time to push the allies back into the sea before even more allied troops arrive.

I'm imagining a stalemate of some sort with the allies controlling between ne and two thirds of the island before the Germans finally decide to quit when their supply situation becomes untenable, just like on Sicilly OTL.

However, I'm more than willing to change my mind.

It looks like no one is going along with this Magnum

Yeah, so I've seen. Therefor, this is probably the last post I'll make regarding this. I was bored. And, for the most part, it was fun to write.
 

Cook

Banned
Except for Wake, I don't recall any naval landing in ww2 being stopped.
There is a reason for this: the allies in each instance attacked with overwhelming force and with close air support. This restricted where allied landings could take place in Europe because they had to be within the range of land based fighters; hence the landings in Sicily could take place in the south and west, within range of fighters from Tunisia and Malta, but not in the north. The landings took place in Solerno because this was the furthest north that fighters based in Sicily could reach. The technique is the same as the island hopping used in the Pacific, it just isn’t as obvious. And even with the enormous firepower available to the allies Solerno was very nearly a disaster and Anzio was a disaster.
 
I may be too much influenced by Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn" but it seems to me that OTL's Torch was about as big a stretch as the Allies could attempt in November of 1942.
The U.S. had never organized an amphibious invasion of such size and complexity before and the rehersals for it in Chesapeake Bay had not gone well.
The attempts to bring over the local French forces to the Allied side were the stuff of comic opera with senior officers (who should never have been permitted in enemy territory with their knowledge of the details of the operation) hiding out in cellars while attempting to deal with French generals who would not commit one way or the other.
The attempt to insert assault forces directly into the ports by means of destroyers crammed with commandos resulted in bloody disasters.
The landings were confused shambles and if they had been confronted by active and motivated defenders they too would have massacres. To top it off, the weather in North Africa turned very bad the day after the initial landings and if the landings had been attempted even a little bit later, many of the landing craft would have been scattered or swamped.
Even after the intial landings had been consolidated and the French had finally come around, the Allied forces made slow progress towards Tunisia and suffered the necessary defeat of Kasserine before they improved their tactics, logistics and leadership.
It seems to me that OTL's Torch was a gigantic gamble that could have failed in several aspects and only hindsight sees it as a smooth operation that lead to a major victory. An operation more complex and ambitious than OTL's Torch was probably beyond the capabilities of the Allies and this was probably apparent to Marshall, King and Hewitt.
The good thing about Torch (and here I am paraprhrasing Atkinson) was that it allowed the Allies, and especially the U.S. to learn how to fight a modern war in a relatively small theater of operations and to weed out some commanders and some tactics that would have lead to major disasters against better opponents.

AH
 

Hyperion

Banned
The LW has a grand total of 130 serviceable bombers based in Italy and Greece at this time.

How on earth do they stop (instead of just harras) the landings ?

Mind you, they will no doubt bomb Toulon, and might even sink a big ship or two docked there. I'm skeptical however that they'll send everyone to Davy Jones.

Do you even know geography. No Axis aircraft, German or Italian, that are based in Greece are going to do anything.

How many German aircraft are, you know, based in France.

For that matter, how many Italian aircraft are within range of southern France?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
An additional issue is the rate of advance of the transport headed to Toulon.Transports had a top speed of 9-13 knots (10-15 mph) that puts them inside the range of aircraft flying from southern France for at least a full day, more likely a day and a half after they leave the harbor (lets just pretend that they make it to the quay undetected for shits and giggles). We are not talking about warships here they are totally unarmored, you can sink them with 20mm cannon (i.e. fighters can tear them to pieces, something the U.S. demonstrated to the Japanese time and again). If you get two ships out it would be a low order miracle.
 
An additional issue is the rate of advance of the transport headed to Toulon.Transports had a top speed of 9-13 knots (10-15 mph) that puts them inside the range of aircraft flying from southern France for at least a full day, more likely a day and a half after they leave the harbor (lets just pretend that they make it to the quay undetected for shits and giggles). We are not talking about warships here they are totally unarmored, you can sink them with 20mm cannon (i.e. fighters can tear them to pieces, something the U.S. demonstrated to the Japanese time and again). If you get two ships out it would be a low order miracle.


I know I promised I would leave this thing alone and stop beating a dead horse, but this is, IMO, wrong, for the simple fact that the Germans did not have air bases in southern France for their short-ranged aircraft, since the area was still under Vichy controll at the time.

Any aircraft they use would be based way up north. A quick glance at google maps distance calculator reveals that the distance from Paris to Toulon exceed the maximum Stuka range by 150km and Me109 range by 100km.

That only leaves the medium bombers, of which, like I said before I have no idea how many there are, where they are based and what kind of training they have.

The only reason I'm writing this is becasue I'm bored. I really, really promise to leave this alone from now one. You win.
 
One could look to the Dodecanese islands campaign to see what the Germans WERE capable of - and that was later in the war, when the Italians were already out, and further away from German bases than Toloun.

If the Vichy have decided they do want to fight, they can move their troops to North Africa by themselves with their navy, where they will be out of German and Italian reach.
 

Hyperion

Banned
Would carriers have been of any use in the ETO? Anywhere?

The USS Ranger and all four Sangammon class CVL where used in used during Operation Torch, pounding Vichy targets in North Africa. Several British carriers where used, and British and US forces staged out of Gibraltar as well.

Aircraft carriers where present during Operation Husky, the attack on Sicily.

A number of CVL and CVE where used in a couple of landings in Italy, but at that time the US had enough airfields in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and southern portions of Italy that carrier air support, while helpful, wasn't a significant game changer one way or the other.

It mainly benefitted the allies in that it gave a lot of CVL and CVE crews experience before some of them deployed to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
 
The USS Ranger and all four Sangammon class CVL where used in used during Operation Torch, pounding Vichy targets in North Africa. Several British carriers where used, and British and US forces staged out of Gibraltar as well.

Aircraft carriers where present during Operation Husky, the attack on Sicily.

A number of CVL and CVE where used in a couple of landings in Italy, but at that time the US had enough airfields in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and southern portions of Italy that carrier air support, while helpful, wasn't a significant game changer one way or the other.

It mainly benefitted the allies in that it gave a lot of CVL and CVE crews experience before some of them deployed to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.


Interesting. How many planes do you reckon the carriers used in torch had ?
 
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