Can the luftwaffe destroy the Suez Canal?

Well you could probably do it by scuttling the entire Regia Marina in there, but that has issues of its own...
 
Well you could probably do it by scuttling the entire Regia Marina in there, but that has issues of its own...

Well, that was about the only way Regia Marina could have gone about to block the Suez. Maybe it was worth a try, seeing how it didn't do many useful things otherwise... :D
 
Thing is, most of it was blocking up Taranto harbour by that point.:D (yeah, I know, not really accurate, but it sounds cool right?)
 
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abc123

Banned
Maybe they could sink some enormous ship there and block the passage?
But, that would require that Germany has some huge ship available that she's ready to use her for sinking and the LW would not have any role there...
 
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Germany has nothing but U-Boats in the Med, and good luck convincing Il Duce to spend his ships on that fools errand.
 
To be fair I think the modern canal has been dredged out to be considerably wider and deeper than it was in WW2. It still seems mindbogglingly unlikely that the LW could make more than as nuisance of themselves. If they ever got close to mining it shut the allies wouikd just respond by redeploying resources to protect it.

Destroying it would be a project of similar magnitude to digging it, and thats not happening from the air....

It was certainly more restricted in WW2.
You couldn't run ships in both directions at the same time. at least in parts of it.
My father remembers with some amusement a KGV-class battleship having to wait for his tanker to go past in 1944 (tankers travelled in groups and had priority over everything)
 
I think the only way the canal can be 'blocked' by the LW would be continuous air mine dropping operations

But destroyed - no
 
Wellduring WWII the British were very concerned about the safety of the Canal. It was second only to London in the priority for heavy AA defenses. In fact there was a light weapon (The CDL, Canal Defense Light) created to disorient pilots attacking the canal. I believe the concern was the canal being blocked with damaged ships but it was such a key component to communications in the Empire that it had top priority for its security
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Wellduring WWII the British were very concerned about the safety of the Canal. It was second only to London in the priority for heavy AA defenses. In fact there was a light weapon (The CDL, Canal Defense Light) created to disorient pilots attacking the canal. I believe the concern was the canal being blocked with damaged ships but it was such a key component to communications in the Empire that it had top priority for its security
Mining, ships transiting... there's all kinds of reasons why it's a vulnerable point. In particular, the usual reason why ships are hard to sink with high-altitude bombing is that they can dodge the bombs. That is not possible in the canal!

...also the CDL was not actually designed to defend the Canal. It was a secret offensive weapon designed to dazzle enemy troops or light them up for night attacks, with the name intended to conceal the true purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Defence_Light
 
Mining, ships transiting... there's all kinds of reasons why it's a vulnerable point. In particular, the usual reason why ships are hard to sink with high-altitude bombing is that they can dodge the bombs. That is not possible in the canal!
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Well, the ships in the Canal were hardly stationary. They moved along the length of the canal. AFAIK, the level bombers had large trouble hitting stationary point targets. It is hard to imagine the LW being able to mount attacks so intensive as to render the Canal unusable due to danger of bombing.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Well, the ships in the Canal were hardly stationary. They moved along the length of the canal. AFAIK, the level bombers had large trouble hitting stationary point targets. It is hard to imagine the LW being able to mount attacks so intensive as to render the Canal unusable due to danger of bombing.
It's not rendering it unusable that's the problem, it's being able to sink important ships when they're unusually vulnerable.
You take precautions about this kind of thing.
(The bigger threats probably being dive bombers, mines or torpedoes.)
 
Mining, ships transiting... there's all kinds of reasons why it's a vulnerable point. In particular, the usual reason why ships are hard to sink with high-altitude bombing is that they can dodge the bombs. That is not possible in the canal!

...also the CDL was not actually designed to defend the Canal. It was a secret offensive weapon designed to dazzle enemy troops or light them up for night attacks, with the name intended to conceal the true purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Defence_Light

I have read that but I have also seen reports of it being tested as a defense weapon for the canal including reports from pilots during night time tests who were overcome and lost all sense of attitude. Flying on instruments was not a reliable solution because the sudden changes from light to dark ruined the night vision required to use the cockpit instruments
 
Anyone know what the capacity of the railway line from Suez was at this time?

A bit from Hyperwar

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Med-II/UK-Med-2-11.html

[FONT=&quot]The progress on the base up to the end of 1940 had been satisfactory, and the position only became serious with the arrival of German aircraft on the scene and the closure of the Suez Canal by mining. Much had already been done to lighten the burden on Suez and Port Said by building wharves at a number of points along the Canal so that ships could unload at all of them. The capacity of Suez itself had been greatly increased. But the mining of the Canal brought a new factor into the problem, for while it was of great importance to develop still further the capacity of Suez, it now became necessary to provide for ships to be unloaded at places other than the Canal ports. The immediate decisions were to double the railway from Suez to Ismailia, so as to increase the rate of clearance of the port of Suez; to lay a pipeline for naval fuel oil from Suez to Port Said, so that tankers for the Fleet need not enter the Canal; to expand the lighterage port of Ataqa, eight miles south-west of Suez, and equip it to handle cased vehicles; and to open a direct route between the Red Sea and Palestine by enlarging the primitive port of Aqaba and linking it with the Hedjaz railway at Ma'an. These projects were put in hand as quickly as possible, but were handicapped by the lack of stores, transport, and materials. The growing importance of Syria made it necessary to do something more than develop the difficult route through Aqaba and, as it was very desirable to relieve Suez of the burden of traffic destined for Palestine, it was decided to build wharves for lighters near the mouth of the Canal at El Shatt on the east bank and to connect them by a railway line to Kantara, there to join the trans-Sinai railway. These wharves were to be replaced later by deep-water berths at Marrakeb, which would hasten the turn-round of ships by enabling them to be offloaded more quickly.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The mining of the Canal in March caused a big hold-up of cargoes of all kinds, among the most important of which were coal for running the Greek railways, naval fuel oil, and consignments of war materials to Greece and Turkey. During the move of the British forces to Greece there were at one time more than a hundred ships in Suez Bay awaiting discharge, many of which were wanted in the Mediterranean. It was fortunate that the interruptions were separated by long periods of lull; after the attack in March there was a quiet spell until May, and another during June. Attacks began again in July, when mines were scattered all along the Canal, and in Suez Bay also, which added greatly to the delays at this port. A further insurance against severe damage to Suez was made by expanding the small lighterage port of Safaga, just south of the Gulf of Suez, and improving the road to Qena so as to connect the port with the Nile valley route. As a long term project deep-water berths were also begun at Safaga and a metre gauge railway was laid to Qena. Finally, there was Port Sudan, a good deep-water port linked to Egypt by the long and complicated Nile valley route, but invaluable for receiving and storing certain classes of cargo, and thus assisting the turn-round of shipping. Port Sudan was warned that if an extreme emergency occurred it must be ready to receive 180,000 tons of cargo in two months, of which not much more than one quarter could possibly be cleared by the Nile valley route. [/FONT]
 
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Assuming Gibraltar has fallen, U boat pens can be constructed in Greece. From bases there, U boats could wreak havok on shipping exiting the canal and render it all but unusable. Apart from Greece, the U boats could also be based at the Regia Marina's submarine pens.
 
I have a scenario!

Hitler announces that the Luftwaffe has to close the Suez Canal or else.

The Luftwaffe convinces some minor canal somewhere in Germany to rename itself to 'Suez', and then they station a couple of airmen at each end to stop barges from going through.
 
I have a scenario!

Hitler announces that the Luftwaffe has to close the Suez Canal or else.

The Luftwaffe convinces some minor canal somewhere in Germany to rename itself to 'Suez', and then they station a couple of airmen at each end to stop barges from going through.

Himmler fills a barge with SS men and then takes pictures to embarrass Goering :D
 
Well, that was about the only way Regia Marina could have gone about to block the Suez. Maybe it was worth a try, seeing how it didn't do many useful things otherwise... :D
I guarantee they would find a way to screw it up. Probably something ridiculous like scuttling all their ships, only to realize they were still in Naples.:D
 
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