Different plan for Operationa Platinum Fox (29 Jun 41)

Background: The German Army in Norway, with the support of Finland, were very successful in expelling the Soviet forces in the Finnish Petsamo area during the opening movements of Operation Barbarossa. The 2nd phase of the German Forces (29 June 41) was to take the Rybachi Peninsula and move onto Murmansk to stop supplies from flowing in from the UK.

Premise: Instead of having German Army Group North and South be assigned Fliegerdivision and Air Landing Division (glider) units, could those units instead have been given to the German forces in Norway and dropped on the Murmansk airfield:
1) 1st Parachute Regiment & 2nd Battalion Air Landing Assault unit (1st Fliegerdivision)
2) 22nd Air Landing Division (glider) - since reconstituted from 1940 Netherlands campaign

I realize the German Airborne forces & Ju-52/3m fleet had been depleted in the Netherlands assault (157 lost of 450 used) and the Crete assault (170 lost with ~5,000 casualties) but industry was able to make up for those losses in 1940 by delivering 388 a/c and in 1941 delivering 502 more. Each Fliegerdivision was normally assigned ~250 Ju-52/3m's to support their forces.

Defending Forces: 3 line Soviet divisions (14th and 52nd Rifle Divisions & Polyarny Division) and 1 pickup volunteer unit of sailors & marines assigned to stop the ground assault. ~250 Soviet aircraft which were of outdated utility (I-16/I-15bis). Those Soviet divisions were very successful in stopping the German invasion mainly due to their ability to take advantage of very poor German tactical leadership & inexperienced SS troops).

Question: Could the ~20,000 experienced German airborne forces have been able to cause enough havoc in the backfield to cause a loss of Murmansk and a general Southern retreat of the Soviet forces confronting the German land forces in the Petsamo area (the Finnish troops were very successful but later stopped their attacks after direct threats from the US from interfering with US deliveries of Lend-Lease material).

Please note, the 1st six 1941 Artic Convoy's went to Arkhangelsk (1st arrived 31 August) and the 7th-9th went to Murmansk and didn't arrive until 20 December, 11 January, & 12 January. So no real impact on supplies being delivered right away.
 
From which airfields would the 1st Fliegerdivision and the 22nd Air Landing Division operate from? The distances up north are big, and any close enough airfields in Norway and Finland would have limited capacity and be difficult to supply. Like for any operations in the Arctic theatre, a major problem for this plan would be the various supply bottlenecks that would plague the attempt all the way from the beginning. The supply problems would especially kick in after the airborne troops have landed in and around Murmansk.
 
There was an airfield just south of Liinahamari which is about 95 miles as the crow flies (the distance from Murmansk to Arkhangel is about 367 miles so Soviet fighter air support would be out of range). You are absolutely correct, resupply of airborne forces is critical but if they can land on the Murmansk airfields and restrict Soviet counter-air then the assigned Ju-52's could do the job.
 
What does the pool of replacement transport pilots look like for the Luftwaffe? It may be easier to replace aircraft than the pilots lost in the Netherlands and Crete.
 
The replacement pool in the real timeline stopped because they had to bring in multi-engine IP's (bomber/transport) to the active roles to support Operation Barbarossa missions. In the long term it really impacted the pipeline but since this is early in the campaign it wouldn't detract from the later months in 1941 when the LW was needed to drop supplies to isolated Army Group Center units.
 
This undertaking might have made sense in the context of an alternate operational plan for Barbarossa, one in which Army Group North received formations that, in our time line, ended up in Army Group Center. To put things another way, the practicality of the plan depends, not only on the ability of the Air Force to deliver and sustain the airborne forces, but also on the speed with which the airborne forces and the main body of the land forces can link up with each other.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Getting those German formations - and supplying them - to North Norway/Finland would be a logistical feat in itself.
Some units on the main front get starved of supply ...
 
If Army Group North were the main effort of Barbarossa, most of its forces would be supplied through ports in the Baltic. Once Leningrad had been taken, which, with sufficient forces, would have happened quickly, then a substantial detachment of Army Group North would advance along the axis of the White Sea Canal, using that canal as its chief means of moving supplies.
 
If Murmansk is taken, the flow of LL through Archangelsk will simply not take up the slack, and with Murmansk in German hands the dangers of the convoys will be markedly increased, so the LL flow could be quite limited indeed. Flow from Persia, and flow from the US to Vladivostok using Soviet ships is limited - in the first case by the need to build up infrastructure to get stuff from the ports to the Soviet border, in the second due to limitations of the connections west. It is true thast LL took time to spin up, but even assuming the Russians take Murmansk back within 18 months, that means a diversion from efforts elsewhere, and you can be sure that before the retreat the Germans will trash the port quite thoroughly.

If the Germans hold Murmansk, this actually opens up a supply route for them - ships can creep up the Norwegian coast, and once they get far enough north there is really no air threat, and the RN won't be operating close inshore except for some subs. These supply ships will be operating with air/naval protection the whole trip, certainly it won't be huge amounts of supply but it will be quite useful.
 
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