This is the essential starting point. How on earth is the Churchill government going to get taken seriously if it tamely gives up territory like this? Both the domestic and diplomatic fallout would have the potential to cripple the war effort. To give just one angle: does the abandonment of Malta happen before Lend Lease passes? If so Washington will ask, rightly, whether London actually wants to fight. If after LL, Washington will ask, again rightly, what these fool British intend to do with their shiny new gear.
Max Hastings: Operation Pedestal
- Thread starter Wolf of Badenoch
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Leaving aside the opinions of Mr Hastings opinion
John Ellis in his statistical analysis 'Brute Force' has a handy chart that shows both the numbers for air raids on Malta - the suppression, and for the Axis cargo embarked for Lybia and sunk/delivered. I don't have the volume at hand here in the coffee shop & cant recall if the graph broke it down by month or quarter. Either way the importance of the suppression jumps out. The Axis effort to suppress Malta was not continuous or even, but rather a series of efforts or surges. The periods where the suppression was low or declined were periods of serious losses to the cargo ships transiting to Lybia. At some points the losses were so bad that had they continued into the next calendar quarter unabated the logistics of the Axis Lybian armies would have effectively collapsed. That is to say the Axis were forced to suppress Malta, There was a distinct threat from their PoV of losing the supply line to Africa. Jeff Lesser traveled through the original Italian naval records and came to a similar conclusion, that suppression of Malta was necessary.
It is possible to look at the consolidated numbers of June 1940 to January 1943 & see that overall Malta based weapons were not responsible for much more than half the Axis cargo losses on the Lybian route. Alexandria as a naval base, airfields near Benghazi, or airfields in Algeria did make a major contribution. But, what Ellis shows is that Malta when unsuppressed was the base for severe damage to Axis cargo delivery, and if left unsuppressed would have been more significant.
John Ellis in his statistical analysis 'Brute Force' has a handy chart that shows both the numbers for air raids on Malta - the suppression, and for the Axis cargo embarked for Lybia and sunk/delivered. I don't have the volume at hand here in the coffee shop & cant recall if the graph broke it down by month or quarter. Either way the importance of the suppression jumps out. The Axis effort to suppress Malta was not continuous or even, but rather a series of efforts or surges. The periods where the suppression was low or declined were periods of serious losses to the cargo ships transiting to Lybia. At some points the losses were so bad that had they continued into the next calendar quarter unabated the logistics of the Axis Lybian armies would have effectively collapsed. That is to say the Axis were forced to suppress Malta, There was a distinct threat from their PoV of losing the supply line to Africa. Jeff Lesser traveled through the original Italian naval records and came to a similar conclusion, that suppression of Malta was necessary.
It is possible to look at the consolidated numbers of June 1940 to January 1943 & see that overall Malta based weapons were not responsible for much more than half the Axis cargo losses on the Lybian route. Alexandria as a naval base, airfields near Benghazi, or airfields in Algeria did make a major contribution. But, what Ellis shows is that Malta when unsuppressed was the base for severe damage to Axis cargo delivery, and if left unsuppressed would have been more significant.
Very few convoys actually were. From June 1940 through May 1943 the Mediterranean route was effectively closed to the Brits. Only one major convoy, Op TIGER, was run from west to Alexandria. That was successful through a combination of Brit luck and Italian intelligence failure, and some secondary bad decisions of the Italians. The Italians improved their game & the Germans weighed in. For 1941 there were some small convoys of a handful or less cargoships. Those were complex operations requiring Brit fleets deployed from both ends of the Med to the center, a surge in air activity, a full court press in intel work. And still serious losses were taken by the Brits in cargo lost. In the summer of 1942 Op PEDESTAL demonstrated even the most heavily protected convoy would suffer severe losses Malta was saved, but as a large naval operation PEDESTAL showed the Mediterranean was Closed. During these two year better than 95% of the cargo embarked for Egypt & the far east went by the Cape Horn route, or the Pacific route. Only a small percent actually made it though the Mediterranean until Tunisia was secured in 1943.
Riain
Banned
It isn't supposed to. In my mind the biggest problem with the Greek campaign isn't that it shouldn't have happened (it shouldn't have), or that Crete was lost (it shouldn't have) or that 2nd AD was destroyed in Libya because of it (it shouldn't have).
In my mind the biggest problem was that W Force, a Corps of an AIF division, a NZEF division and a British Armoured brigade was defeated at huge expense without ever fighting a battle above the Brigade level. If you're going to send a Corps on a politically motivated, Alliance driven lost cause then at the very least it should fight Division and Corps level battles, to really make the enemy work for his victory and inflict losses commensurate with the destruction of an AIF division and the capture of ~5000 Australians.
trinity
Banned
The key here was to decisively defeat the Italians in North Africa in 1940/1941 before they could be properly reinforced by the DAK.
Considering the generally extremely poor morale and equipment of the Italian Army at this stage of the North African campaign, concentrating all British land assets in the Middle East/North Africa in a general advance across Italian Libya would probably have overwhelmed the Italian defenders.
Riain
Banned
I agree with the political imperative, but Churchill fucked up on the execution of this one.
For starters the force should have been an ANZAC command, an AB and some cats and dogs does not warrant the appointment of a British General over a Corps consisting of an Australian division and a New Zealand division.
The only serious questioning about Greece was done by Menzies when he attended the War Cabinet, everyone else simply nodded and agreed with Churchill rather than providing some serious rigor to the idea/plan. This isn't to say that even with rigor the operation wouldn't have gone ahead with similar forces on a similar time-frame, however the task and goals may have been different, perhaps with more emphasis being put on larger battles or conversely to preserving the force in the face of overwhelming opposition.
Riain
Banned
The Axis, specifically the Germans, won the race to reinforce Libya.
The 155 tanks of Panzer regt 5 of the 5th Light division arriving in Tripoli by 10 March.
While 2nd AD arrived in Egypt in December 1940 it's tanks were already worn out after the 1940 invasion scare and in desperate need of refitting and adapting to the desert conditions. The division was spit on Feb 27 with an AB consisting of 52 light and 52 cruiser tanks going to Greece. What was left in Libya consisted of 29 light tanks, 25 cruiser tanks and 48 captured Italian M13s by the end of March. This was after a general reorganisation of all available and serviceable equipment, as the vast majority of 7th AD remaining tanks were totally worn out by Op Compass. These tanks were all lost in Op Sonnenblume by about 10 April and in Greece by 30 April.
The 144 tanks of Panzer regt 8 with the 15th Pz Div began moving to Libya between April 26 and May 6 and were assembled and on the line by 28 May.
On 12 May the British Tiger convoy arrived in Alexandria with 29 Light, 82 cruiser and 135 Matilda tanks, these equipped 2 ABs in the 7th AD and went into action in Op Battleaxe on 15 June. 90-100 of these tanks were lost in Op Battleaxe.
The only possible advantage the British could hope to secure was deploying all of 2nd AD in Libya, this would give it some 81 light, 77 cruiser and 48 M13 tanks against the 155 tanks of the 5th Light Division, However as stated these British tanks were worn out, not refitted prior to being deployed to Libya and suffered horrific non combat losses in action in April 1941, so they're not an option to for the conquest of Tripolitania in the face of 155 German tanks in the 5th light division.
trinity
Banned
Which further demonstrates the idiocy of attempting to reinforce Greece and Crete of all places against the Axis.
Riain
Banned
Sure does, although the political imperatives are quite powerful
An alternate course of action which might be more suitable given hindsight would be keeping 2nd AD intact with it's light and cruiser tanks, and deploying it east of Jabel Akhdar and sending the captured Italian tanks to Greece. This gives the ANZAC Corps some armoured support and meets the political imperative for the greek campaign and puts the 2nd AD where it needs to be with maximum strength.
Riain
Banned
I don't think anybody thinks the Greek campaign was a good idea, but that doesn't make an advance on Tripoli a practical alternative. The available equipment wasn't up to the task.
It was a decision taken above their paygrade and Max was not even a twinkle in his daddy's eye at the time.
trinity
Banned
See the quote that's been posted above:"the brief opportunity had passed" during the fortnight of indecision over whether to pour invaluable resources into the strategically hopeless Greeks or not.
Churchill's inability to focus on a single operational objective during this time period pretty much single-handedly demolishes "the Churchill myth" constructed by his own autohagiography and his loyal supporters.
I am not the one double guessing the Governments decisions of the day based on Strategic considerations in a global war and in Max's case based on 70 plus years of research
I see no comments about abandoning Malta making the slightest bit of positive difference to the North African campaign.
trinity
Banned
As the quote above shows, the brief and fleeting chance to "finish off"(direct quotation) the Italians in Libya before the DAK could be equipped and manned to combat-effectiveness was squandered away by Churchill's quixotic decision to parcel off the British armoured units to assist the Greeks.
trinity
Banned
This is surrounding the direct aftermath of Operation Compass, when the Italian Army in Libya was rapidly approaching its death knell even despite the piecemeal arrival of the DAK, and was only saved by the British detour to Greece.
Riain
Banned
As an Australian I don't buy into this myth; he shafted us in Greece, Malaya and tried to by diverting the AIF to Burma when PNG and potentially Australia was under dire threat. That said, the arguments against the Greek campaign are operational, the political-strategic arguments are valid enough given the assessments of the time.
For example the assessment that Rommel couldn't advance until May is fair enough, to do so with a single light division was bold the the point of reckless, something which Rommel is famous for. Standard planning meant that the Tiger convoy would replace 7th ADs tanks and 2nd AD would likely get trickle fed refitted tanks during April.
That said, with what equipment is OConnor going to take Triploi in the thrid week of February? His very much depleted and worn out equipment that had been in action since September 1940 and just advanced from 100km inside Egypt to El Agheila, over 650km as the crow flies and at least double on the ground? Of the worn out equipment the 2nd AD bought with them that was still in Egypt in March?
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