Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942

[Garrison]

1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part I – Japan - Planning the Final Blow​

An invasion of Burma had been planned by the Japanese for the latter part of December, only to be postponed as the situation in Malaya remained in flux and they had no choice but to call it off completely after the failure to breakthrough at the Swettenham Line and the possible threat of a British counterattack. This was a reasonable decision, and the next logical step would have been to concentrate all available forces on Malaya, focusing on either breaking through the Swettenham Line or mounting a fresh attack from Thailand down the eastern coast, isolating and destroying the defenders at Khota Baru and advancing south capturing other ports and airfields as they went. Initially the Japanese 55th Division, originally earmarked for the attack on Burma, was assigned to strike down the eastern coast, with the expectation of the renewed offensive being launched at the end of January [1].

This straightforward, and eminently reasonable, plan soon fell victim to what came to be called the Japanese ‘victory disease’ After the astonishing success of the Japanese attacks launched on December 7th there was a sense that Japan was unstoppable and fated to win, setbacks in Malaya and at Wake Island notwithstanding. Even among the Allies some seemed to share this sentiment, the shock of defeat now painted the Japanese soldier not as a buck toothed, glasses wearing weaklings, but as fanatical warrior willing, even eager, to die for the emperor and able to march for days without rest through the most appalling conditions sustained by little more than a handful of rice. Montgomery would have a few choice words about such sentiments when he was asked his opinion of the Japanese army, he had a degree of respect for the determination, but was keenly aware that it was married to incredible recklessness both tactically and strategically [2].

The Japanese of course wholeheartedly agreed with this new characterization of their armies as almost superhuman and in the air of exhilaration abroad in Tokyo in January 1942 no one was willing to brook the derailment of the grand plan of conquest owing to one or two minor setbacks. The British in Malaya must be not merely defeated but crushed showing the White colonialists that their time in Asia was done and that they had no choice but to make peace. This view went along with the hollow rhetoric of ‘Asia for the Asians’, where the only Asians worthy of controlling the region were the Japanese. This attitude meant the soon to be corrected setback in Malaya could not be used as an excuse to completely abandon an invasion of Burma for the foreseeable future. A better solution, from the perspective of the leadership in Tokyo, was a simultaneous strike in both Malaya and Burma, overwhelming what had to be thin British defences and taking complete control of the vital resources of the region. In their wildest ambitions Tokyo saw this victory perhaps even opening the door to a future invasion of India itself [3].

What emerged as Operation Yari was bluntly a strategic monstrosity that went unchecked because no one dared to openly argue against anything other than the fine details for fear of attracting the wrath of the senior officers who had embraced it wholeheartedly, and indeed the only major revision that was eventually incorporated served to make it even more unwieldy and complex. In addition to spearheads striking into eastern Malaya and Burma, as well as a renewed attack on the Swettenham Line, a fresh amphibious assault at Kuala Dungun in support of the eastern spearhead was added in the middle of February. The idea was that the once the British committed their forces to engage the spearhead attacking out of Thailand the amphibious force would land behind them. This would theoretically encircle the British forces, allowing for their complete destruction and leaving the Japanese a clear line of advance down the eastern coast. This idea received short shrift from the IJN, who had their own plans for inflicting a decisive defeat on the Allies. This the army would have to mount the amphibious assault with whatever it could scrape together out of its own resources [4].

The ever more complex plan required yet more changes to the Japanese order of battle and those fine details where arguments did take place almost entirely centred around the allocation of troops and equipment to the separate assault formations. The aforementioned 55th Division graphically illustrated the problems caused by these constant revisions. The divisional HQ had been relocated to the east to begin organizing their attack on Malaya under the original straightforward version of the plan. They had barely gotten settled in and started work when orders were issued suspending the movement of the division. Then a further ‘refinement’ meant Lieutenant-General Takeuchi, commanding the 55th, was advised that his division was being divided up, with part of it now providing the infantry for the amphibious assault, only for this to be cancelled as well in favour of using the whole division for the attack on Burma, the very task it had supposed to undertake in December. In one final twist one regiment was belatedly reassigned to the amphibious assault. By the end of February Takeuchi complained in his diary, ‘The British have more idea where my soldiers are than I do’ [5].

Takeuchi would have been shocked to discover just how much truth there was in his bitter joke. The endless discussions over the organization of Operation Yari generated plenty of radio traffic for British signals intelligence to work with and they were able to glean enough to establish the broad outline of the operation, most importantly the plans for Burma and the amphibious assault. This information was supplemented by the fact that within a very short time of occupying Thailand and the area of western Malaya north of the Swettenham Line the Japanese had alienated large parts of the native population. The Japanese could not contain their contempt for the native peoples even when it was in their strategic interest to do and the people of Malaya and Thailand were treated as less than even second-class citizens by the Japanese, subjected to casual brutality practically as a matter of policy by their soldiers and even this paled compared to the ruthless repression carried out by the Kempeitai. Notionally a police force the Kempeitai’s real role was akin to that of the Gestapo, clamping down on anti-Japanese sentiment whether real or imagined and their treatment of POWs was legendarily appalling. The Kempeitai may have been effective at brutalizing peasants and POWs, they were far less effective at preventing information being passed to the British and given the necessity of involving Thai officials and workers in organizing transport and shipping for Operation Yari there was a steady stream of information being received from those who, while not necessarily sympathetic to the British Empire, were eager to see the back of the Japanese at the earliest opportunity [6].

On the other side of the intelligence equation the Japanese proved extremely lax about gathering detailed information on exactly what the British were doing in Malaya and Burma during the spring of 1942. Some cynically suggested that this was because no one wanted to produce any facts that might contradict the expressed opinions of the leaders in Tokyo who were certain that the British in Asia were on their last legs and the Japanese Empire would soon raise its flag over New Delhi as well as Rangoon and Singapore. There seems to have been some truth to this idea, reports that contradicted the optimistic assumptions of Operation Yari were dismissed or simply never sent up the chain of command. Overall though the real issue seems to have been the internal squabbles over the allocation of forces to Burma and Malaya, with no one willing to sacrifice their chance for glory in the name of such mundanities as logistics or concentration of force. This led to different parts of intelligence reports that were submitted being latched on to in support of a particular position, while other parts were dismissed or denied. There was also a level of exaggeration in many quarters, over the capabilities of the Japanese troops and the deficiencies of the British, all of which served to badly muddy the waters as far as the real strategic situation was concerned.

All of this can be summarised as the Japanese needing to be able to win with the forces they could gather by the middle of March when Yari was due to be launched, therefore the unchallengeable assumption was made that British could not possibly have mustered the forces necessary to thwart that goal. This display of victory disease would prove fatal for Japanese ambitions in South East Asia [7].

[1] It was a sensible plan; so it was never going to survive the ambition of the Japanese command in Tokyo.

[2] In some ways this attitude mirrors that adopted by the allies after the Fall of France, overestimating the enemy as way of excusing their own failures.

[3] Overreach is something the Axis nations seemed to be determined to outdo one another at.

[4] The IJN plan will involve the Kido Butai, in an operation, or a pair of operations that will make OTL Midway look sensible.

[5] Essentially a case of too many glasses and not enough bottles to fill them.

[6] Again a common theme with the Axis, either through ideology or short-term necessity they alienated populations who might have supported them.

[7] They are assuming the British will conform to their plans and there are no contingencies if they should deviate from their assigned roles, not dissimilar from what happened with Operation MI in OTL.

 

[Garrison]

1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part II – Britain - No Longer a Backwater​

Even though they were unaware of the decision of the Japanese to postpone the invasion of Burma at the time it was a godsend for the British. It would be unfair to say that General Auchinleck had ignored the threat to Burma, but given the fact that Malaya was seen as the more likely target he had to allocate the available resources accordingly and after the arrival of Montgomery, with whom Auchinleck would eventually establish a solid working relationship, Malaya drew in the lion’s share of the additional soldiers and equipment available. After the initial assault on Malaya Auchinleck assumed that Burma might be well be targeted if the Japanese decided to bypass Malaya and threaten India and he was determined to reinforce it accordingly. To this end he now recalled the 10th Indian Infantry Division from the Middle East and successfully lobbied for the dispatch of the 1st Cavalry Division. and the mechanized elements that had been attached to form it into a flying column, as well. Some were sceptical about the deployment, but Auchinleck was adamant that if the Japanese could use bicycles for mobility he could use cavalry, not to mention the attached armoured cars and light tanks. Both divisions arrived in theatre in the middle of January, with General Slim being given overall command of what was effectively a Corps formed of the two divisions, though this would expand in response to Auchinleck’s demands for the dispatch of more armour and infantry [1].

That both Mark VI B and the Matilda II had proven invaluable in the defence of the Swettenham Line helped make Auchinleck’s case that there was indeed a place for tanks in South East Asia. He was willing to accept the dispatch of more of the tanks considered obsolescent for combat in the Mediterranean and Europe in the light of developments with the Wehrmacht’s Panzer and South East Asia would become the final battleground for many a Cruiser IV and Matilda II. These would however be leavened with a number of late model Crusader and Valentine tanks as the fighting in the Middle East had made it clear the ability to fire an effective HE shell was invaluable, especially in the infantry support role. In many respects however the best tank to see service in the theatre in the first half of 1942 was the American M3 Stuart light tank.

The British had received 150 Stuarts in the Autumn of 1941, without any great enthusiasm it must be said. At a point in time when it appeared that if there were to be any further armoured clashes in Libya it would be with a revived Afrika Korps there was no desire to deploy more light tanks considering the fate of so many Mark VI Bs. There was also a more political concern that accepting the Stuart into frontline service would open the door for the M3 Lee to be introduced at the expense of the tanks the army actually wanted, the A22 Black Prince and A24 Churchill infantry tanks, and the A27 Centaur cruiser tank, though with the latter two the line between infantry and cruiser tank had already blurred and they would be succeeded by a single tank that could carry out both roles [2].

Politics also played its part in the fact that these tanks were not dispatched to the Far East before December 7th. There had been some grumbling in Washington military and political circles that so much of the hardware shipped to Britain had been dispatched to ‘backwaters’. They were particularly aggrieved at the dispatch of so many P40s, at that point one of the most modern fighters in the USAAF’s inventory, to Australia and South East Asia. At this point in time the British were still worried that Americans would discover how much of the surplus equipment they had supplied to a desperate Britain in 1940 was now in the hands of the Italians and Germans courtesy of the fall of Greece. It was thus considered too risky diplomatically to dispatch the Stuarts to Malaya while it remained at peace, the situation changed drastically after December 7th.

Those soldiers in Burma and Malaya who found themselves being expected to crew the Stuarts, many converting over from the Mark VI B, were deeply dubious that they were once again getting the short end of the stick. That the Stuart soon came to be known affectionately as the Honey by its crews indicates how quickly that attitude. The Stuart was an excellent light tank, offering better protection and firepower than the MK VI B while still being quick and small enough to operate in the jungles of South East Asia. As it acquired a stellar reputation with the British forces in the Far East it was greeted with far less enthusiasm by the Japanese who had to face it. The Stuart remained in service in South East Asia long after tanks like the Sherman, Centaur and Churchill had come to dominate the Allied armoured divisions in Europe [3].

Equally important to the defence of Malaya and Burma were the radar systems dispatched to the Far East to allow for the creation of an integrated air defence system. Just as in Eagle Days over Southern England the radar proved a massive force multiplier, removing the need for constant combat air patrols and alert fighters on the ground, conserving resources and allowing available fighters to be concentrated in the right place. This meant that as both sides looked to strengthen their available air strength for the next major engagement the RAF and RAAF forces would enjoy a critical advantage that helped offset the fact that for the time being the IJA still retained numerical superiority [4].

The dispatch of so much equipment and manpower to Burma and Malaya does beg the question of why the Japanese didn’t make a serious effort to interdict British shipping. Certainly, it was possible for the British to avoid some of the more obvious shipping routes, especially when it came to running supplies to Burma and the British did their best to time their movements based on intelligence about IJN dispositions. Fast convoys sometimes assembled in Rangoon to make a swift run to Singapore when they knew the Japanese were preoccupied with operations in the Pacific. They were even able to make critical supply runs to the grab bag of Allied forces still holding out on Java, the inability to finally secure the Dutch East Indies providing another powerful incentive to conquer Malaya and Burma [5].

Still the approaches to Singapore were an obvious choke point and with Force Z still licking its wounds in Ceylon and awaiting the reinforcements that would transform it into a fully-fledged fleet, there was little available at that time to stop the IJN from attacking the convoys. The interservice rivalries that plagued the Japanese armed forces played a major part in this and there was also a certain amount of wounded pride that needed assuaging after the IJN had failed in December to either intercept Force Z or prevent the relief of Wake Island and if anyone were going to deliver the decisive blow that forced the Allies to seek terms Yamamoto and his staff were determined that it be struck by the navy not the army. This meant that even as the Army needed all support possible for their overambitious plan of attack the IJN was focused on their own grand scheme to finally bring both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy to battle and achieve the elusive decisive victory that had eluded them so far. This meant that the army was on its own in Malaya and Burma and the British could run convoys through the area with only air attacks from the IJAAF to worry about, and they had to run the gauntlet of the air defences around Singapore itself [6].

Together this all meant that the Japanese belief that one more push would drive the British out of South East Asia was wide of the mark to say the least. The defenders in Burma and Malaya in March of 1942 were far stronger than they had been in December 1941 and the window of opportunity for an easy victory had closed, if it ever existed. Much the same could be said for the Pacific War as a whole, though it would be some time before both sides realized that the initiative was swinging towards the Allies [7].

[1] The British have the most valuable commodity of all courtesy of the ever-expanding nature of Operation Yari, time.

[2] You can guess the name of that single replacement tank.

[3] To be clear the Lee isn’t actually bad; it just doesn’t suit the British when their own tanks have performed better and been upgraded sooner.

[4} The Japanese have more aircraft, but they will be given multiple task that negate much of that advantage besides radar.

[5] The Japanese forces fighting in the DEI are even more of a mixed bag thrown together at the last minute than the Allies, which combined with the fact that the Canadian troops thrown away in Hong Kong wound up in the DEI instead has allowed the Allies to bare cling on to a foothold.

[6] The IJNs plan will be discussed in detail after Operation Yari is done.

[7] The next two updates cover the fighting in Burma and Malaya respectively.

 

[Garrison]

1st February– 25th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part III – The Burma Spearhead​

The Japanese intended to launch Operation Yari on the 19th of March, with a swift advance into Burma by the 55th Division that would take the British by surprise, supported by heavy air attacks that would destroy the RAF and RAAF forces on the ground, the British however had no intention of following the Japanese. General Slim had been impressed by the conduct of the irregulars in Malaya and with Auchinleck’s blessing had sought to create his own equivalent, intending for them to slip behind Japanese lines to target their communications and command infrastructure. These groups ranged between platoon and company strength, with some of the larger units provided with mules to allow them to carry rather more equipment and supplies than their counterparts in Malaya. Slim had also found some men who were familiar with the animals and their handling, which was just as well since the oft used phrase, ‘stubborn as a mule’ was well founded and inexperienced handlers often found the animals all but impossible to get moving.

The Burmese irregulars, still lacking a proper title, made their presence felt on the night of the 18th of March, striking at supply dumps and communication posts belonging to the 55th as well as a forward airfield preparing for the attack the next morning. This indication that the British were not going to be taken by surprise was dismissed out of hand by the senior Japanese commanders and if General Takeuchi felt any trepidation about the timing of these British attacks he kept it to himself, as he had his concerns about the disruption to his division caused by the toing and froing during February. The 55th struck out across the Burmese border as scheduled with bombers droning overhead as dawn broke. Courtesy of the irregulars the air defences in Burma were on full alert and as soon as radar picked up the incoming raiders every fighter available took to the skies, a mix of Brewster Buffalos, P40s, Hurricanes, and even some freshly arrived Spitfires, with many of the RAF planes outfitted with 20mm cannon. The aerial battle was fierce and the defending fighters took significant casualties and some groups of bombers did get through but the IJAF losses were far heavier than the defenders, partly because the effort to build up Japanese airpower in the region had focused on bombers, meaning that the fighter cover for the attacking formations was much thinner than it should have been, with the Japanese again depending on the element of surprise and the assumption that the British build-up had been as hampered as their own [1].

Matters were made worse by the fact that this shortage of fighters left the Japanese airfields badly exposed and British bombers were heading in the opposite direction even as the IJAF was launching their own attacks. Surviving Japanese aircraft returning to base found airfields pockmarked with bomb hits and columns of smoke, drastically impacting their ability to carry out the tempo of sorties Operation Yari called for in support of the advance into Burma. This aerial duel continued over the next five days, and in the end, it was the IJAF that was forced to call off its operations and regroup, which was a relief for the defenders as they were also nearing the point of exhaustion by this point. The Japanese returned to bombing operations by the 25th of March, though these were sporadic and of limited scale as supplies of munitions were also becoming depleted [2].

As the air battles were fought above them the 55th was having a torrid time on the ground as well as they tried to press forward as fast as possible, only to encounter repeated figurative and literal roadblocks placed in their way by the British. They managed to reach the vicinity of Kawkareik on the 28th of March, intending to quickly seize it before advancing on Moulmein. They now encountered elements of the 1st Cavalry Division, acting in their role as a mobile column, skirmishing and disengaging rather than getting drawn into a stand-up fight with cavalry element fighting purely mounted infantry. Their goal was to slow the Japanese advance, putting ever more pressure on their logistics, especially Takeuchi’s ability to feed his troops, already an issue as the advance was falling behind the tight timetable laid out for the 55th. Auchinleck and Slim had taken onboard the lessons learned from Malaya and the reports of the irregulars, that the greatest weakness of the Japanese was their supply system, they simply could not sustain their advance for very long without the situation becoming critical. The 1st Cavalry carried out their harassment to great effect, which only increased Takeuchi’s determination to advance, since the only solutions to his supply issues lay before him. The confused nature of the fighting and the fact that the Japanese never saw the full strength of the 1st Cavalry meant that Takeuchi remained convinced that the British forces were weak and unable to face the 55th in open battle. This view persisted even when the 55th encountered the dug in defences around Kawkareik itself on the 31st of March. Takeuchi believed that he had ‘run the enemy to ground’ and his troops were eager to finally pin down and destroy the forces that had been harassing them for days with what they believed to be their superior numbers. In doing so the Japanese troops were doing precisely what Auchinleck, and Slim, had hoped they would do [3].

Far from out numbering the defenders the 55th was facing the 10th Indian Division, demounted troops from the 1st Cavalry and elements of the Burma Division. The latter had only been formed a few months earlier and had been rated as ‘poor’ back in January. Since then, efforts had been made to train the troops and raise their morale, as well as providing them with a generous share of the new weapons and equipment that were delivered to Burma. By the time of the battle at Kawkareik the Burma Division was regarded as ‘steady’, not suited offensive operations but able to hold a defensive position without panicking, which was all that was required of them in Slim’s plan [4].

While the Burma Division held the centre, reinforced by some elements of 1st Cavalry, the bulk of 10th Infantry and the mechanized elements of 1st Cavalry were positioned on the flanks of the position. The plan was to draw the Japanese into making a frontal assault on the centre, at which point the flanking troops would pivot in and attack the flanks, a classic encirclement in essence. It was a plan that could have been taken from a military textbook and Slim was perfectly aware of the maxim that ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’, and it would be a close-run thing. It seemed that the 55th Division might breakthrough in the centre several times during the fighting and the flanking forces were not able to advance as quickly as Slim had hoped. Despite this the plan did succeed, in no small part because Takeuchi didn’t appreciate the strength of the attacks on his flanks. His failure to understand the seriousness of the situation was the main reason the 55th nearly broke through in the centre, Slim had assumed they would abandon the attack far sooner and shift to trying to break out of the trap. In the end the fact that the Burma Division managed to hold doomed the 55th [5].

By the time Takeuchi did realize the situation his troops were in it was all but too late, his troops fought with a mix of courage and desperation and in the end the equivalent of one Brigade did manage to escape, this left three-quarters of the 55th caught in the pincer movement, including General Takeuchi himself. The fighting in what was called the Kawkareik pocket continued until the 3rd of April before the remaining exhausted Japanese soldiers finally laid down their arms, seemingly lacking the desire to fight to the death for the emperor. Takeuchi was not among the prisoners; he chose Seppuku rather than the humiliation of being a POW. While becoming a POW may have been a disgrace for the soldiers of the 55th, they would at least be fed and provided with medical assistance, while their more ‘honourable’ comrades who had escaped the trap faced the long trek back to Thailand with little food. Hungry soldiers ate whatever they could find and drank dirty water, meaning that dysentery was rife, and many soldiers succumbed. Even when they reached what had been their jumping off point at Mae Sot in Thailand the survivors of the 55th found little in the way of supplies, and it wasn’t until they reached Raheng on the 9th of April that their ordeal finally ended. By this time the remainder of the 55th couldn’t muster even a single regiment of troops.

There were other planned attacks on Burma, one aiming towards Victoria Point in the south and an amphibious assault on Rangoon. Both though had been contingent on the success of both the 55th and the attacks in Malaya, the latter would prove no more successful than the former, meaning that Burma would remain secure [6].

[1] Wingate will make an appearance in due course and his plans for something on a larger scale than the irregulars will be well received.

[2] The IJAAF just isn’t getting the replacements it needs, and the IJN certainly won’t help.

[3] Even if they suspected the truth the Japanese would still have had little choice but to attack.

[4] With less time to train and little equipment the Burma Division fell apart in the face of the Japanese advance IOTL.

[5] Its hardly uncommon for military officers to develop tunnel vision in a battle and lose track of the bigger picture.

[6] So the other OTL strikes on Burma don’t happen because the resources are needed elsewhere, and the 55th finds itself experiencing something akin to the retreat from Kohima in OTL.

 

[Garrison]

1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part IV – The Assault at Kuala Dungun​

The amphibious force heading for Kuala Dungun was scheduled to make its landing on the 21st of March, two days after the land force launched their renewed assault on the position at Khota Baru, allowing for the British to mobilize whatever reserves they had in the east of Malaya to reinforce the positions around Khota Baru. This portion of the plan failed well before the amphibious force got anywhere near their destination, because the British were well aware of Japanese intentions and the defences at Khota Baru were far stronger than the Japanese had anticipated and the attack there swiftly bogged down, without Montgomery feeling the need to move any of his reserves north. Those troops instead remained positioned to counter the amphibious force, which would also have to contend with the attentions of the RAF and RAAF bombers that were dispatched to intercept them [1].

Just as in Burma the IJAAF intended to devastate the British aircraft on the ground, and just as in Burma the establishment of radar facilities eliminated the element of surprise, resulting in the IJAAF taking heavy casualties. Combined with the losses over Burma the IJAAF had seen its strength reduced by between a third and a half in the South East Asia theatre, depending on which sets of figures is used as a reference. Japanese sources are contradictory about the number of aircraft and sorties conducted over Burma, Malaya and Java, where small scale air attacks continued even at the height of the fighting around Khota Baru and Kuala Lumpur. The figures on numbers and losses in Japanese archives were almost certainly altered after the events to minimize the embarrassment to the IJA. Regardless of the actual rate of attrition the relative failure of the air attacks allowed the British to mount a large-scale raid with some 73 Blenheims, Bostons, and Beaufighters attacking the amphibious force in three waves. The aircraft were largely carrying bombs, though perhaps half a dozen of the Beaufighter were carrying torpedoes, a variant known as the ‘torbeau’. Most of the available IJAAF fighters had been covering the airfield attacks and the transports, hastily outfitted with a few light artillery pieces and some heavy machine guns as anti-aircraft weapons, could offer little resistance.

Even so the attacks cost the British a dozen aircraft, in exchange the two largest transport ships were sunk out right and another suffered heavy damage that left it with no choice but to retreat and limp back to port, despite the desire of the army officers aboard to press on. That left one transport ship and nine fishing vessels to press on to Kuala Dungun in the hope of getting ashore before any further air attacks could be mounted. The transports also put in an urgent request for more air support, without much success. They were only spared from further air attacks because the bomber crews overestimated the amount of damage they had done and mistakenly concluded that the entire amphibious force was withdrawing. Still, what had been a force of 1100 Japanese troops had been reduced to less than 500, with most of the force’s supplies and heavy equipment lost with the large transports [2].

This mistaken conclusion could have had serious consequences for the defence of Eastern Malaya; Montgomery however had not placed his faith in the idea of destroying the amphibious force at sea, and some 600 British troops were waiting to meet them. These troops had only arrived in Malaya a few weeks before, but they were all veterans of the fighting in the Middle East and they exhibited excellent fire discipline, not opening up until the Japanese troops tried to rush the port facilities, hoping to take control of them and secure a bridgehead for the unloading of their remaining supplies and heavy equipment. Instead, they found themselves advancing into a killing ground of interlocking machine gun nests and mortars. As soon as the machine guns opened up so did the supporting artillery, meaning that both the front and rear of the Japanese force were under fire, pinning them down with little in the way of solid cover. By the time they were able to pull back they had taken over two hundred casualties, dead and wounded, and any hope the situation could be retrieved was lost when the remaining transports pulled out, apparently in response to aircraft sightings. These though were probably Japanese aircraft as the operational reports from the British forces indicate that no RAF or RAAF aircraft were in the vicinity until almost dusk, by which time the Japanese ships had withdrawn. The transports were supposed to return after dark but owing to a final breakdown in communications with the forces ashore this did not take place, or at least the absence of any communication with the troops was the excuse put forward for the decision to completely abandon the landing force [3].

A further attempt to breakout overnight by the remaining Japanese troops was also repulsed and the following morning a delegation of British officers, marching under a white flag, sought the surrender of the cut off Japanese troops, only to find that the Japanese apparently thought the British intended to surrender! After the British officers beat a hasty retreat there was a further Japanese attack on the British position, though this involved less than a hundred Japanese troops and was again repulsed with heavy Japanese losses. The British once more called on the Japanese to surrender and again they were rebuffed, even though by this point the Japanese were down to less than one hundred and fifty effectives, including a number a of walking wounded. It was only after the reappearance of the RAF, this time in the shape of Hurricanes that strafed and bombed the Japanese position, that the by now very junior officers commanding the remnant of the assault force finally chose to lay down their arms, in exchange that for a written assurance from the British that they had fought honourably and had surrendered only to obtain medical aid for their wounded men [4].

The fighting around Khota Baru was far less dramatic, though still costly for the Japanese. The British position had been substantially built up since the fighting in December and while both sides fed reinforcements into the battle in a piecemeal fashion the British and Indian troops received rather more of them than the Japanese side. It was only on the 27th of March that the Japanese commanders finally elected to withdraw ‘to regroup’, admitting to a retreat being far too humiliating. This regrouping amounted to appeals for additional air support, artillery, and tanks, none of which was forthcoming as what little reserves the Japanese possessed had already been committed. Almost everything the Japanese had accumulated in the way of men and equipment during the first months of 1942 had been thrown into the initial assaults and once those had been used up at Khota Baru and Kuala Dungun the eastern arm of Operation Yari in Malaya had to be abandoned, regardless of attempts to rally the Japanese forces fighting spirit to mount fresh assaults with depleted regiments and inadequate ammunition. The only advantage the troops withdrawing from Khota Baru enjoyed was that their supply lines were far shorter than those of the 55th Division in Burma and they were able fall back into Thailand in relatively good order [5].

With the repulse of the offensive in Burma this meant that by the 27th of March three of the four arms of Operation Yari had failed. This did not mean the fighting was over, indeed it would drag on into April, with Montgomery recording in his official account of the defence that the battle finally ended on the 13th.That the second battle of Kuala Lumpur dragged on for so long after the failure of the rest of Operation Yari speaks to the intransigence of the Japanese forces in Western Malaya [6].

[1] They are of course getting no support from IJN.

[2] So yes, the bomber pilots have somewhat exaggerated their success, hardly the only time in the war this happened.

[3] Some people on the Japanese did still understand that sometimes discretion was the better part of valour.

[4] A display of common sense that will not be repeated very often as the Japanese position in the war deteriorates.

[5] Relatively meaning they didn’t actually have men starve to death during the retreat.

[6] And yes there is one more update on the battle in Malaya before we move elsewhere.

 

[Garrison]

1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part V – The Second Battle of Kuala Lumpur​

In early versions of Operation Yari the force attack Kuala Lumpur had strictly limited objectives, with a matching force level. It was intended to pin the British defenders in place while the attack in the east broke through and if the opportunity arose to drive them back towards Singapore and prevent the British from establishing a new line of defence. This latter objective was largely included as a sop to the more aggressive elements in the Japanese High Command. The problem arose when this hoped for pursuit was transformed into a requirement of the plan, despite the continued concerns of some planners, who objected to the fact that this heavier weighting for the west of Malaya came at the expense of every other part of Yari. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, was primarily responsible for the demands to increase the weight of the attack in the west, fearing that a mere holding action would give the British too much room to manoeuvre and that they had to be pushed out of the Swettenham Line and kept off balance. Tsuji did express the view that this should not be done at the expense of weakening the attack in the east, however when it became clear that this simply wasn’t possible Tsuji, safely removed from the front line in a comfortable office, reverted to his aggressive instincts and allowed the western arm of the offensive to draw strength away from the other parts of the operation [1].

One item that the western force absorbed almost entirely was armoured support, on the grounds that the additional weight of firepower was best used to break the Swettenham Line and pave the way for a sweep into the British rear, while the attack in the east would use the amphibious assault to achieve the same result. The Japanese were not looking to the kind of sweeping armoured flanking manoeuvre that Manstein and Guderian had embraced, especially as the Japanese could only assemble some 81 tanks for the battle and Montgomery had no intention of offering any open flank to be exploited. The tanks would though be used in a concentrated mass intended to punch a hole in the line and in many cases, they would go into battle with Japanese infantry clinging to them, intended to be swiftly deployed when the Japanese broke into the Swettenham Line. Troops hitching a ride on tanks to reach the front was hardly unusual in WWII, riding on them into the thick of the action was a different matter and few of these troops survived their ride to engage in battle, either unceremoniously thrown from the tanks they were precariously holding onto or victims of enemy fire. The latter would have been less of an issue if the Japanese had maintained better operational security. Instead the British learned where the Japanese had placed their armour and Montgomery adjusted his forces accordingly [2].

The Japanese offensive in the west opened on the 20th of March, with the armoured spearhead leading the way, though as often happened in all theatres it was less a question of leading more of running ahead in the heat of battle and becoming isolated from infantry support as a result, an issue that the infantry riding on them was supposed to address. They were met by a force of 27 Cruiser tanks, largely Cruiser II and Cruiser IV that briefly skirmished with the Japanese spearhead before falling back with the enemy in hot pursuit, which was precisely what Montgomery had planned for. As the Japanese advanced, they came under fire from concealed anti-tank guns and hull down Matilda IIs and Valentines. Most of the infantry tanks were still only equipped with 2pdr guns, these were more than adequate against the available Japanese tanks and the spearhead was cut to pieces with British artillery adding to the carnage [3].

The infantry attacks that were intended to follow up a successful armoured breakthrough went in nonetheless and persisted for three days, making little ground before they were finally called off and a series of small-scale British attacks between the 25th and 26th of March retook what meagre ground they had taken. After this there was a lull in the fighting, with Montgomery resisting calls for a full-scale counterattack on the grounds he had neither the numbers nor the logistics to sustain a meaningful pursuit. Some of the Japanese saw this ‘inertia’ as a sign that they had stretched the British to the breaking point and with the failure of the attacks in the east they cajoled their troops into preparing what was hoped to be the final attack that would break the Swettenham Line and open the road to Singapore. This was fuelled by a sense that the British must have had to create a weak point somewhere in their lines to mount an effective defence in the east and faced with the knowledge that abandoning the attack would essentially mean giving up on conquering Malaya altogether there really was no other option but one last push from the Japanese perspective. This fresh attack was launched on the 30th of March [4].

Certainly, the defenders on the Swettenham line were tired and not as strong as they had been on the 20th, however they were still stronger than the Japanese and their supply lines were secure and able to provide rations and ammunition to the troops, not something the Japanese troops could count on by this stage of the battle. The renewed attack didn’t achieve even the limited gains of the previous assault on the 20th, nevertheless the renewed attack continued for five days this time, with some Japanese units being reduced to mounting bayonet attacks by the 4th of April, whatever else they lacked determination was not in short supply, though it was not nearly enough in the face machine guns and artillery that never quite ran out of ammunition even though the British were running short by the 4th of April. The Japanese did try to vary their tactics, putting in a night attack on the 6th of April that turned into a confused mess with Japanese units running into one another in the dark and alerting the defenders. On the other hand British probes of the Japanese lines were also met with stiff resistance, confirming Montgomery’s decision to remain on the defensive [5].

It was only when reports were received that the attack into Burma had been also repulsed, which was not until the 10th of April after the remnants of the 55th Division finished their retreat, that it was finally conceded that the forces facing the Swettenham Line would have to withdraw and regroup. The theoretical threat of a British attack towards Bangkok from Burma provided a face-saving excuse to withdraw northwards, and the Japanese began pulling out of the forward positions on the 11th, with the entire force in motion by the 13th, hence Montgomery marking this as the end of the battle. For the defending troops this was an immense relief, though as far as Montgomery was concerned the defence of the Swettenham Line was simply a steppingstone to driving the Japanese completely out of South East Asia and the Dutch East Indies, the Pacific he was prepared to leave to the Americans [6].

On the Japanese side there was a very quiet shift in strategy, a reluctant acceptance that for the time being at least they had no choice but to shift to the defensive, not only in Malaya but across the rest of their conquests. This did not spare several senior officers from being dismissed in disgrace, carrying the blame for the overreach that was now handing the initiative to their enemies. This shift in Japanese strategy not only gave the British a secure base of operations, but it also meant that when faming struck Bengal in 1943 the British were able to mount a meaningful relief effort through Burma, countering claims by some nationalists that they were prepared to leave Indians to die of hunger [7].

From this point on Japan would be facing a battle for survival, not conquest The Royal Navy would return to Singapore in due course and from there they would be able to blockade the Japanese forces in the Dutch East Indies and the need to fight on so many fronts put an ever greater strain on an already overextended IJA and IJN, with the latter facing its own catastrophes in the spring of 1942 [8].

[1] So yes there were some attempts to try and properly balance the forces, but no one was willing to dial things back when it became clear that wasn’t possible.

[2] A big part of the problem for the Japanese is that they don’t have as much room for surprise as they did back in December 1941, and even they telegraphed a lot of their moves, the counters were just poorly handled.

[3] It’s a trick that was used time and again in the war, using armour as bait to draw in the enemy.

[4] Its one last throw of the dice for the Japanese, and such things have worked on occasion, its just the Japanese no longer enjoy that kind of luck.

[5] Both sides are getting close to complete exhaustion at this point.

[6] So Montgomery’s ego is quite unlimited.

[7] So yes, the Bengal famine doesn’t happen.

[8] And those catastrophes will be along in a few updates.

 

[Garrison]

12th February -13th February 1942 – Operation Odin​

Even in the months after the loss of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen Admiral Raeder had not entirely abandoned his plans for further sorties into the Atlantic by his surface fleet, though whether this was motivated by a genuine expectation of success or simply the need to be seen to be doing something is still a subject for argument. His plan now centred around linking up Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, possibly acting in co-operation with a repaired Gneisenau. This latter possibility had crumbled as the extent of the damage inflicted by the RAF air raids became clear, and further attacks in the following months had undone much of what work had been carried out. By the end of 1941 the efforts to rebuild Gneisenau had been unofficially abandoned for the time being and Hitler had now decided that Norway was a ‘zone of destiny’ that must be protected at all costs. So rather than Tirpitz departing Norwegian waters to link up with Scharnhorst, the Scharnhorst was now required to head from north from Brest and link up with Tirpitz, meaning that Scharnhorst would have to run the gauntlet of the English Channel with only a quartet of destroyers and a force of E-Boats as an escort [1].

Raeder’s anxieties about this plan were increased by the fact that he had received reports of several Royal Navy capital ships departing from the Mediterranean. Such reports often tended to inflate the class of ships involved, with cruisers frequently being described as battleships or even carriers, however that the British had withdrawn one or more battleships back to home waters was all but certain. Raeder’s anxieties were ignored by Hitler, who had little faith in the Admiral’s opinions and was not in the mood to revisit his decision. Raeder was right to be worried as the reports were accurate and one battleship had been correctly identified as such, HMS Queen Elizabeth.

This venerable battleship was withdrawn from the Mediterranean in early December, with the intention of having her undergo maintenance and a modest refit to upgrade her anti-aircraft defences. This plan was delayed at the beginning of January when the British received intelligence that Scharnhorst was possibly going to sortie from Brest. This also meant that plans for the deployment of the King George V class battleship HMS Anson, recently returned from ferrying Churchill to the USA, to Ceylon were delayed in the hopes of intercepting and destroying Scharnhorst. The British formulated a plan that aimed to integrate action by the Royal Navy, RAF and FAA, Operation Fuller [2].

That the British had so much advance information about the planning for what the Germans called Operation Odin [3] was due to a mixture of signals intelligence, aerial reconnaissance, and a pair of spies inside Brest itself. The aftermath of the loss of most of the Marine Nationale had fuelled resistance activities in and around the major French dockyards and made obtaining human intelligence from inside France easier, though never easy, with the agents risking their lives every time they made contact. The British did their best to protect their agents, ensuring that neither of those monitoring activities in the dockyards at Brest knew the other existed.

Doenitz had spent much of January trying to scrape up more of an escort for Scharnhorst, the problem was that the Kriegsmarine was running out of surface ships to use. Given this reality much of the responsibility for defending Scharnhorst would fall on the Luftwaffe. Goering promised heavy air cover for the battleship, and for once he delivered on his promise. Conversely the RAF contribution to Operation Fuller fell somewhat short of what might have been expected, with units having been dispatched overseas and redeployed to airfields in the north of Britain, ironically in response to the perceived threat of a breakout by Tirpitz. This meant that available squadrons able to intercept a potential breakout from Brest were thin on the ground and the situation was exacerbated by miserable weather and some northerly airfields being snowed in. That communications between the RAF and Royal Navy were still far from satisfactory did nothing to help in co-ordinating a response [4].

A further issue was that the RAF bomber groups around Dover intended to deploy AP bombs as these were theoretically the only bomb the RAF had that could seriously damage the Scharnhorst. General Purpose (GP) bombs would simply explode when they struck armour, and the blast would do little damage to an armoured target like Scharnhorst. The significant drawback to the AP bombs was that they had to be dropped from at least 7000ft, making it hard to hit a moving target at the best of times. When fog and low cloud limited visibility this meant they either had to be dropped too low to be effective, or dropped blind in the hope they hit home. Doenitz knew nothing of these problems and was filled with apprehension, but under pressure to launch Operation Odin he finally gave the order for Scharnhorst and her escorts to depart. With the operation under the command of the captain of the Scharnhorst, Kapitän zur See Kurt-Caesar Hoffmann the force departed Brest on the night of the 12th-13th February.

The Germans had been doing their best to jam any unauthorized radio transmissions out of the Brest area, one of the agents inside the dockyard did manage to get a message out advising that Scharnhorst had left the dockyard. This priceless piece of intelligence was almost squandered as it took hours for the information to be relayed to the Royal Navy and the RAF, and it was nearly dawn on the 13th before Queen Elizabeth and Anson received orders to proceed to try and intercept the Kriegsmarine flotilla. They had already been at sea after earlier warnings about Operation Odin, but they were not well positioned to respond and it would take some hours for them to close, assuming they could locate Scharnhorst at all before night fell on the short northern European day [5].

This meant that for the time being stopping the Scharnhorst fell to the RAF and the FAA, and all the potential problems mentioned above afflicted the RAF attempts to bomb the battleship. They also had to contend with the presence of the Luftwaffe, making the most of their temporary air superiority over the channel as RAF fighters were either in the wrong place or poorly co-ordinated with the bombers. The RAF bomber groups assigned to attack Scharnhorst were hastily reloaded with GP bombs considering the conditions in the channel, delaying their take off for over an hour. When they did take to the air, they either failed to find the ship, withdrew in the face of incessant attacks from the Luftwaffe, or dropped their bombs to no effect, despite the usual claims of multiple hits from overeager crews. In the end it fell to a single FAA torpedo bomber squadron to spare the British from humiliating failure, and they paid a high price for their efforts.

FAA 825 Squadron had recently been re-equipped with Fairey Monarch Barracuda’s and after several delays they were finally provided with fighter cover and the eight available aircraft of the squadron finally took off just after 12:20 hours on the 13th. The fighter protection however was soon stripped away as the Spitfire’s were drawn into engagements with Bf 109s and Fw 190s covering the Scharnhorst and the Barracudas came under fighter attack themselves as they approached the Kriegsmarine force. Only two of the Barracudas survived long enough to get their torpedoes away, and none survived to return to base. Of the two torpedoes launched only one appears to have hit home, though some reports suggest the other torpedo struck but failed to detonate. The damage done by the one confirmed hit was serious but not fatal. It had detonated on the port side of Scharnhorst, aft of amidships. The battleship did take on water, though efforts to shore up the damage combined with her pumps allowed Scharnhorst to stave off any major flooding [6].

Given the complete failure of the other air attacks it began to seem to Captain Hoffmann that the Scharnhorst had weathered the worst of what the British had to throw at them especially with dusk swiftly approaching. However the same poor weather that had helped mask the Scharnhorst had also allowed the Queen Elizabeth and the Anson to proceed undetected and unmolested. This changed about 15:20 hours when a report from a prowling Luftwaffe spotting plane advised that what was identified as one battleship supported by a cruiser and several destroyers was steaming towards Scharnhorst’s position. This news was greeted with shock on the bridge of the Scharnhorst. With his ship already damaged and fearing that he was facing a repeat of the fate of the Bismarck Hoffman had little choice except to alter course and try to evade contact during the night. Turning back to Brest was out of the question, even if it had been possible tactically any such request would have been inevitably vetoed from Berlin. The Scharnhorst instead altered course while still staying on a northerly heading, unwittingly turning towards uncharted British minefield.

In the next two hours the Scharnhorst hit two mines, the damage from the first was severe, again though probably survivable by itself, the second mine exploded practically next the existing damage from the torpedo strike. The hastily patched damaged was not only reopened but massively worsened as previously weakened plates cracked and tore open [7]. The flow of water into Scharnhorst increased from a trickle to a flood that the pumps could not keep up with and there was no prospect this time of patching the damage. The ship was fighting a losing battle against the flooding and when a pump failed at 16:40 hours Scharnhorst’s fate was sealed. Beginning at 17:20 hours Captain Hoffman ordered the destroyers Z8 Bruno Heinmann and the Z7 Herman Schoemann to come alongside and take off all except a skeleton crew who continued to try and save the Scharnhorst until 19:00 hours when Hoffman ordered all hands to abandon ship. The captain and his remaining crew shut off the remaining pumps and were taken off even as Scharnhorst began to list to port. Hoffman watched from the deck of the Herman Schoemann as Scharnhorst finally went down at around 20:10 hours [8].

For the Germans Hoffman would carry much of the blame for the loss of the Scharnhorst, and in some respects he was fortunate to get away with nothing worse than a ruined career. Even six months later he would probably have faced being shot for cowardice or ‘sabotage’. Admiral Raeder did not escape unscathed either. Hitler’s patience was finally exhausted and he dismissed Raeder, replacing him with the more politically reliable Doenitz, though the promotion did not provide any sudden improvement in the performance of the U-Boat force [9].

The British placed the entire credit for the destruction of the Scharnhorst on the actions of 825 Squadron, which was an exaggeration, though since it ensured that the squadrons sacrifice was properly commemorated it is perhaps forgivable, and it is the case that without their attack Scharnhorst would almost certainly have survived. The commander of 825 Squadron, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, was credited with scoring the crucial hit and awarded the Victoria Cross. At the time lionizing 825 Squadron had more to do with covering up the poor execution of Operation Fuller than with honouring the dead and there would be considerable recriminations behind the scenes about who should shoulder the blame for what had come close to being a complete debacle. One tangible outcome was a renewed determination on the part of the RAF and the Royal Navy to send the Tirpitz to the bottom of Bogen Fjord [10].

[1] Most of the other major ships that took part in OTL Operation Cerberus are either sunk or out of action, so less anti-aircraft support for Scharnhorst for one thing.

[2] So owing to the more secure situation in the Med and ships commissioning sooner there are battleships available for Operation Fuller.

[3] Called Odin rather than Cerberus because there is only one capital ship rather than several. Also given a tougher German line in France the British are getting more info.

[4] So some of the issues with Fuller, such as the weather, can’t be fixed and with operations in North Africa only just finishing up and the demands of the Far East the RAF are still stretched thin despite having more aircraft overall.

[5] It’s still better than OTL Fuller.

[6] Still an appalling loss but ITTL they managed to land some damage. OTL 825 Squadron were still flying Swordfish during the attack.

[7] This is what happened IOTL, except with the previous torpedo damage the effect is much worse.

[8] Another bad for the KM, though the British have hardly covered themselves in glory. IOTL Z8 Bruno Heinmann hit a mine and sank in January, here it avoided that and took part in Odin.

[9] Doenitz gets the top job sooner, for all the good it will do him.

[10] You may assume that is the same sort of ongoing project it was OTL.

 

[Garrison]

14th February – 4th April 1942 – French North Africa and the Fall of Vichy​

The political situation in French North Africa had steadily deteriorated ever since the self-destruction of so much of the Marine Nationale at Mers-el-Kebir and Toulon. Not only had the fate of the French fleet undermined the credibility of Vichy in many people’s eyes, there was also a practical impact in that there was now a severe shortage of vessels to escort convoys heading for North African ports, made worse by the fact that the sailors and officers of the Marine Nationale who remained with Vichy were viewed with deep suspicion by Germany and even by the Vichy government they served, and this constant scrutiny of their loyalty only grew worse after Admiral Darlan’s defection to the Free French. This further undermined the already low morale of the crews of the ships the Marine Nationale could muster, compounded by increasing issues with fuel and supplies. Given the state of the Vichy fleet he British were no longer concerned about the possibility of provoking Vichy into hostile action, and after Syria having acted as a staging post for Axis aircraft, in clear violation of Vichy’s supposed neutrality, they were unwilling to accept assurances that no materiel intended for Axis forces in Libya were being shipped on French flagged vessels. As a result the British took to intercepting Vichy shipping in the Mediterranean, with ships that had defected to the Free French being attached to the patrol groups where possible [1].

This increased British belligerence was also fuelled by ULTRA decrypts and spies in France that meant they were well aware that as the situation deteriorated in Libya there had been considerable pressure on Vichy to allow its North African ports to be used for supplies intended for the Axis forces, though given the available transportation and road network between Tunisia it is dubious as to how much of a contribution this could have made to the defence of Tripoli even if it Vichy had acquiesced to the demands. Once Libya fell a certain panic set in with Mussolini and he was now talking in terms of a counteroffensive being launched, using Tunisia as the springboard. He even went so far as to suggest that with the British on the border of its North African colonies it was time for Vichy to join the war on the Axis side. These ideas met with a mixed reception in Berlin, where von Kleist and the General Staff wanted to simply write off North Africa as an exercise in futility and focus all their efforts on renewing the offensive on the Eastern Front. Hitler however seems to have been at least willing to contemplate the idea, mostly because he was concerned that the British might turn their attention to the Balkans and the vital Ploesti oilfields if their position in North Africa was secured, and of course this would also free the British to reinforce their position against the Japanese, though again some in Berlin believed this outcome would actually be a net benefit to the Reich [2].

The British were in fact already preparing to dispatch Australian New Zealand and Indian forces from North Africa to Malaya and Burma even before Tripoli finally fell, while still retaining forces in the Mediterranean theatre for further operations against Italy. Many of these troops had fought during Operation Yari whilst others would see service in the South East Asian theatre when Montgomery went on the offensive. These changes had reduced the overall forces available in North Africa during the spring of 1942, but this did not deter the British from preparing operations against French North Africa, with the whole hearted support of de Gaulle and the Free French, who had been agitating for the swift overthrow of the local Vichy regimes as a next step in North Africa even before the battle of Sirte., The British were willing to accommodate in the interests of removing any possibility of French North Africa becoming an assembly area for fresh Axis attacks and to bolster the legitimacy of the Free French.

Even as the Free French were pressing for military action they were also reaching out to administrations of the North African colonies, emphasizing that their only hope to avoid the humiliation of foreign occupation and prevent the unnecessary deaths of French soldiers was to declare themselves for Free France and allow Free French forces to enter their territory as liberators. It was emphasized that there might be unfortunate consequences for those officers and officials who chose to make a stand in the name of the Vichy regime. These exhortations resonated in Tunisia especially, where it was no secret that they might find themselves dragged into the front line of the war as Vichy tried to curry favour with Berlin by allowing German and Italian troops to establish forward bases for a fresh offensive against the British. Ironically By April 1942 even Hitler had cooled on the idea of assembling a new army in Tunisia and in Rome the General Staff was now more concerned about the possibility of an invasion of Sicily than trying to chase a lost cause in Libya. The sole exception was the plan for an airborne assault on Malta, which continued to grind forward despite much dismay among the General Staff [3].

These conditions largely explain why the British and Free French forces were able to cross into Tunisia on the 24th of February with little opposition and rapidly advance on Tunis, which surrendered with almost indecent haste on the 6th of March in the face of what was little more than a few companies of Allied troops with a modest contingent of tanks leading the way. This led to a further decline in the morale of troops in Algeria and Morocco, with some local garrisons choosing to go over to the Free French, some of whom had cause to regret as it took time for the Allies to regroup and launch a fresh advance from Tunisia and many troops remained loyal to Vichy, out of sense of duty as much as any love for Vichy. The Allies faced an especially hostile reception in Algeria as many there had blamed the British for the fate of the French Fleet. The Royal Navy itself helped undercut this resistance by staging amphibious landings at Oran and Algiers itself on the 17th of March, while large parts of the available Vichy forces had been moved to the Tunisian border to defend from what seemed an inevitable attack there. The British and Free French troops suffered some significant casualties, in no small part owing to the deficiencies in the coordination of the landings between the Royal Navy and the RAF. These failing allowed Italian aircraft operating out of Sicily to attack the naval convoys, though fortunately the Regia Aeronautica attacks were also poorly organized and failed to seriously disrupt the landings. Attacks from Tunisia launched on the 18th combined with the fall of Algiers led to the formal surrender of Algeria on the 21st of March after face saving negotiations with the political and military leadership [4].

In the aftermath of the rapid collapse of Tunisia and Algeria the Vichy French government began to panic. The leadership in Rabat assured Vichy that Morocco would not capitulate without a fight, but inevitably there were rumours circulating that they were in fact in negotiations with the Free French or the Americans about declaring for the Allies and these provoked the Vichy government into ordering the removal of senior officials and military officers allegedly involved in the negotiations, regardless of the paucity of evidence against them. This effort was poorly executed and led to serious unrest in Morocco, destroying whatever loyalty to Vichy those officials might have retained. The unfortunate army units trying to carry out the orders from Vichy had either been defeated or switched sides by the 27th of March and a Free French delegation flew into negotiate terms, alongside several representatives from the US Army and Department of State, who were regarded as guarantors for whatever terms were agreed by the officials in Rabat, much to the chagrin of de Gaulle. This diplomatic action constituted the only direct US involvement in North Africa, though the supply of material from America had played an important part in the campaign. Morocco formally surrendered on April 2nd, 1942, leaving the Allies, or more accurately the British, in undisputed control of North Africa and the Middle East, and the Royal Navy dominating the Mediterranean. The Germans and the Italians were still not quite willing to admit defeat and under Goering’s insistence the last desperate throw of the dice in Malta remained [5].

By the time Morocco surrendered the fate of Vichy had already been sealed. Hitler had been dubious about the regime ever since Mers-el-Kebir and all the French efforts to appease the Germans since had only served to convince the likes of Fritz Todt that so much more could be obtained if French industry were placed under ‘efficient’ German management. The obviously token resistance in Tunisia finally made-up Hitler’s mind and he ordered that the Vichy zone in France be occupied by the Wehrmacht. This operation was contingency the Wehrmacht had been preparing for almost since the Armistice was signed in 1940. The plan, codenamed Case Anton had been refined ever since and the occupation forces in France had little difficulty carrying it out even at short notice. Case Anton was launched on the 28th of March and concluded by the 4th of April, encountering little resistance from Vichy French forces who were swiftly disarmed and interned. Although Vichy continued to exist as political entity in theory, in practice they were now little more than administrators for German policy in France, which became increasingly harsh as the Germans grew concerned about the prospect of an Allied attack on France.

With the thin veneer of legitimacy Vichy had maintained taken away there was a steady uptick in resistance activity and many of the last colonial holdouts in Africa and Asia defected to the Free French, though even at this point some refused to countenance co-operating with ‘traitors’. Despite Todt’s assurances French industry fared no better under German control than it had prior to the 4th of April. Indeed, without Vichy as a conduit through which some raw materials could be purchased production fell. The full occupation of France was yet another burden for the Wehrmacht, with the number of potential targets for Allied assaults now stretching from Norway to Greece.

For the Allies the fall of Vichy simplified the strategic options available to them, which did not mean that there weren’t heated discussions over the future direction of the war [6].

[1] OTL the British remained circumspect about getting into confrontations with Vichy French warships so the convoys to North Africa went unmolested, not so ITTL.

[2] The General Staff in Berlin are already seeing Case Blue as their last real chance to win the war outright.

[3] The Malta plan has taken on a life of its own at this point, moving forward even as the strategic logic crumbles.

[4] There is no Afrika Korps to keep the Vichy regimes in line, and less hostility to the British overall.

[5] Basically trying to stop Algeria defecting.

[6] Vichy has fallen 6 months sooner, meaning a faster build up of the resistance and another headache for the Wehrmacht as they prepare for Case Blue. On the Allied side the Americans are even less keen on the ‘soft underbelly’ than OTL and they are eyeing up a landing in France quite intently…

 

[Garrison]

17th– 28th April 1942 – Carrier Battles – Part I – Japan - Quest for the Decisive Battle​

Although the Imperial Japanese Navy’s operations in the Indian Ocean and Pacific happened in the same time frame as Operation Yari, any impression of a co-ordinated campaign is illusory. As discussed previously there were attempts to create a combined operation plan, but these foundered in the face of the bitter rivalry between the IJA and IJN. When confronted with the Army’s request for substantial naval support in their planned landing behind the British lines at Khota Baru the IJN was unimpressed and countered with proposals for far more radical operations, either an amphibious assault on Singapore itself or a sweep around the Malayan peninsula to land on the west coast behind the Kuala Lumpur position. These plans all implicitly assumed that the Royal Navy would be drawn out from Ceylon so that they could be destroyed by carriers of the Kido Butai. The IJN was also intent on conducting a fresh attempt to seize Wake Island, a prize in itself but also an opportunity to inflict a defeat on the US Pacific Fleet.

To The IJA planners such as Colonel Tsuji this smacked of the navy trying to usurp control of operations in South East Asia The army was adamant that the more limited landing at Kuala Dungun was what was required and made no secret of the fact that they felt that a landing in Singapore or the west coast of Malaya was an unnecessary overextension, which is quite the statement given the scope of the plan they did embrace. They were willing to provide some troops to support the Wake Island operation, though the IJA planners saw this is as very much a secondary operation. The IJN response to this rebuff was to go ahead with their own plans regardless and offer the minimum possible support to the amphibious assault on Kuala Dungun, most importantly there would be no carrier borne air cover for the operation, those ships were needed elsewhere [1].

The operation in the Indian Ocean would now take the form of a large-scale raid, targeting the ports of Singapore, Rangoon and Jakarta on Java as well as any British convoys that could be intercepted. Crucially this plan envisioned the fleet carriers attached to the operation would not take part in the bombardment, they would be held back to deceive the Royal Navy into believing that the attack force was only being covered by fighters from one of the IJN’s light carriers. Taken by surprise the Royal Navy warships, including whatever carrier strength they could muster, would be annihilated. If they refused to be drawn out, then smashing the ports and the shipping in the area might well hand the advantage on Java to the Japanese and if Java fell then so would Sumatra. That would render Singapore useless as a base of operations and hopefully secure the flow of oil from the DEI. Wake island still retained its original strategic value, and its capture would also allow the IJN to wipe away the stain on its honour from the original failed attempt. This operation would be supported by a small diversionary operation designed to draw American attention away from Wake until the island had bee secured.

Both these operations had merit; the issue arose when it was decided that they should be carried out simultaneously. This provoked arguments, with Yamamoto supporting the idea and a small group of officers led by Admiral Nagumo arguing for a more cautious approach, completing the attack on Wake Island, codenamed Operation MD, before carrying out the raid on Singapore, Operation MK. Yamamoto rejected this and had a pragmatic rationale for doing so, if the Americans were crushed at Wake Island then the British fleet at Ceylon might not leave Ceylon to engage and remain an ongoing threat to other operations in the theatre. He was adamant that the IJN had the strength to cover both operations. Yamamoto was also almost certainly hoping that two simultaneous defeats would force the Allies to reassess their commitment to the Pacific War, perhaps forcing them to seek peace. If that did not happen then such heavy losses would buy time for Japan to finish off the Allied forces in Malaya, Burma, and the DEI, as well as fortifying the outer most islands of their new empire to exact the maximum possible price in blood if the Allies tried to take them. At that point the prospect of a reasonable negotiated would be once again on the table [2].

This assessment of Allied reactions was certainly optimistic, which is not to say it was wrong. It was painfully obvious to the more objective minds in Tokyo that Japan’s hopes for a short war were evaporating. Unless the long sought decisive battle was fought, and won, by Japan before the summer of 1942 then they faced exactly the sort of protracted war that favoured the Allies and bleeding them for every metre of ground they took might simply stoke a desire for vengeance rather than break their spirit. The though of such a vengeful enemy getting into striking distance of the Home Islands, and the emperor himself, was too horrifying to contemplate. Operation MD and MK were gambles, but in gambling terms the Japanese either had to go all in or fold their hand, and even the most realistic minds Tokyo were not prepared to contemplate that option, better to fight to an honourable death than surrender [3].

Still regardless of the strategic and political thinking behind this ‘twin strike’ there were still obvious problems with the plan. For one thing it violated the military principle of concentration of force, though as we have seen previously it was hardly unique in that respect and the IJN could at least reasonably argue that it possessed advantages in tactics, experience, and the quality of its equipment, especially its carrier airwings, that offset that problem [4]. A far more damning flaw was the underlying assumption that the Allied navies would respond to the IJN’s timetable and in the precise manner that suited the Japanese. This might have been justified if the Japanese were in possession of any solid intelligence on the current deployments of the Royal Navy and USN, but their intelligence gathering remained lamentable.

The Japanese remained ignorant of the fact that Admiral Cunningham had taken over command of operations in theatre at the beginning of March, nor did they know the scale of the reinforcements he had received. While Cunningham now had three carriers at his disposal, Formidable, Furious, and Indomitable, the Japanese believed the British force at Ceylon had two at most and that one of those was the venerable HMS Eagle, which was in fact in Britain undergoing a refit before proceeding to the Mediterranean where it would take part in the invasion of Sicily. Since Eagle carried a little more than half the aircraft complement of either Hiryū or Soryu, the carriers the Japanese assigned to the Singapore operation, it is tempting to assume that Yamamoto and his intelligence staff remained convinced Eagle was in the Indian Ocean because it suited them to believe this [5].

A similarly blasé attitude had been adopted regarding the Wake Island operation. The Akagi and the two most modern carriers in the IJN, Zuikaku and Shōkaku, were assigned to this strike, the other member of the Kido Butai, the Kaga, was unavailable as it had been damaged in accident and then suffered some relatively minor bomb hits during raiding operations on the Marshall Islands. Kaga certainly needed repair, however it might have been possible to patch the ship up temporarily to make its air group available at Singapore, where initial planning had assumed that three carriers would be assigned, and if the situation had been reversed one suspects the Allies would have done everything in their power to patch up Furious or Yorktown to have them available [6]. This option was rejected because of the insistence that the repairs be fully completed under what was still essentially a peacetime regime. The Kaga would not be released until it had been returned to 100% readiness and that was that as far as the IJN was concerned. The rigid adherence to the rules stood in stark contrast to the abandon with which the IJN was willing to innovate and take risks when it came to naval strategy and tactics. Their shore establishments remained hidebound, including their pilot training, which still insisted on only the very best being allowed to serve and honing their skills to a peak before ever letting them near a combat zone. Even under the pressures experienced later in the war they still clung to this doctrine, until they adopted new tactics in which piloting skills were no longer a consideration [7].

If Japanese naval intelligence was simply telling its superiors what they wanted to hear Allied codebreakers were providing accurate, if incomplete information, which had not always put to the best use. As a picture of Japanese intentions started to form the obvious response would have been to co-ordinate action between the Royal Navy and USN. This faced a major roadblock in the shape of Admiral King. The CINC of the US Navy fiercely opposed any joint operations with the Royal Navy, which became an increasing embarrassment to the US government as time went on. In the end this was not disastrous for the Allied response, though it did probably foreshorten Admiral King’s tenure as CINC. Under the circumstances although Cunningham and Nimitz could not officially co-operate in planning their operations, there was certainly an exchange of strictly hypothetical ideas about how they might react to certain equally hypothetical Japanese actions. However unofficial it might have been it was clear that Nimitz and Cunningham shared the same view, that the attacks on Singapore and Wake offered an opportunity to turn the tables on the Japanese. Yamamoto would get his decisive battles, but whether he would be happy at the result was another matter [8].

[1] Again the Japanese army and navy seemed to save their greatest antipathy for each other rather than their actual enemies.

[2] So there is some strategic reasoning going on here, though it is being interpreted through the lens of the IJN’s desire for one great decisive victory.

[3] In the end the inability contemplate anything less than victory on their own terms is driving the Japanese to keep rolling the dice.

[4] The advantage is real in early 1942, but as we saw IOTL its remarkably fragile.

[5] Easy to criticize the Japanese for this, but Bomber Command and the 8th Airforce will carry on with the same kind of wishful thinking about bombing Germany into surrender long past the point where they should have known better.

[6] Well because obviously that’s exactly what they did.

[7] That is indeed a reference to Kamikazes.

[8] Japan has to contend with Yamamoto’s gamblers instincts, the Allies have to cope with King’s rampant Anglophobia, which is worse?

 

[Garrison]

17th– 28th April 1942 – Carrier Battles – Part II – Allied Response​

The Japanese planners were correct in their assessment that a threat to Singapore and the other key ports was a threat the Royal Navy would have to respond to, the Japanese planners only mistake was in assuming the Royal Navy would have to respond after the fact. With intelligence painting the broad outline of the raid Admiral Cunningham was not only willing to engage the IJN, but he was also eager to do so. seeing this is as a golden opportunity to turn the tables and inflict a major defeat on the enemy by committing his full carrier strength, with powerful support from his available battleships and the large escorts forces that had been built up since December. Such a plan naturally carried considerable risks but given Cunningham’s track record and the importance of protecting Singapore there were few objections from London, with the main concerns of Whitehall being improving the anti-aircraft defences around Singapore harbour to negate the threat from an air attack, not realizing that the Japanese plan called for a bombardment by surface ships rather than aerial bombardment. Once they were briefed the RAF, commanded in South East Asia by Air Vice-Marshall Keith Park, also made plans to engage the Japanese attack force, as well as providing long range scouting in support of the Royal navy. Given the timescale and the distances involved it was difficult for any reinforcements or fresh equipment to be dispatched but the British did what they could to shore up both the defensive and offensive capabilities of the air and naval forces in the area [1].

Formidable’s air wing in April 1942 consisted of Sea Hurricane fighters and Monarch Barracudas, the latter able to fulfil the divebombing and torpedo bomber role, though it was primarily deployed in the latter role. Indomitable had received a batch of Seafires, one of the first carriers to operate the sea going Spitfire model, an aircraft that it was expected would address the potential deficiencies of the Sea Hurricane versus the Japanese Zero, though overall tactical improvements proved more important than technical upgrades in countering the Japanese fighter. Furious had an unusual complement, being the only Royal Navy carrier at that time to operate the American F4F ‘Wildcat’ fighter, supplied via lend lease. Its bomber complement was also different in that it operated a mixture of Albacores and Barracudas. This was because the production of carrier capable aircraft still somewhat lagged those for land-based fighters and bombers. The F4F was a more than capable substitute for the Sea Hurricane, however the Albacore was very much a stop gap aircraft, with some aircrews feeling it wasn’t much of an improvement over the Swordfish. The British pilots and crews had also been trained in night operations, with many of them being veterans of the Taranto raid. This admixture of aircraft was not ideal for co-ordinating the different airwings, this wasn’t going to stop Cunningham from doing his utmost to ensure that his entire carrier force struck the enemy in a single massive blow [2].

Just as much as the Japanese Cunningham wanted to achieve the element of surprise of possible, the greatest challenge in doing so for what was named the Indian Ocean Taskforce was the passage through the Malacca Strait, between Sumatra in the DEI and Malaya. Fortunately, the Allies were still in control of Sumatra, although Borneo and the islands to the east of it were in Japanese hands. Java remained a battleground, and would become the longest single campaign of the war in South East Asia as neither side would give up on it and neither had the resources available to secure it.

Even given the commitment to the defence of Malaya it had been recognized that Java had to be held. If it fell Sumatra would be wide open to Japanese attacks and if Sumatra fell, then the Japanese could render Singapore unusable as a naval base. Canadian C Force, consisting of one battalion each from the Royal Rifles of Canada) and the Winnipeg Grenadiers plus a Brigade HQ, had originally been earmarked for Hong Kong before Montgomery intervened and they were diverted to Malaya. They had been in reserve during the fighting in December and January, ironically held back to counter any attempt at an amphibious landing in Singapore. They had then been earmarked to aid the Dutch and had been dispatched to Java along with detachments of Australian troops to bolster the Dutch defence, as well as a collection of tanks, guns and aircraft that had been scraped together. A few M3 Stuarts and some rather tired Mk IV Bs had been dispatched, along with Brewster Buffalos no longer required by the RAF or RAAF, which were flown mainly Dutch pilots. This hodgepodge of forces had nonetheless held on in Java and after the British victories in Malaya Japan simply could not muster the manpower to try and bypass the island and assault Sumatra directly [3].

The IJA forces in the Dutch East Indies were exhausted by April, with supply lines being disrupted by Allied submarines and bombers still operating out of Singapore, while men and resources that might have been used to reinforce them were instead committed to Operation Yari, The Philippines, and now to the second attempt at invading Wake Island. The IJAAF had established bases in the DEI, though they were desperately short on aircraft and crews by the time of the Battle of Singapore. This fact was not passed to the IJN, they were given figures for the strength of the fighter and bomber squadrons based in Borneo that included damaged aircraft and those that had been stripped for parts to keep others flying, the IJAAF even went so far as to count a squadron that was currently without any operational aircraft at all. Nor were the IJN aware of the fuel shortages afflicting the IJAAF that limited the number of sorties the available aircraft could carry out, a somewhat ironic development given that the point of taking the DEI was to secure oil supplies for Japan. This meant that the reconnaissance and support that the IJN was expecting was patchy at best [4].

The relief of Wake Island had made for good propaganda and there had been no time for anyone in December 1941 to question the decision to reinforce the island rather than evacuate it. Once the media attention moved on to other stories there were those in Washington who began to argue that the lines of communication with Wake were too vulnerable and the resources invested in defending the island could be put to better use elsewhere, either in the Pacific or Europe.

Admiral Chester Nimitz did not agree with this assessment. Certainly holding Wake came at a cost, surrendering Wake Island might simply mean that they had to pay an even higher cost take it back later. Also Wake might yet allow the US Navy to accelerate its island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, which was still only a plan in early 1942. The intelligence reports that revealed Japanese intentions were thus almost a relief to Nimitz as in his mind they put an end to any talk of withdrawal and Admiral King in Washington agreed. They both saw the attack on Wake Island in the same light as Admiral Cunningham did the raid on Singapore, a threat that had to be honoured and an opportunity to inflict a defeat on the Japanese, though one that carried a considerable risk.

Facing an invasion supported by three, or possibly four, Japanese carriers Nimitz was determined to assemble as powerful a force as he could muster. One complication was that the carrier USS Hornet was already committed to the Doolittle Raid, a plan to launch B-25 medium bombers from a carrier deck to strike targets in Japan. Politically this would have been impossible to cancel as it had support at the highest level and the attack went ahead on the 18th of April, the very same day that the Indian Ocean Taskforce was preparing to engage the IJN. During the attack the B-25s dropped bombs on Tokyo and several other targets on the island of Honshu. In what could be seen as an ill omen one bomber spotted the Kaga in dock undergoing repairs and dropped its bombs on this inviting target. One bomb hit the Kaga, and it only did modest damage, the real issue for the carrier was the fire that broke out, started by either oxy-acetylene equipment or paint stored on board during the repair work, depending on which account you read. With the dockyard in chaos after the bombing the fire went unchecked for almost two hours, setting back repairs to Kaga by weeks [5].

While Hornet was busy elsewhere Nimitz was able to assemble a force of four carriers to meet the Japanese. USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga had taken part in the successful relief of Wake Island back in December and this time they were joined by USS Yorktown and USS Lexington. These ships carried far larger air groups than their Royal Navy counterparts, though it can be argued that this came at the expense of being more vulnerable to damage, specifically they had wooden flight decks versus the armoured decks of the Royal Navy ships. In practice the quality of the damage control operations aboard a carrier proved to be a far more important factor than the underlying design philosophy, as would be demonstrated when the US carriers faced their similarly built IJN counterparts. A greater issue for the Americans was that their crews were lacking in experience and of the aircraft at their disposal the F4F Wildcat proved an adequate fighter and the SBD Dauntless an excellent dive-bomber. The TBD Devastator torpedo-bomber on the other hand was utterly obsolete and due to be replaced by the TBF Avenger in the summer of 1942, in April it was still in frontline service and its inadequacies were brutally exposed in the fighting off Wake Island [6].

Yamamoto had set the date for the opening of the invasion of Wake Island for the 23rd of April and they stuck to their schedule, ignoring the outcome of the Battle of Singapore only days before, if anything that battle only spurred the IJN on in seeking the decisive battle with the USN [7].

[1] Keith Park didn’t arrive in the theatre until 1945 OTL, but here with no Med campaign he’s been assigned to take command of what is slowly becoming a powerful RAF force.

[2] The FAA is doing much better than OTL, it still isn’t getting everything it wants however and the big issue with the Zero is learning the lesson of not trying to get into a turning fight with them.

[3] This part was significantly rewritten after the earlier discussion of C Force and the defence of Sumatra/Java, which of course was in the context of events that haven’t happened yet ITTL.

[4] The Japanese forces in the DEI are at the end of a very long supply line and other places are getting priority.

[5] This little detail about Kaga also inspired by previous discussions.

[6] The Devastator is going to suffer regardless, whether it is as bad as OTL Midway will have to wait for a further update.

[7] So the battle of Singapore is next.

 

[Garrison]

17th– 28th April 1942 – Carrier Battles – Part III– Singapore – Sweeping the Sea​

Despite being spread thin IJAAF scouts operating from Borneo did manage to detect elements of the taskforce, however the details finally relayed to the IJN pointed to an escorted convoy heading for Singapore. Given the Japanese desire to maintain the element of surprise the carrier force heading for Singapore was operating under radio silence and it was felt that this information was not sufficiently important to compromise operational security, especially as it simply seemed to promise richer pickings when Hiryū and Soryu launched their attack. Thus, Cunningham’s ships were able to position themselves with the approaching Japanese force none the wiser.

As dawn came on the 18th of April the Japanese carrier force was east of Singapore, with the battleship group trailing behind them, The Royal Navy force was southeast of the port, and both had scouts in the air. The aircraft from Singapore had a rough idea of where the Japanese were supposed to be, the Japanese were simply intent on establishing conditions in the area around Singapore, looking for any possible targets at sea as well as seeing what ships were in the port. The trailing edge of the arc described by the scouts passed slightly to the north of the position of the Royal Navy ships. This meant that in theory the Japanese would remain ignorant of the presence of the Indian Ocean Taskforce, that things did not work out that way was because one Japanese floatplane went off course [1].

The southernmost scout, launched from the cruiser Tone, suffered a navigational issue, either a problem with the compass or a miscommunication as to their intended course, and shortly after it had turned for home having completed its outbound leg it detected part of the Indian Ocean Taskforce, specifically the carrier Furious and its escorts. Low on fuel the scout did not linger to get a clearer picture of the enemy ships. It did manage to send a report back to the IJN force, which was where the Japanese good fortune ended. Still unaware that they were off course the scout reported the wrong position for the Royal Navy ships at about 0815 hours. They had also only reported only one carrier, which they incorrectly assumed to be HMS Eagle. The Tone’s scout had been aided in detecting the taskforce by the fact that it had already been steaming north in response to their own scout reports that had located the IJN force, and the three Royal Navy carriers launched a full strike only minutes after the Tone scout had departed. The slower Albacores from Furious took off first, trying to ensure that the three air groups would arrive at their target at the same time. Despite best efforts the Albacores and their Wildcat escort reached the IJN ships after the aircraft from Formidable and Indomitable had already engaged and were withdrawing, though this proved to work to the advantage of the Furious air group [2].

The report from the Tone scout plane came as complete shock to the commanders of the IJN force. With no reports from the other scouts, and aware that they had almost certainly been spotted Hiryū and Soryu were preparing for a strike on Singapore as they recognized the element of surprise was gone and that they needed to strike port immediately, meaning that their aircraft were armed with HE bombs, not AP bombs or torpedoes [3]. Aircraft were already taking off as the news of an enemy carrier in the area was received and these aircraft were left circling for nearly fifteen minutes as there was a frantic debate over how to respond. Far from being concerned about why an enemy carrier was in the area the IJN commanders were anxious that it might slip away before they could destroy. The hastily adjusted plan adopted was that Hiryū’s would launch as they were and conduct an attack while the Soryu’s air group would be landed and rearmed for a sea action in case Hiryu’s attack did not finish the carrier or to engage the remainder of the Royal Navy force if it did. Some officers did express some disquiet about this dilution of their striking power, such concerns were brushed aside by superiors still unable to entertain the concept that they had walked into a trap. Even after the battle they were convinced the British had dispatched carrier support for a vital convoy, based on the report from the IJAAF that had not been passed on.

As the Hiryu’s aircraft flew south they paralleled the FAA aircraft flying north. Neither group spotted the other because of the flawed information the Japanese had about the position of Furious, so neither side received any advanced warning about what was coming until the Japanese aircraft entered radar range. The Royal navy carrier strike was not the only threat the Japanese ships had to face as RAF and FAA aircraft launched a series of attacks from airfields around Singapore. These attacks were sporadic and lacking co-ordination, and as a result they took serious losses while failing to land any hits on the Japanese ships, despite claims by overzealous bomber crews to the contrary. They did however create a certain amount of disorganization in the Japanese formation as the ships engaged in evasive manoeuvres and drained the fuel and ammunition of the Japanese fighters flying cover over the carriers. The process of rearming the Soryu’s bombers for a naval action was also not as well co-ordinated as it should have been, hastily removed bombs were left stacked on the hangar deck as they were replaced with torpedoes and the work was still underway when the strike wings from Formidable and Indomitable arrived [4]. The Barracudas were split between wings armed as dive bombers and those armed for torpedo attacks, attacking together this would render it difficult for the Japanese fighters to intercept both, especially with their Sea Hurricane fighter escort engaging them.

The Hurricanes and Seafires did not fare as well as they might have hoped owing to this being the first time the FAA fighters had encountered the Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’. The Japanese fighter’s legendary agility took a toll on those pilots who tried to get into dogfights and both the FAA fighters and Barracudas suffered at their hands, the efforts of the Zeros was not enough to save the Soryu, however. Two torpedoes struck the carrier. These though did not strike the killing blow, this came courtesy of a single bomb hit that penetrated the hanger deck and set of a series of secondary explosions that shattered the deck and left the carrier burning from bow to stern [5].

Hiryū had emerged all but unscathed from this attack, it took minor damage from a couple of near misses by bombs and a torpedo that struck the ship failed to detonate. For a few brief minutes it seemed the carrier might survive, until the Albacores from Furious attacked. The Japanese fighter cover had been stripped away, either out of fuel and ammunition, shot down, or off chasing after the Barracudas and their surviving fighters. This meant that the Albacores were able to line up for a near perfect ‘hammer and anvil’ attack, with Albacores striking from port and starboard. Anti-aircraft fire accounted for almost half the Albacores, though a number of these were shot down after making a successful drop and their comrades pressed on regardless. Four torpedoes struck the Hiryū, one to port and three to starboard. The damage wasn’t as spectacular as that done to the Soryu, it was though every bit as lethal, and the carrier was already beginning to visibly list. It would take hours, but the Hiryū capsized and sank before night fell. This was a victory for the Royal Navy, though at a severe cost to the flight crews of the air wings, and these would not be the only causalities the Indian Ocean Taskforce would suffer [6].

Hiryū’s air wing had been given the wrong co-ordinates for the location of the Royal navy carriers, however the course change enacted to close range with the IJN force meant that they did manage to locate their target, Furious. They were at the very limit of their range by this point and an attack would leave some of the aircraft unable to make it back to Hiryū. They knew nothing of the fate of the Hiryū at this point and they pressed the attack regardless of the consequences. Despite being armed with bombs rather than torpedoes a large group of B5N ‘Kate’ bombers dropped down to low level to simulate a torpedo attack, helping to draw off the fighter cover. With radar providing warning and the Japanese having greatly underestimated the size of the force they were attacking the Hiryū squadrons suffered horrendous losses. Despite this the Aichi D3A dive-bombers put three bombs into Furious, with one shattered bomber smashing into the stern of the carrier. This impact was purely accidental, the impact of one of the Kates may well have been deliberate. Pulling up as it approached the Furious after its simulated torpedo run it hit the island of the Furious and the resulting explosion wrecked the superstructure and started a fierce fire. Combined with the bomb hits Furious was left adrift and despite efforts to contain the damage and take her under tow Furious could not be saved and she was dispatched by torpedoes fired from a destroyer on the 19th [7].

The survivors of the Hiryū air group that turned for home were equally doomed. Not only were their carriers gone but the surviving ships of the attacking force had little choice but to change course and withdraw, leaving the fighter and bomber crews to crash into empty ocean. The battle had been short and brutal and the first in which neither sides ships ever saw one another. It was an undoubted tactical and strategic victory for the Royal Navy and paved the way for redeployment of the Royal Navy’s Pacific Fleet to Singapore in the summer of 1942. It did not however dissuade the IJN from pursuing their planned invasion of Wake Island, indeed the details of what happened off Singapore were not transmitted to the ships still steaming for Wake. The loss of Hiryū and Soryu was attributed to misfortune and the truth of what had happened near Singapore was ruthlessly suppressed long after the battle. In the meantime, the Japanese force steaming towards Wake was still supremely confident of victory [8].

[1] So the Japanese scouting is almost as flawed as that at Midway, almost.

[2] Yes it’s the same scout plane that helped cause chaos at Midway.

[3] Of course the British scouts found them because they knew they were coming, the Japanese just think they got unlucky, so the report from the Tone scout is a real surprise.

[4] To quote the better Midway movie, ‘They’ve got bombs all over the flight deck!”

[5] And again, “Scratch one flattop.”

[6] The Albacore’s finest hour, and pretty much its only hour.

[7] Furious meets her end, but it’s a fair trade given what she did to the Japanese force.

[8] And in the next update we get to see if the USN can match or surpass the RN achievements.

 

[Garrison]

17th– 28th April 1942 – Carrier Battles – Part IV– Wake Island – Avenging Pearl Harbor​

Once the initial elation over the victory at Wake Island had died down some in Washington had begun to question the value of holding the island. It lay at the end of a long supply line and with the reverses the USA had suffered elsewhere its strategic value had been reduced. Admiral Chester Nimitz, now commanding the USN forces in the Pacific saw things differently. The fundamental strategic value might have temporarily been reduced but giving it and letting the Japanese occupy it might simply lead to a later and far more costly effort to take it back as well as strengthening their defensive perimeter. Politically it was also seen as unacceptable. With the fall of the Philippines all but inescapable, the British fighting for every inch of ground in Malaya, and the long dogged defence of Java having become a point of honour for the Commonwealth and Dutch troops in the DEI. Simply walking away from Wake Island would have provoked a furore, whatever the cold-blooded strategic logic presented for doing so [1]. When intelligence reports indicating the Japanese intended to launch another attempt to take the island, and draw the USN into battle, reached Nimitz he was every bit as determined to meet the enemy in battle and turn the tables on them as Admiral Cunningham. Even if abandoning the island was not an option strategically or politically there was some resistance to the level of forces that Nimitz was proposing to commit. Nimitz faced down all criticism, there was no room for half measures, the US Navy had to take maximum advantage of the opportunity that the intelligence reports had given them [2].

In this Nimitz enjoyed support from the White House. The Doolittle Raid offered an opportunity to bolster morale, destroying the Japanese carriers targeting Wake Island would have far more of a practical impact on the war effort. If the threat of further Japanese advances could be reduced or even removed then it would be much easier for President Roosevelt to press his ‘Germany First’ agenda, especially important as he was eager to see a landing in mainland Europe sooner rather than later. This coming together of strategic and political objectives meant that all four carriers that Nimitz had at his disposal set out for Wake Island around the 10th of April.

Japanese reconnaissance of the defences at Wake Island proved to be part of the ongoing pattern of poorly co-ordinate efforts that continued to cost them dearly. Submarines intended to watch the sea approaches were deployed too far north and the sole submarine that might have detected the approaching US carriers was caught on the surface by an SBD flying from Wake Island and although not as claimed by the crew of the SBD sunk, it did take sufficient damage so as to be forced to abandon its patrol and its radio was knocked out in the attack, meaning that it was not able to signal this fact to anyone. The aerial reconnaissance efforts also faced interception by aircraft from Wake, now equipped with squadrons of Wildcats, SBDs and even P40s provided by the USAAF. There was also a small group of Devastator torpedo bombers, which were largely used for reconnaissance given their limitations in the bombing role and one of them was lost when it was engaged by a Japanese fighter, but not before reporting back on the position of the leading elements of the Japanese assault force late in the afternoon of the 27th [3].

This report was almost as confusing as it was useful. The brief message simply stated it had spotted enemy ships without specifying the classes or numbers. If these ships were part of the battleship force or invasion transports and their escorts, then dispatching a carrier strike risked giving away their presence and inviting a counterstrike from the Japanese carriers that might in completely different location. Admiral Halsey, with his flag aboard the Enterprise, was in overall command of the force and he dismissed such concerns. His instincts told him that the scout had located the main body of the Japanese force and ordered a full-scale strike by all four carriers. Halsey’s aggressive temperament led to issues later, but it served him well on this occasion. The ships the Devastator had spotted were indeed the escort elements of the Japanese carrier force, which was preparing its own strike, not against the still undetected US Carriers but against Wake Island itself [4].

The full-scale strike against Wake was detected by air warning radar and all available fighters were launched, along with the island’s bomber strength, conducting a series of disjointed attacks that achieved nothing except to incur heavy losses from the Japanese fighter CAP over the three carriers. Their failure simply encouraged Nagumo, in overall command of the Japanese carrier force despite Yamamoto’s reservations, to believe that they had indeed achieved total surprise. The US fighters on Wake Island put up a fierce fight, as did the island’s anti-aircraft guns. The American pilots suffered from the same lack of experience with the Zero as their British counterparts, getting drawn into dogfights that allowed the Zero to maximize its advantages. These early bitter experiences on the part of the Allied pilots lead to the evolution of better methods for engaging the Zero, aided by a study of one that crashed into the shallow waters off Wake. At the time it was hardly a satisfactory return for the destruction caused by the Japanese bombers, though as they turned for home the strike launched by the American carriers was rapidly closing with the Japanese force [5].

Halsey had wanted his air wings to attack in a single co-ordinated body, this proved difficult given the different speeds of the aircraft involved and each carrier wing seems to have had its own idea about the likely course and manoeuvres adopted by the Japanese ships. This led the attacking squadrons to become scattered. The Devastators from Lexington flew too far east of the Japanese force and had to return to the carrier without engaging the enemy. While some of these Devastators failed to return, they were far luckier than those from the Enterprise and Yorktown, which found the Japanese carriers without any support from the fighters and dive bombers that should have been flying with them. They pressed their attack regardless and both squadrons were cut down by the Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft fire, leaving no survivors. Saratoga’s squadron fared somewhat better.

The aircraft of Saratoga’s VT-3 reached their target just as the fighter and dive bomber squadrons from Enterprise and Lexington were engaging the Japanese ships. This was a matter of pure coincidence, but the Devastators took advantage of the fact that the Zeros were climbing to engage the dive bombers and lined up for an attack. The dive bombers targeted Shōkaku and Akagi, with the Devastators also attacking Akagi. The Devastators managed to land two torpedo hits on Akagi, while losing two thirds of their number in the process and several of the survivors would ditch short of Saratoga [6]. The dive bombers put three bombs into Akagi and four into Shōkaku, leaving both carriers as burning hulks. Zuikaku’s reprieve was short lived, Yorktown’s dive bombers attacked just as their counterparts from Lexington and Enterprise withdrew and they were swiftly joined by those from Saratoga, belatedly arriving with the support of the Wildcats of VF-3. Zuikaku had been desperate working to refuel and rearm Zeros from its CAP that had exhausted themselves in the earlier engagements, and the destruction of these aircraft only added to the inferno created by the dive bomber putting six bombs into her. By the time the American aircraft were finished all three Japanese carriers were shattered wrecks. Only Akagi sank from her battle damage, owing to the damage inflicted by VT-6’s torpedo attack, Shōkaku and Zuikaku faced the indignity of being sunk by torpedoes from their own destroyer escort, to prevent the hulks being seized by the Americans and used as propaganda tools [7].

Halsey’s bold attack had achieved a victory even more decisive than that off Singapore and between the two battles the Japanese carrier force had been devastated. Of the original Kido Butai only Kaga survived, and it would not be until July 1942 that she was able to return to service, now supported only by the surviving light carriers. This force was incapable of mounting further offensive operations and would prove of limited value on the defensive. The great irony was that even as the Philippines finally fell to Japanese forces on May 14th the fighting there was rendered all but irrelevant to the larger Japanese strategy. The Allies held Wake Island, Singapore, Rangoon, and Jakarta, meaning the Japanese grasp on the Dutch East Indies was tenuous at best and the forces required to garrison the Philippines would soon be desperately needed elsewhere [8].

[1] So Wake Island is now a symbol of US resistance to the Japanese in the Pacific, and one they need given that the debacle of the Philippines and in ITTL of course one man is going to carry the can for that failure…

[2] As to the question of how are they doing better at cracking Japanese codes? I am going to say that with a greater allied presence in the region there are just more opportunities to intercept traffic and get their hands on information about Japanese cyphers.

[3] Whether it was bad luck or bad planning the Japanese just never seemed to have much luck with their scouts OTL and they continue that tradition here.

[4] So the Japanese are effectively conducting the equivalent of the first strike at Midway, oblivious to the fact that the ever-aggressive Halsey is already throwing everything he’s got at them.

[5] Yes they do still get their hands on a relatively intact Zero to study.

[6] Think of this as the Devastators equivalent of the Covenanter tanks that captured Rommel, one brief moment of glory before disappearing into the history books.

[7] So the American’s kill one less carrier than OTL but lose one less and of course across that’s five Japanese carriers for the cost of the Furious and the heavy losses to the air wings of the RN and USN carriers. Kaga’s crew are probably quite happy she’s stuck in dock under repair, though their turn will inevitably come.

[8] So the Philippines fall a few days later than OTL because of minor butterflies, and it is a truly pyrrhic victory for the Japanese. The only real value of the island to them will be that trying to persuade Roosevelt to give liberating them priority in the Pacific becomes a running battle that threatens to drain off resources better used elsewhere.

 

[Garrison]

3rd May – 9th May 1942 – Malta - Operation Herkules​

When the British first acquired intelligence about Operation Herkules there was considerable alarm in Whitehall, not so much about the prospect of an attack on Malta, but the possibility that the Germans were aware that Bletchley Park was making inroads into reading messages encoded by the Enigma machine and the even more complicated Lorenz cypher. It seemed to some that the plan for an airborne operation against Malta had to be some sort of decoy, perhaps designed to provoke a response from the British that would prove Enigma had been penetrated. This was a legitimate reaction as from the British perspective Herkules was at least six months too late. The importance of Malta was obvious to both sides, and the Axis had tried to force the island into surrender both by bombing and by interdicting supply convoys. The series of defeats suffered by the Italians in Libya, the increasing activity of the RAF and Royal Navy operating out of Crete and the Wehrmacht’s preoccupation with the Eastern Front had substantially reduced the pressure on the beleaguered Maltese. Even so a large-scale airborne assault remained a concern throughout 1941 even after the heavy casualties inflicted on the Fallschirmjägers in failed attack on Crete [1].

By 1942 however the window of opportunity for such an attack had closed. Malta had been substantially reinforced, especially its air defences, and the British reasonably wondered how if an airborne force did somehow take the island could they hold it given that the supply lines of any Axis force would be tenuous at best? Once they concluded that the Germans were still unaware that Enigma had been breached and that they were serious about Herkules the British still had to be cautious about reinforcing the island, any sudden increase in forces on Malta without a plausible explanation might well tip the Germans off about their security issues regardless and thus a solid cover story had to be put in place. In this case the explanation was straightforward and logical. New equipment was being sent to Malta to replace some that was deemed worn out or obsolete. The chosen reinforcement troops in the shape of the Royal Canadian Regiment were being dispatched for training, prior to relieving other troops on Malta. This caution was admirable, though in the end unnecessary as the Germans and Italians were too busy blaming one another for the outcome of the battle to worry about anyone reading the unbreakable Enigma code [2].

For those who saw them on the morning of the 3rd of May 1942 the sight of the massive Me 321 swooping out of the dawn sky was something that they would never forget, though this did not stop the islands anti-aircraft defences from opening fire on them. On the day eleven Me 321 took part in the assault, a twelfth had been damaged while being towed on the ground and could not be repaired in time. Of the remaining eleven only five survived to land in Malta. The complex towing arrangements for the Me 321, requiring the use of three Bf 110 led to the first casualty as a malfunction in the release mechanism led to a collision between two tow planes that sent both of them and the Me 321 plummeting into the sea. Two others were apparently affected by control or piloting issues that saw them descend far faster than they were intended to, with both also ending up in the Mediterranean and one hit an obstacle while landing and cartwheeled, destroying the glider and killing all aboard. Only two succumbed directly to enemy action as the Me 321 proved remarkably resistant to both fighter cannon and anti-aircraft rounds, their light construction simply allowed rounds to pass through with little damage [3].

The five that made it to the ground delivered not only 120 troops but a variety of exactly the sort of supporting weapons that had been so lacking in Crete. This included seven Panzers, a mix of Pz I and Pz II models as well as four British Bren Carriers, captured in Greece. These had been reconditioned, and now put to work towing light artillery pieces for the Fallschirmjägers. Combined with Fallschirmjägers from more conventional gliders this group could muster almost 200 troops and what was grouped as a fire support company. Their objective was to seize the airfield at Luqa and open the way for reinforcements to be flown in. The problem for the German troops was that the relative success of the Me 321s would turn out to be only such triumph in the battle. Even as these troops organized themselves to move out, they encountered forward elements of the Royal Canadians. The Canadian troops were taken by surprise by the presence of German armour and lacking anti-tank guns were forced to fall back while engaging in a series of blocking actions to slow the advance of the Fallschirmjägers [4].

The presence of this small group of tanks was potentially a problem for the defence of Luqa as there had been nothing on the island bar a handful of Mk VI Bs prior to April. These tanks had demonstrated that they were effective against the Fallschirmjägers on Crete, but the Pz II were a threat they could not counter. This changed when the Canadians were deployed and their superiors in the 1st Canadian Division successfully lobbied for them to be accompanied by a detachment from the 12th Canadian Army Tank Battalion. Most of these tanks were still Mark VI Bs, but the Canadians had taken the opportunity to include two platoons of their home-grown tank the Wolverine in this front-line deployment. The short-barrelled howitzer on the Wolverine was hardly ideal for tank-to-tank engagements, however firing against the Pz I and PZ II at point blank range they proved effective, especially given that they were large immune to return fire. The ‘Wolverines of Malta’ engaged the advancing Fallschirmjägers about two miles west of Luqa. There were five of them with the Canadian infantry in support and the exchange lasted barely twenty minutes. At the end of this one Wolverine was out of action owing to a shot damaging its tracks, in return they had destroyed all the Bren carriers and four out of six Panzers.

Allegedly the moment when the Fallschirmjägers gave up trying to break through and began to retreat came when a hit from a Wolverine blew the turret off a Panzer II. Though some doubts have been cast on this story over the years the turret in question can still be seen in the Malta at War Museum in Birgu. Regardless of whether this legendary shot actually happened or not the Fallschirmjägers were forced to withdraw, and this detachment was the only one that even came close to taking its objective [5].

The decision to deploy the Fallschirmjägers primarily by glider removed some of the issues encountered at Crete but Malta was much smaller island, and the number of landing zones was far more limited. A number of DFS 230 gliders not only missed their landing zones but overshot the whole island and ended up in the sea. Those that did find their target also found the landing zones had been littered with obstacles specifically intended to wreak havoc on gliders and heavy losses were taken. There was some inevitable confusion among the defenders, especially after the first reports of Panzers on the island were received. A group of gliders that landed off course near the airfield at Takali was able to organize and advance for three hours without encountering any opposition because two infantry units were under the impression that the other had been tasked with moving up to block them. Only when they began engaging the defences at the airfield itself was the mistake recognized and troops hastily rushed in to reinforce the airfield, though by the time thesse arrived the German troops had already been driven off [6].

The intended amphibious support for the operation was to put it mildly a shambles. The escort force was supposed to be led by the battleship Vittorio Veneto, intended to provide direct fire support during the landing, along with the cruiser Gorizia, two destroyers and a trio of torpedo boats. On the 1st of May this plan was changed, without the Germans being informed. The Regia Marina had become increasingly anxious that the presence of one of their remaining battleships would make the convoy a magnet for British attacks if they discovered it, the Vittorio Veneto remained in port and command devolved to the Gorizia. The British already knew about the dispatch of the convoy thanks to ULTRA decrypts, and arranged for a reconnaissance aircraft to overfly it, providing a plausible explanation for the dispatch of an intercepting force. This reconnaissance aircraft was spotted and soon Regia Aeronautica scouts reported the presence of Royal navy ships heading to intercept the convoy. At this point the Italian force was ordered to turn around and return to port. It is hard to say who was more upset by this decision, The Wehrmacht or the Royal Navy. There was certainly a great deal of anger in Berlin at this latest display of Italian cowardice. Given the balance of naval forces in the Mediterranean the Italian action may not have been heroic, it was however eminently sensible [7].

There were several attempts by the Luftwaffe to drop supplies to the beleaguered Fallschirmjägers and a second wave of gliders was dispatched on the 4th of May, both taking heavy losses from RAF fighters and the meagre number of supplies and reinforcements received did nothing to change the situation on the ground. The losses in Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica aircraft incurred in these efforts, and in trying to bomb British positions, meant that both air forces drastically scaled back their support over Malta on the 5th and now completely isolated the Fallschirmjägers had little choice but to surrender, though a few pockets of resistance held out until the 9th of May.

The attack on Malta was an unmitigated disaster, according to senior British and American commanders it did not move the date of the Sicily landings by even so much as a day. Inspecting the remains of the Me 321 gliders in the aftermath many were impressed by their sheer carrying capacity, which dwarfed that of anything else in the air. It was however concluded that designing it as a glider and deploying it without adequate fighter cover was folly. The Germans would largely have agreed with this appraisal and were already working on a powered version, the Me 323, though the question of how to use it effectively was never resolved by the increasingly beleaguered Luftwaffe [8].

In the name of preserving his own position Goering threw not only Italians but Kurt Student under the bus and Student found himself unceremoniously removed from command of the 7th Air Division. The new command structure of the division took a more realistic line as far as the capabilities of the Fallschirmjägers were concerned, envisioning them being used in small scale actions in advance of a major attack to cut lines of communications and seize strategically important targets such as bridges. This realism did little to impress Goering, who argued against such deployments. He still kept the program to develop an airborne infantry support vehicle alive into 1943, suggesting that had not yet abandoned the idea of some spectacular airborne operation. Much of the surviving strength of the 7th Air Division was deployed to Sicily to fight as infantry, a questionable decision given their relatively light armament [9].

For the Allies Operation Herkules served as a sign that the Axis was growing desperate and reinforced the belief that plans for a landing in Northwest Europe be prioritized over any operations in Italy or the Balkans. The invasion of Sicily remained a focus of plans in the west for the summer of 1942, however planning for a large-scale incursion on the coast of France was well underway, with the port of Dieppe being selected as the intended target for what some saw less as a raid and more as a chance to seize a foothold on the continent [10].

[1] It was a genuine worry, at the time when it would actually have mattered.

[2] The Axis refusal to consider the possibility the Allies were reading their messages is deeply embedded and immune to any butterflies here.

[3] In OTL it acquired the nickname ‘Elastoplast bomber’.

[4] If the Germans had been able to deploy 100 Me 321, well 80 of them would probably have end up in the Med around Malta.

[5] The first time the Wolverine sees combat ITTL, but not the last.

[6] A bit of confusion but the Germans just don’t have the numbers to hold any ground.

[7] The Italians just don’t have ships to throw away, and the RM had no faith in Herkules anyway.

[8] The Me 321 and 323 were interesting ideas, but they were just never going to work in 1942-43.

[9] And we will see them again when the fighting on Sicily starts.

[10] And yes there will be a couple of updates on alt-Dieppe.

 

[Garrison]

1st June – 31st August 1942 – The Atlantic – Doenitz’s Dilemma​

Replacing Raeder as head of the Kriegsmarine should have been a moment of triumph for Doenitz, and it certainly must have been a relief to him to finally put an end to the internal debates over the priority of the U-Boats. The problem was that Doenitz had inherited the position largely because Hitler’s faith in the Kriegsmarine was at an all-time low. The happy time off the US coast might temporarily have bolstered Doenitz’s standing and won promises of more resources for construction of more U-Boats and the development of new models, but by the summer those promises were being watered down and the victories of the spring seemed a distant memory, and Doenitz had now found himself having to deal with the other side of the argument about the fate of the remaining surface warships [1].

By March of 1942 Admiral King had been under considerable pressure to reduce losses among US shipping, especially as many in Washington were still hoping for a landing in Northwest Europe in the summer or autumn of that year. Once King embraced the adoption of convoys for coastal shipping, he approached it with is characteristic zeal, and he was positively enthusiastic about the idea of hunting groups that would seek out and destroy the U-Boats rather than simply covering the convoys and handing the initiative to the Kriegsmarine [2].

This meant that by the summer Doenitz was facing the same set of problems as he had prior to December 7th, more air cover, more escorts, and new technology that helped those escorts find and destroy his U-Boats, all magnified by the resources of the United States Navy. Perhaps the most significant development of the period was the introduction of high frequency direction finding, colloquially known as huff-duff, to escort warships. This had previously been limited to shore installations, but greater availability of cathode ray tubes and other refinements meant the systems could now be deployed at sea. Huff-duff allowed for the triangulation of the radio signals sent by the U-Boats, signals that were essential to receiving orders and co-ordinating attacks. This technology was particularly valuable for the hunting groups and in combination with sonar and radar, including airborne radar, it brought about a steady increase in U-Boat kills.

Huff-Duff was not where the U-Boat crews placed the blame however, they continued to point the finger at the snorkel system. They were no longer blaming technical failures, primarily because Doenitz had made it clear that such complaints would not be tolerated but focusing on the idea that the Allies could spot the snorkel, probably via radar. This was theoretically possible, but the amount of scatter the ocean surface created meant it took a skilled crew to pick one out. Regardless of the reality it provided an excuse for crews to stay on the surface where they might spot an aircraft, rather than depend on the snorkel and risk the first warning being a string of depth charges [3].

The issues with the U-Boat crews ran deeper than simple recalcitrance over using the snorkel, many of them were lacking in experience and tactical knowhow, because the veterans who should have passed on their knowledge to the new recruits had been lost in combat. The Kriegsmarine didn’t have the luxury of rotating officers out of combat to act as trainers, which suited the more experienced officers who wanted to be in combat not acting as schoolteachers. On the other side British, Canadian and American officers were refining tactics and their knowledge was being shared with others, ensuring that the ever-expanding effort to secure the Atlantic supply lines was being fought by men who had a solid grounding in both convoy defence and U-Boat hunting, which further exacerbated the problems Doenitz faced [4].

In the summer of 1942 Doenitz was not even able to give his full attention to trying to reinvigorate the U-Boat campaign as he found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the continued existence of the surface fleet that he had inherited from Raeder. Hitler was once again putting forward the idea that the guns of the remaining ships would be better deployed in shore batteries and the steel of their hulls cut up for scrap and used to produce equipment that could contribute to the war effort. As far as Hitler was concerned the surface ships were nothing but a source of embarrassment, providing a series of propaganda victories for Churchill and the Royal Navy. To some degree Doenitz may have sympathized with this viewpoint, he certainly felt the resources spent on what were little more than symbols of German military might, that couldn’t possibly hope to engage the Royal Navy on anything approaching even terms, could have been better used to build more U-Boats.

The ships did however exist, and Doenitz had no reason to believe that any resources freed up by scrapping them would benefit the Kriegsmarine, and the fleet in being concept that Raeder had pushed was valid, however many doubts Doenitz may have expressed prior to taking command of the Kriegsmarine. If the ships were scrapped that would mean yet more Royal navy ships released for escort duties. The implicit threat of Tirpitz greatly exercised the British and did keep several warships held in readiness in case she sortied. The threat of it leaving its Norwegian Fjord base and attacking convoys heading for Britain or the USSR led to multiple attempts to destroy Tirpitz by the RAF and FAA, though by the summer of 1942 there was something of a hiatus in operations and Tirpitz remained at least theoretically operational. Doenitz thus had no choice but to defend the existence of Tirpitz and the other ships, while at the same time pressing for a higher priority for both the production of existing U-Boats, particularly the Type IX, and the development of the new Type XXI, increasingly seen as the answer to all the Kriegsmarine’s problems, if it could ever be produced in numbers, which seemed a distant prospect [5].

In his arguments for the importance of the U-Boat force Doenitz pointed out that the Atlantic was the only theatre of operations where the Wehrmacht could simultaneously fight the USA, Britain, and the USSR, with an increasing part of the Lend-Lease supplies provided by the Americans ultimately bound for Murmansk and the Red Army. The Soviets may have been perfectly capable of producing their own highly effective tanks and aircraft, but they still needed every single one they could press into service in 1942, however disdainful they might have been about the quality of some of the hardware they received. When it came to trucks there was no such argument, a large part of the logistics for the Red Army during the war would be delivered in General Motors CCKW Trucks [6].

Doenitz argued, quite reasonably, that so long as the Atlantic supply line remained intact the British would never sue for peace, and it might persuade the USSR to continue resisting even in the face of Case Blue being the triumph it inevitably would be. Whatever Doenitz’s true opinion of the likelihood of Case Blue achieving its objectives he knew better than to dare suggest it might fall short of Hitler’s goals, trying instead to turn it into a reason to increase the funding of the Kriegsmarine alongside those planned for the Heer and the Luftwaffe. His efforts seemed to succeed as by the middle of July Doenitz finally obtained at least some increase in support for the Kriegsmarine, even if it fell short of what Doenitz felt he really needed. Unfortunately for the Grand Admiral all his painfully won concessions were erased by developments in Italy [7] and Hitler’s burgeoning obsession with wonder weapons. Far from seeing an increase in investment in the U-Boat force Doenitz faced a battle to stave off cuts in their resource allocation in the face of Hitler’s latest obsession. The U-Boat wolfpacks face the Autumn of 1942 under increasing pressure to do more damage even as its losses steadily mounted, leaving Doenitz increasingly angry and frustrated, with considerable justification as he was correct in his assessment that the Battle of the Atlantic was increasingly vital to the outcome of the war. However, what he was unaware of was the fact that for the Western Allies it was no longer simply a lifeline to keep Britain and the USSR in the war, it was a highway for the build-up of men and materials necessary for opening a second front and liberating Europe. As the U-Boats faltered the plans for that liberation came into ever sharper focus [8].

[1] Doenitz is experiencing the meaning of ‘careful what you wish for’.

[2] So more bad news for the U-Boats

[3] The U-Boat crews are developing a distrust of the snorkel bordering on the pathological.

[4] The escorts are also getting more experienced as losses are eroding the institutional knowledge of the U-Boat crews.

[5] Without Speer’s interference the Type XXI is being developed in a more traditional manner, meaning they will work when they appear, but that isn’t going to be for quite some time.

[6] Carefully airbrushed out of history by the USSR after the war.

[7] What is going in Italy you may well ask? Well, that will be answered soon.

[8] It’s still going to be a long hard road to Normandy.

 

[Garrison]

26th June – 22nd September 1942 – USSR – Case Blue – The Drive for the Caucasus​

Case Blue was the pivotal battle of 1942 as far as Hitler was concerned, its success would crush the USSR and bring total victory within his grasp. Many in the General staff were far less convinced, especially given that Hitler had insisted that the Caucasus and its oilfields should be the target rather than a renewed attempt to take Moscow. While gaining control of the oilfields and denying their output to the Soviets would have considerable strategic value the distances involved were daunting, a much further reach than even Barbarossa and if they were reached shipping oil back to Germany would be at least as big a challenge as taking them in the first place. It was then yet another gamble by Hitler, one on which the outcome of the war rested.

The Ostheer was smaller than it had been in 1941, its spearhead forces were however inarguably better equipped than they had been during Barbarossa. The Panzer forces had been fully upgraded, with the Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs equipped with 50mm and long barrelled 75mm guns respectively. Some SS units had even received the first models of the new Panzer VI Tiger. The Tiger proved to be a fearsome weapon, once the mechanical issues that afflicted the early production vehicles were addressed. There were also large numbers of StuG III and Czech built StuH assault guns as well as the latest models of machine guns and other small arms [1].

These armoured spearheads were impressive, behind them though the bulk of the Ostheer was still moving on foot and depending on horse drawn transport to carry its supplies. To fill out their ranks these divisions were reinforced with fresh cadres drawn from the ranks of teenage boy barely old enough to serve and family men in their thirties, the latter previously having been excluded from service as they were needed in German agriculture and industry. Increasingly these men would be replaced with slave labour, with consequences both for the slaves and the productivity of German industry. It was clear to many in the Wehrmacht that this was the chance for a German victory but still no one seriously questioned Hitler’s leadership even after the setbacks of 1941. For the time being the Wehrmacht would loyally try to deliver on the demands the Fuhrer made of them [2].

The initial phase of the offensive seemed like a repeat of the early days of Barbarossa, a rapid advance that inflicted heavy losses on the Red Army. This was partly because Soviets had assumed the Germans would indeed try once again to seize Moscow and had deployed their forces accordingly. As the Germans advanced the Red Army began to hastily redeploy and regroup, but it would still take months for them to be able to stop the Wehrmacht advance, and longer for them to be able to mount a counter offensive. The initial successes spurred Hitler on, with victory seemingly in his grasp. However, he soon began to fixate on seizing the city that bore the name of the ruler of the USSR, Stalingrad. The fighting in the city swiftly turned into a brutal attritional struggle, where gains were made not so much street by street but floor by floor in individual buildings, with ground lost and retaken multiple times. It was just the sort of attritional battle that Hitler had previously wanted to avoid but Stalingrad rapidly assumed an importance out of all proportion to its strategic value. its fall became an obsession for Hitler and would blind him to the danger to his overextended armies as summer turned to autumn. For the Soviets Stalingrad also became symbolic, though they had the resources to assemble the means for a massive counterattack that would doom the German 6th Army and cement the cities reputation as one of the bitterest battles of the entire war [3].

The drive east may have been the primary focus of German plans for 1942, they could not however ignore the west, where both their allies and enemies were creating problems that would force them to divert resources. Even without these diversions it is unlikely that Case Blue could have achieved the grandiose goals set by Hitler. Perhaps it could have achieved the more limited objective espoused by some of the more realistic members of the Nazi hierarchy, that of persuading the Soviets to make a separate peace and leaving the Reich with ‘only’ the USA and the British Empire to fight. If the Wehrmacht and the SS had not done their level best to show the people of the Soviet Union that this was an existential war this might have been feasible. The Third Reich had however already murdered, starved, and enslaved millions in the east. Stalin may have toyed with the idea of such a move, but in the end, he took it no more seriously than Hitler did, both knowing that their own personal survival was tied to the outcome of the war. Stalin also knew that he could use the threat of the USSR making its own peace to squeeze concessions from the Western Allies [4].

The reality was that for both the Third Reich and the USSR the only outcomes by the Autumn of 1942 were total victory or total destruction and despite the resurgence of optimism created by the victories won during the summer the latter was far more likely than the former for Nazi Germany. The potential consequences for Hitler and his inner circle if the war turned against them were starkly illustrated by what happened in Italy during the tumultuous summer of 1942 [5].

[1] These are the alt vehicles described a few pages back and drawn up by Cortz#9

[2] Any actual plans to overthrow Hitler are still some way off.

[3] It does have that reputation, but I’ve always felt place like the Kokoda trail were at least as bad and both were worse than the supposedly appalling trench warfare of WWI.

[4] So a relatively short update, because there isn’t that much alt happening here. It wouldn’t however have been right to just skip over the largest campaign of 1942.

[5] What the heck is going on in Italy will be discussed soon.

 

[Garrison]

19th July – 10th August 1942 – A Death in Rome – Part I – The Poisoned Chalice​

At around 3:00pm on the afternoon of the 19th of July Mussolini was departing from his office engaged in an animated conversation with the small entourage accompanying him. As he walked down a hallway a man dressed in a Blackshirt uniform stepped forward and offered a fascist salute. While Mussolini and his entourage were distracted by this the man produced a knife and stabbed Mussolini four times. In the ensuing struggle the attacker grabbed a pistol and was shot six times before he could fire off a single round. Mussolini was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead upon arrival. The man who killed him was identified as Vito Agnelli, who was indeed a member of the Blackshirts who had become embittered after the death of his son during the fighting in North Africa.

The above doubtless seems a remarkably sparse description of such a momentous event and yet even what should be simple facts presented in those few sentences above remain in dispute decades later. Since the assailant was dead and there was, officially, no mystery about the cause of Mussolini’s death no post-mortem was conducted, being deemed an ‘unnecessary indignity’ by the authorities. This meant that claims that the fatal wound might have been inflicted by a shot intended for Agnelli, either from someone firing wildly or a ricochet, cannot be entirely dismissed. As for ‘Vito Agnelli’ himself there is little trace of him in any historical records beyond the brief account of his life in the files on the assassination held in the Italian archives. The details in that account, amounting to a single sheet of A4 paper, are either contradictory or impossible to verify. Details in the archives relating to Agnelli’s membership in the Blackshirts do seem to match up, however there is a strong case to be made that these documents were altered after the assassination and that the man listed in the files had died sometime in 1941 [1].

With so much uncertainty a cottage industry of conspiracy theories has grown up around the assassination and have been embraced by various neo-fascist groups over the years, and even one allegedly mainstream Italian political party embraced them. If one could fill a bookshelf with volumes about the crash at Hendon, then you could stock a book shop with those written about the death of Mussolini. Fortunately, while the how, why, and who of Mussolini’s murder are open to debate the consequences of his death are far better documented and while motivations may be questioned the events themselves are not [2].

In Rome there was certainly shock and anxiety in the aftermath of the assassination, though grief was in short supply and in private some even expressed a sense of relief. The political tensions between Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel were running high in the face of the imminent Allied invasion of Sicily and few had taken Mussolini’s insistence that the island would be held, with the Anglo-American forces driven into the sea, seriously. The Regia Marina was a shadow of its pre-war self and more worried about the threat of another Operation Judgment style attack than conducting offensive operations. The Regia Aeronautica was not quite as badly off, which wasn’t saying much. Its best crews had been lost in combat and many of its operational aircraft were hopelessly obsolete. There were promising designs for far more modern and effective aircraft, the issue was how to produce them in the numbers needed for the defence of Italy? The army had much the same issue. Italian tanks are generally regarded as appalling, with many unsuited to service in the war even 1940 let alone 1942. Again, there were better designs available, with some even being produced in limited numbers. The problem was that tankettes were still being produced in far larger numbers than any of the modern designs because of the limitations on Italian resources, which had only become worse with the loss of so much manpower in Africa and the Mediterranean [3].

Mussolini may still have been hoping that Italy could somehow reverse the situation and achieve a victory, the king and many others however were thinking in terms of Italian survival, and now the considerations about how to achieve that had been brought into even sharper focus. This begged the question, who could be appointed in Mussolini’s place, even if only as a figurehead for a new emergency government? A decision would have to be made swiftly to avoid the threat of civil unrest as different factions threw around accusations as to who was really responsible for the assassination.

The declining reputation of the Fascist movement and the military leadership meant that many potential candidates had been removed from consideration, either being in disgrace even before Mussolini’s death or having fallen at the hands of the Allies, the shooting down of Italo Balbo’s transport aircraft during the last days of the fighting in Libya and his resulting death was a particular shock. Even if Balbo had lived to return to Rome the man who had once been seen as a likely successor to Mussolini was already being attacked as a failure and even a coward for abandoning his troops by his opponents in the General Staff. Even if he had been willing to moderate his Fascist beliefs to accommodate the increasingly sceptical king he would not have been seen as a viable candidate [4].

As if the situation wasn’t complicated enough those looking to appoint a new leader had to consider the potential German reaction to any suggestion that Italy might be wavering in its commitment to the Axis, or even looking for a way to exit the war altogether. This was especially important as some were indeed hoping to achieve some negotiated peace with the Allies. To pacify the Germans the new figurehead would have to at least present a reassuring face, even if he was not necessarily privy to all the machination going on behind the scenes. This suggested someone with diplomatic skills who was known in Berlin and had contacts in neutral countries that would be useful if the opportunity to negotiate an Italian exit from the war without attracting German reprisals did arise. There seemed to be only one man who fit the bill, however much he insisted he did not want the job. Nonetheless having been persuaded that this was the best choice the King was adamant, Count Ciano, son-in-law of Benito Mussolini and Italy’s foreign minister must accept the role of Head of Government [5].

Ciano’s diaries make no bones as to his horror when the idea was proposed. He was convinced that that if he accepted the job then he would be the next to be knifed to death by the Blackshirts. He even apparently considered a ‘diplomatic visit’ to Switzerland, with no intention of returning home. In the end he appears to have worn down by pleas about what might happen to Italy if he refused and possibly also by being presented with an account of the assassination at odds with that made public, though again details of this account are frustratingly absent from Ciano’s diaries. With little choice in the matter Count Ciano was announced as the new interim head of government on the 22nd of July, to little pomp or fanfare, with the much of the populace of Rome and the other major cities still deeply unsettled by Mussolini’s death, regardless of whether they had been supporters or opponents.

Ciano’s first major challenge would be Mussolini’s funeral and how to handle the German dignitaries in attendance. They would be coming to Rome to do far more than simply show respect, they would be looking for reassurances and if they weren’t satisfied Italy could be reduced to just another puppet state and Ciano feared that if that happened his funeral would swiftly follow his father-in-law’s [6].

[1] So we are into the realms of pure invention obviously and I am deliberately leaving some ambiguity about what really happened in Rome that day.

[2] Was it someone eager to take his post? The Germans? The Allies? Italian Communists? Or just the ‘lone knifeman’ that is the simplest and most sensible explanation?

[3] The Italians did have some decent modern designs for aircraft and tanks, they just never saw service in the numbers that might have made a difference and they probably never would have regardless of the course of the war.

[4] Balbo dies in much the same way as OTL, just at a different time.

[5] On the list of terrible Axis jobs Mussolini’s successor is quite high on the list.

[6] The German response will be covered in the next update. Obviously we are into serious butterfly territory here, but by this point things have shifted so much from OTL it seemed one of the Axis leaders should experience a radically different fate.

 

[Garrison]

19th July – 10th August 1942 – A Death in Rome – Part II – The Knife Edge​

One of the few people who seemed genuinely horrified, and even grief stricken, by the death of Mussolini was Adolf Hitler. Whether this was the result of some genuine attachment to Il Duce or anxiety that he might also be targeted by treacherous elements in the Axis is difficult to be sure of, especially given Hitler’s increasingly unstable mental state and escalating drug dependence. Publicly Hitler was full of fury, blaming the murder on the usual suspects, Jews, and Communists, though conspicuously not pointing the finger at the Allies, perhaps feeling that such accusations might backfire by implying the British and Americans might backfire, implying the Allies were operating a network of agents even in one of the capitals of the Axis. That the authorities in Rome so swiftly put the blame on a mentally unstable Blackshirt with a personal vendetta speaks volume about the different priorities in the two regimes, though the Ciano government hastily amended these initial reports so as not to appear to be contradicting Hitler, helping to sow the confusion and conspiracy theories that were already flourishing [1].

Given that there were genuine anxieties about some larger plot it was considered unwise for Hitler to travel to Rome for the funeral, not only was security for Hitler in Rome an issue but there were concerns that if there was some conspiracy afoot that reached into Berlin his absence might encourage them to act. The reality was that at this time plans to remove Hitler and end the war existed only as the unspoken desires of those who had been against Hitler practically since he came to power, and they would not take on any concrete for many more months. There was also the fact Case Blue was now in full swing and Hitler was reluctant to take his eye off the details of the evolving battle even for a few days. After some discussion it was decided that the Reich would be represented by Goering and von Ribbentrop. Goering was far from happy about being away from Berlin either, though he could hardly demur given it was a direct command from the Fuhrer. He was also aware that this trip was about more than just paying respects to Mussolini, which would have been awkward for Goering regardless as he had precisely none for the Italian dictator, it was a crucial opportunity to take the measure of the new Italian government and its commitment to continuing the war [2].

Count Ciano was keenly aware of the larger purpose of the German delegation and having to deal with them so soon put Italy’s situation in the summer of 1942 into sharp relief. The war had been an unmitigated disaster for Italy. Its overseas empire was gone and there was little prospect of it being restored even if the war could be settled on terms short of an Axis surrender, an outright victory being seen as nothing but a hopeless fantasy in Rome. This gloom about future prospects was deepened as the British were already making effusive promises about the future of Ethiopia, in no small part as a reaction to the rumbling discontent over their treatment of Greece that still occasionally surfaced even in mid-1942. The Ethiopians had allied themselves with the British and the British wanted to make it clear that they would help such allies wherever they could. In practice such commitments would be difficult to deal with as once the Italians were gone not everyone in Ethiopia was happy about the return of the emperor, which was no comfort to the Italians in 1942 [3].

Greece and the Balkans were the one area where Italy could argue that they had enjoyed some success, if acquiring control of hostile populations who required large and expensive garrisons to maintain order and lands that had little to offer in the way of resources could be considered a success. The rising strength of the partisan movements in Greece and Yugoslavia, who were being aided by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Special Services (OSS), was a constant drain on Italian manpower and the morale of the armed forces. RAF and FAA aircraft operating out of ‘Fortress Crete’ had all but closed Greek ports to Italian shipping, with the first operational Monarch Barracuda squadrons being ‘blooded’ in the attacks on Italian shipping trying to hug the coast as they moved south. Moving supplies overland was fraught owing to poor infrastructure and the aforementioned partisans. The Mediterranean was to all intents and purposes a British lake, the only other warships that dared operate there were those belonging to the Free French, who were doing their best to make their presence felt in the interests of bolstering De Gaulle’s desire for France to be treated as a full ally with a say in the future conduct of the war. On top of this the Italians were expecting an Allied attack somewhere in the Mediterranean or the Balkans, at best an assault on Corsica or Sardinia. At worst they would invade Sicily and what price the survival of the Fascist regime then?

All of this provided excellent reasons for Italy to seek an exit from the war on any terms short of Allied occupation. After all Italy did not occupy the same tier of existential threat the Third Reich did, and the demise of Mussolini could be spun by Ciano as a clear sign that Italy was willing to turn against the Axis cause, which was another reason to muddy the waters about the events surrounding Mussolini’s death. This did not mean that Ciano was willing to embrace the idea of an exit strategy even in private. The prospect of German occupation at the first sign of Italy showing signs of losing faith in the Axis was the obvious reason to eschew an otherwise sensible course of action. If the Germans decided Italy was unreliable it would suffer the same fate as Vichy France, at best, and this in turn might encourage an Allied invasion regardless of what else they might be planning, turning Italy into a battleground. Also, it must be remembered that no one in Rome had suddenly been converted to the cause of freedom and democracy, some were acutely aware their power and position rested on the continuation of the Fascist regime, and it still seemed in mid-1942 that the renewed German offensive in the USSR might succeed, especially considering the rapid advances the Wehrmacht was making towards the Caucasus at the height of the summer. If the USSR did capitulate it might force the Western Allies to reconsider the continuation of the war, or at the very least end any talk of unconditional surrender, not yet adopted as the official policy of the Western Allies. It was a slender hope but so long as it persisted, and Italy’s northern defences were so thin, Ciano had no choice but to do his best to reassure Goering of Italy’s intentions to prosecute the war even more vigorously than it had under Mussolini [4].

The means of doing so involved both offering more Italian troops to take part in Case Blue and a ‘tribute’ of raw materials for the German industry. There had been rumours that Mussolini had been hoarding certain critical resources, including fuel, since war broke out and Ciano now ‘founds’ this hoard and offered the lion’s share of it to the Germans [5]. Ciano placed this attempt at bribery alongside a shopping list of manufactured goods that the Italians needed to modernize their military, with aeroengines being top of the list, alongside technical assistance with producing a new generation of Italian tanks and aircraft. In effect he was offering to bolster the German war effort and persuade them that he was in earnest about modernizing the Italian war machine, while making it clear it was unlikely his country could do so in the near future without aid he suspected would not be forthcoming. It was a delicate balancing act, but in what was undoubtedly his greatest diplomatic achievement Ciano successfully forestalled German intervention. Goering was more than happy to return from Rome with some practical benefits from his visit, while having no intention of delivering on any of Italy’s requirements, barring some technical assistance, and this apparent generosity was inspired by the desire to find out if there was anything the Italians had in development that might be ‘borrowed’ by the Wehrmacht, however unlikely that might seem [6].

This outcome was what Ciano had expected, and he fully intended to draw the reinforcements for Germany from the ranks of the Blackshirts, while other Italian army units would be redeployed from the Balkans to Italy, ostensibly to potentially to act as reserves for a successful Case Blue, in actuality as part of a move to start shoring up defences on the northern border, while removing elements who might object to a more rational foreign policy, if the opportunity arose for one. The major unknown in Italian calculations was how would the Allies react to the death of Mussolini?

The answer to that question was a subject of heated debate between Washington and London. To summarize the viewpoints; on the one side were those who felt that the death of Mussolini made Italy ripe for invasion and rapid capitulation, on the other were those who felt it removed the already questionable rationale for an invasion of Italy altogether and allowed for prioritization of a landing in France. Churchill was firmly in the former camp, while Roosevelt was almost as firmly in the latter. The fundamental difference was that Roosevelt had almost unanimous support for his position in Washington, while there were plenty of dissenters in London who opposed Churchill’s scheme.

The death of Mussolini brought a rare moment of unanimity between the Germany First and Japan First factions in Washington, both seeing an opportunity to strengthen their hands. Eliminating dubious plans for an assault on Italy would allow an uninterrupted build up for an invasion of Northwest Europe while allowing an increased allocation of men and equipment to the Pacific, a win-win scenario for both camps. There had been considerable political pressure in Washington for an offensive operation in the Pacific, especially in the light of the fresh British victory during Operation Yari and Operation Watchtower, the invasion of Guadalcanal, was already scheduled for late July [7]. There was now vigorous lobbying for further plans to be made to continue operations beyond Guadalcanal sooner rather than later. The confident view in Washington was that either Italy would descend into civil war, rendering it irrelevant. Even in the absence of civil war it would inevitably be occupied by the Germans, ending any notion of Italy as a soft target as the Wehrmacht was correctly viewed as a very different proposition from the Italian armed forces. Such a diversion of German resources would also weaken their defences in Western Europe, increasing the likelihood of a landing in France being successful.

In London Alanbrooke opposed the invasion of the Italian mainland for slightly different reasons, though he would not have argued against the ideas prevalent in Washington. Alanbrooke and his senior subordinates took the view that the removal of Mussolini would strengthen Italy’s defensive capabilities rather than weaken them. General O’Connor, hero of the Libyan Campaign, opined that, ‘Mussolini was worth an entire corps to the 8th Army’. Without Mussolini’s endless interference in the organization of the Italian armed forces they could be a far more formidable force and the Imperial General Staff knew that whatever the public perception of them there were plenty of highly capable Italian troops who would doggedly resist any Allied invasion. If one were going to face a dogged defence, likely bolstered by strong Wehrmacht forces, would it not be better to face them while liberating an ally and opening a far more direct route to Berlin? [8]

Any concept of an invasion of the Balkans received even less support. Even those such as Anthony Eden who were unhappy about the British treatment of the Greeks in 1941 had little enthusiasm for any attempt to liberate them by mounting an invasion. He was persuaded that the shortest route to liberating Athens lay in having an Allied army march into Berlin. With lukewarm support at best from his cabinet and military advisors, and Roosevelt’s resolute stance against an invasion of mainland Italy Churchill chose to concede gracefully in the interest of the Anglo-American alliance. This decision would do nothing to calm Ciano’s anxieties as while an actual invasion was no longer on the cards the threat of one formed a large part of Allied deception plans in the build up to Operation Millennium. Ciano would at least be able to use the threat of invasion to explain the construction of extensive defences in Italy, under the bombastic claim that, ‘Italy would fight all the way to the Alps against a foreign invader’. That those lines of defence would work just as well retreating from the line of the Alps was carefully ignored in Italian propaganda. Ciano’s ministry was doing its best to put together a coherent strategy to protect Italy from its enemies, and its allies. It was not his fault that other saw things differently and began to meddle in ways that invited catastrophe [9].

[1] Chaos, confusion, and deliberate obfuscation, hardly surprising ‘who really killed Mussolini?’ turned into a cottage industry.

[2] In essence the Nazis need to decide if Ciano can be trusted to run Italy or if they need to take direct control, which is a headache they don’t need ATM.

[3] No the British couldn’t have saved Greece, no that hasn’t stopped various elements complaining about it, so Ethiopia is chance to make some good PR.

[4] Ciano has little option but to double down at this point since he can’t count on much actual support from the other senior figures in Rome.

[5] When the Germans occupied Italy IOTL they were astounded, and aggravated, to find that despite pleading poverty Mussolini had been squirreling away vital war materiel.

[6] The Italians did have some solid designs, some of which made it into service, but far too late to do anything about the terrible reputation of Italian tanks and aircraft.

[7] Watchtower will kick off a couple of weeks earlier than OTL, given the weaker Japanese position and end of operations in North Africa, of course other plans in Europe and the Med mean the Pacific First supporters aren’t going to get all they want, just that but more than OTL.

[8] Yes, we are heading for D-Day 1943.

[9] The best laid plans… as they say.

 

[Garrison]

1st August - 15th August 1942 – Rise of the Wonder Weapons​

Nazi Germany was the country where Uranium fission had been discovered so it was inevitable that they would begin to consider the practical applications of the discovery sooner rather than later naturally with an emphasis on the military applications. Despite the ‘brain drain’ of scientists precipitated by the Reich’s oppressive and antisemitic policies it still retained many fine physicists, Werner Heisenberg perhaps being the most notable, and the possibility of building an atomic bomb was discussed in 1941, but the Reich failed to make nuclear research a priority. Many reasons for the decision not to pursue the project at the time have been put forward, and a series of misunderstandings and mathematical errors by German scientists certainly didn’t help to sell Hitler on the merits of a nuclear weapons program. Post war claims that some of these errors were deliberate acts of sabotage must be taken with a pinch of salt and the claims that the idea was rejected for being ‘Jewish science’ can be dismissed outright, except in terms of the aforementioned departure of many first rate physicists from Europe, some of who would loom large in the Allies nuclear programs.

In the end the nuclear program was starved of funds and resources almost entirely for practical reasons. The single biggest problem with such an undertaking, involving what was at that point cutting edge physics, was that no one was sure if it was possible to weaponize Uranium fission, with estimates for the likelihood of successfully creating a bomb running as low as 1 in 10 by some estimates, and even the more optimistic projections made it a 50-50 proposition. Even if it were assumed that an atomic bomb was possible building a working weapon was predicted to take anything up to four years given all the potential issues that would have to be solved along the way, starting with deciding which mechanism and materials to use in building a bomb. This timeframe was well beyond the horizon when Hitler was looking to finish the war in mere months with the conquest of the USSR and the British forced to make peace. Even outside of Hitler’s most ideological supporters there was a recognition that Germany could not afford such a long war and resources had to be focused on weapons that could be deployed within months not years. Given the circumstances Hitler’s dismissal of the idea of an A-Bomb program can thus be framed as a pragmatic one. Some nuclear research would continue, but the work was small scale and largely theoretical, focused on the design of a working reactor rather than how to weaponize the science, though even this limited effort was of grave concern to the Allies [1].

This situation had not been radically altered either by Germany’s inability to bring Britain to the negotiating table or the failure of Operation Barbarossa. Even the US entry into the war left the status of nuclear research largely unchanged. Thus, Hitler’s sudden change of heart in the summer of 1942 took even his closest advisors by surprise. There are no authentic diaries left by Hitler and accounts of discussions at the time by the likes of Albert Speer are self-serving at best and pure fiction at worst, designed to diminish Speer’s role as head of the renewed nuclear bomb program, among other things. One obvious turning point that did weigh heavily on Hitler’s mind during July and August was the death of Mussolini, especially the way that, in Hitler’s eyes at least, the very mention of him had been banished from Italy, and this even with his former son-in-law as the titular head of the Italian government. Some have also suggested that this gloomy mood may have been down to change in the selection of drugs and quack remedies that the always high-strung Hitler was becoming prescribed, with some of these changes being directly in response to his alleged anxiety over the assassination of Mussolini. While the prospect that critical strategic decisions were made owing to a drug induced haze has a certain absurdist appeal it is rather a stretch to pin the responsibility for critical strategic decisions made by Hitler solely on his pharmaceutical intake [2].

It must also be considered that even in the summer of 1942 it was obvious to some that if Germany were to survive, let alone win, it faced years of struggle against materially superior opponents who were increasingly mobilizing that superiority with the aim of crushing Germany. Even if Case Blue were the success Hitler hoped for that would still leave Germany to face the might of the USA and the British Empire and what could Germany do to force them to recognize the need to accept Germany mastery of Eurasia? Although he rarely spoke of it even privately some accounts do suggest Hitler was gripped by a Wagnerian vision of Götterdämmerung, a dark sense that even though Germany was seemingly on the brink of victory in the Caucasus the fates, or the secrets cabals of the Jewish World Order in Hitler’s worldview, would somehow rob the German people of their rewards. Almost worse to Hitler was the prospect that those same voices that had constantly shown such a lack of vision and tried to hold Germany back at every turn would re-emerge and sap the will of the people, making them unworthy of Hitler’s grand Aryan vision and bringing them to ruin. But what seemed to haunt Hitler the most was the thought that ultimate victory and the creation of Greater Germania might not occur while he was alive. If it fell to some successor to complete the great task of purging the Jews and Communists from the world, then would that successor simply wash away the name of Adolf Hitler in the way that Stalin had erased any mention of some of his former comrades in the USSR? A more classical allusion that Hitler certainly did mention to his confidantes was that of Phillip of Macedon and his son Alexander. Phillip had laid the groundwork for the military power of Macedon, but it was his son who was remembered as Alexander the Great [3].

This period of gloom and introspection would soon give way to a fresh surge of manic conviction in the certainty of victory even as the battle of Stalingrad escalated, but while still fully in the grip of these fears in the first weeks of August Hitler put in place plans that would have serious long-term consequences for German military production and the operations of the Wehrmacht in 1943, plans that could not be disputed as the atmosphere in Berlin became even more oppressive and merciless towards dissent. Senior military and political figures who had already learned to be careful in what they said and to who they said it had to redouble their caution, especially as the ideologically committed SS were trusted with an ever-increasing role in leading on the battlefield and policing the Wehrmacht. This increased the distrust of the Generals further eroded what tactical advantages the Heer might have enjoyed over its opponents, making military catastrophe more likely and ironically laying the groundwork for some of the unhappy Generals to take more proactive measures against Hitler [4].

Himmler and the SS would also be given an oversight role in a renewed A-bomb program, with Albert Speer taking charge of the practical organizational side of things, an ideal role for a man who was far more gifted as a propagandist than he was an architect or administrator. Simply reviving German research into nuclear weapons wasn’t enough for Hitler. After seeing an early demonstration of the A4 rocket had visions, or delusions, of marrying atomic bombs to missiles, creating a weapon that could strike down the foes of the German people even if misfortune or treachery brought them the very gates of Berlin. Hitler also had an even darker possibility in mind. If the German people proved themselves unworthy of his grand vision for them then the country should burn, creating a fitting a funeral pyre for the Fuhrer and all his dreams and nuclear bombs could be used to achieve this even if the rockets were not available. Oddly even at the height of his determination to ensure that if the end came for Germany, it would also be the end for everyone else Hitler still did not embrace deploying chemical weapons. Some see this as a sign of a phobia about poison gas stemming from Hitler’s experience in World War I. More likely is that chemical weapons were something of a known quantity and Hitler was looking for superweapons that could turn the tide of the war even if things went badly for Germany, raining down Hitler’s enemies abroad, and at home if it came to it [5].

This demand for a radical acceleration in German nuclear research was greeted with considerable enthusiasm by the physicists and engineers working in the field, despite claims to the contrary after the war. Given the limitations of German resources this could only come at the expense of other cutting-edge projects, especially those in the aerospace industry as Werner von Braun’s A4 rocket program was also given a much higher priority, with the implicit understanding that the A4 was only an interim design and von Braun would be expected to produce what was called the ‘America Rocket’ in due course. This meant that the Me 262 jet fighter and Fi 103 flying bomb would experience delays and development of the Me 163 rocket fighter was all but abandoned, though this latter decision was probably a wise one, regardless of how the engineers who found themselves reallocated to other projects might have felt. The priority of the Me 262 would sway back and forth over the following months, much to the exasperation of the Luftwaffe [6].

Given their understandable anxieties German nuclear research was an area in which the Allies did their best to monitor developments and as intelligence about Hitler’s change of heart trickled in it created much concern in London and Washington. This not only led to efforts to accelerate the progress of the Manhattan Project to create the Allies own bomb, but also attempts to sabotage and disrupt German research as much as possible. This was made more difficult by the decision to bring together all of Germany’s nuclear research at a new site constructed close to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Monowitz, taking over a site intended for a chemical plant, with a ready supply of concentration camp labour to build the facilities. This site was too remote for large scale Allied bombing operations, so they had to content themselves with attempting to subvert the project by means of sabotage operations, as well as planning the kidnapping and, if necessary, the assassination of scientists who might fall into German clutches, Niels Bohr for one was whisked away to Britain when it became clear that the Nazis were trying to draw him into their program. The Allies also sought to disrupt the flow of heavy water from the Norsk Hydro plant at Telemark in Norway, even going so far as to have the Norwegian resistance sink a ferry carrying a large supply of heavy water, despite the presence of large numbers of Norwegian civilians aboard the ferry [7].

As unnerving as the prospect of a Nazi bomb was to the Allies the truth of it was that Hitler’s insistence on this crash program proved to be a boon to them, as it consumed manpower and resources better spent elsewhere as a continuing series of errors, or heroic acts of anti-Nazi resistance depending on which source you prefer, meant the entire program went down one dead end after another. The Monowitz Sonderprojekt site proved far more dangerous to the scientists and workers based there than anyone else. The rocket program would prove somewhat more effective, in the sense that it delivered a working weapon, but it achieved little of strategic value and like so much else in Germany’s wonder weapons projects it would have far more impact after the war than during it [8].

[1] Basically the bomb was too expensive and too time consuming and Hitler just wasn’t desperate enough, yet.

[2] Basically I take the view that whatever drugs Hitler did or didn’t take only sharpened his natural tendencies, his megalomania and anxiety just became more and more apparent as time went on.

[3] That was indeed a thought that haunted Hitler at times, Mussolini’s death has just made it worse.

[4] They are going to do anything yet, its going to take a couple of more military failures to get them to actually do anything.

[5] Chemical weapons are just old compared to the power to rain down the fire of the gods.

[6] So another big idea to fight for resources with all the other big ideas.

[7] So these things are basically as per OTL, with rather more anxiety driving them.

[8] To be clear, no Nazi A-Bomb will be forthcoming. A Nazi Chernobyl? Possibly.

 

[Garrison]

23rd – 24th August 1942 – Dieppe – Operation Jubilee – Part I - Dress Rehearsal for Invasion​

The plan for a raid on the French coast had taken shape independent of American ambitions for a fully-fledged invasion in 1942, an extension of the idea of commando raids designed to disrupt Axis operation and force them to divert resources away from the Eastern Front. The plan for what became Operation Jubilee began to evolve during the spring of 1942 under the direction of Vice Admiral Louis Mountbatten, but was initiated at the prompting of RAF command, who were trying to take on a more proactive role since the daylight skies over Britain were now secure. This new deployment involved aggressive fighter sweeps over France, those consisting of small groups known as ‘Rhubarb’ and larger squadron level sweeps with supporting bomber intended as bait referred to as ‘Circus’. The merit of these sweeps was questionable as they essentially reversed the advantages the RAF had enjoyed over Britain, now it was RAF pilots who found themselves as POWs when they were shot down and the value of these operations were frequently questioned, being continued largely from the desire to be seen to be doing something rather than simply sitting in their bases. Another problem was that the Luftwaffe was proving difficult to draw into battle and Fighter Command came to believe that better bait was needed. It was believed that a large-scale commando raid would be interpreted as the prelude to an invasion and the Luftwaffe would respond accordingly, offering the RAF the opportunity to engage them and inflict heavy casualties. It was dubious logic on which to risk the lives of so many soldiers, but Mountbatten embraced the plan with enthusiasm [1].

Mountbatten had enjoyed considerable success in the planning and execution of other raids, most notably the St. Nazaire raid that successfully destroyed the dry dock there using an explosive laden destroyer and he was something of a favourite of Churchill’s because of this swashbuckling spirit. This did not endear him to other senior officers, including Alanbrooke, and they sought to limit the scope of his operations, Jubilee was an especial target of their ire.

Bomber Command was deeply unhappy about the prospect of being expected to support such an operation, feeling that they would yet again be acting as bait to draw out the Luftwaffe. The Royal Navy was likewise reluctant to commit its capital ships in the fire support role, for much the same reasons. This was a serious impediment given the proposed scale of the attack and there were repeated suggestions that the plan be dropped, at least until after the completion of operations in Sicily Given that Churchill and Mountbatten were determined to press ahead this lack of co-operation had the potential to lead to disaster for the Canadian troops who were now earmarked for the plan. What changed the fortunes of Jubilee was that it drew the interest of the Americans, who saw it even more ambitious terms than Mountbatten and Churchill. To President Roosevelt and his Chiefs of Staff Dieppe seemed a far more attractive option than Sicily in terms of taking the war to the Axis. Dieppe was regarded as a raid by the British, but in Washington it was seen as a springboard for reviving Operation Sledgehammer, the American plan for an invasion of France in 1942. The British had successfully argued that Sledgehammer should only be regarded as a contingency plan in the event of an imminent Soviet collapse and the consensus was that a full invasion could not realistically be carried out until 1943, this had originally been called Operation Roundup and would in due course be renamed as Operation Millennium [2].

Not everyone was convinced that the obstacles to an invasion in 1942 were insurmountable and there was increasing nervousness in Washington about what would happen when the Germans launched a fresh offensive in the east and the wisdom of a contingency plan that might be enacted far too late. Even if the Soviets didn’t collapse there was the fear that Stalin might make a separate peace if the Western Allies didn’t open the ‘second front’ sooner rather than later, and Sicily was too far from Berlin to qualify. Also, after the demise of Mussolini there was a feeling that Sicily was almost as sideshow, with many expecting that the collapse of Italy was all but inevitable regardless of what the Allies did. This led to the Americans offering to join Operation Jubilee as full partners, with the implicit understanding that this was quid pro quo for their support of the Sicilian campaign and that the Allies should make preparations to exploit a successful assault on Dieppe. This meant significantly expanding the scope of the operation, forcing Bomber Command and the Royal Navy to provide far more support than they had originally intended as stinting on support for Jubilee now risked angering the Americans, and if things went badly because of a lack of air or naval support it could have serious consequences for the trans-Atlantic relationship [3].

Having pushed the British into prioritizing Operation Jubilee the US now had to show its commitment was in earnest and provide a force equivalent to that provided by the British, or more accurately the Canadians whose 2nd Infantry Division would be committed to the operation along with the 14th Army Tank Regiment. The contribution from the British Army would take the form of several Commando units, who would be assigned secondary tasks apart from the main attack on Dieppe itself. The major constraint on the American contribution was the availability of shipping and landing craft, which were also in demand in the Pacific as preparations were being made for Operation Watchtower, not to mention Operation Malamute, the invasion of Sicily. The Landing Craft Tank (LCT) was in particular demand and available in limited numbers, meaning that only so much armoured support could be deployed for Dieppe. Regardless of how ambitious the Americans might be about exploiting Dieppe their initial landing force would mirror that of the Canadians, one infantry division with elements of one tank regiment in support.

The US Army selected the 9th Infantry Division to take part in Operation Jubilee, under the command of Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, and they would be supported by the tanks of the 1st Battalion of the 66th Armor Regiment, operating a mix of M3 Stuart and M3 Lee tanks during Operation Jubilee. Both were well regarded formations, however like the rest of the US Army forces assigned to Europe it lacked combat experience. Overall, it was a powerful formation and would enjoy air support from the VIII Bomber Command, the predecessor to 8th Air Force. Naval support would fall largely on the Royal Navy, with several warships belonging to the Free French forces were also attached to the naval force [4].

While the plan for Operation Jubilee had expanded beyond the original intention to draw out the Luftwaffe the underlying assumption that the Germans would respond to any apparent landing attempt in force also highlighted its most significant flaw. The Germans were indeed extremely worried about the possibility of an Allied attack on the continent and were doing their best to monitor British ports and gather intelligence on Allied intentions. The latter effort had depended heavily on French double-agents, willing to pass on questions and requests raised by the British to their German handlers. Since Operation Anton and the total occupation of France this source of information had dried up. Several of these agents had chosen to disappear, others had revealed the truth to the British and one or two had taken to passing disinformation to the Germans without involving the British. This meant that as the British tried to gather more detailed information about the conditions in and around Dieppe the Germans remained uncertain about where an attack might take place, which was an advantage the troops taking part in Jubilee would desperately need. On the other hand, they were certain that an assault was coming since it was impossible to disguise the gathering of Allied shipping in the ports of Southern England and the Wehrmacht did its best to mobilize in response. Their reserves had to be placed to react to attacks on any one of several targets and the availability of formations was limited by the developing situation in the East and the increasing anxiety about the reliability of the Italians [5].

That the target of Operation Jubilee had only been kept from the Germans by the disenchantment of French double agents speak to the paucity of Allied intelligence and counter-intelligence efforts in the run up to the Dieppe raid. Not only did the French agents provide the only effective disinformation effort for Jubilee there was a remarkable lack of knowledge about the state of the beaches. The vital question of how well the tanks would cope with the shingle beach was addressed by an assessment based on nothing more than holiday postcards and guesswork [6]. The attachment of new A22 Black Prince tanks outfitted with equipment intended to help Allied armour cross the beaches was all well and good, however this equipment was new, and it was receiving a field trial under the worst possible conditions. It proved fortuitous for the conduct of the battle that the Canadians had insisted on retaining many their homegrown Wolverine tanks [7]. Operation Jubilee still had the potential to turn into a disaster, regardless of the expanded resources that came with US involvement, and everything would come down to the British, Canadian, and American troops fighting on the ground to prevent it doing so [8].

[1] So not the most auspicious origin for Dieppe, which explains a lot about OTL.

[2] With no desperate struggle in the Middle East the Americans are less inclined to just focus on the Med and a lot more interested in Jubilee than they were OTL.

[3] The Americans have muscled their way into Jubilee, meaning that some of the OTL deficiencies are being addressed.

[4] Basically the US troops are forces that would have been part of Torch, which much of the rest of the Torch troops deployed for Sicily.

[5] Thanks to the earlier Case Anton the Germans have lost a lot of the intelligence sources they had OTL, also as you may have noticed Jubilee hasn’t been cancelled and remounted. Owing to the larger scale it took longer to assemble.

[6] Yes really holiday postcards.

[7] The Wolverine will be adding one more battle honour to its service record.

[8] And the battle starts in the next update.

 

[Garrison]

23rd – 24th August 1942 – Dieppe – Operation Jubilee – Part II – The First Step​

The landing zone for Operation Jubilee was broken down into six beaches. Running from east to west these were simply codenamed, Yellow, Blue, Red, White, Green, and Orange. Yellow and Orange were on the flanks, outside of the town, and the remaining four were in front of Dieppe. The main body of the Canadian division would land at Green and Orange, while the Americans landed at Yellow and Blue. Elements of the Commandos and US Rangers would attack at points along the frontage of Red and White, helping pin down the defenders and sow confusion as to where the main weight of the assault was aimed. The battle opened at dawn on the 23rd of August when the Royal Navy task force, led by HMS Warspite began a bombardment of the town and the shore installations, while Bomber Command carried out a raid on Cherbourg to help draw off Luftwaffe fighters. The naval bombardment created chaos for both the citizens of Dieppe and the German defenders. The bombing attack on Cherbourg was far less effective as many of the bomber missed their targets or arrived late, meaning the Luftwaffe was already on alert for Dieppe before the bomber struck [1].

The chaos caused by Warspite and rest of its bombardment group prevented any co-ordinated response as the first Canadian and American troops began landing. This was just as well because problems were already emerging even before the first soldiers set foot on the beaches. The operational plan called for the troops landing at Yellow and Orange beaches to envelop the town and cut off the movement of reinforcements into the town. A serious failure of navigation meant that most of the American soldiers meant to land at Yellow ended up on the periphery of Blue beach, creating something of a traffic jam and meaning that the troops who did reach Yellow were unable to advance in the face of German opposition and instead had to defend their positions and were unable to link up with the rest of the landings until after 1400 hours [2].

At the same time the, distinctly lacklustre assessment of the condition and gradient of the beaches came back to haunt the Allies as many of the tanks struggled to get off the beaches, most notably the new A22 Black Prince. A number of these had been equipped with a variety of devices intended to help in getting off the beach and clearing obstacles, so it was somewhat ironic that many of them never made it off the beach that day, instead the Canadians would have to depend on their home-grown armoured support. The men of the 14th Tank Regiment had been reluctant to give up their Wolverines in favour of the Black Prince, so less than half the regiment had been reequipped, which proved fortuitous as the Wolverines were able to take advantage of the efforts made by the A22s to utilize their special equipment, much to the chagrin of the crews of the newer and supposedly more capable tanks who remained stuck on the beaches.

Many of the Wolverines, along with the few Black Princes that did escape the soft shingle, were able to push into the town and the 75mm gun of the Wolverine proved considerably more useful at removing anti-tank obstacles than the supposedly purpose-built equipment mounted on the Black Prince.

It was no comfort to the Canadians that their American counterparts also struggled to get their tanks off the beach and again the lighter M3 Stuart fared better than the M3 Lee [3]. Nonetheless the soldiers landing at Orange did succeed in getting some of their armour into action and managed to advance as per the original plan, extending around the western flank of Dieppe and blocking several critical junctions leading towards the town. This was particularly important as reports from the defending Wehrmacht troops were sufficiently confused that the initial efforts to send reinforcements were directed towards the positions strongly held by the American rather than towards the routes left open by the misdirected landing at Yellow beach. The forces landing at Blue and Green had some success penetrating the town and the port facilities, aided by the fact that the force at Blue was now somewhat larger than intended. By midday the German troops had regrouped and repeatedly counterattacked at the port, with the fighting becoming almost hand to hand at some points. The Germans feared the Allies would try and use the docks to land their own reinforcements, a fear that was not without merit given that there was a contingent of transports waiting to deploy the divisional reserves and further armour if the docks could be taken. These were stood down around 1630 hours as it finally became clear that even if the port could be taken the dock facilities would be unusable owing to a combination of battle damage and German sabotage [4].

One detachment of troops at Green beach, consisting of elements of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, Commandos and a small group of American Rangers escorted a radar engineer, RAF Flight Sergeant Jack Nissenthall, in an attempt to seize the German radar station at Pourville. The escorting troops had orders to shoot Nissenthall to prevent his capture if things went badly, he had even been supplied with a Cyanide capsule as a last resort. Fortunately for Nissenthall the attack was a success, though not without heavy casualties as only eight of Nissenthall’s bodyguards made it back to the beaches with him. While Nissenthall was able to examine the equipment and remove several manuals it was cutting the phone lines connecting the radar station and forcing it use radio for communications that arguably had the greatest effect. This radio traffic was intercepted and decoded by the British, providing a wealth of information about the operation and capabilities of the German radar system, all of which greatly assisted future RAF operations and planning for D-Day itself [5].

The success at Pourville was almost certainly the high point of Operation Jubilee. RAF efforts to gain air superiority over the town were frustrated by the presence of the Fw 190 fighter in considerable numbers. This fighter proved more than a match for the Spitfire Mk V as well as the P-40s and P-38s being used by the USAAF. This failure to suppress the Luftwaffe meant that the Allies efforts to bomb the reinforcements advancing towards Dieppe largely failed, compounded by the fact that co-ordination between ground attack aircraft and the troops they were supposed to be supporting was still poor. At the same time the town was proving to be far more heavily defended than anticipated and by 1600 hundred hours much of the armour supporting the Allied troops had been destroyed or broken down, reducing some to functioning as pillboxes covering road junctions and others to simply blocking streets, something that the bulk of the A22 proved quite effective at, regardless of how humiliating it might have been for the crews. With Allied troops deep in the town the naval fire support also had to be curtailed, a serious problem given the paucity of other artillery support. As mentioned the fighting in the port itself had been fierce and in the words of one Canadian soldier, ‘everything that hadn’t been blown up was on fire’. This was an exaggeration but an understandable one given the circumstances. Between the Allied attacks and German determination to prevent the allies taking the port intact it had been put completely out of action for the foreseeable future, which would later be spun as one of the successes of the raid, though in reality aerial reconnaissance pictures of the damage done had a sobering effect on those who were charged with planning the Normandy landings [6].

If the RAF wasn’t able to prevent the movement of German reinforcements, they were able to report on them at least. By 1600 hours it was obvious that further attacks by the Allied troops were pointless and instead they began to withdraw to a hastily prepared series of defensive positions to await their evacuation after dark, with the final withdrawal on the American flank delayed until 1700 to allow the troops who had been successfully landed at Yellow Beach to fall back into the defensive perimeter. The Germans were unable to prevent this withdrawal as they had also suffered heavily in the fighting and as the Allied troops fell back the Royal Navy was once again able to bring its guns to bear and suppress German efforts to harry the withdrawing troops. Night did not fall until 2130 hours and the evacuation was not completed until just before dawn on the 24th, with some of the rear-guard element who were unable to disengage being isolated and forced to surrender by 0900 hours. Almost all the armour and other heavy equipment that had been deployed was left behind and troops losses were significant. The Americans suffered around a 20% loss rate and the Canadians suffered about 15% losses, killed, and captured. These were certainly bad, though still far lower than the worse projections before the battle, and the Germans had also suffered heavily during the fighting. The question that has been asked frequently in the years since is whether the gains from the raid justified those losses?

Perhaps inevitably Mountbatten thought that they did, claiming that valuable lessons had been learned about amphibious operations and that the Germans did deploy divisions in the west at the expense of the fighting in the USSR. Alanbrooke and others were far more scathing in their assessment, pointing out that many of the so-called lessons of Dieppe, such as the vital necessity of air superiority and detailed intelligence about the landing grounds, should have been obvious without the loss of so many men and so much equipment. It is also questionable how much of the German forces sent west were in direct response to the Dieppe raid, in fact more troops were drawn off by the perceived threat of Italy trying to exit the war than went to France. The one indisputable benefit of the raid was that any idea of mounting a landing in 1942 was finally squashed, as were any suggestions of trying to seize a port on the first day of the evolving plan for Operation Millennium. The Allies would have to depend on moving men and equipment across the landing beaches for days if not weeks, an operation even more daunting than the initial landings and one that would exercise the ingenuity of the planners [7]. If some of the other lessons should have been obvious beforehand it is not unusual in war to find that it takes the harsh experience of battle to drive the seemingly obvious home and force those in command to change and adapt. The RAF and USAAF were certainly chastened by their struggle against the Luftwaffe and new aircraft models that could counter the Fw 190 were soon rushed into service. Some in the USAAF even raised fresh doubts about the wisdom of the plans for large scale unescorted air raids into German, alas these concerns were still not taken seriously, and once again a price in blood would have to be paid to learn the folly of that plan [8].

On the German side much propaganda was generated from the images of destroyed tanks, captured Allied soldiers, and the devastation wrought on Dieppe by the ‘callous English who cared nothing for the suffering of the French people’, though the latter had to be carefully edited to avoid showing just how much damage had been wrought on the defenders. Beyond this short-term propaganda gain however the battle of Dieppe did lead the Wehrmacht into drawing several erroneous conclusions, which were probably as valuable as any of the lessons the Allies may, or may not, have learned from Operation Jubilee. For one thing it affirmed their belief that any major landing would be aimed at taking a port, and probably one in northern France, with Calais being regarded as the most likely target. Though attempts to mount such an operation in Norway, or Italy were also seen as likely candidates, at least by Hitler, which meant the Wehrmacht also had to continue taking them seriously. This resulted in the decidedly limited resources available in 1943 to build what came to be called the Atlantic Wall being spread thin and in France would be concentrated on fortifying the major ports, leaving the defences in areas such as Normandy far weaker. Likewise, the reserve divisions of the Heer would be positioned for a rapid response in the Pas de Calais, a move that Allied intelligence did everything in its power to encourage [9].

The other area in which the Germans thoroughly misjudged the Allies was in the quality of their armoured forces, which the General staff now regarded as ‘second rate’. They believed, despite interrogation of Canadian soldiers providing contradictory evidence, that the Wolverine was a hasty reworking of the Valentine that indicated that the British were struggling to produce more modern designs, a belief compounded by their low opinion of the effectiveness of the Black Prince, this being hardly surprising since so few got into action and those that did proved as vulnerable as any tank will when operating in urban combat. They were equally dismissive of the M3 Lee, though there were some favourable comments made about the M3 Stuart, comments that did not find their way into the reports presented by the General Staff to Hitler. The last thing they wanted was a fresh set of demands for yet more expensive upgrades and new tank models that were clearly unnecessary. The official position of the Wehrmacht was that the British had made little progress in armour development since the conclusion of the fighting in North Africa and that Americans were likewise struggling to produce an effective medium tank and doubtless by extension any heavy tanks. This conclusion also played into the desire to send as many of the Heer’s latest armour models to the east as possible, meaning a much lower priority for the likes of the Tiger and the Hetzer to be assigned to units intended to counter any Allied attempts to breach the Atlantic Wall. The Germans remained completely unaware that both the Black Prince and the Lee were regarded as intermediate vehicles by their respective countries, with the far more capable A24 Churchill and M4 Sherman already in production and in the case of the Sherman entering service, with the even more powerful M4A5 Thomas variant following in the latter half of 1943. This false assumption would prove costly the Germans when the Allies did return to France [10].

As far as the troops who took part in the battle, they were regarded as heroes, especially the Canadians. In their homeland Dieppe was regarded as the battle that made D-Day possible and opened the road to Berlin. It had already been accepted that the Wolverine was obsolete, but its service at Dieppe confirmed their view that they should focus on a new generation of infantry support vehicles rather than copying the A22, A24 or even the A27 cruiser tank [11].

If Dieppe was indeed as Mountbatten argued a valuable learning experience it was not the only such opportunity in 1942 and in many respects the invasion of Sicily would be a far more painful, and embarrassing, lesson for the US Army [12].

[1] Obviously this is quite different from OTL, with the attacks aimed at the flanks of the town and much, much heavier naval fire support.

[2] So things are not going smoothly, which was all but inevitable.

[3] So yes, they got more armour into the battle but there are still a lot of tanks stranded on the beaches, probably about the same numbers as OTL owing to their being more armour in the battle to begin with.

[4] And the Allies are going to get it rammed home that trying to secure a working port in an assault is all but impossible, which finally kills any ideas that Dieppe can become a beachhead for a 1942 D-Day.

[5] OTL only one of the bodyguards made it out and the raiders didn’t do much damage besides cutting the phone lines. Here the Germans having a lot more to cope with made things a bit easier on the radar team.

[6] The Allies still fail to get air superiority, which is major reason this is not going well.

[7] There is still a place for the ‘funnies’ and some creative solutions to bypass the need for a harbour.

[8] A topic that will be discussed in far more detail once we reach the sequel and 1943.

[9] The Germans are spreading themselves thin, which is good for the Allies.

[10] The M4A5 Thomas is the result of a discussion with @marathag. It is in effect an all-American Firefly.

[11] Not sure what the next Canadian vehicle will be, might even be an assault gun.

[12] Yeah, a couple of famous/notorious US Generals will be making their appearance shortly.

 

[Garrison]

23rd September – 30th October 1942 – Sicily – Operation Malamute – Part I – Attacking Fortress Sicily​

Even after the decision to invade Sicily had finally there were still several issues to be settled in the summer of 1942 that could have completely derailed the whole operation. First and foremost was the matter of transporting the American troops and equipment needed for the operation across the Atlantic, involving the movement of entire Army Corps, not the single division committed to Dieppe. The U-Boats were certainly being beaten back and the battle of the Atlantic was being won, however it was not yet possible for anyone to declare victory and the U-Boats were still a threat. Delivering such a substantial body of men and equipment would provide a litmus test of just how much progress the Allied navies had made, with failure bringing serious consequences for the rest of the Anglo-American strategy. After all, if they could not transport the forces needed for Operation Malamute safely then how could a landing in France, or anywhere else in the European or Mediterranean theatres for that matter, be contemplated in 1943? In the end this turned out to be a non-issue as the transport of the US divisions went relatively smoothly, with only one troop transport lost during to enemy action, which encouraged those who still hoped for a full-scale landing in France in 1942, their ardour would be cooled by the experience at Dieppe, though the raid came too late to significantly influence planning for Operation Malamute [1].

The otherwise relatively smooth process of assembling the US forces for Malamute did suffer a small crisis when General MacArthur began agitating to be given overall command of US forces for the invasion, or indeed command of the entire operation. MacArthur still had his supporters in Washington who felt he had been used as a scapegoat for the fall of the Philippines and that he should be given a field command once more. In the end what had the potential to be a vicious political fight was headed off by British, who were adamant that Harold Alexander should be in overall command of allied ground forces, which were to be organized under 15th Army Group. Combined with the way MacArthur had once again tried to bypass the chain of command to get his way this allowed General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, to firmly reject this idea, McArthur would remain in Washington, this rebuff did nothing to stop him plotting his escape.

The Us forces committed to Sicily were primarily composed of II Corps and I Armoured Corps, with the freshly created Provisional Corps providing divisional reserves consisting of U.S. 2nd Armoured Division, 3rd Infantry Division and 34th Infantry Division. I Armoured Corps was commanded by General George S. Patton and Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall commanded II Corps. Patton was a larger-than-life character, regarded as a ‘glory hound’ by some of his critics, but undeniably a highly capable and driven commander, and that drive would prove invaluable in Sicily. Fredendall possessed an ego almost as large as Patton’s, regrettably this was the only trait that they shared. Fredendall had many friends and patrons in Washington, Including General Marshall himself. He was a rising star destined for higher things, perhaps even command of US forces for Operation Millennium, until his performance in Sicily derailed his career. It is difficult to feel any sympathy for Fredendall given that he cost to the men serving under him was far greater than a mere tarnished reputation [2].

In theory the British preparations for Malamute should have been far easier as they already had powerful forces in North Africa, however after the overthrow of the Vichy colonies had marked the end of operation North Africa, while the same time the need for troops in South East Asia was steadily growing, the Australian, New Zealand, and Indian divisions had been reassigned. This required a major reorganization of XXX Corps in particular, as its strength had been reduced to the 51st Highland Division and the South African 1st Infantry Division. XXX Corps was reinforced by 1st Canadian Infantry Division and 1st Canadian Tank Brigade in early July, and the British 1st Armoured Brigade at the end of that month. X Corps and XIII Corps had retained their Divisional strength, though XIII Corps was reinforced with the 1st Airborne Division. Much to their disappointment the paratroopers would only be called on to carry out small scale airborne landings with most of its forces being committed to bolster the other divisions [3].

As powerful a force as the British and Americans were mustering there was a keen awareness that Sicily was an almost inevitable target for an Allied assault and the build of men and materiel in North Africa could not be concealed from the Axis. This prompted a major intelligence operation intended to persuade the Wehrmacht to commit at least part of their available forces to other potential targets. At its simplest this took the form of photo reconnaissance and bombing raids against Corsica and Sardinia. False radio traffic and troop movements were also used to create the impression that Corsica was a serious target. A far more elaborate, perhaps even outlandish scheme was Operation Mincemeat. On June 9th 1942 the body of a Royal Marine Major washed up on a Spanish beach with a briefcase filled with vital documents chained to his wrist. These documents discussed plans for attacks against Corsica and a landing in Greece, with air and naval forces already building up in Crete lending weight to this information. The Spanish allowed the Abwehr to photograph the contents before returning the briefcase to the British Embassy and Major Martin was given a funeral with full military honours. This seeming disaster for the Allies was nothing of the sort for the simple reason that Major William Martin never existed. The body that washed up was that of a destitute young man whose corpse was acquired by British intelligence and whose identity has never been made public. The plans he carried were elaborate forgeries, bolstered by some very real letters composed by senior British officers whose candid content was designed to explain why they were being delivered by courier rather than sent by radio [4].

This deception did have a significant impact on German deployments. XIV Panzer Corps, which had been withdrawn from the operational planning for Case Blue to be sent to Sicily, lost 3rd Motorised Infantry Division to Corsica while the 1st Fallschirmjäger Panzer Division Hermann Goering was dispatched to Greece. This reduced XIV Panzer to only two divisions, including 1st Fallschirmjäger-Division, which was the reorganized 7th Air Division. This had only been partially rebuilt from the debacle on Malta and was distinctly understrength when the Allies landed in Sicily. Despite promises from the Germans to the Ciano government to the contrary no replacement divisions were forthcoming and indeed a number that might have been deployed were instead poised to ‘reinforce’ the Italian mainland in the event that Hitler decided that Ciano was going to betray the Axis [5]. These limited deployments created considerable discontent among the General Staff in Berlin. The consensus was that Case Blue had to be driven forward with the maximum available striking power and with the unwelcome decision to occupy the whole of France, as well as the obvious Allied intent of making a landing somewhere on the French coast in the summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht was already stretched thin. When this was placed in the context of grave doubts in the General Staff about the ability of the Italians to effectively defend their own territory it is hardly surprising that they didn’t resist the dispersal of troops originally intended for Sicily to other possible invasion targets.

While the Germans were dubious about the capabilities and fighting spirit of their ally Mussolini had been determined to mount a strong defence of Sicily, all the while talking in terms of retaking Libya and conquering Egypt once the tide turned against the Allies. Even after his death the plan to turn Sicily into a fortress island remained unchanged, mainly because no one in Rome wanted to look weak or hesitant, and because they had no better ideas for how to proceed so long as Italy remained in the war. Whatever the public stance of the Italian leadership many in the high command, including Marshal Badoglio, feared a landing in Sicily were doomed to become a repeat of operations in Libya. However much of a fight the best of the Italian forces put up they would inevitably be overwhelmed by superior Allied manpower and materiel, especially with the Americans fully involved in operation. The best that could be hoped for was to inflict enough casualties that the Allies would think twice about an invasion of the Italian mainland and even that increasingly seemed like wishful thinking, the Allies were rapidly approaching the point where they would accept nothing short of unconditional surrender from the Axis nations and Italy was increasingly caught between a rock and hard place politically and militarily [6].

The rapid advances made in the early weeks of Case Blue produced a fresh surge of optimism in Berlin, further reinforced by the outcome of Operation Jubilee. The repulse of the Canadian and American troops at Dieppe seemed to show that an amphibious assault could be thrown back into the sea, with Goebel’s propaganda machine spreading the message that the much vaunted second front had crushed at its inception. This viewpoint found little support in Rome, where it was suspected that Dieppe had been nothing more than a diversion to draw off Wehrmacht forces and further weaken the defence of Sicily [7].

Italian efforts to strengthen the defences of Sicily were not helped by the steadily increasing efforts of the RAF and Royal Navy to strangle the lines of supply between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Forays by the Regia Marina had become rare to the point of near extinction and the Regia Aeronautica was simply outclassed and outnumbered as the USAAF also began to deploy forces to forward bases in North Africa. These supply problems did nothing to bolster the morale of the Italian forces designated to defend Sicily and the high-handed attitude of their Wehrmacht allies when it came to who got priority for the supplies that were sent just made matters worse, with the growing antipathy between the Wehrmacht and the Italian forces reinforcing the apprehension that Sicily was doomed and quite possibly the whole of Italy along with it [8].

[1] Malamute rather than Husky, simply because of butterflies and a reflection that this isn’t the version of OTL.

[2] It was all but inevitable Fredendall would turn up here given his standing with the top brass prior to his horrendous performance in OTL, and no he won’t do any better in Sicily.

[3] The Allied forces are a blend of those used in Operation Torch, El Alamein, and Operation Husky, with some adjustments for the removal of so many ANZAC and Indian troops.

[4] There are somethings it would be out of the question to butterfly away, and if you are wondering, yes agents Garbo and Zig Zag are still going to have a role to play.

[5] Things are getting ever more poisonous between Berlin and Rome, not helped by the fact that Hitler has good reason to be paranoid this time…

[6] As far as the Italians can see its be occupied by the Allies or become a complete German puppet; they have no idea that the Allies are already looking elsewhere.

[7] Overall Dieppe came to late in the day to seriously affect the defence of Sicily either way.

[8] The situation is so bad for the Axis that even Fredendall can’t save them…