Rommel stops at Benghazi

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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He does come to some good conclusions, I wrote off the desert war for the Axis after reading that book.

Be interesting to know if anyone on the British side did any number crunching - port capacity should be available as would be road and rail link availability.
 
Anything big enough to reasonably prevent outflanking is going to be about as effective as tissue paper at stopping a direct assault.

and would likely still be vulnerable to flanking anyway.... gazalla extended over 100 miles from the sea; and rommel turned it rather easily and decisively won the battle
 
Be interesting to know if anyone on the British side did any number crunching - port capacity should be available as would be road and rail link availability.

He does mention the reason for British success was the rail network within Egypt. It extended from Port Said and Suez through Alex to Mersa Matruh I think initially. During the war it was extended by stages to the border and then into Libya itself. The British didn`t the Axis problem of bulk transport in the rear areas as the Axis did.
 
He does mention the reason for British success was the rail network within Egypt. It extended from Port Said and Suez through Alex to Mersa Matruh I think initially. During the war it was extended by stages to the border and then into Libya itself. The British didn`t the Axis problem of bulk transport in the rear areas as the Axis did.

If you read Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War by C B A Behrens, the UK had massive problems at the Suez ports with ships hanging around for weeks before they could be unloaded. Why no-one suggested that maybe Rommel was having the same problems in Tripoli and Benghazi I don't know.
 
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It doesn't matter. The Allied forces were growing in power rapidly and it's only a matter of time before the U.S. Army arrives and the Afrika Korps has to fight an impossible two front war with the Allies in control of the air and the sea around Libya.

Rommel's only and I mean only way to avoid the Afrika Korps being destroyed by 1943 is driving the UK from Egypt into the Middle East and then turning the Sini into a fortified DMZ that the 8th Army can't break through so he could use most of his forces to fight the U.S. Army advancing from the West.

Rommel makes clear in his papers that he was well aware of the overall strategic picture that the US and UK were massively outproducing Germany in terms of tanks, ships, oil, weapons, etc. He knew every month that went by Allied forces in Africa would grow stronger then the Axis forces were growing stronger and he would soon be fighting a two front war unless he managed to kick the 8th Army out of Africa.

The British could let him sit in the Sinai and rot, while they advance from the south down the Nile.
 

Deleted member 1487

So what then is the optimum strategy for the Axis once the Germans get involved?
 
Rommel makes clear in his papers that he was well aware of the overall strategic picture that the US and UK were massively outproducing Germany in terms of tanks, ships, oil, weapons, etc. He knew every month that went by Allied forces in Africa would grow stronger then the Axis forces were growing stronger and he would soon be fighting a two front war unless he managed to kick the 8th Army out of Africa.

He seems to have grasped that Germany had no chance of matching everyone else's production, but that's also after being smashed by Monty in a classic case of Stellungskrieg.
 
So what then is the optimum strategy for the Axis once the Germans get involved?

someone other than rommel (who antagonizes high command so nobody wants to support him) in charge to start; ideally someone of propaganda value who has some kind of working ability to deal with other nations; particularly the italians; ideal candidate for plausibility is Manstein who was the 3rd choice in OTL whereas Rommel was 4th... from a practical perspective; Raus, and Balck spoke some Italian and where brilliant commanders and consensus builders

a little bit more ground forces, and a lot more air power to suppress malta and fly top cover for the convoys; once the panzer army captures alexandria; the med becomes an axis lake and their supply lines get much more manageable
 
someone other than rommel (who antagonizes high command so nobody wants to support him) in charge to start; ideally someone of propaganda value who has some kind of working ability to deal with other nations; particularly the italians; ideal candidate for plausibility is Manstein who was the 3rd choice in OTL whereas Rommel was 4th... from a practical perspective; Raus, and Balck spoke some Italian and where brilliant commanders and consensus builders

a little bit more ground forces, and a lot more air power to suppress malta and fly top cover for the convoys; once the panzer army captures alexandria; the med becomes an axis lake and their supply lines get much more manageable

And in the process, sapping vital resources needed on the Eastern Front. Giving the Soviets a not insubstantial boost.
 

Deleted member 1487

there are some choices there that could have negative ripples in other sectors but that was not comrade wiking's question

I'm asking what strategy would have been in Germany's best interest. So that means holding in Africa as long as possible to keep Italy in the game, while also using the least possible resources, because Libya is a sideshow that is meant to keep Italy in the coalition. Russia is Germany's critical front, so sucking in resources to invade Egypt is against Germany's greater strategic goal, because it requires too many supplies and critical equipment (trucks). I'm looking for the Axis's best option in Libya to keep Italy in the war as long as possible and at the same time keep resource consumption to a minimum.

Edit: Does anyone have any resources for British logistics in Africa?
 
If you read Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War by C B A Behrens had massive problems at the Suez ports with ships hanging around for weeks before they could be unloaded. Why no-one suggested that maybe Rommel was having the same problems in Tripoli and Benghazi I don't know.

I don`t doubt it, but they also had Port Said, Alex and smaller Med ports all connected by railway.
 
So what then is the optimum strategy for the Axis once the Germans get involved?

They got involved too late, ideally they could have started looking as soon as Sea Lion was cancelled and sent the full 4 mobile divisions by October or November 1940. They could have been supplied from Tobruk long before the RN and RAF became strong enought to interfere. They then should have taken Egypt from these forward ports.
 
I don`t doubt it, but they also had Port Said, Alex and smaller Med ports all connected by railway.

But they still had to get the supplies off the ships. The chaos at both ends of the canal makes Rommel's at Tripoli and Benghazi look like a walk in the park.... its a bloody miracle they achieved what they did.

Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War – C B A Behrens

Page 210/211

The principle ports concerned – Alexandria and Port Said at the Northern end of the Suez Canal, and Suez at its southern entrance – were not only the terminal points of the convoy routes that converged on the Middle East, and the sources of supply of the battle area; they also had to handle the civilian imports and exports of Egypt, and much of the imports of Syria, Cyprus, Turkey and Palestine which were delivered to Port Said for transhipment. Alexandria, much the largest and bets equipped of the three, handled in peace, a volume of dry-cargo tonnage that must it seems, have been considerably smaller than that handled by Glasgow, and it was now the base of the Mediterranean Fleet and its use by merchant ships restricted.. Port Said was less than half its size, while in Suez, it was estimated in the Spring of 1941. even with efficient management, only about 40 ships could be discharged a month. None of these ports were equipped to deal with the kind of military cargoes that now began to arrive, and all of them for this and other reasons, contracted much more serious forms of the war-time diseases from which the UK ports had suffered a little while before. For the cargoes were awkward cargoes, weighing up to seventy tonnes and despatched before the days when it became established principle that the ships destined for outlandish parts must be provided with derricks capable of getting the contents out of the holds or else service by crane-ship on arrival. The cargoes were stowed un inconvenient ways, or in ways that did not suit the needs of the military authorities, who had often experienced many unforeseen vicissitudes between the dates of despatch and arrival and wanted in a hurry things which were at the bottom of the holds. The battle areas were a long way off and the roads and railways connecting them with the ports inadequate, so that here as elsewhere the most intractable of the difficulties was inland clearance.

Page 213

‘I believe’ (said a visiting ship owner at Suez), ‘I am right in stating that in one instance, to obtain 3,500 to 4,000 tons (half the capacity of a single ship) discharge took place on 61 ships at the same time’. The cargo discharged during this process was then hurled into lighters (for most of the ships in Suez had to be discharged overside) ‘to the detriment of the cargo and the waste of lighter capacity’. From the lighters it was ‘thrown out onto the quay’ without any attempt at proper stacking, until the moment came when all the quay space was filled with objects impossible to remove (for apart from all the confusion, there was not the transport to clear such an accumulation), all the lighters were full, and 117 ships were waiting outside Suez through which only about half a shipload could be moved a day.
 
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Can we compare apples with apples, rig up something close to apples and apples?

Van Creveld gives figures for monthly tonnages that Rommel needed and received. He also gives monthly tonnage capacities that the Libyan ports could handle and what they actually did handle. (wiking, if you still have the book can you post some of those figures?)

PMN1, can you get similar figures for the Egyptian ports? Because while I don`t doubt that port facilities in Egypt were dodgy if they were putting through twice the monthly tonnage that Libyan ports were then the dodgy conditions at the ports were good enough.

Similarly the statement that road and railway conditions were inadequate doesn`t really say anything. Inadequate for what? The rail network may not have been awesome but it did exist and did allow some amount of bulk cargo to be efficiently transported from rear area ports to Mersa Matruh and beyond.
 
Can we compare apples with apples, rig up something close to apples and apples?

Van Creveld gives figures for monthly tonnages that Rommel needed and received. He also gives monthly tonnage capacities that the Libyan ports could handle and what they actually did handle. (wiking, if you still have the book can you post some of those figures?)

PMN1, can you get similar figures for the Egyptian ports? Because while I don`t doubt that port facilities in Egypt were dodgy if they were putting through twice the monthly tonnage that Libyan ports were then the dodgy conditions at the ports were good enough.

Similarly the statement that road and railway conditions were inadequate doesn`t really say anything. Inadequate for what? The rail network may not have been awesome but it did exist and did allow some amount of bulk cargo to be efficiently transported from rear area ports to Mersa Matruh and beyond.

There is quite a good thread here but it doesn't tie down capacities with any great certainty

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=140717

It seems the UK did take the time to expand the facilities

Both Alexandria and Port Said were expanded iirc new jetties and deep water berths put under construction along with developing the marshalling yards and railroad system around that area.

With the Germans dropping mines into the canal every now and again, Alexandria and Said under random air attack, Suez it seems turned into the major supply point for the Army. Playfair states that within 8 months the ports capacity had doubled (although no tonnage figures are given) even wharves etc had been built along the canal itself along with massive road and rail improvements inland to get to were they were needed.(p. 327, Vol I middle east series).

Pp. 327-328 he notes that once mining of the canal began it was decided to develop Suez to its upmost capacity as well as construct a pipeline from near Suez to Port Said to pump naval fuel. It was also decided to double the railway between Suez and Ismailia and develop Ataqa (where ever that is) as a port to unload vechiles at.



Oh for a few barge carriers.......

I also have this of Egyptian railways in 1939 but it doesn't give capacities unfortunately.

Egyptianrailways1939.jpg

 
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I think that in the absence of capacities the mere fact that the British developed Port Said, built pipelines, extended the rail line 350km from Mersa Matruh to Tobruk says it all.

In contrast the Axis built 40km of rail line from Marj towards Derna. I don`t know if they expanded port infrastructure, but given their feeble railway building efforts I doubt they did much.

Which brings us back to Van Crevelds assertion that it was transport within Africa itself rather than shipping that as the crucial factor in victory and defeat.
 
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