Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.

[naraic]

The question of the Mediterranean fleet and Force H requirements is dominated by a simple question. What can the Italian fleet threaten.

The easy answer and what I believe to be the standard answer before Japanese entry is that you need to counter the Italian Mediterranean fleet in the West Atlantic and the East Atlantic. That is to say 3+ capital ships in each squadron.

When decisions have to be made and a surplus of capital ships aren't available it makes sense to draw down Force H as there is no real reason to contest the Western Mediterranean. Malta can have planes ferry themselves from Libya. Goods can come in by merchant ships hugging the Libyan coast.

So Force H becomes the force that back stops the Home Fleet against a raider sailing into the Atlantic. For that in my opinion you want a battlecruiser to chase down and hunt raiders. If the raider is a cruiser or Scharnhorst it can outmatch it in a fight. If the raider is Tirpitz it can shadow and keep contact. Once a larger force is assembled from the home fleet it can add its weight.

Assuming a parallel to OTL Tirpitz is in Norway. Therefore the artic convoys need heavy protection. Defending the convoys I'd place a Nelson class as more or less an equal of anything else. If Tirpitz came to convoys it would be coming to the Royal Navy and so speed wouldn't really be needed.

The OP is sending one Nelson with Force Z and keeping one at home presumably.

Naval action isn't the focus of this tale so its hard to judge exactly what makes a good Force Z at the moment. We don't know if any losses have caused butterflies to spread their wings.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

The question of the Mediterranean fleet and Force H requirements is dominated by a simple question. What can the Italian fleet threaten.

The easy answer and what I believe to be the standard answer before Japanese entry is that you need to counter the Italian Mediterranean fleet in the West Atlantic and the East Atlantic. That is to say 3+ capital ships in each squadron.

When decisions have to be made and a surplus of capital ships aren't available it makes sense to draw down Force H as there is no real reason to contest the Western Mediterranean. Malta can have planes ferry themselves from Libya. Goods can come in by merchant ships hugging the Libyan coast.

So Force H becomes the force that back stops the Home Fleet against a raider sailing into the Atlantic. For that in my opinion you want a battlecruiser to chase down and hunt raiders. If the raider is a cruiser or Scharnhorst it can outmatch it in a fight. If the raider is Tirpitz it can shadow and keep contact. Once a larger force is assembled from the home fleet it can add its weight.

Assuming a parallel to OTL Tirpitz is in Norway. Therefore the artic convoys need heavy protection. Defending the convoys I'd place a Nelson class as more or less an equal of anything else. If Tirpitz came to convoys it would be coming to the Royal Navy and so speed wouldn't really be needed.

The OP is sending one Nelson with Force Z and keeping one at home presumably.

Naval action isn't the focus of this tale so its hard to judge exactly what makes a good Force Z at the moment. We don't know if any losses have caused butterflies to spread their wings.

In TTL the losses (total losses and damaged ships) 'not' sustained during Crete and the various reinforcement efforts of Malta (now not necessary as aircover from North Africa allows far easier convoy and airhead reinforcement of the islands taking a great deal of pressure of the RN) alone represents quite a significant amount of assets over OTL that allow a greater reinforcement of the Far East and elsewhere.

 

[MarcH]

Assuming a parallel to OTL Tirpitz is in Norway. Therefore the artic convoys need heavy protection. Defending the convoys I'd place a Nelson class as more or less an equal of anything else. If Tirpitz came to convoys it would be coming to the Royal Navy and so speed wouldn't really be needed.

An R class is all you need to protect a convoy, anything else is a waste of a good ship.

Convoy protection is a simple game of "Is the ship protecting a convoy powerful enough to damage the convoy raider". If it is then the convoy is safe from all but suicidal attacks. Any damage a convoy raider takes is potentially the end of the convoy raider. If the raider is slowed then it becomes much easier for the faster and more modern RN ships to chase down and sin it.

By that arithmetic an R is all you need. An R class can go toe to toe with Tirpitz for a decent enough length of time to inflict damage and end its short term career as a raider. If Tirpitz want's to slug it out with a R the RN will gladly accept that. It the Tirpitz avoids a convoy protected by an R then again the RN is perfectly happy with that.

 

[marathag]

20th 1940 and rendered useless - the dock should have been 'submerged' during the attack in question but it was 'being painted' and so wasn't - honestly I think some people still had not grasped that there was a war o

'But some things just aren't done without paperwork, old chap'
Said by Col. Blimp while sipping a Lead Paint cordial.

 

[wietze]

'But some things just aren't done without paperwork, old chap'
Said by Col. Blimp while sipping a Lead Paint cordial.

no lead paint needed, just certain victorian beers

Hundreds of Old Beer Bottles Found

Archaeologists in England discover more than 600 beer bottles at the site of an old Victorian brewery that contain dangerous concentrations of lead.

www.antiquetrader.com

(some of the beer contained dangerous lead levels)

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Col Blimp (actually Major General Clive Wynne-Candy VC) was a Gin drinker. Also if you watch his biopic he was a very courageous and able officer and anything but an idiot.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CB13]

Yes its a shame the Admiralty Floating Dock 8, which had a 1000 ft length and 70,000 ton capacity was not moved to Alex from Malta before hostilities with Italy started

It would have allowed for the use of KGVs in the Eastern Med and Indian ocean

Sadly it was bombed on June 20th 1940 and rendered useless - the dock should have been 'submerged' during the attack in question but it was 'being painted' and so wasn't - honestly I think some people still had not grasped that there was a war on.

Union workforce only painted during daylight hours?

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Col Blimp (actually Major General Clive Wynne-Candy VC) was a Gin drinker. Also if you watch his biopic he was a very courageous and able officer and anything but an idiot.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He was as he admits at the end totally out of touch

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

He was as he admits at the end totally out of touch

What officer isn't if recalled to duty years after retiring?

 

[Salamander]

Yes its a shame the Admiralty Floating Dock 8, which had a 1000 ft length and 70,000 ton capacity was not moved to Alex from Malta before hostilities with Italy started

It would have allowed for the use of KGVs in the Eastern Med and Indian ocean

Sadly it was bombed on June 20th 1940 and rendered useless - the dock should have been 'submerged' during the attack in question but it was 'being painted' and so wasn't - honestly I think some people still had not grasped that there was a war on.

There are so many examples of this throughout the early years of the war. You had rear echelon staff officers in Middle East Command working regular office hours, including long lunches and weekends off, from the start of the war until after the fall of Crete. Warehouses of captured Italian equipment, which could have re-equipped Greek units on Crete, just sat there, because it never occurred to anyone to ship some of it to Crete. The command & control issues that hampered the air defence of Malta for months, little things like forgetting to build revetments to protect the aircraft and their ground crews from bombing, BEFORE the bombing started. Repeat these issues for Singapore, Malaya, Burma and India.

 

[Rickshaw]

Yep, however as I told you before I asked Mike about what you you've been saying here because it sounded interesting, but he had never heard of a base fuzed 2 pounder high explosive round and said he had never told anyone about such a thing.

Well I still have somewhere around about the original letter from him...

There are a couple of photos of ammunition being loaded into Matildas in WWII, but as might expect from the documentation of the day, it is a mix of AP shot and the nose fuzed HE shell, not a "special tank-only base fuzed HE shell".

Fair enough.

 

[X Oristos]

Another thing that is worth contemplating is if the Dieppe Raid will take place. I think we all expect that Tripoli will soon fall. That means that the equivalent of a Field Army will remain idle. I sincerely doubt there will be an hostile actions by Vichy. We forget who commands Tunisia and that man is de Lattre. If Germans try to avoid interment, de Lattre WILL intern them. If they fight back, de Lattre will fight. I somehow don't see the Germans willing to be interned by a defeated enemy.

Come 1942, there will be more than enough Commonwealth forces in the Mditerranean Theater with precious little to do. The amphibious capacity of Torch is not there yet. But they must do something, even if it is to capture weakly-held islands like Karpathos (1 battalion garrison if memory serves right) or a more ambitious target like Pantelleria. But such operations will demand most of the amphibious capacity Britain has. Therefore, I don't think there will be enough specialized vessels to launch Dieppe Raid.

Lastly, as mentioned before, there are also Greeks in Egypt and Palestine slowly forming a new corps. If we take them into account and the lack of targets post-November, then the British have the luxury to earmark a full corps for deployment in south-east Asia, as soon as the Japanese start their centrifugal offensive.

 

[Thoresby]

True, though I'm not sure how much better off they are
Mm, not enough sealift to do the job, plus there's untis in place that are better acclimatised. I'm getting a feeling of Dieppe here.

Another thing that is worth contemplating is if the Dieppe Raid will take

Dieppe needs to happen to disabuse the British of launching a direct attack on a port. The worst case scenario is they launch a direct port attack and it works and then build their plan for an invasion of France around a direct attack on Calais and it's an epic disaster.

 

[MattII]

Come 1942, there will be more than enough Commonwealth forces in the Mditerranean Theater with precious little to do. The amphibious capacity of Torch is not there yet. But they must do something, even if it is to capture weakly-held islands like Karpathos (1 battalion garrison if memory serves right) or a more ambitious target like Pantelleria. But such operations will demand most of the amphibious capacity Britain has. Therefore, I don't think there will be enough specialized vessels to launch Dieppe Raid.

Dieppe will almost certainly happen sooner or later, as Britain needs to do a test-landing in mainland Europe.

 

[kelgar04]

Greeks saved quite a few units if memory serves they had the corp that is forming but also th Createn Division which is still there but more intact Greek merchant and warships intact.

 

[Icedaemon]

The notion of a successful alt-Dieppe actually leading the British down the wrong track for the eventual invasion of France actually seems quite fascinating to me.

 

[allanpcameron]

30 November 1941. Washington DC, United States of America.

The new American tank, known as the T6 prototype, had for the three months undergone strict and exhaustive testing. A variety of changes had been ordered, and a number of pre-production models were now being produced.

Major-General Douglas Pratt (Armoured Fighting Vehicles British Army Staff Washington) had been involved with the Americans in the development of the T6. Examining the Valiant tanks had helped with the development of the traversable turret, and Pratt was quite happy with the cast hull version of the T6. Writing his report about the new tank he noted that, with minor adaptations for British use, the T6, or M4 as it was likely to known once ordered, would be a good medium tank.

While the American tank had undergone testing, the Canadian Valiant IIA* had also been tested at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. With the diesel engine, and the 6-pdr gun, it was a difficult job to choose between the two. The T6 had been fitted with a M2 75mm L31 as the production version L40 wasn’t available. The 75mm had a very good HE round and a good AP round. The 6-pdr had an excellent AP round and a reasonable HE round. The Valiant was better protected, but the T6 was faster and more manoeuvrable, the Valiant’s suspension was a limiting factor. Pratt knew that the Victor prototypes were doing well, and would have liked to compare the T6 to the Victor, which he thought might be the better tank.

The good news was that when the Purchasing Commission had ordered both the M3 Light and Medium tanks, it had written into the contracts that delivery of these would be changed over to their successor tanks. The first three M3 Medium tanks, known as the Grant, had been shipped to Australia, another eleven would be in the hands of the Australian Armoured Division in December. Realistically, production of the M4 wouldn’t begin until at least February of 1942, with delivery, possibly, by late summer. The initial order for 500 M3 Grants and 500 M3 Stuarts would equip the 1st Australian and 1st Indian Armoured Divisions, with a reasonable reserve for training and replacements. British 10th Armoured Division in Iran would be a mixture of A15 and Stuart tanks.

Pratt was aware that the Canadians and Australians were cooperating on their replacement of the Valiant with the Ram/Jumbuck. Work on the successor to the A15, becoming known as the Crusader, wasn’t progressing as fast as work on the Victor. Tweaks to the Crusader to allow it to mount the 6-pdr was one thing, but, Pratt couldn’t see Nuffield Mechanisation coming up with something as good as the T6/M4 was likely to be, at least in the period between 1942 and 1943. His recommendation to the War Office was that the British Government should apply for Lend Lease M4 tanks to supplement the Armoured Divisions equipped with the Victor. Whether Nuffield would be interested in switching to building Victors instead of their own design was a political issue that Pratt couldn’t weigh in on.

 

[MarcH]

So Britain's next step in Europe.

So we are at an interesting point ITTL now where we have to consider what Britain's next step is going to be. The fighting in North Africa is soon going to be over, I don't see it continuing into Vichy French Tunisia unless the Vichy French their switch sides.

That leads to Britain facing a seaborne invasion of somewhere in Europe, probably in 1943. The question is where.

First off there will be raids and other minor landings in 1942. The first and most obvious place is in the Aegean sea to secure some more Greek Islands. Rhodes will be the first stop, I believe we have already had an update about plans for that but I could be wrong. Further Aegean adventures not only keep the Greeks happy but also serve a further purpose that I will come to later. The next place will be continental Europe, Franc in particular. A Dieppe style raid as a test for an invasion of Europe is a good idea and has other purposes, again more on them later. Raids on Mainland Greece and Sicily are also an option but I feel less likely than the first two.

Now where will Britain go in 1943 with the Americans.
The first choice is Greece, invade Greece as it is a long way from Germany and harder for the Germans to reinforce. In addition it is a good place to blood American units in Europe. This is the least likely in my opinion except as a distractionary invasion ala operation Mincemeat target (again) though with more backing it up at this point as Britain will likely have spent much of 1942 capturing islands in the Aegean that make an invasion of mainland Greece more likely.

The second is an Invasion of Sicily. This is a good possibility for the same reasons as OTL. There are differences from OTL however ITTL (obviously). The main one is the likely complete or near complete Allied control of all of the North African shore. This will have given the British in particular a much safer run through the Mediterranean to reinforce the far east. That added to over a year of being able to build airfields etc will have probably made the run pretty safe. That removes one of the bigger driving forces for the OTL invasion of Sicily. Another good place for a deception campaign though.

The final, and in my opinion most likely is a 1943 invasion of Continental Europe via France. Now I know that there has been a lot of discussion on this forum about the feasibility of an allied invasion of Europe in 1943 and I have generally come down on the side of it being feasible if and only if the right conditions are met. The thing is TTL is rather different. For one thing Britain and to a degree America are going to spend a lot of 1942 gearing up for a major invasion of somewhere in Europe so the lift capacity should be notably better than OTL. In addition Britain won't have the same fear of the Germans as they had OTL so are more likely to consider France as an option. Finally Britain has some very good equipment on route, in particular the Victor. That will also help calm the nerves somewhat. Now a 1943 invasion won't have the same success as the Historic Invasion of Normandy, namely liberating pretty much all of France and a lot of Belgium by December. What it will give though is a good, solid base from which to conduct operations in 1944 to push on into Germany.

Can't wait to see where Allan takes us.

 

[Look More Closely Later]

So Britain's next step in Europe.

So we are at an interesting point ITTL now where we have to consider what Britain's next step is going to be. The fighting in North Africa is soon going to be over, I don't see it continuing into Vichy French Tunisia unless the Vichy French their switch sides.

That leads to Britain facing a seaborne invasion of somewhere in Europe, probably in 1943. The question is where.

First off there will be raids and other minor landings in 1942. The first and most obvious place is in the Aegean sea to secure some more Greek Islands. Rhodes will be the first stop, I believe we have already had an update about plans for that but I could be wrong. Further Aegean adventures not only keep the Greeks happy but also serve a further purpose that I will come to later. The next place will be continental Europe, Franc in particular. A Dieppe style raid as a test for an invasion of Europe is a good idea and has other purposes, again more on them later. Raids on Mainland Greece and Sicily are also an option but I feel less likely than the first two.

Now where will Britain go in 1943 with the Americans.
The first choice is Greece, invade Greece as it is a long way from Germany and harder for the Germans to reinforce. In addition it is a good place to blood American units in Europe. This is the least likely in my opinion except as a distractionary invasion ala operation Mincemeat target (again) though with more backing it up at this point as Britain will likely have spent much of 1942 capturing islands in the Aegean that make an invasion of mainland Greece more likely.

The second is an Invasion of Sicily. This is a good possibility for the same reasons as OTL. There are differences from OTL however ITTL (obviously). The main one is the likely complete or near complete Allied control of all of the North African shore. This will have given the British in particular a much safer run through the Mediterranean to reinforce the far east. That added to over a year of being able to build airfields etc will have probably made the run pretty safe. That removes one of the bigger driving forces for the OTL invasion of Sicily. Another good place for a deception campaign though.

The final, and in my opinion most likely is a 1943 invasion of Continental Europe via France. Now I know that there has been a lot of discussion on this forum about the feasibility of an allied invasion of Europe in 1943 and I have generally come down on the side of it being feasible if and only if the right conditions are met. The thing is TTL is rather different. For one thing Britain and to a degree America are going to spend a lot of 1942 gearing up for a major invasion of somewhere in Europe so the lift capacity should be notably better than OTL. In addition Britain won't have the same fear of the Germans as they had OTL so are more likely to consider France as an option. Finally Britain has some very good equipment on route, in particular the Victor. That will also help calm the nerves somewhat. Now a 1943 invasion won't have the same success as the Historic Invasion of Normandy, namely liberating pretty much all of France and a lot of Belgium by December. What it will give though is a good, solid base from which to conduct operations in 1944 to push on into Germany.

Can't wait to see where Allan takes us.

Original Timeline Churchill was very interested in Norway, too, for various reasons, including rolling back German air and naval bases that could attack Arctic Convoys.

 

[Icedaemon]

Greece's mountainous nature and relatively low levels of infrastructure are commonly cited as reasons why a Greek campaign is not a great idea. Norway is a much longer country, with taller mountains and of not worse infrastructure then certainly more distance between the parts of land where there is any infrastructure.

Also, possession of Greece allows for attacks into Romania and up the Balkans. Possession of Norway gives little beyond slightly safer arctic convoys and access to Swedish metal. The latter is certainly useful, but not a war winner and arctic convoys are more of a detriment to western allies by the time a Norwegian campaign is likely to be underway, let alone complete.