Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.

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perfectgeneral

perfectgeneral

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Look More Closely Later said:
Shades of the First El Alamein of the original timeline here at Beurat maybe if the Italians hold, only with the British as the attackers who can't break through?
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Well it is a good defensive position and the Ariete division is fairly good, capable of overrunning a motor brigade. This is a more static defence in terrain advantage. The extra artillery and infantry will win it for O'Conner with the tanks cancelling each other out without flanking opportunity. Oh wait, these are Italian tanks. And they have little time to lay mine fields. Yeah a three or higher, two for a stalemate.
 
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MattII

Look More Closely Later said:
Shades of the First El Alamein of the original timeline here at Beurat maybe if the Italians hold, only with the British as the attackers who can't break through?
Click to expand...
Maybe, but Italian morale won't be terribly high, so they might break under pressure they could have held otherwise.
 
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CaptainCalvert

If the Italians had prepared Beurat in advance they would have a fair chance of holding the impending attack due to current local air superiority. Unfortunately for them, they are being attacked a day or two after arriving in disarray in an unprepared (I think) position.
 

Peg Leg Pom

CaptainCalvert said:
If the Italians had prepared Beurat in advance they would have a fair chance of holding the impending attack due to current local air superiority. Unfortunately for them, they are being attacked a day or two after arriving in disarray in an unprepared (I think) position.
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The way I read it isn't that the Axis have air superiority but that neither side has it so both armies are suffering from air strikes.
 

CB13

If you're the British, I think you could get your forces to the starting line, but nothing moves down the coastal roads until you're sure your LRDF had taken all the high ground inland - first to deny the enemy accurate artillery spotting, and secondly but as importantly to ensure you have scouted all the possible routes of ambush (especially as you know there are still some German tanks out there somewhere). Based on the hard-learned lessons with much valuable blood having been spilled, although the British may wish to be aggressive, they would not do so at the cost of being foolhardy.
 

Look More Closely Later

Tick-tock. Clock ticking down to the original timeline start date of Barbarossa.
Will it still go forward as in the original timeline, or will the harder German fighting in Greece and reduced German fighting (with fewer aircraft lost, but the island not captured) in Crete disrupt that?
 

CaptainCalvert

CB13 said:
If you're the British, I think you could get your forces to the starting line, but nothing moves down the coastal roads until you're sure your LRDF had taken all the high ground inland - first to deny the enemy accurate artillery spotting, and secondly but as importantly to ensure you have scouted all the possible routes of ambush (especially as you know there are still some German tanks out there somewhere). Based on the hard-learned lessons with much valuable blood having been spilled, although the British may wish to be aggressive, they would not do so at the cost of being foolhardy.
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Talking of which, I wonder where the Germans are. I'd assumed they were in or around Tripoli reorganising, but they may already be combat-ready. Well, as combat-ready as you can be with almost no artillery and only 30 real tanks.
As there's effectively no good flanking or counter attacking opprtunity at Beurat, my guess is they are either the rallying point at Tripoli or busy placing explosives at the port.
 

pjmidd

perfectgeneral said:
Well it is a good defensive position and the Ariete division is fairly good, capable of overrunning a motor brigade. This is a more static defence in terrain advantage. The extra artillery and infantry will win it for O'Conner with the tanks cancelling each other out without flanking opportunity. Oh wait, these are Italian tanks. And they have little time to lay mine fields. Yeah a three or higher, two for a stalemate.
Click to expand...
Ariete might have escaped but it will be down a shedload of tanks just due to the speed it had to pull back and has had no time to repair/fix. All breakdowns have been lost as well as those knocked out by the British,
 

Mr Carrot

There's also the spectre of a general collapse of the Italian forces at this point.

They've had no victories ITTL and the Germans turned up shouted a lot and then ran away, how much gas in the tank have they got morale wise?
 

Peg Leg Pom

The French (both types) are probably muttering darkly about the damned rosbeufs waiting for France to be ruined before they start to actually fight.
 
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