Sir John Valentine Carden survives.

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Darrenb209

Julius Vogel said:
All of this makes me think that there's no On The Bounce invasion as surely the Germans both 1) appreciated Allied forces more and 2) will have figured out that Crete has got a reasonable amount of evacuated troops - more so than OTL's apparently farcical intelligence report
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In a sane world you'd be right.

But as I said a while back in the thread... I think it was this thread anyway the main driver for the invasion of Crete was quite literally the Luftwaffe gambling in an attempt to win back prestige so that they'd have more influence during the Invasion of Russia. Or perhaps I should say, so that Goering could have more influence.

The "Luftwaffe" will have even more of a need for that TTL. The SS came out of this looking like incompetents, the "Luftwaffe" was looking good until they threw away troops and the Heer itself stands both successful and not incompetent.

And Goering and Himmler both would never stand for that. They both need a success to not end up falling out of favour. Which means another military campaign prior to Barbarossa, which pretty much just means Crete.
 
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X Oristos

MattII said:
Yeah, the Cretan Divisions has an advantage no other division has in that they have local knowledge of the terrain of Crete, and local knowledge of the terrain can be critical.
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A prime example of knowing the local conditions is to cover the wells and springs with snipers. According to Antony Beevor, a British intelligence officer proposed such a thing in OTL, but the brass didn't follow his advice. Considering that this officer had established a network with local potentates and clan leaders, I think the notion came from them, since this tactic was something used in cretan guerilla warfare in the past.

Just this simple tactic could become a source of much distress for the Fallschirmjäger.

Another thing that comes to mind, is that if the Cretan Division is back, then they would press the British to provide rifles and a few rounds to the formed National Guard bands. These bands were not provided with arms in OTL. Nevertheless, they took up hunting shotguns, axes and knives and contributed in the battle. If they had a couple thousand italian Carcanos, then their contribution would have been much more valuable.
 

MattII

X Oristos said:
A prime example of knowing the local conditions is to cover the wells and springs with snipers. According to Antony Beevor, a British intelligence officer proposed such a thing in OTL, but the brass didn't follow his advice. Considering that this officer had established a network with local potentates and clan leaders, I think the notion came from them, since this tactic was something used in cretan guerilla warfare in the past.

Just this simple tactic could become a source of much distress for the Fallschirmjäger.

Another thing that comes to mind, is that if the Cretan Division is back, then they would press the British to provide rifles and a few rounds to the formed National Guard bands. These bands were not provided with arms in OTL. Nevertheless, they took up hunting shotguns, axes and knives and contributed in the battle. If they had a couple thousand italian Carcanos, then their contribution would have been much more valuable.
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Exactly the sorts of things I was thinking about.
 

Mark1878

Donor
Ramontxo said:
Well there was this guy, Tyler Kent, in the German Embassy in London, but he was detected very soon and thought he claimed to be an isolationist there were suspicions of he being in reality an Soviet agent

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Why not just give the link to wikipedia rather than making everyonne give their information to google?
It is also much shorter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Kent
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Mark1878 said:
Why not just give the link to wikipedia rather than making everyonne give their information to google?
It is also much shorter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Kent
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Well I am strictly an Gutemberg Era Dinosaur surviving in the post meteor world... (meaning dont even know how to program my new phone or home PC for spelling checks in English, or how sometimes I copy an link and it is a nice one like yours and other times is an blue page long wall)
 
Orry

Orry

Donor
Monthly Donor
Have to dig out my book on the 20 committe

There was at least one supposed german agent who when parachuted into england approuched the police - told them he had arrived and where from so as to be put in touch with the British intelligence service in order to send false information back.

If the Germans and Japanese were rolling 6's a lot at the start o the war British intelligemce was often rolling 7's (tp make up for their 0's against the soviets)
 

Geordie

Orry said:
Have to dig out my book on the 20 committe

There was at least one supposed german agent who when parachuted into england approuched the police - told them he had arrived and where from so as to be put in touch with the British intelligence service in order to send false information back.

If the Germans and Japanese were rolling 6's a lot at the start o the war British intelligemce was often rolling 7's (tp make up for their 0's against the soviets)
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They had a few zeroes in the Netherlands, but certainly, on UK soil they did very well against the Axis agents.
 

wietze

Geordie said:
They had a few zeroes in the Netherlands, but certainly, on UK soil they did very well against the Axis agents.
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on those zeros in the Netherlands i have wondered if they saw it as good way to decimate the intelligence capacity of the Netherlands with post-war in mind.
i mean the englandspiel went so bad i wouldn't even call it a zero, more some negative value.
 

kelgar04

Orry said:
Have to dig out my book on the 20 committe

There was at least one supposed german agent who when parachuted into england approuched the police - told them he had arrived and where from so as to be put in touch with the British intelligence service in order to send false information back.

If the Germans and Japanese were rolling 6's a lot at the start o the war British intelligemce was often rolling 7's (tp make up for their 0's against the soviets)
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Reminds me what I read in a Book called Alone By Micheal Korda when he talked about how Kim Philby one of The Five when he was working for a news paper I think the Times managed to get an interview with Lord Gort and his staff and managed to get a lot of access he really shouldn't have.

I have to wonder how much that ass passed to the Soviets who probably passed it to the Germans since they were in bed at that point.

Heck I wonder what would have happened if Gorts staff intelligence officer had been a touch more paranoid and really started to dig into Philby. Wonder if the whole Five could have been blown open then. But Philby was one of the old boys network at the time so maybe I'm wishing on a star.
 

CB13

If he stumbled in the run up to that meeting and made himself look suspicious, that would make for a very cool butterfly....
 

vizzer

I was wondering when we might see some more tank updates but then realised the last one was at the beginning of March & it's only just the end of April in the timeline not very long at all in terms of tank development timescales.
 

allanpcameron

Donor
vizzer said:
I was wondering when we might see some more tank updates but then realised the last one was at the beginning of March & it's only just the end of April in the timeline not very long at all in terms of tank development timescales.
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I'm looking forward to it too, Greece and North Africa have kind of sidelined the tank development narrative. I suppose we are seeing the effect of Carden surviving. The A9 and A10, A11 being a bit better, and having more of them, means that the A12 and A13s are doing okay. The next phase of North Africa have the Valiant I & I* (an early and better Valentine), Crusader isn't rushed, and the Victor (better and earlier Cromwell) should be along soonish.
 

Merrick

allanpcameron said:
I've been playing with the above update for the past week. Again, I'm a bit worried about making things go too well for the British. My thinking is that it is a smaller version of Arnhem, a regiment of paratroops being dropped among two Regiments of tanks and four battalions of infantry.
Allan
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If the German intelligence/air reconnaissance has failed to spot the prepared positions South of the canal and they assume that they're only dealing with a weak rearguard/stragglers (they know that the British have been sending troops to Nafplion, but they may assume that most of the organised forces that have made it past Corinth have already been evacuated), then a quick drop to seize and hold the canal crossings and cut off the withdrawal of Commonwealth troops from Megara makes sense. The canal, as discussed previously, makes a pretty good defensive barrier against attempts to break out from the North.

The one question I'd have is, where is the German ground-based follow-up? The Germans know the Commonwealth forces include armoured units, and while they may believe them to be depleted (and they may have noted that the A13 has limited anti-infantry capability), they're still armoured units, and the entire war to this point has been a lesson in what happens to infantry units with inadequate AT capability that find themselves facing panzers. If I was commanding the paratroops, I'd want some pretty solid assurances that the Panzers would be coming to my rescue before my men found themselves trying to hold the bridges (which they can't destroy without isolating themselves) against tank attack with small arms and Molotovs.

Did German paratroop units of the period have any organic AT capability? Or were they wholly dependent on whatever light AT units were accompanying them on the gliders?
 

Rickshaw

The Paratroops would have had AT Rifles such as the Panzerbüchse 39:

panzerbusche-39-pzb39.jpg
 
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