As Allied air power in Crete builds up, it looks to me as though the Axis position in Rhodes would become untenable.
Crete is more than 20 times bigger than Malta in size. What makes you think it the Allies would have been easier to smash in Crete than in Malta?At the same time, the Luftwafee may be ordered to smash Crete like Malta, another drain to Luftwaffe resources although it's questionable whather the island would survive.
Crete is more than 20 times bigger than Malta in size. What makes you think it the Allies would have been easier to smash in Crete than in Malta?
There would be some downsides to the Allies initially:
1) Supplying Crete would require some additional shipping
2) The forces evacuated from there would, obviously, not be available elsewhere.
Upsides would probably outweigh those, and I think that whoever mentioned morale nailed a big one. A big, very public win over actual Germans (as opposed to the Italians) would be a major boost to British morale. It might also have some impact on the Germans. An unbroken string of German victories seemed to confirm the Nazi racial theories. A very public defeat might slow that train down.
Longtime Crete will become an important base for raids against Plösti and other targets of interest, but for the first 6-12 months the british may secretly wish they had lost the island.
Quite frankly it's gonna be a bitch it supply Crete until the allies gain control of the mediterrenean.
In OTL the RN was literally bombed out of the water north and west of Crete and was reduced to night runs to reduce casualties.
As mentioned all ports are on the north side...
RAF had effectually abandoned the island. Planes can (with some limitations in type and equipment) be flown in, but fuel, spareparts, ammo, groundpersonel & equpment etc will add to the shipping requirements...
In the short term britain will have to allocate sparse resources to Crete, after all we can't affort to lose the only win in the war so far
Things will of course improve as german resources get stretched...