What if the Germans do not invaded Crete in 1941

In 1941, Nazi Germany launched a successful invasion of the Greek island of Crete. But what if this had been unsuccessful?
 
Superimpose another aircraft radius circles onto the airbases in Crete but the convoy routes stay constant and you have your answer. The amount of aircraft available to the British will likely remain the same, so no grand schemes against Polesti, but it gives the British a lot more options such as moving to Crete if Malta gets too hot or doing shuttle bombing from one base to another.

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First: Nazis need to abandon plans for seizing Arab oil and the Suez Canal.

Secondly: LW would still have enough transport airplanes to re-supply Stalingrad, etc.

Third: no "lessons learned" would mean no FG42 rifle.

Fourth: few Fallschirmjager casualties would leave more to resist the WALLIED invasion of Italy. Fallschirmjagers proved resourceful and stubborn defenders from 1943 until VE Day.
Fewer Fallschirmjagers casualties would also mean more parachute and glider-borne raids later in WW2.
 
I toughed that with it closer to Romania it would be used as a base for B-17 bombers who could carry more than B-25 if they only operating from Egypt and Libya.
Yeah. It would also allow them to have more bases. And crete would be a good middle point for refueling.
 
Cross posting from another thread, so please excuse quoting myself:

I'd agree with everything but the last point. Crete makes a terrible place to base heavy bombers. First of all, you need to construct the bases. This requires huge amounts of concrete, which has to be shipped in. Next you need the fuel, ammunition and sundry other supplies, which need to be shipped in. You then need to store all these things, which means tank farms, ammo bunkers etc, which requires more concrete. Sustaining these ops will require huge volumes of supplies, so you'll need to upgrade the islands transport net to cope. This means oil pipelines, better roads, possibly small railways with attendant marshalling yards. This requires more concrete, steel, and other supplies, which need to be shipped in.
Problem is that the decent ports are all on the north side of the island, making it riskier sending in all this shipping. Yer probably too small to cope with sustained ops, so you'll need to upgrade them. More concrete, steel, etc. Now don't forget that heavy bombers are EXPENSIVE, as is all the infrastructure you have to develop to support them. Can't have the Germans staging a paratrooper raid and knocking out your airbases. Yes we know that it is unlikely, and the British may believe this due to Ultra, but how much risk do you want to take? So along comes some additional garrison troops, heavy and light AA, fighters, night fighters, radar etc. All of which require even more supplies. Crete is still likely to be an outpost though, much in the same way Malta was, with little opportunity to develop a layered air defence environment. You are likely to have contest air space at best, and the attritional nature of this will place further demands on your logistics. Meanwhile, if one raid gets through and knocks out 30-40 bombers on the ground, you lose the £ equivalent of a battleship. Not really worth risking it, especially as the bases that you are building are on Greek territory, so aren't likely to be strategic assets after the war.

Better to bombers somewhere more logistically feasible, with better existing infrastructure, better defensive options, and less risk that he colossal investment in blood and treasure will end up outside of London's control/influence post war.
 
I think the main use for Crete would be tactical rather than strategic bombing, much like Malta. I don't doubt a Polesti raid or three would be laid on but that wouldn't be the valuable, bread and butter work in Crete. Indeed Malta wouldn't have nearly as tough a time ITTL as 'bomb alley' between the Benghazi bulge and Crete wouldn't exist when Rommel's forces held the bulge for most of 1941-42; British convoys could head north to hug the south coast of Crete then shoot through the Greece-Benghazi bulge gap in a night.

LW would still have enough transport airplanes to re-supply Stalingrad, etc.
Fewer Fallschirmjagers casualties would also mean more parachute and glider-borne raids later in WW2.

The butterflies in Russia could be huge; the paras and air mobile divisions could possibly be used to reinforce Panzer spearheads that had outrun the foot infantry during the deep encirclements or to hold a position to allow the Panzers to keep going.
 
Not really, I can see them getting ground down pretty quickly in Eastern Front conditions.

If they are used as line infantry certainly, but if given specific, time limited para and air mobile tasks they won't be exposed to the punishing daily grind of the eastern front.
 
Lack of casualties to the Fallschirmjager mean they might try the Malta thing later on...
Or they might go ahead with the landing on the Black Sea coast road. That is according to Liddell Hart the Germans planned to make an airborne landings as part of their Caucasus offensive. IIRC they were to be along the Black Sea coast road.

IMHO it us a choice between invading Crete in May 1941 or invading Malta in May 1941. After that Malta is probably too well supplied and too well defended. That is because it is easier to supply Malta from Alexandria with Crete in Allied hands.

It also helps that no invasion of Crete probably avoids the sinking of 3 cruisers, one AA cruiser and 8 destroyers off Crete in 1941 and the aircraft carrier Formidable being put out of action for about 6 months. This tips the naval balance of power in the central and eastern basins of the Mediterranean even more firmly in favour of the British Mediterranean Fleet even further than it was in the second half of 1941 (that is until Hitler had some U-boats sent there) in spite of the heavy losses suffered off Crete.
 
Notes I made from Pictorial History of the Luftwaffe by Alfred Price say that XI. Fligerkorps had 530 Ju 52, 100 assault gliders and 13,000 paratroops. However, I think the Germans also used the 22nd Air Landing Division and some mountain troops. Within range of Crete were 650 fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft under VIII. Fligerkorps. German losses were 4,500 killed and 271 Ju52 were damaged beyond repair. I don't know if those losses are for the paratroops only. E.g. the Germans tried to send reinforcements in by sea, but the convoy was massacred by the Royal Navy which also sank some of the escorting Italian destroyers IIRC.

He says that British naval losses were 3 cruisers and 6 destroyers sunk, plus one aircraft carrier, 3 battleships, 7 cruisers and 4 destroyers damaged.

For Stalingrad he wrote that the garrison required an absolute minimum of 500 tonness of supplies a day. Each Ju52 could carry 2 tons, which required a minimum of 250 sorties per day. He wrote that a force of 850 transport aircraft (Fw200, He111, He177, Ju52 and Ju86) were scraped together including 350 from the training schools, hacks and specialised units. They were only able to deliver an average of 100 tonnes of supplies a day and lost 488 aircraft in the process (including 165 He111 and 266 Ju52).

If all the Ju52s lost in Crete (and their crews) had survived until the end of 1942 that would increase the available force by about a third to 1,120 aircraft. Based on the above the average quantity of supplies would have been increased by only 30 tonnes. I also think that the losses of transport aircraft would have increased proportionately from 488 to about 650.

OTOH the 270 extra Ju 52s might be used to supply the panzer spearheads during Operation Barbarossa. IIRC the supply units were often unable to keep up with them which allowed large bodies of Soviet troops to escape encirclement on several occasions.
 
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