What if the Italian army had managed to reach the Nile in WW2 ?

[LordKalvan]

I found this article on Google (unfortunately in Italian): http://www.regiamarina.it/somm.htm

The gist is that the Italian submarines at the start of WW2 were modern enough, but had a number of bad features that made their technical performance inferior to the German U-boats:

• significant time required for immersion/emersion
• superstructures too cumbersome, which affected capacity of maneuvering quickly
• lack of echo-goniometers
• lack of a centralised computing facility to aim and launch torpedoes
• torpedoes launched by compressed air, which often gave away the U-boat position

Most of these handicaps were corrected and modified during the first two years of the war. It's quite obvious that the italian U-boats performance would have been much better if they had been better prepared by June 1940 (which might be one of the minor PODs ITTL). The adoption of German tactics (wolves pack) can be happen pretty quickly.

 

[Croesus]

the mucho grande victory is Malta, where ITTL the Italian flag was raised by the end of June.

Hey, no fair, you pulled the Malta card from up your sleeve...

Well I think you're essentially arguing for Mussolini's rational side, where he's optimising his gains. My read on him is more mercurial, but I don't think I can argue the point much further.

So Malta falls June/July 1940 and Italy can supply his North African push. That certainly is a great feat that he can throw in Hitlers face (even if he has to stand on a box). Just out of interest, what does he do about the Greeks and their meddlesome agreement with Britain?

Croesus

 

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Either I missed such a post, or nobody noticed that after reaching the Nile the Italians have to CROSS it in order to do anything worthwhile ....

And, unless some coup de main happens, the Italians run into a major river obstacle with no bridging equipment. Alexandria harbour is most likely wrecked and/or mined. So, unless they come up with something localy, they have to land boats at Banghazi and haul them across th desert 1000 miles to the Nile ...

Thus, to the date of Italians reaching the Nile IMO one should add several weeks, if not a couple of months, before the Italians get across.

Borys

 

[AMF]

Borys is completely right. In fact, it is even worse (from Mussolini's point of view), because the Nile has a delta consisting of two main branches (Rosetta and Damietta river) and many smaller rivers and canals.
There was also one post saying that the Italians should base their designs on the Fiat 3000. This is a bit like saying that an airforce should base the design of its planes on the Wright Flyer. The Fiat 3000 was closely based on the Renault FT 17 (this is also stated in the post I am referring to). The French Renault FT 17 was very much the ancestor of all turretted tanks, and in one form or another one of the first (if not the very first) tanks for many armed forces, including those of the US and the Soviet Union. It was a very good design when it appeared in Worl War One, but it was totally obsolete in WWII, although the French, Italians and Germans (possibly others) still used them to some extent.

So sorry to be a spoilsport !

 

[Croesus]

There was also one post saying that the Italians should base their designs on the Fiat 3000. This is a bit like saying that an airforce should base the design of its planes on the Wright Flyer.

Yes, that was me. I suggested the Fiat 3000 for three main reasons;

1. Long development time. Using the Fiat as their base design, Italy gets 21 years to work things through; using the Vickers 6-ton as OTL they only get 12 years.

2. Learning from others. Renault took the FT-17 design a long way and Fiat (another industrial giant btw) will be one step behind most of the way. There is therefore an opportunity to watch what the French do and copy if it's good, or do something different if it's bad.

3. Proven design. The FT-17 was an excellent design and was taken up by many countries; it's a safer bet. The Vickers 6-ton was rejected by the British and taken only by the Poles, Russians and Finns (and Italians), suffering from engine and reliability problems.

There are of course other possibilities: this is just one.

Croesus

 

[zarkov]

I see that the Italians would have had problem crossing the Nile Delta with some of their tanks and equipent. Thenext question we must is what kind of new equipment could ge fitted to the Italian army with better industry ?

Also what about foreign investment within the Italian mainland. Could that have helped the Italians with having a better army and finally what about better designs ?

 

[LordKalvan]

Hey, no fair, you pulled the Malta card from up your sleeve...

Well I think you're essentially arguing for Mussolini's rational side, where he's optimising his gains. My read on him is more mercurial, but I don't think I can argue the point much further.

So Malta falls June/July 1940 and Italy can supply his North African push. That certainly is a great feat that he can throw in Hitlers face (even if he has to stand on a box). Just out of interest, what does he do about the Greeks and their meddlesome agreement with Britain?

Croesus

Weel, I argued from the beginning of TTL that the first, the second and the third things that the Italians had to do after entering the war was taking Malta. IMHO, if Malta stays in British hands, the desert campaign becomes at best very expensive, and at worst impossible.

Re. the British-Greek agreement, the answer is pretty easy: instead of bullying (and invading) the Greeks, just kick the British out of the Mediterranean (which is the result of Malta and Egypt falling). No British, no party

Crossing the canal will be not easy. However, the Italo-Germans should be able to achieve air superiority, and, as we discussed earlier, the logistics of supplying the British forces in palestine might become pretty difficult. At worst, one might always plan a landing in Lebanon (with Vichy's aquiescence) and an encirclement of the British.

 

[Larrikin]

Hauling to the Nile

Ahoj!
Either I missed such a post, or nobody noticed that after reaching the Nile the Italians have to CROSS it in order to do anything worthwhile ....

And, unless some coup de main happens, the Italians run into a major river obstacle with no bridging equipment. Alexandria harbour is most likely wrecked and/or mined. So, unless they come up with something localy, they have to land boats at Banghazi and haul them across th desert 1000 miles to the Nile ...

Thus, to the date of Italians reaching the Nile IMO one should add several weeks, if not a couple of months, before the Italians get across.

Borys[/quote/]

Tobruk, Bardia, Sollum are all ports big enough to handle bridging equipment being unloaded. IIRC there is also a small Egyptian port just on the west edge of the Nile delta which they could use if the capture it.

As for the Delta, You don't go through it, you go around it, cross at Cairo and go straight for the Canal, masking the Delata as you go.

 

[basileus]

Italy… is bathed by a landlocked sea that communicates with the oceans through the Suez Canal, an artificial link easily blocked even by improvised methods, and through the straits of Gibraltar, dominated by the cannons of Great Britain. Italy therefore does not have free connection with the oceans. Italy is therefore in truth a prisoner of the Mediterranean, and the more populous and prosper Italy becomes, the more its imprisonment will gall. The bars of this prison are Corsica, Tunis, Malta, Cyprus. The sentinels of this prison are Gibraltar and Suez. Corsica is a pistol pointed at the heart of Italy; Tunisia at Sicily; while Malta and Cyprus constitute a threat to all our positions in the eastern and western Mediterranean. Greece, Turkey, Egypt have been ready to form a chain with Great Britain and to complete the politico-military encirclement of Italy. Greece, Turkey, Egypt must be considered virtual enemies of Italy and of its expansion

That should have been enough to send Mussolini to a good psychiatrist as a case of delusional paranoia like few others... Instead his contemporaries let him ruin the nation and consign us to over sixty years of the most abject servitude.