Nice map. This is supposed to invoke visions of French cargo ships sinking all across the eastern Mediterranean? Torpedoed right and left by roving squadrons of SM79 & bombed to burning wrecks drowning thousands of French soldiers?
1. Let's look at it realistically? The surviving French fighter cover is not too good. I figure under the circumstances... non existent, as in zero.
1a. French escort vessels of the day? The typical cruiser had 6-9 9 cm AAA guns and 6-10 3.7 cm AAA guns which were linked to a 2 or 3 optical director system that could handle 1 (one) aircraft attack at a time. This is effective to a slant of about 2,000-4000 meters and was H/A ineffective against dive bombers which would be pulling out at bomb release at the moment when the 90s and 37s start to bite; also useless against torpedo attack (not enough shells to cover the threat zone per second with saturation effect) and just inside the Italian bomb/torpedo drop points. The last defense was a battery of manually aimed machine guns usually quads or duals of about 8-12 total of 13.2 mm bullet throwers of an effective slant range of 1,500 meters. Morale effect. Not too shabby compared to German or Italian efforts, but LOUSY by RN standards. Pom Poms quad and octo were at least last chance revenge weapons that could down a Hunchback or a Heinkel.
1b. Even if the French can form up and convoy (takes practice), threat axis align body guard ships to flak trap inbounds, (takes knowledge which the Marine Navale does not have, cref IJN, USN and RN who took more than a decade to learn how to air defend fleets at sea.), find enough sailors to man the merchantmen and head for Algiers and Oran, they have to do this in port while presumably the Luftwaffe is breathing down their necks and the Wehrmacht is hustling south with artillery to ruin their day. NO AIR COVER. Lot different from Dunkirk and that is the French scrambling to load for a journey of 5 days steaming doglegging away from Sardinia with whatever ships that can be manned and sortied. I figure over the week they will have they can clear about 60 merchant ships from the Riviera ports and lift ~100,000 men. Maybe they can get out about 55-60 warships (If they have fuel.). None of these sorties will be well organized (independent sailings) so the exodus will be extremely vulnerable to opportunity attacks.
Leaving aside for the moment aircraft ranges, the ability of the Sardinian airfields to park large numbers of aircraft, the actual aircraft available vs muster strength, & a few other painful details. The question of effectiveness, or number of sorties per ship sunk is useful. What was the Italian record at this time?
2. If the Regia Aeronautica can get 4 or more squadrons of SM79s forward based, I would be surprised. it will more likely be a mixed force of medium bombers, see further. More can be expected from the Luftwaffe than from the Reggia Aeronautica during the first two days steaming. As the standard transit times is about 5 m/s or 18 km/h the danger time close to France is
11 hours steam time vs. Ju 87s and about 38 hours steam time with He 111s. The French will be at sea for days and will be subject to re-attack for at least a day and a half of that time using the contemporary means the LW had. This is NOT Dunkirk. More like Force Z. The Germans will have time to make a bloody shambles of things and they will not need many aircraft to do it under the conditions to be expected in this exodus.
3. Enter the Italians. A typical Italian medium bomber squadron had 6-8 aircraft (a stormo) depending on type. The more typical Italian bomber tactical unit would be the grupo or wing. Sardinia's two major airfields could just support that size force. Figure 40 aircraft split among 6 stormo consisting of Cant 1000Z, some BR-20s and the Savoia Marchetti SM 79s of similar performance and strike capabilities. (It is the Italian way in those days to mix and match.) Operational availability of aircraft based on Italian records is combat ready 60%.
3a. Attacks will be by level bombing. Contrary to popular belief, the RA had practiced this war at sea thing, so they were fair to good at it. Without active air opposition they will be dropping marbles on scared mice from anywhere between 3,000 to 4,000 meters altitude just above the effective HA Marine Navale AAA warship engagement envelope. Freighters, however, are DEAD MEAT at mast height release altitudes which the RA know how to do; since French warship slant ranges cannot provide overlap coverage. Incidentally the French are still in He-111 type danger times (38-40 hours steam times) from Sardinian airfields (airpower radius circle 800 kms) versus these Italian aircraft.
Of those ~ 60 freighters that sailed; expect ~15 to 20 to be sunk. Combo of Luftwaffe and RA work over 4 days. That is the expected loss based on RN combat experience of trying to ram better organized convoys through. With the massive confusion and chaos of this French exodus it could be worse. Much worse.
28 June Battle of the Espero Convoy. Hits on Allied ships by Italian aircraft: None. Actually I can't find anything about any Italian aircraft sortied. Guess the air men could not be bothered.
9 July Battle of Calabria. 72 SM79 attacked in two groups. HMS Glouster took a hit on the bridge & continued in action. Note the SM79 dropped their bombs from 12,000 feet - 3,700 meters. At the time this was a common attack altitude for them. Later in the day another 126 aircraft attacked, claiming hits on the HMS Eagle, Warspite and Malaya. None suffered noticeable damage. Score: 198 sorties one hit, none sunk. Or perhaps is should be 148 sorties? The Italian fleet counted fifty Italian aircraft attacking them.
19 July Battle of Cape Spadia. Italian air force distinguished itself by sitting this one out. Not clear if these absences were due to poor coordination between the Navy & AF, or perhaps range, or just not enough time to show up.
12 October Battle of Cape Passero. Yet more empty skies. Excuse is it was a night battle.
11 November Battle of Taranto. Might mean something if the Italians were trained to attack at night with torpedoes.
27 November Battle of Cape Sparvento. Another night battle with no air actions mentioned in connection.
Operation Excess
9 Jan 10 SM79 & 15 CR42 attack, No hits admitted to by the Brits.
10 Jan 2 SM79, 18 He111, 43 Ju87 - HMS Warspite hit & light damage, Illustrious hit & damaged. Second attack had 7 SM79, 20 Ju 87, 14 He111 One hit.
.....For this one we have 114 sorties & three ships hit none sunk.
Warships in wagon wheel defense, convoy discipline, and air cover in several of those cases. NOT VALID EXAMPLES.
From these few actions we have a ships hit rate of one per 78 sorties. It is correct slower less maneuverable cargo ships are more vulnerable, so maybe 1-35 sorties? However data from the 1940 'Kannal Kampf' in the English Channel August-October 1940 reveals a similar hit or sunk rate by the German air forces, vs a mix of cargo & small warships.
Against warships and merchantmen with air cover; again not a valid example.
I hope to do a lot more compilation and analysis of aircraft vs ships from his era. At this point it looks like only a handful of Brit, Japanese, & US airmen had any skill against ships up through 1942.
Try Crete. This shows worst case, but is a useful metric.
USAAC standard and available means of a much more powerfull nation; Phillipines was a strategic place at these days.
You might want to look at the US order of battle December 7 1941.
here
Not too good, was it?
But, unfortunatly, this was not the case in France. You hardly found a couple of airfields with concrete take-off runway. Even Le Bourget, main French civilian airport near
Paris and major air base didn't have one at the outbreak of the war, only park runways.
https://journals.openedition.org/insitu/16231#tocto1n2
I am not going to criticize the French military too much, or even at all as I prefer lessons learned approaches. They had a lot on their plates with their 1930s economy and politics. In the French airpower discussion about what could the AdA do before June 1940; I noted that each new French air minister had a new idea and the AdA really had no good air staff like the RAF with a consistent vision and purpose to ride these guys out. No air force got it right, either. (Hey, did I not suggest it earlier, here?) Ground crews training, a LW strength and airbase organization, also a LW strength were 2 giant AdA weaknesses that were handwaved. Lessons learned, not a criticism.
Try to find ONE concrete runway before the war in these airfields:
http://www.anciens-aerodromes.com/?page_id=32520
To go to the point, French High Command was issued of the senior officers that won the WWI and couldn't understand the modern warfare despite lots of younger high-ranking officers were pushing for new tactics and equipments. Lots of complains were raised during the Phoney war about anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons shortage for example. This was more or less the same story for the politician.
Or maybe look for bulldozers and matt rollers among the AdA engineer units? Might be that the AdA looked at concrete or asphalt and looked at French grass strips, checked the floatation problem and the weather, and thought it would be cheaper to buy a bulldozer to fill in a bomb crater on a dirt runway than to pave it and have to fill in a bomb crater with the same bulldozer on a concrete runway? Different logics, but if your airbases have good weather and your aviation is not expected to fight in a monsoon, I can just see the AdA making that wrong pre-war decision?
Firing the old officers and replacing them by those younger ones will boost the efficiency of the whole French army, even if it was far too late to recover (no Marne miracle).
Having a consistent government military policy over time may help more. (Are you listening, DoD?)
Remeber that even in USA, Mitchell didn't saw the success of his ideas before his death. And a sucessfull Pearl Harbour aeronaval attack was the case of a war game few years before the war but nothing was made after that...
Pearl Harbor was wargamed from 1935 on. Even planned against. ROOSEVELT screwed that one up, by not listening to his senior admirals who warned him that the Fleet should not be put within IJN sortie radius pre-war. But FDR wanted to send the Mikado a political message. The IJN replied with interest.
Nothing that sandbags couldn't do (look at some videos posted), that could be achieved at very low cost by ground forces (spads, bags, and manpower).
If the difference is a bulldozer and the training manhours for Filipino infantry, get the !@# !@#$ed bulldozer, from the civilian Manila Construction Company, and ramp up dirt berms. Filling sandbags is a waste of time and training money. Same goes for France 1940.
But you know what? We are at war and there is a threat on Corsica.
I don't care about Corsica. It is gone. How about the Suez Canal? How about the Straits of Gibraltar? How about picking up the shambles of this disaster and doing what can be done? What can be done? In the Mediterranean? Beat the Italians in Libya, first. Clear North Africa. Once that happens, fallout is Somalia, Ethiopia and an exposed Italy and no DAK. This is what the British failed to do. SEAPOWER, which is what the British claimed to be, is determined by the constraints of nearby land geography. MAHAN, principle 3 or 4, I forget. The point is that if you want to limit Vichy to the Metropole, keep the Germans stuck in Europe, and keep Free France in the game in late 1940, the ALLIES HAVE TO CLEAR LIBYA. And that can only be done from EGYPT. French North Africa 1940 lacks the infrastructure and means to take Libya as will be proven by TORCH 2 years later. Sheesh.
Either you consider because of missing proper shelter, you have to give up, or you try to fight with the available means, including improperly protected airfields.
Improvise with the available means to hand. Scratch out grass-field dispersion sites. Raise berms to protect fuel, munitions and people, disperse ye olde airplanes, borrow a few civilian bulldozers, borrow the civilians who run them, too. Use your time and local resources wisely and don't play tennis or whatever the French equivalent of USAAF golf is. Don't be that Brereton or his incompetent boss, MacArthur.
BTW, in such a case, early warning is the best way to deal with. French and British had radars and high mountains are a very good place to keep watch on open sea.
British radar was in the field and still somewhat clunky. The French radar was stuck in the lab or undergoing first field trials with mixed results. Won't be seen until late 1942 operationally and then only with the MN.