First of all, thanks for the map, its very helpful !
You are welcome. it is what I do to make clear in my own mind the basis for my conclusions.
RAF vs LW in Greece.
Why? Indeed, the RAF could not establish superiority over the Peloponnese airfields in May 1941 for the following reasons:
i) They didn't have a single proper airbase in Crete
ii) More importantly they had to face Fliegerkorps VIII.
If you cannot control the skies, the other guys has 4 moves to your 1. That means he can bomb you, immobilize you, blind you and cut off your supplies and reinforcements. You get chopped to ribbons in the resulting land warfare exercise..
Indeed, the British couldn't have established air superiority if the Luftwaffe made a continuous effort against Crete by a whole Fliegerkorps instead of using it in Barbarossa. What are the chances for it? They can move of course Fliegerkorps X as in OTL, but that means Malta gets a respite. There were simply not enough assets to cover both areas. In June 1941 there were 267 planes of all types in the Med.
The opponent chops you up where he can get at you. Malta can wait as he, the German, bombs you, immobilizes you, blinds you, cuts you off and sinks or blows up your supplies and reinforcements where you foolishly exposed yourself in Greece. You gave him a birthday present when you should have thrown him a birthday party in N. Africa..
Come on, you have studied the Pacific War in a great detail. How many squadrons did the Allies used to suppress Rabaul for a long period of time?
Short version: the Rabaul air campaign was initially to suppress IJN/IJA counter-missions against CARTWHEEL. AirSols and 5th AAF between them had variously 300-500 aircraft depending on casualty replacements and mission attrition rates. The air campaign did not change to neutralization until the closing stages of CARTWHEEL by late 1943-early 1944. Then it was to knock out the remaining Japanese air and surface naval forces on MacArthur's flank as he had largely bypassed the base. All in all the air campaign was hideously successful killing over 3,000 Japanese aircrew and ground maintenance personnel, damaging or destroying 2 Japanese SAGs, wiping out an air complex, and costing the Japanese close to 800 aircraft for the loss due to all causes of about 150 Allied aircraft and 500-600 aircrew from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. You could actually call it a battle of annihilation. 100,000 IJN soldiers were wiped from the board as if they had been POWs. CARTWHEEL itself killed an estimated 40,000 of them in the bypass operations, so it was a devastating campaign of how to use air and sea-power, and probably MacArthur's chief claim to being "competent" as a general.
Then why do you need even Malta? You can mine everything with Stirlings or other bombers. You disregard naval bases that are placed in the middle of the enemy's communications just for an argument.
Because Malta has runways and harbors and those assets are geographically situated, to make what the mines missed, come within reach of single engine attack aircraft, fast attack boats and subs. It is a choke point.
Hold your horses. What kind of fallacy is this? Where did I mention the civil war of 1944-1945? I demonstrated the willingness of the civilian population in 1941 to help the Allied cause. I talked about five guys with sledgehammers solving a logistics issue in a few hours. (Here is a photo of the offending building, apparently it was a 5 square meter room.
YOU asked me what I knew about the Greeks.
View attachment 490688
A future civil war has nothing to do with infrastructure in Crete in 1941. In the same spirit there was an inactive narrow gauge railway in Heraklion that was not utilized at all during the half-hearted attempt to expand the civilian airfield. Still, a letter to the local mayor wouldn't have anything to do with a potential civil war in the future. Apples and oranges.
Greeks fight. BTW, how was the NGR supposed to be used? Where's the rolling stock and Locomotives?
Even though the Cretans were republicans they worked pretty well with the monarchist regime in OTL. Not a single incident happened in April-May 1941.
Now that is a fallacy. What has that to do with the British being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
By the way the implication that if you give sledgehammers to Greeks to tear down a building would lead to brutally murder each other ( "they wont stop"), I find it as a Greek who lost relatives in the civil war in poor taste at best.
I lost a grandparent at Salerno, so what has my bitter feelings about MONTGOMERY and his delay during HAYSTACK have to do with what happened when his inaction allowed the Germans to savage Clark and got my grandfather killed? IOW, that is not logical to note a fact about the Greek Civil War's savagery and call it poor taste. I cannot help your relatives and I cannot help my grandfather. You are entitled to your feelings and I respect them. But history is what it is. The Greeks are incredibly tough. That is what I meant about the savagery involved.
Except 90% of it was evacuated, albeit largely to Crete. But the decision was made in late 40 and executed in response to a request from an allied government that then failed to deploy its own army as agreed and left hanging.
"War is not a moral exercise. It is brutal efficient mass murder intended to convince your opponent to bend to your will."
Raymond Ames Spruance
IOW... "Doing something stupid aids your enemy."
And what pray is to stop them? In 42 the Persian population is if anything pro German ( well pro not being occupied by the Brits and Soviets) and the Iraqi arab population has just had a revolt suppressed.
Iran is politically split and run by bandits. (See previous commentary about Yugoslavia.) The Iranians may be "pro-German" at the government level, but they are not pro-invader anybody. This applies to Germans. How? The regime in Berlin has a known habit for making enemies of allies.
You man the one assessed as having tubes made by GE. You do realise that the Japanese did have a radar programme and had a working cavity magnetron in 37.
Others have answered. Design in hand takes years off development program. If you want an example, I refer you to the Tizard Mission.
Your comment was the British Had three reinforced corps and afford to pull a division out. In fact they had two trained divisions and a hodgepodge of brigade level forces.
Not mine, but if you have four fronts in progress, don't open another one until you have cleaned up some of the other four.
No aircraft are very mobile, but tied to their bases airpower is dependent on having the ground bases and logistics to arm, fuel and repair the aircraft. It moves at the speed of any ground based logistics element. Hence the German problem in Barbarossa of outrunning their initial bases and having to displace forward. The wiped out Red Air Force btw forced the redeployment after Kiev to be conducted largely at night to avoid attack and detection.
So the Germans redeployed. The point is that they did.
Except your supposition is that a spoiling attack with limited forces against a numerically very superior army should be supported by the logistics of a multi corps offensive, which simply are not available at the time. COMPASS was exploited to the full, with the available forces, but the end point is far short of Tripoli, with a very limited force holding a picket line at El Agheila. Again Mid East command has no good options at this point nor would it until Crusader because its armour is the pre war deployed set from EAF.
AIRPOWER. Britain has it. Use it to cover the desert army and do the four moves on 1, that actually made COMPASS possible in the first place.
The first Beaufort Squadron is deployed in August 42. Now the Takoradi route has already been surveyed and proven but the air reinforcement becomes much more feasible after March 41 when Lend Lease is passed and the EATS starts producing crew. But that applies as much to a Aegean set of bases as Tripoli.
You have Havocs, too. Use everything.
Its Cunninghams argument, which hold water because it had been done (by the Italians) and could use magnetic mines and he has no degaussing station.
1. Build one.
2. Frogmen.
Rhodes btw is well within reach of Suez for the Italians.
And thus becomes a priority for an assault.
Hardly. The Initial Japanese Garrison is under 900 construction troops vs 11,000 marines and any reinforcement has to deploy down the slot and complete the mission in darkness unless Henderson is Suppressed. Thereafter from the air perspective, which is the only one that matters the US could deploy and maintain a force far more easily than Japanese. Both are operating at the edge but the US has a large air and sea base in the New Hebrides already completed well beyond range of Japanese interdiction and within ferry range of Henderson.
The Japanese have the ships, planes, oil and the logistics and the RIKKOs (Rabaul). The Americans do not... yet.
You are proposing attempting to supply by sea a force operating in range of the much larger Italian and German Air forces ( even with the Barbarossa Deployment) flying from pre war permanent fields and depots in Sicily where you supply ports are basically fishing villages.
Sure am. WATCHTOWER shows it can be done, even with incompetents like Turner.
Your comment was Greece is a the bottom of a sack going nowhere. The Wehrmacht at flood tide is going into Russia. If its got troops in the south its not having those forces in Russia. The upshot of the all this Balkan manoeuvring is a pro allied Yugoslavia, a Romania that switches sides as soon, as and a Bulgaria that does not participate in the invasions of Yugoslavia or Greece (although it does occupy parts after the fact). In fact it maintains diplomatic relations with the USSR throughout and does not declare war on Britain until December 41 ( when it also declares war on the US). So actually a much more favourable situation for the Allies than WW1.
It is going to have troops in the Balkans anyway. (See above.) Wave a Fortitude at the Berlin Maniac and he'll bite.
Not so the land campaign once again uses allied forces not realistically deployable elsewhere and bear in mind that Italy is co belligerent with the Allies and under German Occupation. you cannot get replacements for these forces, nor can you support them onshore anywhere else until 44 because of lack of sealift. Its a theatre where the allies can support them and control the attrition rate at a point where are comfortable. Once again 20-25 of the entire German mobile forces are stuck in a backwater losing every time the allies chose to mount an offensive.
Why spend lives and resources at 3 to 2 when 1 to 1 is preferable? Chew off as much of Italy as you need and use the resources saved for other operations like Normandy. The stuff you saved by not mounting ANZIO could have paid dividends at ANTWERP when lack of assault shipping and small craft means the Canadians get chopped to bits. You have to think ahead and be smart about your logistics, especially your lift.
OFC it helps if you own the only airfield and resupply that way and the enemy is in the same boat not using a major port like Tripoli.
He cannot use Tripoli if you are in bombing range.
All 94 aircraft. Mainly Gladiators and Hartbeests. Effectively used but not sure of your point.
Again you point was that these could be used to attack to Tripoli, mine is they are not ready until late March, when they go to Greece so any movement into North Africa requires deployment from Egypt. There simply are not the troops available until after DAK has landed.
Check your calendar again, I think you are off by 30 days. Also... Untrained for Greece is the same as untrained for N. Africa, so your point is moot that way, too.
And its achieved by using the waste heat from running the boilers in the first place. 2 pints per man per day drinking water.
You have the capability which was what was argued did not exist, when it did. Now that the British did not do it well? That is another matter.
Which at no point exists. Your argument boils down to take Tripoli using divisions which are not available until March (when they have to go through 5 Italian inf Divs, 1.5 Pz Div and an Italian motorised corps, who enjoy air superiority and armour superiority ( until Tiger the following year) to get there, because aircraft which are not available until August ( of the following year) will supress the RA in Sicily by being supplied from LST which have not been built yet because a year later operating 800km from a major supply base the USN could maintain corps sized force around an airfield while the IJN could not feed a series of Bde size forces while operating 1200km from its supply base.
Uhm, the Germans are still at regimental strength with command confusion and short of equipment and supplies. The DAK really does not get going until APRIL.
Actually dry cleans nicely.
As I said Middle East command has no good options. But in March 41 there is a certainty that the Germans are about to attack the USSR which is going to need help to survive ( UK estimates of Soviet strength are based on Winter War performance) , there is certainty that lend lease will supply massive air power but not that the US will enter the war. In that context continuing to support the Greeks - the decision was made in October/November the previous year, so while its a wrong decision, and a risky one, its not actually a stupid one at the time it was made.
It was a stupid one. See my five questions below?
But at the time Greece and Yugoslavia represented another 450 thousand and 700 thousand Soldiers (had they mobilised in time) respectively with which to oppose the fascists.
I would have asked the British IGS these questions before we ever started Greece;
--"Can we sustain these new allies?"
--"Can we gain air superiority and keep it?"
--"Can we guarantee our sea lines of communication?"
--"Will this force diversion hurt us in the Mandate, Syria, Iraq, Iran and our forces in Egypt?"
--"Can we reinforce faster in Greece than the Axis?"