Ghastly Victories: The United States in the World Wars

[RamscoopRaider]

…The rapid nature of the victory over France stunned the Wehrmacht. What they thought was going to be a long slog with an inevitable defeat at the end turned into a brilliant victory within two months. That the victory came from a return to the German Army’s pre WWI roots in Bewegungskrieg was even better and served to bolster their level of confidence even more. Everyone claimed responsibility for a key part of the victory and everyone believed that the sky was the limit. The French had the second best army in the world and they beat them in six weeks, if they could do that they could do anything…

…The Battle of France finally revealed to the Wehrmacht that the Panzer force was an arm of decision of its own and not merely an adjunct to the infantry. The Panzers could be used for decisive effect on their own and had been so used to great success. The Panzerwaffe received enormous prestige and became the symbol of German military might and martial success. In consequence t moved from being a middling priority as far as resource allocation went to a much higher one…

…After the fall of France the decision was made to increase the Panzerwaffe to 25 Panzer divisions. This was partly due to the increased prestige of the Panzerwaffe, partly due to the increased role foreseen for the Panzer Divisions, partly due to Hitler’s desire for large numbers and partly due to simple practicality. The Battle of France had shown that the Panzer divisions had too few supporting troops for the number of Panzers that they had and the Panzers sometimes suffered unnecessarily heavy losses because of this.

Rather than add support troops to each division it was decided to reduce the strength of each Panzer division to a single regiment of Panzers and to increase the number from 14 to 25, in addition to forming a number of independent units and attaching a battalion to of tanks to 7 motorized infantry divisions to upgrade them to Panzergrenadier divisions. A similar expansion of the motorized infantry was also planned however there was a lack of motor transportation even with the looting of French vehicle parks and with the Panzers having high priority ordinary infantry units were left behind…

…The Battle of France had shown that the German panzer force was significantly deficient in quality. The Panzer VG “bunker buster” was their best machine, but even it found itself lacking the armor to deal with the newest British and French anti-tank guns and the firepower to deal with the newest British and French infantry tanks. Other models of Mark V performed even more poorly and the IV, III, 38(t) and 35(t) ranged from inadequate, in the case of the 38(t), to death traps in the case of the Mark III.

Experience showed that Germany would need 4 types of Panzer to replace their current fleet. A fast scout Panzer, a general purpose medium, a spearhead heavy and a fortress destroying super heavy. The first would need to have roughly the firepower and protection of the current Mark VG with far greater mobility, the second greater mobility than the Mark V with an 88mm class gun and ability to resist fire from an 88mm at long range, the third mobility similar to a Mark V but with a gun a class up from an 88mm and the ability to resist an 88mm at point blank range and the final a massive 120mm+ weapon and the ability to resist heavy field artillery.

This however was far too ambitious for the near future. As a stopgap the next generation would consist of an uparmored Mark V with a longer barreled 7.5cm gun as a medium, a light Mark VII with a high velocity 5cm gun and resistance to 4.7cm class weapons, a heavy Mark VIII with a standard 88mm and resistance to the same at range, and a super heavy Mark IX with a 105mm gun and functional immunity to 88mm class weapons…

…The Battle of France had reinforced the need for more self-propelled guns in the German Army, not just infantry support weapons but anti-tank weapons and proper artillery so that the Panzer divisions and motorized infantry would have proper fire support without losing the benefit of mobility.

With the Panzer III to be moved out of combat units they were available for conversion to Tank Destroyers. In that role they would be supplemented by more powerful anti-tank guns on captured French tractors and on surplus Panzer IV or 38(t) chassis as production of the designs converted to recon variants in preparation for replacement by the Panzer VII in 1943.

For assault guns the existing turretless variant of the Panzer V would be procured in greater number, supplemented by a variant of the 38(t) with a 15cm infantry support howitzer. Proper artillery support would be provided by 10.5cm howitzers on Panzer IV chassis and 15cm howitzers on Panzer V. Supplemental self-propelled artillery would take the form of rocket launchers on halftrack chassis

With the exception of the tank destroyers, the Sturmgeschutz V and the halftracks production of these weapons did not start in large scale until 1943…

…With the defeat of the French the Germans captured two very important pieces of military research. The first was the French research into Sabot rounds to improve their older anti-tank guns, the second was their copy of the American 3” infantry rocket, one the French had hastily grafted a shaped charge warhead on to create a last ditch AT weapon…

-Excerpt from The Iron Blooded Eagle, Germany in WWII, Bishop Press, New York, 2000

…The Invasion Panic, while less crippling than the Fall of France itself or the Battle of Britain, was still a crippling blow the Empire could ill afford and one that was completely unneeded. The Royal Navy had a far greater margin of superiority over the Kriegsmarine than it ever had over the Kaiserliche Marine and there was no concern about an invasion then. If even a handful of British Captains showed a sliver of Nelson’s spirit then any German invasion would be defeated in a sea of blood and the Germans were aware of this. The Royal Navy reported that there was no potential of a German invasion before 1943 given the odds at sea and lack of preparation, and the secret service concurred. That the government chose to ignore this was a mistake with great consequences…

…In the rush to prepare against an invasion that would not come the changeover to a new generation of weaponry was paused mid stride, not only continuing to produce obsolete equipment but complicating logistics and preventing economics of scale in the name of short term production. The 2 pounder AT gun was built alongside the 6 pounder and the 6” 26cwt howitzer alongside the 5.5” gun howitzer that was supposed to replace it. This was most prevalent in armored vehicle production where no fewer than 6 models of tank were being built.

The first two were the Mark VII and VIII light tanks, continuing to be built after the Armoured Corps considered the type useless after the Battle of France revealed that there was nothing they could do a cheaper armored car could not. The Mark III Infantry Tank and Mark IV Cruiser were produced alongside the Mark IV Infantry Tank and Mark V Cruiser, despite the latter being better armored and having the option of a 6 pounder rather than a 2 pounder gun. Admittedly there was some cause to keep the older Cruiser and Infantry tanks in production given that the newer models had major suspension issues, but the nature of the panic prevented those issues from being looked at until after hundreds of each had been produced…

…The Invasion Panic led to a severe lack of resources for North Africa, with the early deliveries of heavy equipment from Commonwealth donations and the stripping of India proving entirely inadequate…

…The Home Guard, for all the fond memories, was given far too many resources. While vital for purposes of morale a significant quantity of scarce resources were used to bolster an ultimately unnecessary organization. The story of the Pikes and Maces is well known, 500,000 of each produced to a standard pattern on the insistence of Churchill after hearing that almost 60% of the Home Guard lacked firearms. These were then delivered in October and November, after every member who felt a need had improvised their own and the unarmed members had found roles as grenadiers, drivers or heavy weapons operated. These however were but the most infamous of the boondoggles in arming the Home Guard.

The Home Guard Shotgun while a cheap and easy to produce weapons and useful for morale purposes should not have been kept in production into 1943, and the Home Guard Rifle, inferior in most respects to the old Martini-Henry, should have never been made let alone seen 400,000 produced at a time the Regular Army lacked a working semi-automatic rifle, having had to switch to a bolt action after the failure of the Model 39. The situation for pistols was no better and for all the weapons that were actually issued thousands of skilled manhours were wasted on various prototypes, including muskets, air guns and even crossbows that could have been used developing real weapons.

The situation in heavier weapons was even more of a travesty with only the dubiously effective 3” AA rockets, “John Boy” Grenade launcher and the “Hoover” Pneumatic AA mortar actually in service by fall of 1941, with the other designs not even starting to be built until late 1942, well after there was any need for them…

…Rationing in Britain began in 1940 with the start of the war but only started to effect food by 1941 and only limited varieties until the Fall of France. After the Fall of France rationing tightened and only fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, bread and a few odds and ends were left unrationed, a situation that would only get worse by wars end…

…Rationing would only end in 1980 after a 40 year period that saw a generation reach middle age with it as a constant factor…

…By Fall of 1941 the resources of the British Empire were strained to their utmost and the decision was made to go hat in hand to the United States. It was a decision that would ruin the Empire, yet thanks to Hitler it was the only possible one…

-A Setting Sun, the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, Bodley Head, Nottingham, 2015

…The Battle of France was a terrifying revelation to the United States Army. Ever since the Revolution the US had seen the French Army as the acme of skill in land based warfare. That it was destroyed, and in six weeks no less, was purely terrifying. That the US Army was in many ways a copy of the French Army made that all the worse, for whatever weaknesses the French had the US probably shared. The US Army would need to completely reevaluate its tactical, operational and organizational practices in light of these new revelations.

An enormous series of wargames and field exercise were scheduled to start developing and testing the new changes…

…There were three major deficiencies identified with the equipment of the US Army, in addition to a host of minor ones, anti-armor, mobile anti-aircraft, and mobile artillery.

In the case of the first the US Army had standardized on a French 25mm towed AT gun, without any ancillary weapons. The 25mm had proved inadequate in France and that the US only issued 3 guns per battalion with no higher reserve meant that even if the guns were useful they would not be concentrated enough to stop an armored fist. The US needed a better anti-tank gun, it needed that anti-tank gun to be mobile and it needed reserves of them. As a stop gap 75mm field guns in storage were converted to AT guns and mounted on halftracks to form independent battalions to be held in reserve and the infantry were issued with AT rifles to supplement their AT guns. As a medium term solution a license for the British 6 pounder was purchased, at an inflated price to subsidize the British, to provide an adequate towed anti-tank gun and in addition to a 3 per battalion issue each regiment would have a 9 gun company and each division headquarters an additional 3 gun platoon. For the longer term design work began on a series of fast full tracked tank destroyers, open topped and lightly armored but with a rotating turret and a powerful new 76mm gun. These would be formed into battalions and brigades as a mobile first available to army group commanders to counter any massed armored attacks.

In the case of anti-aircraft weaponry, while the new 90mm was judged as sufficient for heavy AA in concert with the prototype 120mm, the 25mm Bofors autocannon, .60 caliber and .50 caliber machine guns used for light AA were judged as both lacking in mobility to cover mobile troops against dive bombers and lacking the range and firepower to stop them. A longer range piece with greater firepower was needed and one was available, the 40mm counterpart to the 25mm Bofors the Army was already using. With the Navy already having a license expanding production to a land based variant was simple. New half-track mounts were to be designed for both the 40mm and the existing 25mm cannon and .60 caliber machine guns.

Finally there was the case of artillery. France had shown that mobile forces were needed for counterattacks, and those forces needed considerable firepower. While the United States possessed a superb train of towed artillery, this was all towed. A fully tracked 105mm gun was to be developed based on the standard medium tank chassis, as a first step, with larger guns to follow…

…As summer of 1941 turned to fall the British financial situation grew more desperate. This was problematic for the United States as it was felt by the establishment in both parties that it was in the interests of the United States for Britain to keep fighting Germany, and thus to aid Britain. At the same point the Neutrality Acts tied American hands, money could not be loaned to belligerents who had previously defaulted on American war loans. Even if they had Britain had precious little unencumbered collateral and no private business would risk an unsecured loan to a belligerent who had already defaulted from a much better position. A government to government loan would be needed, yet public opinion was firmly against that at this point.

As a stopgap President McNutt arranged for the sale of a large amount of war equipment to Britain at less than scrap value to allow Britain to stretch out its reserves of hard currency. This however could only do so much and did nothing to stem the amounts Britain was forced to spend on new arms and raw materials. A workaround was needed.

Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace proposed one such. He pointed out that Britain was importing food from the United States, and paying for that with hard currency. If the United States organized a food aid program, that could save the British currency, support American farmers and be easier to get through Congress. This was taken as the basis for the Wartime Food Relief Program.

Nominally open to all European countries as a sop to Congress, the verification requirements ensured that only Britain and the governments in exile in London would be eligible for it. The program provided food and auxiliary items to the UK free of charge to ensure that there was adequate nutrition for the whole population under wartime conditions. While not fully covering the food imports of the UK, or even coming close, it did free up a substantial amount of cash and included quite a few ancillary items, some of which had military value.

The program passed in October after heavy debate and was a model for a Wartime Medical Relief Program in November and a Wartime Shelter Relief Program in December. These however while useful merely kicked the can down the road. Sooner or later Britain would run out of assets to liquidate and have to cut back on her purchases, crippling her war effort. A comprehensive program was needed…


-Excerpt From Before the Storm: American Neutrality in WWII, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2000

 

[RamscoopRaider]

#86 Operation Palimpsest July 19th to 26th 1941

Palimpsest was in many ways not a naval battle, in the traditional sense, as the British and Italian fleets did not directly clash, with the primary Italian force involved being the Regia Aeronautica. It did however involve a very large British force conducting naval operations under pressure with one goal being to shape naval strategy, and there were clashes with the Italian navy as part of it. It’s importance thus makes it a great naval battle…

…The Battle of Malta and Lampedusa left Britain in a precarious position in the Mediterranean. Malta was rendered defenseless and the British Mediterranean fleet was destroyed. The key British position in the Mediterranean was in danger of falling and the British Army in Egypt was exposed to the threat of Naval bombardment.

Fortuitously the Battles of Eigeroya and Malta had temporarily crippled the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina surface fleets. Neither navy had any modern capital ships capable of going to sea for the moment while the Royal Navy had 2 fast battleships and 4 battlecruisers that could do so, in addition to two modern slow battleships and a number of obsolete capital ships. This provided a window of opportunity to reinforce Malta and to send naval reinforcements to Egypt.

Operation Palimpsest would consist of 4 forces. Force A would consist of the carriers Leviathan, Argus and Hermes, escorted by the battleships Canopus and Majestic, with 9 destroyers and 3 light cruisers as a screen. Leviathan would play defense while between them the other two would carry 32 Hawker Headhunter fighters and 6 Boulton Paul Ballista Fighter-Dive Bombers between them which would be flown off to reinforce Malta. Force B would consist of the BattleshipDuke of York, the battlecruisers Beatty and Sturdee with 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, 1 AA cruiser and 6 destroyers, which would bombard Pula and Cagliari before feinting North. Force C would consist of the Battlecruisers Anson and Hood, 2 light cruisers, 2 AA cruisers and 9 destroyers which would move with Force D into the Strait of Sicily and then break north to bombard Marsala before withdrawing. Force D would consist of the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Warspite, the Battlecruiser Renown, the Aircraft Carrier Audacious, one heavy cruiser, 2 AA cruisers, 3 light cruisers, 1 Minelayer and 14 destroyers. Force D would escort a convoy of 20 old merchantmen as far as Malta, where they would be abandoned to be unloaded and then would sprint at 22 knots for Alexandria to serve as a replacement Mediterranean fleet.

The assembled forces departed Britain on July 1st and successfully managed to avoid any encounters with U-Boats or German aircraft. German and Italian intelligence did pick up on the convoy, but it was assumed that the merchantmen and older ships were bound for Egypt via the Cape route, and that the newer ships were simply bound for Gibraltar. It was not until the combined force passed Gibraltar on the 13th that there was any inkling of a major Operation in the Mediterranean. The Italians were caught flat footed their submarines were predominantly in port after a burst of high intensity operations in June and their maritime aviation was undergoing a reorganization after poor performance in the opening battle of Malta and Lampedusa.

The Italians surged their submarines as fast as could be managed and set up constant air patrols, with their operational surface units moving to fortified anchorages for protection. The Italians were somewhat further hampered by the fact that they did not yet have bases set up in Tunisia and that many units were in the process of moving there. As a result they did not catch sight of the British until just before dark on the 18th, too late to do anything about it.

On the 19th they swept the area southwest of Sardinia and at noon, after losing two recon planes to the British CAP, they found the British force. A force of 30 bombers flew out of Sardinia, but took losses against the CAP and was forced by heavy AA to drop their bombs early, losing 6 planes for no hits. That night an Italian submarine attacked the trailing destroyer in the convoy, failing to get a hit but successfully withdrawing and avoiding contact.

On the 20th the Italians launched 3 larger waves of 40 bombers, all level bombers, after spotting the British early in the morning. One of the groups, not trained in maritime strike, made a navigation error and did not notice before it was too late and needed to return to base. The remainder successfully found and attacked the British fleet. Once more disrupted by the CAP and facing heavy AA gunnery, they managed only minimal accuracy, managing a near miss on a destroyer and a light cruiser, with one hit square on the roof of Beatty’s Y turret, doing no damage, alongside two more near misses and splinter damage to another destroyers, in exchange for the loss of 7 planes. On the night of the 20th a second Italian submarine managed to penetrate into the British formation and sank a pair of transports before being depth charged into oblivion by the escorting destroyers.

On the 21st the Italians managed an even larger strike, 150 level bombers and 30 Torpedo bombers. Coordination from multiple bases proved poor and rather than an overwhelming force, they struck in groups of 30. A light cruiser was hit by two bombs, but remained combat capable, a destroyer was hit by one and lost its forward guns, while two freighters were damaged but remained able to make full speed. Later Majestic took a single torpedo hit, square in the thickest part of her torpedo defenses and remained fully combat capable. The strikes however cost the Italians 14 level bombers and 8 torpedo bombers. Two submarines attempted to attack after dark, one managed to torpedo a destroyer and slip away, with her comrade being targeted and heavily damaged before escaping the next day.

Just before midnight on the 21st Force B slipped away and began its journey north. It was spotted first, by a patrol out of Sardinia looking for the main body and triggered multiple attacks by level bombers, first a wave of 30 followed by a wave of 50 and then another of 30. These proved more accurate, as they were only facing heavy AA and not any airpower. However as level bombers, and predominantly not trained in naval strike, accuracy was still poor and seven bomb hits were managed, three on Duke of York, knocking out one secondary turret and destroying her float plane, one on Sturdee doing no damage, two hits on a light cruiser doing minor damage and one hit on a destroyer knocking out its radar and jamming a turret, in exchange for 7 aircraft shot down. The main body was spotted after the third wave was being launched and it was decided to hold back the bombers as not to feed them piecemeal into a working integrated air defense.

Force B hit Pula in early afternoon, bombarding the docks there before advancing to Cagliari, sinking a half a dozen coasters, an old destroyer and a minesweeper. Around that time 30 single engine recon aircraft launched an attack with light bombs, scoring a dozen hits and causing cosmetic damage to the Sturdee and a cruiser, backed by 30 fighters performing strafing runs that killed 70 crew and knocked out several light AA positions, at a cost of a further 12 aircraft. Force B was able to continue with its mission and advanced northeast into the Tyrrhenian Sea as a feint.

Both the main body and Force B avoided encounters with Italian submarines on the night of the 22nd. During the night Force C detached from the main body and advanced on Sicily. Force C became the primary target and 90 level bombers and 30 torpedo bombers launched a coordinated strike in late morning. Two destroyers were lost, two cruisers were damaged by bomb hits and the Hood took a torpedo and several bomb hits but remained combat capable, in exchange for the loss of 9 level and 5 torpedo bombers. In mid afternoon Force C bombarded Marsala at long range and sank a pair of coasters. Shortly thereafter it was attacked by about 100 single engine aircraft, Hood took several more bomb hits and had a fighter crash on her stern, Anson took 3 bomb hits and had a main battery turret jammed and one of the AA cruisers took a single bomb hit but remained combat capable, while almost all ships took some strafing damage for the loss of 10 aircraft. In this chaos a force of 11 MAS boats attempted to attack from the Aegates islands but were spotted by the British destroyers and were driven off with 2 losses.

While the Italians were busy with Force C and hunting for Force B in midafternoon Argus and Hermes were close enough that their Headhunters, modified with temporary extra fuel tanks, could reach Malta on a one way trip. All aircraft managed to successfully take off and in a feat of navigation all 32 arrived at their destination, guided by the six Ballistas with their onboard navigators and advanced navigation systems. With this accomplished Force A turned around for Gibralar.

During the night of the 23rd Forces A&C rendezvoused and Force B turned south to join them the next day. Italian submarines found these forces too fast to target and there were unsuccessful attempts on each of them by Italian submarines. Force D was not as lucky and two merchantmen were sunk by one submarine that escaped, while Renowntook a torpedo hit that reduced her to 24 knots but left her otherwise combat capable from a submarine which did not.

The day of the 24th proved to be complete chaos in Italian command as they were unsure whether to target the modern warships of the main body or the transports of Force D. In a decision that left Sanna distinctly unamused it was decided to split the difference rather than overwhelm one force. 90 level bombers and 15 torpedo bombers attacked the retreating main body while 45 level bombers and 75 single engine aircraft attacked Force D. The situation in the air turned into a farce as 30 of the level bombers missed the main body due to a bad guess about speed and the remainder attacked in uncoordinated waves, leading to a trio of hits on Hermes that would have rendered her unable to launch aircraft, if she was still carrying any for the loss of 9 bombers. The aircraft attacking Force D were disrupted by the fact that one of their assembly points was in range of the fighters that had been delivered to Malta and the level bombers had to scrub their attacks after losing 6 aircraft due to the fighters there. The single engine aircraft did better, sinking two transports, getting a trio of hits on Audacious that failed to penetrate her armor deck and damaging two destroyers at the cost of 11 aircraft.

During the night of the 24th Force D passed Malta and the merchantmen broke off, reaching Valetta harbor at 2:00 in the morning. An additional 3 were lost to MAS boats, as was a single destroyer in exchange for the loss of two of the small boats. 11 of the 20 freighters managed to reach the safety of the harbor, bringing food, ammunition, additional AA guns, mortars, machine guns, fuel and 6 priceless AT guns, with 12 more lost.

A Token attack by 30 level bombers was made on the main body on the 25th, hitting two cruisers and forcing one to slow down to 15 knots for the cost of a single aircraft. An attack on Force D was scrubbed by bad weather and it avoided encountering any submarines on the night of the 25th.

On the 26th Force D was attacked by two waves of 60 level bombers, one from Italy and one from Libya. The Italian attacking force mistook the heavy cruiser Cornwall for a battleship and unloaded on it, scoring 7 bomb hits, disabling her main battery and reducing her speed to 18 knots. The attacking force from Libya, not being trained for maritime strike, attacked late and disjointed, unsuccessfully attacking the destroyers making the southern portion of the screen to the exclusion of the main body. Such was the lack of coordination that most of Force D did not get a chance to use their AA guns with Warspite having had the luck to avoid needing to fire them all operation. Between the two separate attacks the Italians lost a further 8 aircraft. This proved to be the last air attack of Operation Palimpsest and the last actual attack was the sinking of a Force A destroyer by an Italian submarine at 11:00PM that day and the subsequent destruction of the submarine.

In total Britain had lost 4 destroyers and 9 freighters, with 11 more written off at Malta, along with 50 aircraft due to accident and being shot down. In return they had destroyed 8 Italian freighters, a destroyer, a minesweeper, 3 submarines and 4 MAS boats with 113 aircraft shot down, written off or forced to crash-land. Malta had air cover once more and was supplied for a siege and stubborn defense, while there was now a British fleet in the Western Mediterranean. A large number of British ships were damaged, but with the existing damage to the German and Italian heavies this was not an issue that materially effected the balance of power…

…Palimpsest was critical in buoying British morale and demonstrating to the world that Britian was still in the fight and could strike back effectively…

…Palimpsest served to color future impressions of the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of land based airpower against warships…

-Excerpt from 101 Great Naval Battles, American Youth Press, New York 2010

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…By the start of August Britain was beginning to make strides in rectifying its deficiencies in aircraft, with production of all types having increased. The first phase of intermediate Bandit conversions were being produced, while upgunned Glaives, with either 6 .55 HMG or 4 20mm Autocannon were also entering service, with both aircraft receiving an overboost modification to allow them to outperform their German opponents, for brief periods. They were complemented by the first “Gunsharks”, heavy fighter conversions of the Bullshark torpedo bomber, that would serve as both night fighters and daytime bomber destroyers.

This however was insufficient to keep fighter command strength from falling from 900 to 700 by the start of August. To preserve strength it was determined that the three air bases in coastal Kent would have to be withdrawn from on the 6th of August after too many losses on the ground. This however was followed by the activation of the new London Air Defense Area on the 7th.

The rebuilt system immediately proved its efficacy on the 8th, with a 50 bomber raid escorted by 20 fighters easily dealt with, first by a squadron of Glaives attacking from a position of strength distracting the fighters, then a squadron of Bandits intercepting the bombers. The British lost 4 fighters in exchange for 9 German ones and 11 bombers. It was a performance that would be repeated on the 9th, 11th and 12th, with multiple Luftwaffe raids being hit hard. By the 15th Von Richthofen made the decision to call off all attacks on the London metropolitan area as losses were no longer favorable.

Instead he focused on the transit links leading to the area, as well as the industry outside of it, achieving notable success. Most dramatic of this was the August 17th raid on Portsmouth that destroyed the Battleship Venerable in drydock, though more impactful were the raids on railway yards. Cargoes backed up, deliveries were delayed and the industry of the London Metropolitan area began to slow down…

…Over the course of August Fighter Command began to modernize its tactics, replacing its 3 aircraft vics and rigid formations with German style wing pairs, finger fours and loose formations. This shift contributed to a reduction in losses in most tactical situations…

…Despite the activation of the London ADA and the improvements in fighter quality and tactics, the numerical strength of fighter command continued to fall over August, dropping below 600 by the 22nd. On the 24th it was decided to evacuate the two fighter command bases in Cornwall as they were simply too exposed and suffering too many losses for too little gain. This however increased the amount of British soil that was defended only by anti-aircraft batteries and allowed the Luftwaffe to act with greater freedom. If the situation continued for much longer then it would impact aircraft production, which had the potential to lead to a defeat spiral.

To avoid that the British needed to change the nature of the battle and on the 28th they received approval from Churchill to do just that…

-Excerpt from Airpower!, Dewitt Publishing, Los Angeles, 2010

…As the Battle of Britain was being waged in the skies the Battle of the Atlantic heated up on the seas. German operations increased in tempo and British losses increased. Losses before the Fall of France had averaged 120,000 GRT a month, after the battle losses climbed to 700,000 GRT a month. This was twice the rate at which the British could replace losses.

Britain however possessed a Merchant Marine of 18 million GRT, counting that of the Empire, to which 4 million GRT of Norwegian vessels were added as were 1 million GRT of miscellaneous Dutch, Belgian, French and Danish vessels, totaling 23 million tons. Britain needed at least 6 million GRT to feed itself, 10 million to wage a defensive war and 15 million to wage an offensive one according to, flawed, German estimates. At the current rate of loss Britain would be forced to massively scale back military operations within 20 months they predicted…

…In the North Atlantic, where the vast majority of the U-Boats operated, the British were able to run convoys and protect their shipping. The loss of the French navy meant that they had to run fewer convoys with less proportional escort, which proved less of a problem then they feared, but they could still protect their convoys from submarines and merchant raiders. Aircraft proved problematic as they had few vessels with effective heavy AA that could be spared for convoy duty given the need to divert the converted AA cruisers and destroyers to fleet duties and the short range of the new escort destroyers. Worse even if they did manage to scrape up AA escorts, the Kriegsmarine’s long range aircraft could simply stay out of range and call for the U-Boats.

It was proposed early on to fit some merchantmen with catapults to launch an aircraft to defend the convoy, which would then ditch and the pilot would be recovered. However losses in the Battle of Britain meant that the British could not afford to throw away even obsolete fighters. Thus it was instead proposed to build a flight deck over the deck of existing grain carriers and to carry 3-4 fighters in a deck park which could maintain a 1 plane CAP, sufficient to deal with isolated long range aircraft, while still being able to carry the vast majority of their cargo of grain. They would be followed by converted from the keel up merchant vessels as time and resources allowed which would carry 20-30 aircraft and provide protection against all types of foe, aerial, surface and submerged.

The first conversions were ordered on September 1st and construction began by the end of the month. 50 were planned so that every convoy could be protected by at least one…

…Outside of the North Atlantic the British lacked the ability to run convoys. They simply lacked the forces available to do so in 1941. These theaters were far enough away that the majority of the U-Boats could not reach, with only the relatively rare Type IX and handful of Type X able to do so, along with merchant raiders. While the latter could be hunted down, and usually were within a short time, the longer ranged U-Boats were much more difficult and wreaked havoc on the independently sailing merchantmen, mitigated only by travel time minimizing the number of sorties possible…

Excerpt From A Naval History of the European War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2008




A/N Part 6-47 has been rewritten to be a bit more plausible, no significant changes on the macro scale

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…Following the defeat of France Japan saw an opportunity to break the stalemate in China by cutting off the Chinese supply of arms and other material through French Indochina and began preparations to occupy the colony. This came to the attention of the Italian diplomatic mission in Tokyo and from there to Sanna himself, who immediately worried that this could lead to an expansion of the war that would make things more difficult to control.

Sanna therefore brokered a deal where French Indochina would remain nominally unoccupied, but that Japan would have the ability to lease a base at Haiphong for a nominal fee and station troops within 50 miles of the northern border of the colony in an “Inspection Zone”, who would be authorized to preserve the neutrality of the colony by intercepting deliveries of war material. This compromise prevented both an erosion of the authority of the Vichy government and served to keep the United States from doing anything too rash about the Japanese presence. After all the British had maintained a similar presence in Iceland and the Faroe Islands since April and the United States did not complain about that.

The United States was still very displeased by the actions, both in providing the Japanese with a stronger position and the cutting off the flow of supplies to the Chinese. Sanna’s mediation did however provide enough of a fig leaf that the United States took no action against France, Italy or Japan directly…

…Sanna followed up his mediation between France and Japan with a mediation between Siam and France. The Siamese had lost a considerable amount of territory to the French over the decades and wanted some of them back, and with a powerful military they had a chance of overrunning the French territory in question. The only way for the French to preserve control of their territory would be to either invite in the British, providing a wedge for the London Government to gain legitimacy, or to invite in the Japanese and anger the Americans.

To avoid either case Sanna, with Japanese aid, brokered a deal to sell Battambang, Pailin, Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey, Oddar Meanchey, Preah Vihear, part of Champassak, Xaignabouli and part of Luang Prabang to Siam for a total of 150 million Francs, payable in cash or goods over 5 years. This prevented a war and served to increase Italian influence over France. It also served to increase Japanese influence over Siam in the coming months as they agreed to purchase basing right in Siam in order to provide the Siamese with the cash needed to pay for the purchase…

…With the creation of the Indochinese “Inspection Zone” all supplies from the west to China were forced to go up the recently completed Burma Road, a much more difficult journey that both increased transportation time and reduced throughput…

…Japan immediately attempted to pressure Britian into closing the Burma Road in the summer of 1941. The British were willing to do so to avoid a potential front in the Pacific and a draft agreement was made shortly before the American ambassador was informed. The British were then told in no uncertain terms that if they closed the Burma Road they would not receive the aid they were asking for from the United States.

There was a brief debate in the Foreign Office before it was decided that while the United States probably would not actually halt aid to Britian over the closure of the Burma Road, aid from the United States would be delivered later and in reduced quantity in that eventuality, while the Japanese were unlikely to actually go to war over the Burma Road at the moment. The vital supply route thus remained open…

…Vichy France was the biggest diplomatic headache for all parties involved in the latter half of 1941 but especially for the United States. While American sympathy was with Britian, it was nonetheless felt in the State Department during the latter half of 1941 that Britain had no chance of actually winning the war and that she was simply fighting for a white peace. While Britain obtaining such a peace was certainly in the interests of the United States, it would mean that the Vichy regime would remain in charge of France after the end of the war and thus it was in American interests to retain good relations with France as well as with Britain.

That meant that the United States continued to recognize Vichy as the legitimate government of France over the British puppets in London and continued the existing purchasing contracts for American weapons and material. Vichy would retain full control of French finances in the American sphere of influence and the US government stated that it would look poorly on fighting in the Western Hemisphere which served to preserve Vichy’s control over their colonies in the Hemisphere…

…The French Government in Exile in London started with only a tiny amount of territory, a score of acres of land on St. Helena, the territories in India and the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, all territories in very close proximity to overwhelming British force. This was followed by French Polynesia in September and New Caledonia in October, after troops from Australia and New Zealand arrived in overwhelming force and convinced the French leadership of the colonies to resign in favor of pro London appointees.

Britian attempted to negotiate a deal with the United States that would allow them to do the same to French colonies in the Western Hemisphere but the United States held firm. Colonial territories in the Western Hemisphere would not change hands by force in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Lord Halifax argued and made some progress in convincing the Americans that the colonies were not changing hands, but merely changing which administration they were reporting to, however this was not sufficient to sway the McNutt Administration. If Vichy was the legitimate government of France, which the US recognized, then by allowing the seizure of French colonies by the London government would be equivalent to aiding and abetting a rebellion…

…A key piece of British leverage was their technological developments, something that they felt was necessary to use as a bargaining chip to obtain greater aid from the United States. The British Technical Mission was sent in September 1941 with all of Britain’s latest developments to try and shift the needle in US discussions of aid…

-Excerpt From Deals with Devils: Diplomacy before and During the Second World War, Johnstone Press, Seattle, 2005

…At the start of August the Italians launch attacks out of East Africa against the British. The primary attack was on British Somaliland, where the Italians sent 25,000 men against 4,000 defenders and overran the British colony in about two weeks. Smaller spoiling attacks were launched to take buffer zones in Kenya and the Sudan, as well as the fortress and railway junction of Kassala in the Sudan. All of this was accomplished by the end of August and the Italians settled into conducting a raiding campaign as part of an active defense of East Africa…

…The Italian Flotilla in the Red Sea consisted of 8 destroyers, 2 torpedo boats, 6 MAS Boats, 8 Submarines and 10 auxiliaries. Upon the outbreak of the war they attempted to cut British supply routes through the Red Sea to Egypt. This failed miserably, the older ships assigned to East Africa had been given low quality crews and were at the bottom of the priority list for supplies. They sortied only a few times and failed to achieve anything beyond the sinking of a few armed trawlers and light to moderate damage to a few British escorts and destroyers. The submarines did slightly better, but sank less than a score of freighters between them, and British convoy operations were not affected in the slightest. By the end of 1941 the Italian Red Sea Flotilla effectively ceased to be a factor…

…Following the early offensive into Egypt the campaign turned to a static war of bombing, artillery duels and raiding. The more energetic British forces proved superior at raiding, forming small units of highly mobile offroad vehicles, while Italian air superiority allowed them to conduct an effective campaign of bombing to hamper British logistics.

It was in artillery that the situation was evenly matched. The Italians had more guns, a few longer ranged 149mm heavy guns, the benefit of aerial reconnaissance and the ability to operate unhindered on their side. The British however, thanks to their possession of a railhead going right up to their position rather a couple hundred miles behind them, had a much greater supply of ammunition and were limited only be their, ample, supply of replacement barrels. Thus while the Italians hammered any targets they could see during the daylight with short intense bursts of fire, at night the British removed their guns from hiding and dropped over the course of hours several times as much fire, albeit with much less accuracy…

…It was November before the Italians had built up their logistics to the point of being ready to take the offensive in Egypt once again…

-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001

…The British Technical Mission was one of the biggest diplomatic blunders of the war. Instead of carefully doling out Britian’s hard earned technical secrets for maximum effect, the Cabinet decided to give over everything at once for an insultingly low price…

-A Setting Sun, the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, Bodley Head, Nottingham, 2015

…The Contributions of the British Technical Mission were of four main types.

The first was technologies that were inferior or at most equivalent to what the United States had. This included bomb sights, most forms of radar, examples of sonar systems, rockets, shaped charge designs, early prototype proximity fuses and degaussing equipment.

The second category was technologies that had a niche use or were minor improvements. These included cone gun designs, new explosive formulations, gas formulations, Lewisite antidote, gyroscopic gunsights and jet engines.

The third category was extremely important technologies of war impacting proportion, of which only two stand out. The British version of the Cavity Magnetron was two orders of magnitude superior to the Cavity Magnetrons developed by the United States and other powers of the war and enabled effective airborne radar in the early years of the war. The second was the antibiotic Penicillin, which saved an enormous amount of lives.

The fourth of course was Britian’s research into atomic weapons…

…Given the situation that Britian was in the American response to the British technical mission was surprisingly generous. Surprisingly large license fees were given for the production of magnetrons and gunsights, while fixed payments were made for Penicillin and other chemical formulations, as well as British jet engine research. These took the form of credits which Britian would use to purchase material in the United States…

…One of the most important British purchases paid in cash was the fall 1941 order for 450,000 GRT of tramp freighters to a standardized design to be built in a pair of brand new shipyards and all completed by October 1943…

-Excerpt From Before the Storm: American Neutrality in WWII, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2000

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…On August 30th every single bomber in the RAF that could fly and reach Berlin with a bomb took off as part of the largest single RAF operation of the war. 167 bombers were dispatched to hit the German capital during the night, despite the suboptimal moon and weather conditions. 151 Bombers made it to Germany and 118 found the Berlin metropolitan area, with 101 managing to drop bombs within in, 47 within the city proper. German night fighter defenses were in shambles and made only a handful of interceptions, while Flak batteries, despite the earlier Polish raid on the city were even worse off, not firing until after the first bombs had fallen.

In the end about 40 tons of bombs fell on the city itself, killing 33, in exchange for the loss of 12 British bombers and 2 German night fighters. It was by most standards a pinprick, less damaging than the Polish raid that opened the war and that itself had caused no significant damage. What was significant however was Hitler’s reaction to it. He was furious and he demanded that London be levelled in revenge.

Von Richthofen, not wanting to send his aircraft into a hornets nest and making good progress on his unzipping campaign, planned to mollify Hitler with a limited bombing raid by Ju-76s flying at relatively high altitude on the 3rd. This was however preempted by a 100 bomber repeat raid on Berlin by the British and Hitler’s reaction was positively volcanic, made even worse by the anemic response of Von Richthofen. He demanded that the Luftwaffe hit London with everything that could reach the city, immediately.

On the 4th 400 Luftwaffe bombers protected by 120 fighters attacked London. Target planning was minimal and coordination was poor, giving the outnumbered British a chance to engage the Germans piecemeal and inflict very favorable losses. The Germans lost 39 fighters and 51 Bombers, in exchange for 19 British fighters, and killing 127 civilians. The British then followed it up with a 50 bomber night raid on Berlin, despite the full moon.

Hitler demanded greater retaliation against London and Von Richthofen was forced to abandon most other targets to hit London hard. The RAF, on the verge of having to withdraw from its airbases in Southern England outside of the London metro area altogether, was given a much needed reprieve and the British transportation industry received a similar one. British industrial production continued to climb and British aircraft production began to overtake German production.

To his credit Von Richthofen attempted to focus on industrial targets, transportation hubs and suppressing the air fields of the London Metro area. However the British had concentrated their AA assets around London’s most valuable targets, in particular the airfields, leading to heavy losses for minimal results. He was unable to shift to softer targets as RAF Bomber Command had found its rhythm and kept launching 40-50 plane night raids against Berlin where circumstances permitted, keeping Hitler in a frenzy. The dive bombers continued to attack coastal targets and FW-117 heavy fighter launched nuisance raids as the former lacked the range to attack London and the latter as fighters could escape notice.

On September 20th the situation for the Luftwaffe became worse as the British were able to expand the London ADA to roughly double the radius, covering more targets within the umbrella and allowing earlier interceptions. Losses continued to climb and on the 24th no fewer than 100 Luftwaffe aircraft were lost as part of an attempt to swamp the British defenses with a gigantic raid of 450 bombers and 650 fighters. After a smaller raid on the 26th was equally savaged Von Richthofen made the decision on the 28th to call off daylight bombing of London with bombers.

Instead he switched to a round the clock strategy. In the day London would be attacked by bomb carrying fighters heavily protected by unencumbered fighters and capable of dropping their bombs and dogfighting if needed. At night the bombers would attack unescorted, reducing accuracy but increasing survivability. He hoped that a few days of this could convince Hitler to allow him to conduct more than nuisance raids outside of London. Unbeknownst to him RAF losses in forcing that change had been heavy with RAF fighter strength bottoming out at 512 aircraft on September 29th.

The change in strategy was successful, dropping bomber losses by 80% for two weeks until British tactics shifted and they began transferring older Bandits to nightfighter duties and conducting intruder operations on returning bombers with Gunsharks and converted Swordsman nightfighters, increasing losses to 50% of what they had been in September. German fighter losses remained constant, but British fighter losses fell as the frontline force consisted almost entirely of Glaives by this point who could generally escape unfavorable conditions given the Germans were operating at the edge of their range. However damage to British industry and their transportation network dropped as by bombing at night the bombers could not hit individual targets and despite operating in daylight the fighter pilots were not heavily trained in target identification and had a more difficult job without onboard bombardiers.

On October 11th the London ADA expanded once again, covering the airfields in Kent and allowing their reoccupation. Thus a German raid was surprised on the 12th well before they expected combat and was forced to turn back. A second shock was delivered on the 15th when American SEV 6 and Hawk 105 export fighters rose up to meet their fighters alongside the British Glaives.

This second shock saw Von Richthofen successfully argue that he needed to be able to do more than just bomb London now that the British were getting fighters from the US. He needed to be able to attack the docks to prevent further imports and the transport systems that fed British factories if he was to achieve air superiority, rather than just hope to beat down the British by attacking London. This was accepted by Hitler, providing he continued to deliver 5 times the tonnage on London that the British did on Berlin, something he could achieve without nearly his full bomber force.

By this point however it was too late. Too much of Britain was now covered by an effective air defense network and British fighter strength had recovered to over 700 aircraft, with the open cockpit biplanes finally phased out completely. There were still uncovered areas, but most of the Luftwaffe bomber bases were located to attack Southeastern England and bombers would require a significant dogleg to avoid it, cutting payload. Worse most targets were outside of escort range, meaning that even standard Bandits could operate with impunity.

Raids on the 17th and 19th suffered heavy losses, and while a raid against the Midlands on the 20th was successful, it was clear from all involved that it was a fluke that was unlikely to be repeated. Without the ability to degrade the British fighter force faster than the German bomber force the daylight version of the Entpacken strategy had to be abandoned. Fortunately for Von Richtohofen his engineers had a solution that would allow him to effectively bomb by night…

…The 1941 British raids on Berlin are a textbook example of using airpower to achieve a strategic aim. By targeting political weaknesses they forced the Luftwaffe into a suboptimal strategy that prevented it from effectively using its strength to degrade their resource base…

-Excerpt from Airpower!, Dewitt Publishing, Los Angeles, 2010

…By the end of September the Kriegsmarine was able to convince Hitler that the window for an invasion had passed, that they would not have good enough weather for an invasion until May. What few preparations for the so called Sea Lion that were made were cancelled and Hitler began asking for options on how to defeat Britain apart from the ongoing air and naval campaigns.

The Heer suggested an attack in the Mediterranean, but that would require working with Sanna, which Hitler did not want, and the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine both pointed out that the logistics were poor, so the option was dismissed. An operation against Gibraltar via Spain was also considered, however General Mola was refusing to get involved, with Sanna’s backing, and the economic organs of the Reich all wanted Spain to remain neutral. This too was dismissed.

Attacking the Middle East through Turkey could avoid that, but would require a great deal of diplomatic preparations to bring in Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania or Yugoslavia as necessary precursors. Discussion shifted to this subject as the only possibly way to bring ground forces to bear against the British.

An hour into the discussion as the topic became tempting Romania with security guarantees against the Soviet Union Hitler interrupted and asked why not simply invade the Soviet Union. Planning for Operation Otto, as the invasion was codenamed, had begun even before the fighting had ended in France, as the Soviet Union was always Hitler’s primary target for German expansion. However Hitler, for quite logical reasons, had wanted to defeat Britain before fighting the USSR and he was unanimously supported in this. Now it seemed that he had changed his mind.

The other participants at the meeting were aghast, but their objections only seemed to embolden Hitler. The eternal German worry of a two front war was dismissed, Sanna was keeping Britain occupied in the Mediterranean and the air and naval wars barely counted. Claims that it would cost more resources than would be gained were dismissed by the wealth of the Ukraine and the ability to demobilize many of the divisions guarding against a Soviet betrayal. Argument after argument was dismissed and with each one Hitler grew more and more enamored of the prospect. By the end of the meeting he was certain. The USSR would be invaded in May 1942…

…During the discussions relating to Operation Otto it is notable that there were no concerns about the ability of the Wehrmacht to actually defeat the Soviet Union. The poor performance of the USSR in Finland, where it took 4 times as long for the USSR to overrun a tiny nation as it did for Germany to overran the strongest realm in Europe, convinced everyone that the Soviet Army while very large was rotten to the core. The question in Germany was not if they could defeat the Soviets but simply how long would it take…

-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…With the end of the French campaign it became difficult for Germany to ignore pressure from the USSR to fulfill their portion of the Moscow agreement, particularly the part about pressuring the Romanians into ceding Bessarabia to the USSR. While Germany was no longer as dependent on the USSR for raw materials, with the British blockade disrupted by the Fall of France and access to French stockpiles, Germany still required them for full war production. Hitler was intending to betray Stalin and invade in the coming year, but until that point wanted to keep the Soviet dictator strung along so that he could support as big a short term buildup to prepare for the invasion as he could manage.

To that end he began to excerpt pressure on Romania to cede Bessarabia to the USSR, something he was now able to do as Germany was the only country that could supply military equipment to Romania now that Italy was distracted with the war against Britian. The Romanians agreed to attend a conference in Varna with the Soviets in September, as they felt threatened by the fact that Hitler was known to be shipping parts of the old Czech military industrial complex to their rival Hungary.

At Varna the Romanians agreed to cede Bessarabia to the USSR effective December 1st 1941. In exchange Hitler offered them the Hungarian counties of Temes, Krasso-Szoreny, Hunyad, Szeben and Fogaras, all of which had Romanian majorities, under the condition that the rights of the German minorities in the area be respected. Hungary was convinced to accept this deal at a later conference in October, also in Varna, after threats to cut off shipments of tooling for their military industry…

…The cessation of Bessarabia to the USSR made Romania amenable to German overtures over the winter of 1941 into 1942 to join a secret alliance against the USSR, as Germany promised to restore the lost territory should she be victorious. Hungary was similarly enticed into that alliance with promises of territory in the General Government region…

…The First Varna Agreement created yet another rift between Hitler and Sanna, the latter of whom was furious about Hitler so directly enabling Soviet expansion. Yet given Italy’s economic position he could not afford to do more than complain, Italy needed deliveries of German coal and Britain was unresponsive to Italian overtures for a separate ceasefire…

…With the decision made to invade the USSR there were discussions on how to do it. Invading out of Poland was a certainty, and out of Romania was one of the first additions to the plan. This was followed by an invasion out of Norway, with a certain degree of unofficial Swedish logistic support, officially to liberate Finland, in practice to simply secure the Nickel mines of Petsamo. It was the possibility of a fourth front that caused the most debate.

The Soviet Union had a border with Turkey in Anatolia and a number of factions in Germany saw that as a potential fourth front against them. On the face of it the idea seemed ludicrous, the official Turkish government barely controlled the Constantinople metropole thanks to the presence of foreign soldiers and Demir’s shadow government only consisted of barely armed militias that would have extreme difficulty with overcoming the Soviet Border Guards, let alone real Soviet troops. Despite this there were three groups within the Heer that lobbied for the formation of a Turkish front.

The first and most logical were the logisticians. They did not care about the actually fighting on that front at all and simply wanted the Straits open to naval shipping, which bringing Turkey into the war would allow, in order to reduce the burdens on the rail system in the Ukraine, which they though would outweigh the costs of keeping an Anatolian front open. The second group were the Gebirgejaegers, who wanted to open another front they would control that would give them glory to compete with the more central fronts who would be dominated by the Panzerwaffe. The third was the Turkish lobby, consisting of old members of the Imperial German Military Mission to Turkey, who had an exaggerated respect for the fighting power of the Turks and sincerely believed that the Turks would be more of a benefit than a loss.

Between them the three groups managed to convince a majority of the Heer brass to support opening a Turkish front against the Soviet Union. Hitler was very skeptical over this, and did not want to alienate the Greeks, who had a powerful military. Hitler however was soon convinced, not solely by the merits of the arguments for Turkey but by the fact that the only way to get Bulgaria to do more than passively acquiesce to an invasion of the USSR but to actively contribute would require alienating Greece. With Sanna’s claims against Greece as a potential bludgeon the foreign office predicted that they could force Greece to give up their recently acquired parts of Thrace to Bulgaria without a fight, both bringing in Bulgaria against the USSR and providing a route to Turkey. This was enough for Hitler to approve of the opening of a Turkish front and the actions needed to support Demir…

…Demir’s November 11th March on Constantinople saw the collapse of the Ottoman government, with the Sultan fleeing to Greece. The League of Nations troops who had kept the city secure had either already left due to the war or been intimidated into doing nothing by German threats. The official Ottoman troops went over to Demir wholesale and the capture of the city was relatively bloodless with Demir being careful to only use his most disciplined forces.

Demir himself did not officially take control over the state but rather installed one of the Sultan’s distant cousins who was a follower of his as Caliph and Commander of the Faithful after a nominal election. Demir however was most certainly the power behind the throne…

…Demir’s official takeover of Turkey saw Greece become increasingly alarmed. The Greeks despite favoring the French and British had adopted a policy of strict neutrality to avoid provoking Sanna. After the Fall of France they had congratulated themselves on avoiding a potential pitfall. Now with Germany actively courting Demir and expanding their influence in the Balkans they were afraid that they were on the chopping block as part of a deal between Hitler and Sanna.

Worried that they might find themselves invaded even if they did nothing the Greeks reached out to the British to make a secret security agreement. If Greece was invaded by Germany or Italy then the British would do their best to aid Greece and plans were made on how that might be accomplished…

…Demir’s capture of Constantinople and the subsequent actions by Hitler and the Vichy government ironically provided the French government in London with the greatest boost to its legitimacy yet. In courting Demir Hitler had ordered the Vichy government to withdraw its troops from Turkey and to turn over a number of arms caches in Syria to Demir. The former was done but the latter caused High Commissioner of the Levant Gabriel Puaux to balk. Puaux was an old diplomatic hand who while supporting the Vichy government was a French patriot first and foremost.

Puaux was quite worried about Demir, whose fanatics had been a worry for both his and his predecessors administration. Seeing his orders to aid Demir, Puaux assumed that Hitler was trying to push for an attack on British positions in Iraq, Palestine and the Transjordan using Demir’s fanatics as an army. Puaux was quite worried that if he allowed Demir’s fanatics into French territory that they would not leave willingly and would stir up a religious conflict that would make governing impossible even if they did leave.

Puaux thus took the step of declaring neutrality and took the arms caches intended for Demir to raise militias of Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shiites and Kurds who would have every reason to oppose Demir. In secret he reached out to the British and made the offer to join the London government if the French mandates were invaded…

…After Italy entered the war Sanna abandoned his attempts to destabilize Yugoslavia in order to focus on a single problem at a time. This left the ultra-nationalist Chetniks who he had supported without a patron and at risk of collapsing without an influx of resources. To rectify this they turned to Germany, offering to join the war if Germany would aid them in taking over Yugoslavia.

With Yugoslavia being a nominally pro-British monarchy, that nonetheless was very careful to stay absolutely neutral and even showed some economic favoritism to Germany, elements of the German foreign office jumped at the chance to move the country into a full blown puppet state. The matter was brought up to Hitler who was very interested in having Yugoslavia change sides and provide some cannon fodder for his planned invasion of the USSR. The Chetniks soon found themselves with more resources than they had ever had and in a position to actually carry out their plans for Yugoslavia…

…Following the Fall of France President of the Irish Executive Council Michael Collins felt the time was finally right for Ireland to become truly independent. With the support of the Dail and Seanad he issued a Unilateral Declaration that Ireland was no longer a Dominion of the British Empire but a Free and Independent Republic on September 11th 1941. The monarchy was abolished, the Governor General removed and British control over Irish foreign policy ended…

…In November 1941 Prime Minister Churchill attempted to pressure President Collins to allow the use of the so called Treaty Ports, naval facilities and airfields guaranteed for British use in the Anglo-Irish treaty, for protection of British commerce against U-Boats and long range aircraft. Collins refused stating that such was a violation of Irish neutrality and that the Treaty was both signed under duress and now void thanks to the abolition of Ireland’s Dominion status. When Churchill threatened military action Collins responded not only by mobilizing the Irish Defense Forces but by formally renaming them the Irish Republican Army, Irish Republican Navy and Irish Republican Air Corps…

…Prior to Collin’s Unilateral Declaration there was some discussion in the British Foreign Office of attempting to bribe Ireland into joining the war by promising unification with Ulster at the end of the war. This was not followed through with because it was pointed out that the Irish would never believe they would intend on following through and that it would be bad for morale if the offer was leaked. Furthermore it was pointed out that public outcry would prevent Britain from following through on it, that a civil war would ensue if they tried, and that the Irish were quite convinced that the British were going to lose and did not want to offend Germany…

-Excerpt From Deals with Devils: Diplomacy before and During the Second World War, Johnstone Press, Seattle, 2005

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…The British had been aware of the German Lorenz bombing gear since fairly early in the war, when a damaged German bomber on a mining mission made a relatively soft crashlanding in Kent. The Lorenz Gear, typically used for bad weather landing, was far more powerful than needed for that purpose and the British determined that it was a bomb aiming system fairly quickly. However they made one mistake, in that they determined that it was purely a short ranged tactical bombing system, meant for use in close proximity to the frontlines in coordination with ground troops. This was due to an oversight, knowing that the frequencies used were suitable only for near line of sight use, and not realizing that with elevated transmitters aircraft at 20,000 feet were effectively line of site even at a distance of over 400 miles. By using two beams, one projected from the Ruhr and one from the Danish border, bombers could follow one and then release when encountering the other beam, which intersected in an area approximately a hundred yards across right over their target.

The first raid with the device occurred on October 30th with 50 bombers attacking an aircraft factory in the Midlands in concert with a larger raid on London and several smaller raids on other targets. The attack was a success, with the factory in question knocked out for 8 months, but poor intelligence meant that the factory they targeted was only producing trainers and not fighters or bombers. Furthermore the choice of a factory for a target at all clashed with the goal of the Luftwaffe’s campaign as it stood at the end of October. Von Richthofen wanted to combine nighttime bomber attacks with daytime fighter attacks to cripple the British transportation net, and thus the British economy. However by the end of October he was busy planning the air portions of Otto and organizing the defense of the Reich, leaving the Battle of Britain to subordinates. This meant he did not notice that the Lorenz bombing team continued to target factories in accordance with early directives that it was meant for use against point targets, with area targets to be handled with conventional bombing and not shifting to the revised definition that included railway marshalling yards as point targets for night bombers.

Four additional Lorenz guided attacks occurred in the first week of November, impacting bomber production and knocking out a plant for tank engines, before the British noticed that the German night attacks were too accurate for conventional navigation. A modified bomber was set up and noticed the presence of powerful Lorenz beams, converging over an aircraft factory making transports, thanks to the German practice of turning on the beams twelve hours before the mission.

Three more factories were knocked out before the British successfully managed a method of interfering with the German system by using local transmitters to mimic the crossbeams on the 15th, effectively providing many possible target points and no way to differentiate save by minute timing differences in the signals. Accuracy plummeted and became worse than even conventional night bombing, which was lucky to hit London. Despite this the Germans kept attempting to use the system, even as the British improved their jamming within a weak to be precisely synchronized to the German signal and thus totally indistinguishable.

In the daylight the Germans continued with coastal and Channel attacks by dive bombers, nuisance raids with heavy fighters and massed attacks by single engine fighters on the British transport system. The Germans did not attempt to press harder in order to begin conserving aircraft for Otto, but continued at a low enough pace to be sustainable.

On November 26th the British received a lucky break in the form of forewarning about a raid on Portsmouth thanks to an agent in occupied France. Fighter Command was massed and able to intercept the Germans over the channel and inflict dreadful losses, shooting down 38 fighters for the loss of 8. The loss of multiple squadrons in a single day came at the same time as high command began reducing replacements to prepare for Otto. Already needing to reduce operations to match the reduced pace of replacement aircraft the severe losses led to a temporary halt to operations over Britian and a reduction in operations over the channel. The British quickly filled the gap and increased patrols of their own.

By December 5th the Luftwaffe was unable to conduct daylight operations with dive bombers over the British coast and was forced to curtail operations over the Channel, while their nuisance raids were cut in half. Luftwaffe planners considered taking the offensive again once they recovered but an audacious British raid that destroyed 21 fighters on the ground on the 7th made that impractical for the moment.

At night things continued to get worse as the British began to be able to do more than jam but effectively manipulate the German Lorenz beams, allowing them to cause them to drop their bombs in open wasteland and to interfere with their navigation so that they could not find their way home properly. Bomber losses climbed precipitously and it became clear that the twin beam Lorenz Bombing System was useless. On the 10th Von Richthofen temporarily called off all bombing of Britian outside of retaliation missions on London while he attempted to crate a strategy to defeat Britain with the resources available in the west.

Very quickly he found that his only option was to wait for the more advanced and difficult to jam Multi Beam Lorenz system, which would not be available until January. Between the cessation of directed night bombing and the pulling back of German fighters the British were thus given a reprieve of a month, during which they were able to vastly improve their position. December 9th is thus considered the end of the Battle of Britian…

…The Primary German failure in the Battle of Britian was Hitler’s retaliation against London, wasting resources on a symbolic target that could have been used to degrade British air defenses and production. The second failure was the division between attacking British industry and attacking transport targets, had the latter been focused exclusively on, as the former could not be, the results would have been significantly greater. The third was the failure of Luftwaffe intelligence to properly identify and prioritize targeting amongst the categories so that what they did have could be applied to maximum effect.

As it was the Battle of Britian can only be considered a partial failure, as it did keep Britian’s air assets pinned to the British isles for all of 1941 and had a significant impact on British production at a time when it was most significant…

…The British lost about 2400 aircraft, 1700 fighters, 500 bombers and 200 other types, while the Germans lost 2500, 1200 fighters, 1200 bombers and 100 other types. In aircrew losses were 2150 British dead and 50 POW and 3200 German dead with 1300 POW. As British aircraft production overtook German the loss ratio broadly favored the British, while in aircrew the losses were even more favorable to the British with their superior aircrew training system. British aircrew quality increased over the course of the battle while German quality fell somewhat…

…With the end of the Battle of Britian initiative in the air shifted from the Luftwaffe to the RAF, with Bomber Command eager to avenge Britain’s suffering on Germany, once they had the resources to do a proper job of it…

-Excerpt from Airpower!, Dewitt Publishing, Los Angeles, 2010

…On November 3rd the water pipe to the Egyptian frontier was complete and Sanna was ready to take the offensive in North Africa once again. He had reinforced his troops in the theater to 4 infantry, 2 motorized and 2 armored divisions, though only two of the infantry divisions were combat capable, with heavy air support. Against this the British had one armored and one Indian infantry division present in the field, with an additional British infantry division split between the Suez canal zone and Cairo and an Australian infantry division in the process of unloading at Port Suez.

Sanna’s goal was to destroy the two British divisions at the front, which would force the British to divert troops from Kenya and protect Italian East Africa by proxy. He planned to use his foot infantry divisions backed by one motorized and one armored division to occupy the British while sweeping around behind them with his other divisions in a shallow flanking maneuver.

The operation began on November 15th with a sharp hurricane bombardment, followed by a massed air attack. The British lacked the ability to contest the skies and Italian air supremacy meant that their artillery could not respond effectively. Despite that the British were well dug in with properly sited defenses, and the generally inadequate nature of the Italian artillery park was felt here, with the Italian assault made only tentative progress on the first day. During the night the British artillery responded with a vengeance, inflicting moderate casualties on the exposed Italians, but not risking the assault.

On the 16th the diversionary assault continued while the Italians launched the flanking maneuver. They were constrained by the escarpment to their south, which made it easy for the British to spot the maneuver. Many small skirmishes were fought between the Italian vanguard and the British scouts on their flank, with the more aggressive and motivated British performing better despite their numerical disadvantage.

On the 17th fighting on the front began to reduce as the British infantry began a phased fall back while the British armor attempted to counter attack the Italian flanking attack. The British tanks were better handled but most of them were machine gun armed lights, with relatively few 2pdr armed units. The Italians had proportionally more of their 47mm armed tanks in their force and more tanks in total. Losses were mostly equal, which favored the more numerous Italians, who were also able to hold the field and recover their disabled tanks while the British could not.

Seeing the writing on the wall the British began a withdrawal to Sidi Barrani on the 18th. The Italians harassed them every step of the way with armored cars and air power. On the 20th after several skirmishes went badly the British decided to withdraw to El Tarfaya about 10 miles further east, completing the withdrawal on the 23rd. The Italians captured Sidi Barrani on the 24th and made no further attempt to pursue, preferring to let their logistics catch up before resuming with a planned offensive…

…Following the battle for Sidi Barrani the British received a large amount of equipment sent from the British isles after the invasion scare ended that served to replace their losses.
In terms of tanks and armored cars they were back to full strength while in terms of artillery and anti-aircraft weapons they were actually stronger, with the only deficiency being in towed AT guns.

Additional aircraft would take slightly longer, with Headsman squadrons being stood up at the beginning of January and finally reducing Italian Air Supremacy to mere superiority…

…Despite the success of Operation Palimpsest the Italians managed to once more neutralize Malta’s airpower by the 6th of August and were from then on able to once more bomb the island with impunity. The British, whose carrier wings had been depleted in the course of Palimpsest were unable to repeat the performance and the Italians were able to steadily degrade the island’s defenses.

After 4 months of preparatory bombing and naval bombardments they were finally ready to eliminate the potential threat to their supply line in January…

…By the end of the year the British had been able to mass enough forces in Kenya from their African colonies and Dominion to launch an invasion of Italian Somalia…

-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001






A/N Okay I won't say I've really recovered from my father's untimely passing, but I am ready to start writing again, as a return to some semblance of normalcy

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…While various stopgap measures to support the British had been passed by the end of 1941 it was clear to President McNutt and his advisers that these would not be sufficient to keep Britain in the war long enough to secure a white peace, as was believed to be the best possible outcome at the time. A comprehensive aid program to provide Britain with American arms she could not otherwise afford was needed to ensure that she could protect her convoys and airspace, hold onto Egypt, erode the French and Italian positions in Africa and put pressure on Germany.

McNutt’s advisers, primarily former President Roosevelt, proposed offering to lend Britain such equipment as she needed to fight the war. Roosevelt simply suggested that the British would return any remaining equipment after the end of the war, with destroyed equipment and damage being written off. He however was overruled by the rest of the President’s advisers who felt that was more of a gift than a loan, and that there was no mood for an outright gift among the American people rather than a loan. No for it to be a loan then the United States would have to receive back all that it had sent, and with interest at that.

Furthermore given that the British had previously defaulted on war loans made by the United States, loans made from a stronger financial position at that, there would need to be some security that the British would pay them back, rather than default on them when convenient…

…Securing the Wartime Material Support Loan Act was difficult. Almost all of the British owned assets within the United States were already encumbered from previous loans, and even if they were not would not suffice to fully collateralize a loan of this magnitude, which was estimated to exceed 5 billion dollars at a minimum. Even adding British assets in friendly countries did not sufficiently shift the needle to make it practical.

One suggestion was to have parts of the British empire be used as collateral, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Ascension Island and others. While sufficiently valuable this presented the problem that Britain could not be compelled to hand them over in case of a default save by force. A modified version of this was suggested instead. Rather than hold the land as collateral, it would be the resource rights. Trinidad’s oil, Jamaica’s Aluminum, South Georgia’s sealing and more.

Britain would be required to transfer ownership of those rights for the duration of the loan to British government owned but New York listed corporations, whose shares would serve as collateral. This proposal received much more support, both as it was easier to enforce, that it would be more profitable in the event of default as few of Britain’s colonies were actually profitable to administer, and that it would not lead to any more nonwhites entering the US.

Of course Britain could still use physical control over the territory to circumvent the effects of a default, even if having to completely reorient the money flows would reduce potential profits. To further ensure that Britain would not default it would be required that Britain return to the Gold Standard within 5 years of the wars end, and to keep no less than 95% of the gold reserves backing the Pound within the United States, where they would serve as additional security, while not directly stated as collateral they could be seized if Britain did attempt to renege on its collateral obligations. These provisions would very severely punish any British default…

…The main problem that the passage of the Wartime Material Support Loan Act faced was that Britain had few fanatical partisans in the United States. American sympathy was on the British side, but there was relatively limited will to make sacrifices for them and much of that had been taken up by the limited relief acts that preceded them. If Britain wanted further American help then the prevailing mood was that Britain would have to do something for the United States to earn it…

…To win over sufficient votes to pass it was made a requirement that to be eligible for the Wartime Material Support Loan Act that Britain would be required to prove her total commitment to the war. Britain would need to demonstrate that she was applying her full resources to the war effort by converting her remaining export industries to war production, something that would allow American industry to fill the gap…

…When the first draft of the Wartime Material Support Loan Act was shown to the British in late March the British War Cabinet was appalled. They needed the resources, but having to almost literally mortgage the profitable parts of the Empire and the Pound itself to get them was too much for many to bear.

Lord Halifax got in touch with Roosevelt through back channels and found that McNutt and his cabinet wanted to adjust the terms to be more favorable to Britain when the opportunity presented, as they realized that a strong Britain was in American security interests. He thus advised caution on the matter, to accept the deal and have the foreign office work through back channels to alter the deal after it had passed.

The Prime Minister however decided to take matters into his own hands with a public appeal to the American people, trying to shame them to pressure their congressmen into offering more generous terms. It was a well written appeal, and was very popular in the Commonwealth and many neutral countries. It was not however popular in the United States outside of those who were already pro-British and to most fence sitters it came off as condescending. It produced no outcry in favor of offering more lenient terms, and it offended a number of Congressmen who did not like Churchill attempting to do an end run around them.

As a result an even stricter version of the Act was passed in late April, as the non-sequentially numbered House Resolution 1776, with two major changes. The first change was that it was specified that any equipment returned be returned to a location of American designation at British expense. The second was that as a condition for receiving the loaned material Britain would agree to pay back every penny of the loans she had defaulted on during the Great Depression, with interest and penalties, secured by the same collateral as the rest of the Act….

…The final Wartime Material Support Loan Act was found to be even more outrageous by the British Cabinet than the preliminary version. However they were well aware that they had no choice but to accept, not after the recent losses they had taken. Their hope was that the McNutt administration would follow through on its promises to do what it could to revise the Act to be more favorable to Britain.

That the McNutt administration was stretching the previous relief acts as far as they could go in order to favor Britain was taken as evidence that McNutt and his administration were serious in their desire to do so…

…Almost immediately after the implementation of the Wartime Material Support Loan Act the McNutt administration began working on how to loosen the terms of the agreement, reducing interest, providing a longer interest free grace period, manipulating values, anything to leave Britain in a better position postwar. A weak Britain would need continuous propping up and cost more in the long run than forgoing the chance to squeeze blood from a stone. However major changes to the Act would require Congressional approval, which would require a change of circumstances…

-Excerpt From Before the Storm: American Neutrality in WWII, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2000


…In the last 6 months of 1941 British merchant losses averaged at 700,000 GRT, which when placed against British construction resulted in a reduction of available shipping by 2.4 million GRT. Over the first six months of 1942 this average dropped to 450,000 GRT, with a total reduction of 900,000 GRT.

This drop in sinkings by the Germans could be attributed to many factors. Among the first was the shift in the Air Battle. With the Battle of Britain over and the British gaining parity, if not superiority over the channel, losses there to air attack were markedly reduced. Furthermore the effectiveness of German MPAs was reduced thanks to Gunshark patrols forcing them to dogleg south, reducing time on station significantly. The presence of MACs beginning in March also hampered the MPAs, preventing them from directly attacking British merchantmen and being restricted to vectoring in U-Boats. Greater activity from Coastal Command further hindered the actions of U-Boats.

An increased number of escorts, the Corvettes, refitted destroyers and the former American vessels allowed greater coverage of convoys. Improved tactics made this increased number of ships even more effective than simple numbers suggested.

Among the most dramatic changes however was the German decision to withdraw many of their Type IX boats for transport duty. Operating in distant waters where the British could not run convoys or patrols they had managed impressive per boat totals with minimal losses. However with the British blockade once more growing effective in early 1942 and the plans for Otto making reliance on the Soviet Union for resources unlikely it was decided that a repeat of the WWI merchant sub program on a larger scale was needed. The Type IX’s were thus taken off a combat duty to be reassigned to the merchant marine and carry cargoes of rubber, copper, tin, nickel and cotton amongst other materials. This deprived the U-boat arm of some of its most potent weapons.

The result of these measures was that by July 1942 Britain was building merchant ships faster than she was losing them…

…A number of lessons were learned in the early phases of the Battle of the Atlantic by the British. Of their current escorts only the sloops were truly satisfactory, with the converted destroyers lacking in seaworthiness, and the corvettes being both unseaworthy and too slow to catch up to convoys. A ship as seaworthy, long ranged and fast as a sloop that could also be mass produced was needed. It would not need the heavy AA armament array of the prewar sloops, but it would need some heavy AA to provide some protection against German MPAs. By mid-1942 precise requirements were laid out both for domestic and empire built vessels and for a design from the United States…

…A major problem with attacking submarines with depth charges was that early sonars had a minimum range that produced a blind spot near the ship, and depth charge attacks needed to be conducted from roughly on top of the submarine. Furthermore successful or not a depth charge attack would temporarily blind sonar systems, making it very easy to lose contact after an unsuccessful attack.

A system that could engage a submarine outside of the minimum range of sonar and that would not produce sonar interference from a miss was desired. By mid-1942 the British had multiple prototypes that promised to do just that…

…A key weakness of German U-Boat operations was the requirement that U-Boats make constant status reports back to Germany by radio, often multiple times a day. These reports were limited in duration using a special short code order to avoid detection by radio direction finding. Unfortunately for the Germans the 20 seconds of their typical reports, while adequate against the Bellino-Tossi system in common use that required a minute for direction fix, was more than long enough for the Cathode-Ray Direction Finding system the British had developed for lightning location, which could detect a U-Boat transmission in under 5 seconds. By mid-1942 the system was beginning to see wide deployment…

…In December 1941 with their carrier air wings rebuilt the Royal Navy moved to begin neutralizing the Vichy French Navy. The first target was Dakar where the Ark Royal, three battleships and a battlecruiser were dispatched to neutralize the French forces there. The light battleship Strasbourg, heavy cruiser Tourville, light cruisers Primauguet and Montcalm, 7 destroyers, 2 Avisos and 4 submarines were there waiting for them.

The French fleet was given four options. The first was to join the Free French, the second was to sail to a French colony in the Americas and stay there, the third was to sail to a neutral country in the Americas and be interned and the fourth was to be destroyed. With a tremendous disparity of force against him the French commander made the decision to accept the second option and sailed for Martinique to join the handful of warships already there.

The British fleet saw the French off to Martinique and then joined reinforcements at Gibraltar to make their next move, neutralizing the larger French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir…

…The Free French Navy conducted its first operation on December 27th when its single Aviso, the Bethune and the Typhon, one of its three destroyers, supported a coup on the island of Reunion. 110 men were landed and quickly captured the capital of Saint-Denis in a bloodless coup. The governor quickly surrendered the island the next day upon learning the invaders were fellow Frenchmen. The Reunion operation is notable in that in addition to being the first naval operation of the Free French, the primary radio operated involved in coordinating the operation was none other than Emperor of Vietnam in exile Duy Tan…

Excerpt From A Naval History of the European War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2008

 

[RamscoopRaider]

#87 The Battle of Cape Palos January 17th 1942

Cape Palos had its origin in the French surrender and the naval situation immediately following it. The surrender of France had removed the French Navy from the British order of battle and left it in a state of limbo where it could possibly be added to the Italo-German one in the future. There had been proposals to immediately neutralize the French Navy, however that had been prevented by the need for French cooperation to complete the evacuation of British and other foreign troops from France, which took until August. By that point Palimpsest had gutted the British Fleet Air Arm and the Battle of Britian was preventing the replacement of the expended carrier wings.

By December the situation had improved to the point where the British had rebuilt their carrier air wings and air cover could now be provided to attempts to pressure the French. The first was the medium sized force at Dakar built around the battleship Strasbourg, which was easily convinced to join the carrier Bleriot and its escorts in the West Indies and sit out the war. This left the next major concentration as the fleet at Mers-el-Kebir.

The French had stationed the majority of their fleet in the colonies, to keep them away from the German occupiers so that they could not be easily seized. The Battleships Richelieu, Jean Bart, Dunkerque, Lorraine and Provence, the seaplane carrier Commandant Teste. the heavy cruisers Algerie, and Colbert, eight destroyers, three Avisos and six submarines represented a powerful force. The three modern battleships in particular could sway the balance at sea against the United Kingdom when combined with the other modern capital ships available to Germany and Italy. Yet for the moment those capital ships were not a factor, with only two modern Italian battleships being combat ready, with every other modern Italo-German ship either working up or in yard hands. In three months that would change, with five battleships becoming battle ready, but for the moment the British could operate with impunity.

At Gibraltar the Battlecruisers Hood, Howe and Rodney, the battleships Canopus, Majestic and Duke of York, the aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Albion, three heavy, six light, and two anti aircraft cruisers, along with 27 destroyers were assembled under Admiral Cunningham. The goal of this force was to convince the French fleet to do the same as the squadron at Dakar, and either join the Free French or head west and sit out the war. The gathering of such a large fleet could not be hidden and the Spanish were well aware of the composition and status of the fleet.

When the force made preparations to depart the French were promptly notified and when the fleet as a body left just after nightfall on the 16th of January the French were informed within a half hour. By 10:30pm Admiral Gensoul was ordered to depart Mers-el-Kebir for Toulon. Gensoul managed to depart by 4:30am, minus Commandant Teste, the submarines and gunboats and immediately headed due north at his best speed, to enter the safety of neutral Spanish territorial waters.

At 7:30 he was found by the British dawn patrol off Albion and the British turned to pursue him. At 8:30 a combined strike force off the two carriers arrived and Admiral Cunningham summoned Gensoul to turn around or be attacked. Gensoul refused and at 8:50 the combined air wings launched torpedo attacks on the Richelieu, Jean Bart, and Dunkerque, seeking to cripple the most potent of the French units. Under orders from Paris not to fire unless fired upon Jean Bart and Dunkerque did not defend themselves, Richelieu did as Gensoul countermanded that, but the order was not transmitted quicky. The flagship survived unscathed but Jean Bart and Dunkerque each took two torpedoes, the former was merely slowed to 27 knots but otherwise fully combat capable, the latter was slowed to 23 knots and lost her main battery due to magazine flooding.

At 9:45 the British battleships were sighted and Gensoul realized that he had a problem. Even the slow British battleships could make 25 knots, while his slow battleships were limited to 18 given their age. With two hours to go before reaching Spanish territorial waters he would be engaged by the British before he reached that point, and the British were not too likely to respect Spanish territorial waters in any case. He thus ordered Rear Admiral Godfroy to take the Lorraine and Provence and charge the British fleet and buy time. With those obsolete battleships out of the fleet he could then increase speed to the 23 knots that Dunkerque could make and reach Spanish waters quicker.

On seeing the obsolete battleships charging him Cunningham ordered the fleet to open fire at 10:21. Lorraine blew up at 10:27 from a magazine hit and was unable to even make a single shot in reply. Provence opened fire at 10:39 but by that point had already taken severe damage and lost her fire control. She fired ineffectively at Hood until 10:56 when her main battery was silenced. At 11:02 she blew up from a magazine hit either from Canopus or Majestic. Gensoul considered sending his destroyers to try and delay the British next, but realized that being outnumbered 2 to 1 by the present destroyers and facing a large number of cruisers they were unlikely to do much.

Following the destruction of Lorraine Cunningham ordered his ships to advance on the French at maximum speed to catch them before they could reach the safety of Spanish territorial waters. This resulted in his force becoming strung out with the Canopus and Majestic falling behind the faster ships but meant that by 11:20 his faster ships were entering extreme range. Engagement of the modern French units was temporarily delayed by the need to dodge a French air raid which was otherwise ineffective but Rodney opened fire on Dunkerque at 11:36, with Hood engaging Jean Bart at 11:39, Duke of Yorkengaging Richelieu at 11:42 and Howe engaging Colbert at 11:43.

The French could not effectively respond as the all forward arrangement used on their modern capital ships meant that they had a wide blind spot astern. Bringing their heavy guns to bear would require making wide zig zags that would massively slow down their progress, something inadvisable given the disparity in force. Instead Gensoul’s force bore onwards and at 11:49 a Spanish destroyer announced that the French had entered Spanish territorial waters and demanded that Cunningham cease his attacks.

Cunningham ignored this and at 11:51 the first hit occurred on Dunkerque, by 12:00 she had taken two more 15” hits and every other major French vessel had taken at least one hit. At 12:03 Howe put a shell clear through Colbert’s forward stack and snuffed two thirds of her boilers, dropping her to 20 knots. At 12:11 another shell dismounted her inner shaft and left her completely dead in the water, to be destroyed by 12:25, leaving Howe to focus on Algerie.

At 12:13 the first British cruisers began opening fire on the French destroyers. At 12:20 the destroyer Bison took a hit to her torpedo flats from the cruiser Belfast and was lost, followed by the Jaguar taking a rudder hit from Kent and beaching herself at 12:26. At 12:31 the destroyer Casque was lost from fire from 3 different cruisers and a minute later Jean Bart took a hit to her stern that reduced her to 15 knots. Cunningham scented blood and was prepared to see the French annihilated however he received a new message from the Spanish

The Spanish battlecruisers and heavy cruisers had entered the scene and the Spanish were now threatening to open fire if he did not stop violating Spanish neutrality. Cunningham believed that the Spanish were bluffing and was confident that any one of his capital ships could take both Spanish battlecruisers. However he was under orders not to engage the Spanish under any circumstances, his verbal instructions permitted violation of their neutrality but not an actual shooting incident as the government feared having Gibraltar neutralized as Malta had been. This at 12:40 Cunningham ordered his force to cease fire and break off…

…Cunningham dog legged around the Balearics and took a position off Cape Cerbere on the 19th to try and intercept Gensoul’s fleet as it crossed into French waters or to force it to be interned in Spain. The Spanish however stated that as France was currently at peace they were not required to intern the French vessels, which could stay as long as they wished. Cunnigham then radioed London for permission to strike the French vessels in Barcelona on the 20th but was firmly denied and forced to return to Gibraltar…

…Cape Palos was a tactical and operational victory but an immense strategic failure. Cunningham had destroyed 2 old battleships, a heavy cruiser and three destroyers, crippled two modern battleships, heavily damaged a third and a heavy cruiser and damaged 5 destroyers to varying degree and suffered only minor damage and less than a dozen total casualties, only 3 fatal. However in doing so he had caused a diplomatic disaster that severely hurt Britain’s standing among neutrals, not only for firing on the French but for violating Spanish neutrality.

The British actions in instructing Cunningham to go to such lengths to neutralize the French fleet seriously compromised their position in the long term. The unoccupied parts of metropolitan France had been de facto neutral in the war, now France was effectively a cobelligerent against the British with French warships and aircraft actively taking action against them in the Mediterranean. The French colonial possessions in general became much less sympathetic to the British and any hope of bloodlessly forcing them to change allegiance had disappeared for the moment…

…Despite acting within his instructions, and having ample precedent in the form of no lesser personage than Horatio Nelson, Andrew Cunningham was court martialed and cashiered to mollify foreign, particularly Spanish, opinion. This was an unpopular move and was one of the contributing factors to the May 18th Confidence Vote in Parliament…

…Cunningham’s one mistake was in not ordering his ships to make their best speed earlier in the battle. While this would mean that Canopus and Majestic would have fallen behind, Cunningham possessed enough firepower in his other four capital ships not to need them, and an extra half hour of combat would have likely seen the destruction of at least one of the modern French capital ships. As it was they would be present to influence matters well into 1944…


-Excerpt from 101 Great Naval Battles, American Youth Press, New York 2010




Well there's the update, somewhat disrupted by research for an ASB story idea, quotes as follows

Spoiler

Wanted: Paleontologist specializing in pre Carboniferous era for elaborate practical joke. Two Week minimum contract, NDA required

I've been to the Ediacaran and there was nothing trying to sell me a lousy T-shirt

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…Malta had been neutralized as a threat to Italian supply lines to Africa by the end of August 1941. However Sanna insisted on having the island captured, as both a bargaining chip and to prevent the British from eventually reinforcing it and using it as a threat. The problem he faced was that he had no plans to invade the island, Italian war plans against Britian had all been defensive in nature and assumed that they would not be able to take the offensive. The collapse of France, destruction of the Mediterranean fleet and the presence of the Germans in distracting the British made invading Malta a real possibility.

Sanna ordered a plan drawn up and an invasion was tentatively scheduled for January 2nd 1942. The attacking force would consist of elements of two airborne divisions, an airlanding division, five infantry divisions and the entirety of the San Marco Marine Regiment, with the support of 90 tanks. Against this the British had 12 battalions of infantry, no operational tanks, and seven remaining 18 pounder artillery pieces. 19 Heavy and 150 light coastal guns, along with 280 AA guns had previously defended the island, but after months of air attack and intermittent naval bombardment most were out of action.

The invasion was soon delayed 29 days to January 31st due to both a lack of lift, both aerial and naval, and the fact that the Italian navy wanted to wait until repairs to the battleship Vittorio were completed and the newly completed Roma was nominally combat capable. The extra time would allow the Italians to crash complete a number of additional landing craft and to borrow many of the craft the Germans had built for their planned invasion of Britian, as well as a number of German transport aircraft and gliders. Even with that however they lacked the lift to drop their paratroopers in one day, let alone one sortie, and needed to not only cancel a subsidiary attack on smaller islands of Gozo and Comino but to have the amphibious forces make multiple trips.

The attack began on the 30th with preparatory bombardments of Marsaxlokk Bay, St. Paul’s Bay, Mellieha Bay, and the area northwest of Valletta, with each target receiving a working over from one of the older Italian battleships and a heavy cruiser, as well as lighter units. Only Marsaxlokk Bay in the southeast of the island would actually be an invasion site, with the others attacked as a diversion. On the morning of the 31st under the cover of numerous airstrikes two battalions of the “Nembo” Paratrooper division landed at the heights overlooking Marsaxlokk Bay. Over the course of the day 5 more battalions and supporting elements of the division were landed before the amphibious assault began with the evening tide.

The San Marco Marines and Cremona division landed at Marsaxlokk Bay with the support of the battleships Leonardo da Vinci and Duilio, the Armored cruiser San Marco, the AA cruiser Scipione Africano and the light cruisers Ancona and Taranto, which deliberately beached themselves to provide close in fire support. The Italians quickly overwhelmed the single Maltese battalion defending the beaches and linked up with the paratroopers by next morning. There however the good news ended.

The Italians had underestimated both the degree of supply consumption and the difficulty of landing follow up echelons, resulting in the Livorno division and the first company of tanks not being fully landed until February 2nd, rather than 1st, giving the British time to establish some sort of defensive line north of the landing. A second airborne attack, targeting RAF Ta Kali west of Valetta suffered severe difficult, with the first wave of the Folgore paratrooper division pinned down immediately after landing in the morning and suffering heavy losses, with the second wave taking similar casualties and the third merely stabilizing the situation for the fourth wave to finally seize the airfield, too late in the day for the La Spezia division to begin airlanding operations.

Italian operations against Valetta did not start until the 3rd and the British were dug in against both prongs of the attack. Minimal progress was achieved on the 4th and 5th with breakout only occurring on the 6th and Valetta only being captured on the 7th, with the rest of the island falling on the 9th. Gozo and Comino surrendered on the 12th after preparations for an assault had visibly begun.

The British had suffered 15,000 casualties, 5,000 dead or wounded and the rest captured, while the Italians had taken 25,000 and lost a considerable number of transport aircraft and landing craft. A powerful blow had been dealt to the British position in the Mediterranean and to British prestige. Yet it was arguably an unnecessary one.

Malta had been starving when the Italians invaded, despite the resupply during Palimpsest and the constant trickle of supply by submarine and evacuation of non combatants. The British would have been forced to attempt a second Palimpsest, against an intact Italian fleet, negotiate for the evacuation of civilians or surrender the Island by May at the latest. The first could have offered a chance to bleed the Royal Navy to death, the second to relieve East Africa in exchange for relieving Malta and the last capture of the island without essentially gutting 3 divisions in the process…

…There were major questions asked about why the Royal Navy did not relieve Malta. Certainly the Royal Navy had more than enough warships to do it if taken as a whole. In the Mediterranean however, while it did have 7 capital ships, only 4 were modern and the 3 obsolete vessels were located at Alexandria separate from the modern ships at Gibraltar. Attacking 5 modern and 4 obsolete Italian capital ships with that force was possible, given the individual superiority of the British vessels. Getting to that point however would require penetrating through hundreds of miles of Italian controlled air space, subject to air attack, running picket lines of submarines and MAS boats and only then being able to attack the intact Italians after potentially taking severe losses. The RN attempted to mitigate this by recalling both capital ships that had been dispatched for routine maintenance after Cape Palos as well as additional reinforcements for a relief expedition, but by the time they were ready to sail again it was the 10th and Malta itself had been lost.

The RN would take criticism of its action to heart and act more aggressively against the next major Italian Naval Operation…

…The proximate cause for the February 14th Valentines Day coup was King Paul’s decision to open an investigation into atrocities against Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians and Albanians during his father’s reign, as part of a compromise to expand conscription and increase military funding to maintain Yugoslav neutrality in December 1941. This was unpopular with Serbian nationalists in the Yugoslav military who felt that those targeted had done nothing wrong and merely did what was needed to maintain order. These nationalists felt that the action was a blatant power grab to replace them with non-Serb officers and became responsive to Chetnik overtures for a coup.

On February 14th forces loyal to the plotters, including elements of the Royal Guard, seized key points in Belgrade. Communication was cut off with the city secured by 1:00pm and the King captured while attempting to flee with his family. With the safety of his children on the line King Paul agreed to abdicate in favor of a transitional council, Serb dominated, that would oversee the reformation of Yugoslavia into a Republic and was escorted into exile in Germany. The coup itself was relatively bloodless with only eight deaths and in Serbia it quickly received widespread support among a nationalistic populace.

Outside of Serbia however Prince Paul had been quite popular among the other ethnic groups of Yugoslavia, who were quite concerned by his replacement by a cabal of Serbian ultranationalists. Croat, Slovene and Bosniak military units quickly ended up refusing to recognize the coup and effectively in a state of mutiny. In the south and center of the country these units were put down, in the north however there was a critical mass of Croat and Slovene units combined with local civilian populations that resulted in a prolonged revolt.

With most of the Yugoslav army not combat ready after the Coup the plotters called in German aid, and a pair of German motorized corps quickly crushed active resistance by the end of February…

…Following the Coup Yugoslavia became a full member of the German Alliance, now known as the Pact of Steel. It did however have to make territorial concessions, northern Slovenia to Germany, Backa, Baranja, Medimurje and Prekmurje to Hungary and most of Yugoslav Macedonia to Bulgaria. Notably however Yugoslavia did not make any territorial concessions to Italy, as Sanna did not want to deal with the occupation of any more hostile territory at the moment, something that would cost him a great deal among Italian nationalists…

…The awarding of the majority of Yugoslav Macedonia to Bulgaria was considered sufficient compensation that the Bulgarians were willing to forgo any requirement for territorial compensation from Greece in order to provide troops and military access for Otto. This in turn meant that Germany merely needed to pressure Greece for transit rights, both land based in Thrace and by sea, something the Greeks were willing to accept as a cost of avoiding an unwinnable war. That however meant that there was no reason to compensate Demir’s Turks with Ionia, something that did not sit well with Demir’s fanatics…


-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…The British invasion of Italian Somalia began on January 3rd. Two British divisions attacked two reinforced Italian colonial divisions, who while numerically superior had inferior equipment and were operating under British air superiority. Rather than make a stand in the flat plains of the border with Kenya the Italians had left only skirmishers west of the Juba, with their main force concentrations being the towns of Gelib and Bardere.

After a four week running battle the British reached the Juba and captured the port of Kismayo on the 31st. After a week to pause and refit the British moved to force the Juba near the coast and threaten Gelib from the rear. By the 13th they were threatening to leave the Italian position inviable and the division at Gelib withdrew to Mogadishu.

The British pursued and on February 22nd reached Mogadishu. Rather than make a final stand the Italians once more fought a delaying action and withdrew on the 25th up the Imperial road to the Ethiopian border. This retreat saw the Italian force lose about 50% of its native strength due to desertion and the British take an impressive number of prisoners, mostly native Somalis. It did not however weaken the Italians enough that the British could simply waltz into Ethiopia unopposed and after a cursory action on March 6th the British decided not to press the pursuit while waiting for more supplies.

A second British division routed the other Italian concentration at Bardere on February 16th, but with more difficult logistics found it more difficult to pursue and after a brief fight with the remaining Italian troops at the border town of Dolo, the British once more decided to wait for a deliberate attack. This however would not be quick in coming.

The primary theater of Egypt, and other operations in the Mediterranean, were eating up a great deal of the supplies that were available in the East African and Middle Eastern theaters and had a much higher priority. What was left for East Africa would only support a single large offensive operation at a time. It was decided that an attack on Eritrea would have more utility and impact than a push into Southern Ethiopia, now that forces in Sudan would suffice to support such an attack. Furthermore it was thought that Ethiopian guerillas and desertion would wear down the Italian forces in Ethiopia, thus making it wise to delay an attack there to focus on Eritrea where that was not the case.

Fighting in the southern portion of the East African Theater would from mid March into summer consist of isolated company and battalion actions as the British slowly pushed up through Somalia…

…Following the capture of Sidi Barrani Sanna established Mersa Matruh as the next objective for his army in Egypt. He had given up on trying to destroy the British army in Egypt after it had proved better at mobile warfare than his own forces. Rather he was interested in territory for securing his bargaining position and Mersa Matruh controlled the road action to the Siwa Oasis and taking it would force the British to have to withdraw from there, in addition to being closer to Alexandria.

The British under General Pope had a relatively strong blocking position at El Negaila about halfway between Sidi Barrani and pickets further west at El Tarfaya. They had more ability to contest the Italians in the air at any point prior and more heavy firepower as well. The only relative deficiency compared to earlier in the campaign was in tanks, with the British only having lights and older model cruiser and infantry tanks, while the Italians not only had more tanks than before but a higher portion being the more powerful M22/41. The British also had fewer anti tank guns but had made up for that with the practice of mounting them on trucks “portee style”, providing additional mobility and reducing the chance of being lost in a rapid withdrawal.

Sanna originally wanted the attack to start on January 20th shortly after the capture of Malta, which was at that point expected to occur on January 15th. However successful interdiction of supplies by British submarines and deep raids by British special forces in light off road vehicles disrupted the preparation and the attack was not ready until the 17th of February, after the much delayed capture of Malta.

The Italians under Marshal Garabaldi started by moving recon forces backed by heavy units closely behind east along the coastal road to push back the British pickets. This allowed them to overwhelm the British screening forces without suffering excess casualties to their own less dexterous light forces, but left them more exposed to ambushes, mainly mitigated by the lack of effective long ranged AT weapons on the British part.

These ambushes served to delay contact with the main line of resistance at El Negaila until February 21st and the beginning of the assault to February 24th. Once more the Italians conducted a relatively orthodox attack, a deliberate assault by an infantry heavy force with plenty of artillery support on the main British position, followed by an armor heavy flanking attack to the south after the majority of the British forces had been fixed.

The attack began much as the attack on Sidi Barrani had, with the only difference being fewer air strikes and a greater amount of British counter battery fire. General Pope once more were found himself overstretched and forced to commit his reserves to buy time for a withdrawal. Compared to Sidi Barrani however he was better prepared with a number of minefields laid specifically to cover such actions.

The British completed their withdrawal on the 26th and immediately positioned themselves just in front of the Mersa Matruh-Siwa road in prebuilt defensive positions. A number of ambushes delayed the Italian attack on this new line to March 4th. Knowing that the Italians had not the time to build up a supply reserve for a major set piece attack General Pope concentrated his heavy firepower in concealed positions where he expected the armored thrust to come from in order to savage the Italian flanking attack.

Pope guessed correctly and on March 6th the expected Italian armored flanking thrust found itself running into dug in infantry supported by artillery pieces firing over open sights and took heavy losses. Marshal Garabaldi recovered quickly and realized that Pope had to have stripped his forces near the coast to provide the reserves needed to blunt the attack and he ordered his armored reserves to instead attack near the coat on the 7th.

The Italian tanks quickly broke through the British positions and Pope ordered a withdrawal in the afternoon to be completed during the night. Pope left screening forces at Garawlah while his main body withdrew to Fuka to dig in and reorganize. Garabaldi captured Mersa Matruh on the 8th and paused to regroup and reinforce…

…The fall of Mersa Matruh saw the evacuation of the Siwa Oasis ordered on the 10th, with the British defenders falling back to Lake Sitra 90 miles to the east…

…Mersa Matruh marked the first time that the British had traded evenly with the Italians in terms of personnel losses all campaign on a large scale. Improvements in tactics and a reduced deficiency in firepower allowed the British to better take advantage of the strength of their defensive position…

…Following Mersa Matruh Sanna set his objective as Alexandria, something he thought was ambitious but doable in stages provided the British did not heavily reinforce the region. The capture of Alexandria would force the British to withdraw their heavy units from the Mediterranean and would provide a major port that could handle any possible logistical needs of the Italian Army in Africa. With Alexandria for a supply base the fall of Egypt and the Suez canal were merely a matter of time, given the difficulty the British faced with supplying Egypt around Africa.

Even if Alexandria could not be taken due to British reinforcements, pushing back the British would place his air bases further east and the British ones further west, securing Italy from air attack and allowing him to project considerable power into the eastern Mediterranean…

…After Mersa Matruh the British were bloodied once more but not beaten. More convoys with replacement equipment were on the way and reinforcements from India, Australia and New Zealand had already arrived in Egypt and were nearly ready to deploy. The RAF had stood up more squadrons with several Glaive units in the process of standing up, once ready they would give the British parity in the skies and allow them to give back some of what they had received.

The additional reinforcements were still not enough for the British to maintain a line long enough to reach the Qattara depression and avoid being outflanked, but they would force the Italians to make a longer flanking maneuver and stress their supply lines more. Combined with parity in the sky and what was probably an effective superiority in artillery and Pope felt he had a good chance of stalemating the Italians despite his inferiority in numbers and especially in tanks.

Pope’s reinforcements soon found themselves with other tasks…

…The most notable deficiency in British equipment was that of tanks. The Italian offensive forces in Libya were equipped with a mix of L6/38 and L6/40 light tanks at the start of the war. The two were broadly similar to British Mark VI or VII light tanks, with the both being slightly superior in armament to the British designs but the L6/38 having a worse arrangement, both were inferior to the Mark VIII in armament with a 20mm autocannon instead of a 40mm 2pdr gun. At the start of the war British light tanks in Egypt consisted entirely of Mark VI’s or older units on training duties. After casualties in the opening attack these were replaced with more Mark VI’s with the Mark VII and VIII not arriving until December and serving to replace losses after Sidi Barrani. The Mark VII was functionally no superior to the Mark VI, while the Mark VIII’s were pressed into the role of cruiser tanks, while the Italians gradually increased the proportion of their light tank force that was the modern L6/40 over the course of 1941 and 1942. Only the quality of the British crews prevented the Italians from dominating the recon battle

The British would only rectify the gap in light tank quality in October when the first American light tanks with a high velocity 25mm gun arrived in quantity, enabling them to have a vehicle that both outmatched the L6/40 and could afford to be used against it.

The situation in larger tanks was however rather worse for the British. At the start of the campaign the Italian tank force consisted of the M16/39, with a 47mm gun and adequate speed and armor, while the British forces in Egypt had Mark II infantry tanks and Mark II and III cruiser tanks. The Mark II infantry tank while effectively invulnerable to the Italian 47mm gun from the front was very slow and only as well armed as a Mark VI light tank, thus incapable of harming the Italian medium tanks save from the side at very close range. The Mark II and III cruisers had a similar armament to the M16/39 but less armor and while faster were less reliable. The Italians over the course of 1941 and 1942 began supplementing and replacing the M16/39 with the M22/41 which was armored against the British 2pdr at combat ranges and featured a 65mm gun that could kill a Mark II infantry tank in the frontal arc at 300 yards. The British meanwhile were forced to use Mark I infantry tanks which were slower and less well armed and Mark I and II Cruisers and Mark VIII light tanks as replacements until February 1942 when the first Mark III Infantry Tanks and Mark IV Cruisers arrived.

The Mark IV Cruiser proved no significant improvement over its predecessors while the Mark III Infantry tank was. Rearmed with a 2pdr AT gun it could hurt Italian medium tanks while retaining the front armor of its predecessors and being able to resist 47mm AP from the sides at all ranges. The Mark III however still was more vulnerable to the M22/41 than vice versa thanks to its much weaker gun and arrived after the Italians had began issuing HEAT shells which allowed their 47mm guns to penetrate its side armor at any range and the new M16 derived Semovente 75/18 to do the same to its front armor, and its slow speed led to it often being outflanked.

The Mark III Infantry Tank and Mark IV Cruiser would be the primary British tanks in Egypt in 1942, facing Italian M22/41s. Better British skill generally did make up for the difference in quality, but it was not enough to make up for the superior quantity of Italian tanks, namely that the British were outnumbered by 3 to 1 on average, a situation maintained by the Italian ability to recover their losses and the British inability to do the same. The introduction of the Mark IIIa infantry tank and the Mark IVa cruiser tank in June made up some of the gap. Using the engine of the Mark IV and V, undeployable due to insoluble suspension issues, allowed the Mark III to become more maneuverable and the Mark IV to gain protection from 47mm AP rounds at longer ranges. This however only made the two somewhat more competitive and did nothing for the fact that the M22/41 was much better armed.

The Mark V Infantry Tank and Mark VI cruiser were supposed to fix the suspension issues of the Mark IV and V, and thus provide the forces in Africa with a 6pdr armed tank that could effectively match the armament of the M22/41 in September 1942. The Mark V and VI, while solving the suspension issues of their predecessors instead came with cooling and filter issues that made them unsuitable for Desert climates without a hefty redesign. This led to the deployment of the Mark IIIb and Mark IVb in October with modified turrets allowing the older chassis to carry 6pdr guns, ending the firepower gap but at the cost of deleting a third man from the turret and forcing the commander to serve as gunner, severely impacting efficiency.

It was only with the arrival of the redesigned Mark VI Infantry tank and Mark VII Cruiser tank in February alongside American medium tanks in January that allowed the British to gain parity in quality with the Italians, coming just as the Italians were introducing the M26/42 with a powerful 75mm gun…

…The Long Range Desert Group was a highly successful unit, achieving striking results despite its small size. Raiding in unarmored all terrain vehicles guided by expert desert navigation skills the LRDG was able to repeatedly penetrate deep into Italian lines. There they destroyed supply depots, attacked airfields and provided a remarkable degree of intelligence. Their actions provided General Pope and his successors with an accurate view of the Italian order of battle, delayed multiple Italian offensives and mitigated Italian Air superiority…

…The Long Range Desert Group was in some ways too successful. It served as the catalyst for the transformation of the Independent Companies which had been raised as maritime raiding forces into the Commandos, as well as the formation of several other Special Service Units . Thousands upon thousands of the best troops in the British military were skimmed off into these units, far more than were actually needed, diluting the quality of the regular forces in the process and encouraging the launch of a number of dubious operations…

-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001




A/N Okay that went on longer than I expected

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…Britain was relatively conservative in the months following the Battle of Britian, expanding patrols over the Channel and Bay of Biscay and reinforcing secondary theaters, but not committing to major actions. In part this was because of a worry that the Germans might attempt to restart the battle, in part because the British wanted to handle their ongoing commitments before starting new ones and in part because they were aware that it was not yet the opportune time to act.

This left the Germans to act first with the deployment of the multi beam Lorenz system on January 12th. Using a main beam and multiple cross beams to provide a multiple reference points before the target it was easier to use than the twin beam model and more accurate thanks to the higher frequency. Better security practice, not turning on the beam until just before the bombers were due to launch, meant that the British did not come up with a preliminary jamming system until the 26th, and that was ineffective due to tight filtering of incoming signals.

Despite this the multi beam Lorenz system was less effective than hoped due to poor targeting. The Luftwaffe had changed target priorities for the system and had it used to target railway marshalling yards to disrupt the British transportation system as Von Richthofen wanted with the twin beam system. Had this occurred during the Battle of Britian it would probably have been effective, but with fewer bombers, no daylight attacks and with less disruption to coastal shipping in the channel, the British transport system had enough slack that Factory attacks would have been more effective at reducing production. The British eventually managed to jam the system after salvaging a mostly intact bomber that made a soft landing in the Blackwater estuary and examining the receiving and filtering systems, with the last effective attack being on February 18th.

The British grew somewhat more aggressive in March with the introduction of the Bandit II that outperformed any existing German day fighters, if not by that much, increasing offensive fighter sweeps and attacks on German air bases in France. German daytime harassment attacks, already low, dropped still further and Britian grew more secure.

In April the Luftwaffe hoped that the introduction of a single beam navigation and bomb aiming system, the C Gerät, using a modulated signal and aircraft based retransmission, would allow them to once more accurately bomb at night. This, alongside the deployment of a few very high altitude Ju-76 variants, would allow a resumption of round the clock bombing.

Requirements in other theaters would mean that the single beam C Gerät would not be used to nearly its full potential against Britain as the fast twin engine bomber squadrons were drawn down…

…The Appearance of the Bandit II saw the Luftwaffe place a greater priority on their radial engine fighter program, selecting Messerschmidt’s design for production as the Me 196 to enter service in September and provide an aircraft substantially better than the Bandit II and capable of serving as the Luftwaffe’s frontline day fighter for years to come…

-Excerpt from Airpower!, Dewitt Publishing, Los Angeles, 2010

…In the first week of March there was a concerted attempt by Turkish farmers and herders near the Greco-Turkish border in Ionia to push onto the Greek side of the border, if not very far. This was responded to by the Greek Border guards, initially peacefully, but after 5 days of constant responding to violations four Turkish shepherds were shot after an argument got out of hand.

In retaliation on March 7th just before dawn Turkish irregulars attacked a dozen Greek border posts. The Greek border guards held their ground and inflicted heavy losses on their attackers, however these attacks were merely a diversion. Another dozen parties of irregulars slipped through while the Greek reaction forces were occupied and attacked a dozen border villages, killing, looting and raping before withdrawing in the night. When the Greeks attempted to respond the next day, they were met by what passed for Turkish regulars who refused to allow them to launch a pursuit into Turkish territory and resist vigorously when they attempted to do so on their own. 23 Greek border guards and 143 civilians were dead and 34 more civilians, mostly young women, were missing after the March 7th attack. Greek, and international, public opinion was frothing at the mouth for revenge.

Exactly who planned these provocations and attacks is unknown. It may have been Demir, either directly, or in a “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” way, or it may have been one of his subordinates acting on their own, or it simply may have been a local conspiracy. What is known is that Demir for internal reasons could not truly back down and retain power, despite immense pressure from both Germany and Italy to do so. In response to Greek demands he publicly executed a dozen officers and officials, primarily scapegoats he had already wanted dead, and made a show of disciplining the regular troops involved in the incident and hunting for the irregulars, while actually doing little.

This did not satisfy the Greeks and on the 16th of March they moved to occupy a “punitive buffer” of 5 to 25 miles around their territory. The Turks resisted, but lacked the firepower to stop the Greeks and by the 21st the Greeks had secured their buffer zone.

This should have been the end of the matter, the Greeks were satisfied and Turkey both stood no chance of defeating them and had the prospects of gains against the USSR in Otto to think about instead of sticking their hands in a meat grinder. However Demir refused Greek overtures for a ceasefire and kept up the fighting, if at a low level to avoid losses to equipment he could not replace.

This put the Germans in a quandary as even if they could negotiate a limited ceasefire on the Thracian border, the Greeks were absolutely not willing to allow the transfer of arms and munitions into Turkish territory, leaving the Germans unable to use Turkey to open a Caucasian front for Otto.

The most logical solution for them would have been to cancel the auxiliary prong of Otto in the Caucuses and to negotiate with the Greeks for passage of shipping through the straits to support Otto under Greek supervision. That course of action was advocated by the Foreign Ministry, the logistics elements of the Wehrmacht and by the Panzerwaffe, who either wanted to avoid another diplomatic quagmire or simply felt the Caucasian front was an unnecessary and useless diversion.

Rather than listen to them however Hitler chose to listen to the more established members of the Wehrmacht High Command such as Halder, Jodl and Keitel. While not enthusiastic about the Caucasian front in the planning stages, now that it had been part of the plan for months and multiple revisions they defended it as an integral part of the plan. Rather than modify the plan to remove what was in the end a peripheral thrust they proposed a rapid military campaign to enable the plan to occur as planned.

While Greece was viewed as tougher to conquer than Turkey, it was considered easier to occupy, that the occupation would disrupt logistics or Otto less, that Bulgarian, Yugoslav and Italian troops could be used, that Greece would not actively join the fighting while the Turks would and that the Greek islands would be relevant to the North African campaign. Therefore it was proposed and Hitler agreed that Greece be attacked as soon as practical.

Negotiations immediately began with Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Italy, alongside the Turks. The Bulgarians and Yugoslavs were eager to get territorial gains at Greek expense and the Turks were ecstatic. Sanna however was very skeptical and while he wanted the Ionian islands, and more if he could manage, he did not at all think that the time was right for such an endeavor given that there was already the conflict with the British and Otto to think about. At the same time however Sanna had no desire to see the British gain airbases in Greek territory and reluctantly agreed to participate in the operation in order to make sure it was a total success…

-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005




A/N going to movies later so posting now

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…The decision to attack Greece was made on March 30th, two weeks were allotted to move forces into position to deal with the Greeks, leaving the attack to start on April 14th. The Greeks had 24 divisions after their latest reorganization, 21 infantry and 3 cavalry. 12 Infantry divisions were located in Northern Greece, covering their borders with Italian Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, 7 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry divisions were located in Ionia to face the Turks, a single reinforced infantry division was holding the detached part of Thrace, and a single infantry and cavalry division remained in reserve, with 200 aircraft to cover the skies.

Against this the Italians committed 2 mountain, 6 infantry, 2 bicycle infantry, 2 motorized stormtrooper and 2 cavalry divisions operating out of Albania, along with 300 aircraft and the heavy surface elements of the Italian navy. The Yugoslavs could only contribute 50 aircraft and a single infantry regiment. The Bulgarians would contribute 8 infantry and 4 cavalry divisions, along with 200 aircraft. The Turks would contribute about 100,000 irregulars, their regular forces having been effectively shattered by the Greeks. Germany would contribute a Panzer Corps, a Mountain Corps, and their Corps of Airmobile Infantry, with a second Panzer Corps, a Motorized Corps and their paratroopers in reserve if needed, supported by 900 aircraft.

The plan called for the Italians to attack out of Albania and fix the majority of Greek forces. The Bulgarians would take the detached portion of Greek Thrace and attack west from their portion of Thrace along the coast, fixing more Greek forces there. The German Mountain Corps would break the Greek frontier defenses north of Thessaloniki while the Panzer Corps would attack through the valley south of Monastir, break into the Thessalian plains and then into Boeotia, Attica and the Peloponnese in that order. The Airmobile Corps would be airlifted into Turkey to start the attack on the Greeks in Ionia, to be reinforced by the Reserve Panzer Corps once the routes through Thrace were available. Follow on attacks would take the Greek islands in concert with the Italians…

…The movement of 40 divisions was impossible to hide and the British learned of the Pact deployments by April 3rd. Churchill initially wanted to take the reserves allocated to Egypt, one Australian and one New Zealand Infantry Division and an independent British Armored Brigade, and have them directly reinforce the Greeks on the mainland to try and hold a line north of Thessaly. This was very quickly determined to be impractical and by the end of the day Churchill was thinking of a deployment anchored on Thermopylae to protect southern Greece, Boeotia, Attica and the Peloponnese, with most of the Greek islands protected by proxy.

The Imperial General Staff quickly determined that a forward deployment was inviable, as the Pact forces would have air supremacy and be able to deploy a corps of paratroopers behind their lines in the Peloponnese and render their position impossible. Furthermore such a forward deployment would require all seven proposed Brigades, Brigades that Pope in Egypt needed to stop the Italians. Many in the War Cabinet did not want to strip any reserves from Egypt at all, viewing defeating the Italians there as more important than holding a part of Greece and Churchill found himself having to justify holding Greece by providing the RAF with advanced bases to strike at the Romanian oil fields and to threaten the seaward Italian flank in North Africa.

A compromise was proposed, that only one Australian brigade and only the Infantry and Light Tanks of the armored brigade would be sent and that the plan would be to hold the Peloponnese, using the Isthmus of Corinth as a choke point. While possible, as a single division backed by an independent artillery regiment could hold the three and two thirds mile long Corinth Canal, it also relied on two brigades as well as any Greek remnants to hold 120 miles of coastline on the Gulf of Corinth and to provide rear area security against paratrooper landings. It was doable if the Greek forces fell back in good order, but that was something that the Imperial General Staff did not expect to occur against rapid German Panzer thrusts and massive air attacks. It was still possible if the Greeks were willing to redeploy their reserves and rapid reaction troops to the Peloponnese, however requests to do so were refused on April 5th as the Greeks still wanted to try and hold onto most of their mainland possessions

A revised plan was quickly made, the troops intended for Greece would move to secure Crete as a place for the Greek government to fall back to and rally resistance from and a forward airbase a hundred miles closer to the oilfields at Ploesti than Cyprus was and much better positioned to provide support to the Western Desert Theater…

…The British were confident that the Italian fleet would not be able to interfere with their operations on Crete and with good reason. Over the course of March no fewer than three Italian battleships had been disabled by British attacks, Duilio on March 13th by HMS U-14, Roma on March 26th in the ambush of an attempted bombardment raid on Egypt by Ghost torpedo bombers off of HMS Audacious and what was believed to be Vittorio by HMS U-19 on the 27th returning from the raid. None of the ships were destroyed or irreparably damaged but all of them were at least out of action until August.

An intercept of an Italian communique on April 3rd confirmed that three battleships were out of action and thus in British minds meant that the available Italian modern units would be Littorio, Actium and Lepanto, a force outmatched by Queen Elizabeth, Warspite and Repulse, and possible the Greek Nika as well, given the demonstrated Italian unwillingness to risk their older battleships to even the odds. With Audacious to soften up attackers and provide overwatch Admiral Somerville was confident of handing the Italian Navy a major defeat if they attempted to interfere with the British around Crete.

What he and the rest of the Royal Navy were not yet aware of was that the Battleship Andrea Doria had struck an Italian defensive mine that had come loose on March 20th, and that it was the already damaged Roma that had been torpedoed on March 27th and not the Vittorio…

…Hitler made it clear to Demir that he was not happy about having to divert troops to a sideshow because of his border incident. If Demir wanted the full quantity of weapons and other assistance that had been promised he would have to do more for Hitler than simply allow transit rights for and take part in Otto. Hitler demanded that he use his connections with the Islamist movements in the British portions of the Middle East to foment revolt and otherwise stir up trouble for the British.

Demir agreed to this concession immediately, as it was something that he wanted to do on his own. What he did not tell Hitler was that he would also be doing his best to stir up trouble in French Syria and Lebanon as well…

-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005

…As Otto approached and the British blockade tightened Hitler was briefed that there was projected to be a serious shortfall in food from Fall of 1942 into Fall of 1943 in German controlled and allied Europe, unless the British would choose to end their blockade after the success of Otto. This was considered unlikely, as was the possibility that cereal production in the Ukraine would fully recover within a year after Otto, meaning that a food shortage would likely continue well into 1944.

This briefing, combined with the previous briefing from the same meeting about known difficulties with the proposed mass expulsions of the Jewish population led Hitler to make his famous remark of “You say we have too many Jews, you say we have too little food, the solution is obvious.” This remark is considered the beginning of the Volkist Population Reductions as distinct from the general racial oppression of the Volkist regime…

…Hitler had always intended to wipe out the Jews according to his private papers, however before and during the early phases of WWII this was always considered a problem for later, after the British and French had been humbled, the USSR had been destroyed, and potentially America had been humbled as well. The food crisis faced by the Reich simply gave Hitler an excuse to spend resources on one of his long term goals immediately rather than in the distant future…

…Senior Gestapo official Reinhard Heydrich was given the task of overseeing the Reduction of the Population of Jews and other undesirables. Heydrich quickly developed a system of priorities based on both an individuals perceived danger to the Reich and their value as a laborer. Jews, despite the virulent antisemitism of the Volkists, were actually middle ranked in terms of danger as while they possessed a racial threat in the long term Heydrich felt that the people of the Reich were well inoculated against Jewish propaganda and manipulations. Instead he was more concerned about political enemies of the Reich of ethnic German stock, socialists, communists and trade unionists, who might be listened to by the common people of the Reich. It was these who were first targeted in the so called Population Reductions…

…The Population Reductions did not officially start until December of 1942 after Heydrich had worked out a comprehensive plan and set of policy goals, but impromptu massacres had started by April of 1942, as well as a steady program of deliberate starvation in the ghettos of Europe…

-Excerpt From The Great Dying: the Volkist Genocides, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2012

 

[RamscoopRaider]

…The invasion of Greece began as expected at Dawn on April 14th. German and Italian aircraft crossed the border first and managed to catch almost a hundred Greek aircraft on the ground thanks to a Greek lack of radar coverage. This was followed up by invasions all along both the Greek mainland border and the northern portion of the Thracian and Ionian borders.

The heaviest attack came out of Albania, despite the fact that 4 Italian divisions were not in place for H-Hour the Italian force was still the largest and had access to large preplaced stockpiles. The Italians however faced a full half of the forces in northern Greece and the majority of the Greek border fortifications. To avoid taking excessive losses for what was ultimately a diversion they moved slowly and methodically, advancing 10 miles at the most on the first day.

The German forces to their immediate east moved faster, with the panzers of the XIVth Corps moving south from Monastir advancing over 50 miles on the first day and completely annihilating the single Greek division defending the section of the border facing them. The German XXX mountain Corps and Bulgarians made little advance into their parts of Greece, as they like the Italians were merely fixing forces. In Thrace the Bulgarians managed a 20 mile advance against the understrength Greek division tasked with holding the area, taking few losses thanks to a 5 to 1 superiority in numbers. In Ionia the German airlanding Corps did well to make a five mile advance as the Greeks were both expecting trouble from the Turks and as well armed as they.

On the 15th the Greeks realized the threat the German Panzers posed and a nighttime withdrawal was ordered. This did not stop the German Panzers from advancing another 25 miles into the country, reaching the edge of the Thessalian plains, while the Italians, Bulgarians and mountain troops made more limited advances of a few miles. In Thrace the Bulgarians pushed forward another twenty miles, with the Greek 19th division only continuing to fight to buy time for Ionia, where evacuation of civilians was already underway. In Ionia the Germans made no advances on their own, needing to wait until the Bulgarians cleared the routes for the Panzers to have sufficient firepower for more than token advances.

On the 16th the Greek withdrawal had already started and Pact forces moved to make it into a full rout, hitting the fleeing forces with airpower and trying to race ahead. The Greek reserves were deployed just north of the town of Lamia to serve as a barrier behind which their forces could flee and reconstitute. The forces facing Albania found themselves diverting south as the German Panzers had begun advancing through the Thessalonian plains and cut off a more northerly route. To the east three divisions attempted to make a stand at Thessalonica and the Chaldice Peninsula, or at least to evacuate by sea. Two more attempted to withdraw along the coast and try to race ahead of the Panzers. The 19th division in Thrace found itself forced to retreat to Arcadiopolis and made a stand there to deny the railway route to Constantinople to the Germans as long as possible. Once again only token progress was made in Ionia as the Greeks fought hard to keep the Turks out. Small landing parties from the Bulgarians seized Thasos and Samothrace while the Italians seized Corfu, Paxos and Lefkas.

On the 17th the German panzers swung east and destroyed the two Greek infantry divisions attempting to flee along the coast. The Italians attempted to do the same with one of their motorized divisions and catch the northernmost trio of Greek divisions in their sector but only succeeded in destroying one. The Bulgarians and German mountain troops began a siege of Thessalonica and the Chaldice while the Greeks began an evacuation. The 19th division continued to make its stand at Arcadiopolis while the Greeks continued to hold in Ionia. The Italians took control of the remainder of the Ionian Islands and the Germans dropped a single Paratrooper regiment near Pyrgos to seize the nearby fishing villages to gain a foothold in the Peloponnese.

On the 18th the Germans paused to reorient the XIV Panzer, while the Italians continued their pursuit of the Greek Albanian forces with some success, the constant pursuit and air attacks reducing coordination to a minimum. Italian forces furthermore made a regimental level landing near Pyrgos and started fortifying a beachhead while the remainder of the German forces continued the siege of the Chaldice. The Bulgarians made regimental landings on Imbros and Tenedos, capturing the two small islands, but took relatively high losses in the process as the islands were garrisoned against the potential of Turkish attack.

On the 19th the German Panzers launched an assault on the Greek defense line north of Lamia while a division scale paradrop was made in Boeotia to cut off the Greek retreat. The Panzers very quickly broke through the Greek lines, despite the limited approaches from the rough terrain limiting their options the Greeks had no AT guns for the Germans to fear. The Paratroopers, while lightly armed, were able to hold the northernmost roads in Boeotia, forcing remnants of a half dozen Greek divisions to funnel through much more narrow roads in the rougher southern part of the region while under hot pursuit, while others attempted to withdraw across the Gulf of Corinth by boat.

By the 20th there was no effective Greek resistance on the mainland outside of Thessalonica and Arcadiopolis and the Germans were at the gates of Attica and the Italians preparing to expand their foothold in the Peloponnese. Ionia was still holding out, but only because of the difficulty in getting heavy German forces into position to attack it. Similarly most of the islands of the Aegean remained untouched, but were undefended and ripe for the taking once the opportunity presented. The Greek government made the decision to flee Athens and withdraw to Heraklion on Crete, which was strongly held by British Commonwealth forces and would be a rallying point for resistance.

The Germans however had a plan for that and Sanna was willing to cooperate and do the heavy lifting for it…

…Thessalonica fell on the 22nd, leaving Arcadiopolis as the last bastion of Greek resistance on the mainland. It fell on the 24th and the Germans had restored the railroad by the 26th, allowing the Panzers of the XXIInd Corps to enter position to attack the lines in Ionia on May 2nd…


-Excerpt From The Fall of Europe, Scholastic American Press, Philadelphia, 2005