The Afrika Corps...

[Footslogger]

Could the Germans have captured Matla by using the Folgore Parachute Division along with other German units? If yes, then why didn't they do so?

novice gamer,

Joe

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: Footslogger

Could the Germans have captured Matla by using the Folgore Parachute Division along with other German units? If yes, then why didn't they do so?

novice gamer,

Joe

Operation Barbarossa started and all Luftwaffe units were pulled to support offensive against Soviet Union. There were no German air force at mediterranean to deal with UK navy anymore.

That was good for UK since their navy suffered very bad casulties at mediterranean becouse of Luftwaffe air raids. It was very hard to keep malta supplied.

I think after Creete Germans also got weary as they suffered wery bad casulties there. Afrika simply were not anymore main importance to Germans and there were no resources to spare to support more offensives like taking malta.

[Footslogger]

Well what do you think Rommel should have done then?

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: Footslogger

Well what do you think Rommel should have done then?

He had no chance because of Logistical problems. Not taking Malta and pulling Luftwaffe to support offensive against Soviet Union made it even worse. It was only matter of time when he would have lost.

It is bit funny if I remember right Italians had 4 times more troops in North Africa than UK but still Italians had to be saved by Africa Corps. Italians had massive fortifications at Tobruk and 100 000 men defending it witch had to surrender without shooting a shot because a lot smaller but more mobile UK forces bypassed the fort and cut it off from supply after that those 100 000 Italians run out of food and had to surrender. Italians fortifications on Tobruk got into book witch contains most stupidiest military mistakes.

[Omat]

Hello

An abstract about Operation Herkules can you find here.



Omat

[Eggmanrc]

If I recall correctly, Africa in that time period was never supposed to be a major theater. Rommel's naval warfare tactics in the sand garnered unexpected success and it caught Hitler's attention. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never read anything as far as operational strategic planning ever being considered on an invasion of Malta. Resources would have been stretched pretty thin and with the British owning the Med on the water.... I don't know.

I wonder.... Even if Malta would have fallen would it have made a major difference in a large portion of Rommel's supply going to the bottom of the Med? I'm not sure that other than air intelligence, and keeping a portion of the Italian air force to be placed in the area, did air activity prove vital for the British concerning Malta. Other than importing supplies, was the port vital? I'm just thinking that the Western Med Force and the Gibraltar Force would have still wreaked havoc on German supply anyway, Malta or not.

Love to hear your opinion.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

ORIGINAL: Footslogger

Could the Germans have captured Matla by using the Folgore Parachute Division along with other German units? If yes, then why didn't they do so?

novice gamer,

Joe

Operation Barbarossa started and all Luftwaffe units were pulled to support offensive against Soviet Union. There were no German air force at mediterranean to deal with UK navy anymore.

That was good for UK since their navy suffered very bad casulties at mediterranean becouse of Luftwaffe air raids. It was very hard to keep malta supplied.

I think after Creete Germans also got weary as they suffered wery bad casulties there. Afrika simply were not anymore main importance to Germans and there were no resources to spare to support more offensives like taking malta.

Warspite1

Could the Axis forces have taken Malta? Well yes, it is highly likely, if they had taken Malta in late 1940 or early 1941. The Germans took Crete, and there is no reason to suppose that a concerted effort by German paratroopers, supported by the Regia Marina, would not have succeeded - although at what cost is anyone's guess. However, the Crete affair accounted for a great many of Student's Fallschirmjaeger so it would be largely up to the Italians......

I understand that Operation Hercules was due to be undertaken as late as Spring of 1942, but many of the troops earmarked for that operation were needed more urgently in the western desert. A Malta operation in 1942 sounds a lot more hazardous for the attackers. The big ships of the Regia Marina were all laid up for want of fuel for example. Also timing would have been vital. If a Malta aircraft re-supply operation had just delivered a load of Spitfires to the island, the job would have got a whole lot more difficult.....

As for the quote about there being no Luftwaffe units in the Mediterranean after the start of Barbarossa, that is not correct. The problem the Germans had was where to concentrate the Luftwaffe units it did have in that theatre - Malta? or the eastern Mediterranean? - they could not be everywhere, and the Italian airforce were simply not as good.

[Q-Ball]

I think it could have been successful in 1942, but ONLY by diverting Luftwaffe strength from Russia, which the Germans were not willing to do.

Luftwaffe control was absolutely vital, because the Regia Marina on it's own was not up to protecting the invasion convoys. I think the Axis would have found the fuel for this operation and put the Regia Marina to sea, but it's performance to date had been uninspiring, and clearly they needed air support.

Several hundred German bombers based on Sicily would probably have kept the RN at bay, or made it costly to intervene.

Amphib landings are very tricky and complicated, I don't have alot of confidence that the Italian Army could have pulled it off; soldiers were brave enough, the logistics and staff work was terrible. The FOLGORE division was a good one, but the heavy-lifting would have been done by the Infantry Invasion. Then again, the garrison wasn't very large or strong.

Overall, I think it would have fallen, but it would have required large Luftwaffe Support, probably resulted in alot of dead paratroopers; the Italian sea invasion would have been a mess, but probably prevailed due to numbers and air support eventually. It would have been quite costly for the Axis.

[tigercub]

It would have been costly some thing like 6,000 but it would have have changed the whole balance in the Med!

[Footslogger]

I got this idea from this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVmvH4IUA9E

[Jakerson]

ORIGINAL: Footslogger

I got this idea from this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVmvH4IUA9E

I got that Silent Hunter 5 too.

[Pipewrench]

great read on

COMPARISON OF THE INVASION OF CRETE AND THE PROPOSED INVASION
OF MALTA by MAJ Stephen L. W. Kavanaugh, 115 pages.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Lo ... =ADA452022

[Footslogger]

Wow!! What a Link!! Thank you PipeWrench [&o][&o][&o]

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

Thanks - nice read!


Leo "Apollo11"

[Dili]

The Italians could have taken Malta if they had the will to do it, which they didn't. For example the Italians dropped more bombs in Spanish Civil War than against Malta.

[Aurelian]

I have an old book on the German navy in WW2. IIRC, this was brought up, and the problem was that there were seperate commands, both German and Italian. And not even Hitler or Mussolini could give orders to all of them.

[terje439]

Also, after Crete, Hitler declared that the days of the Paratroopers was over.
The casualties taken by the German Paratroopers on Crete was so high that Hitler did not want to use them in the same manner again.

Terje

[vinnie71]

One should also keep in mind the defences of Malta which were inadequate at best in '42:

-Most of the troops were second rate troops plus the British had no authority to mobilise the population
-Almost no armour
-Low stocks of ammunition of all kinds
-RAF was badly battered
-Royal Navy had evacuated to safer ports and could not effectively intervene without running the gauntlet of Axis air power in the Central Med
-Coastal artillery was no match for the Italian big guns

Some other advantages that the Axis enjoyed during the same time:

-Air superiority - Both a Luftwaffe fliegerkorps and the Italian airforce in Sicily had substantial resourses
-Complete dominance of the sea around Malta (the Italians even managed to run a series of convoys unmolested)
-There were more troops involved in the invasion besides the paras (something that was absent in Crete were the Germans only committed a mountain division besides the paras and basically the allies had more or less the same amount of troops, something which was different in the case of Malta)

In essence the Axis never had any better chance to take Malta. The decision not to attack was based on an appreciation of current conditions rather strategic reality by both the Germans and the Italians. Last thing, we should keep in mind that the Med was essentially an Italian operation, until the debacle of Tunisia. Thus they basically ran the show with Smiling Albert (Kesserling) trying to put some sense in the whole operation...
-

[Mehring]

Hitler had got Germany up to its neck in trouble. The US's intervention in the war was a question of when, not whether, and he needed to engage the US as far as possible on his own terms.

The conquest of western Europe had, once the spoils of conquest were consumed, left Germany with yet another time bomb to add to their extensive collection- a number of economies cut off from their non-European raw material supplies and now tied to the Axis economies. There wasn't enough of anything to go round, not even coal and with time the shortages would reach crisis proportions. The remedy was conquest of Russia to gain grain, minerals and energy and a self sufficient economy capable of helping Britain see which side its bread was buttered and of taking on the US.

Barbarossa had failed but the Japanese attack in the Pacific provided a distraction to Britain and the US which would allow Germany a second chance in 1942. Hitler knew it was germany's last chance before the might of the US economy was brought to bear on Germany. Anything that distracted from, or would take significant resources from the imperative of defeating Russia in 1942 was off limits. That's why Malta was never attacked.

[Klydon]

Malta going down would have helped the security of the convoy's going to Africa a lot. The Allies had short ranged subs stationed there and would use Ultra intercepts to learn about convoys running and react accordingly. One thing to react out of Malta to a convoy and quite another to react out of the ends of the Med to try to intercept.

One of the issues the Axis would have still faced however is the port capacity in Axis hands was not that hot and was a choke point at times trying to off load supplies, etc for the Africa Corps.

The Axis could only support so many troops/formations in Africa. With Africa being largely an Italian adventure, the quality of troops was not very good, yet they consume as much for supplies as the better German troops. Had the Axis changed up the mix to favor more German units (would not happen for political considerations) then something more may have been able to be done. Of course the Italian units having pasta rations (requires lots of water to boil the pasta and water is at an extreme premium in the desert) just shows one aspect about the lack of planning by the Italian high command for desert warfare. (using machine guns that require an oiler to work properly would be another).

My personal observation is the Axis missed their chances with the desert and Malta. Had they been planning a better war against the British, the invasion would have been done in the fall of 1940 after it was clear that Sea Lion was not going to take place. The Malta garrison was almost non-existant and what British aircraft were available in the Med were pretty bad. Even during most of 1941, they had opportunities until May when the decision was made to invade Crete. (One of the absolute worse mistakes was Italy invading Greece as it had so many bad results following that for the Axis).