Should the Axis have tried harder to take Malta?

That's ok in open, European ground; do it on Malta and all you'll get are a LOT of busted canisters and baskets! Also...dropping on the "right" forces on the ground depends on

1/ being able to see them on the ground;

2/ troops on the ground being able to mark for location and windage, and...

3/ the enemy not doing the same!

Also - there's STILL the issue of a few feet either way and they're dropped on the wrong side of a stone ditch or field wall in a freefire zone!

 

Steve -this is probably the wrong thread for a long disposition on Crete...but you need to grab one of the histories They were near the drop zones, about half of Freyberg's troops were - remember, they knew they were coming!

And Crete only "worked" in the end because a series of tactical blunders "gifted" them Maleme after three days to start flying reinforcements in en masse; prior to this....the FJ were arguably busy loosing! They were within a day, a day and a half at very most, of running out of everything they needed - food, water, ammo, medical supplies etc., etc...and having to surrender. Inplaces they HAD run out and were reduced to drinking from puddles...while the Luftwaffe merrily dropped THEIR supplies to the defenders! They had been caught on the hop by rapid reaction on the ground at Heraklion, and pinned in various locations around Chania; the only one of the three combat areas where there was any movement was Maleme to the west....the forces flown in there had to come to the rescue of ALL the rest!

 

All a game of luck!

 

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Look at post #74 the MZ, or the practically identical original German MFP could carry a heavy thank or 3 M13/40. IIRC some 30 MFP were sent to the Med through the French canals. They actually planned to land two captured KV-2 using them as as sort of instant pillbox, if they can actually move them off the beaches they would be hard to stop though I certainly wouldn't like to be inside a soviet tank in Central Med summer temperatures. I think the (MZ/MFP) were used to ferry some of the Tigers so they could handle a KV-2..

But of course the Italian secret weapon was
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IMO the British have to hold or interdict any area the Germans can drop cannisters to, the axis planes need to land only if they carry non jump capable troops, not for resupply runs. At Malta the paras will not be outnumbered like at Crete so are they are not under the same pressure to finish the job before the British get their act together and may not need the airlanding element at all.

 

Yep...which is NOT something you're supposed to base a major campaign on!

 

Air and naval superiority and close to 4:1 advantage in troops is not luck. The only thing the British have going for them is the difficulty of the initial assaults, but with that number of paras they will grab a foothold somewhere.

 

You keep bandying about the figure of 6-7,000 paratroops; don't forget that Malta had ALL the various types of peril for FJ landing by parachute and glider that Crete had....multiplied tenfold and THEN condensed into a much smaller area. If the initial losses of landing on Crete are duplicated...then that's still ~25-30% of the landing force lost or incapacitated - anything up to 2,000 men! And given the issues with getting LZs for gliders, even harsher terrain and even more obstacles on landing for the FJ...that percentage could greatly increase.

On Crete the Luftwaffe didn't have mere air superiority - they had total supremacy, unlike Malta...and yet very soon after the initial attack they had to rapidly scale back their air attacks on the defenders for the simple reason that with the FJ scattered all over the shop and intermingled with the defenders positions, they couldn't any longer provide close air support.

By 1942...we've already had the map of AA coverage posted up...the defenders ALSO had the "box barrage" covering the island In 1941, the defenders' AA caused plenty of losses....and yet was only concentrated in the Suda/Chania area. The "Box Barrage", being an early form of "metered" defence before the arrival of the VT fuse, would decimate Ju52s...and although holes could be knocked in the Barrage, removal of the AA threat requires it being done on the ground...

I also wouldn't over-exaggerate this "exhaustion" you expect the defenders to be suffering; the defenders of Crete were exhausted and lacking substantially in equipment after being thrown out of Greece, and had been additionally terrorised by the "morning hate" Luftwaffe attacks on the island for several weeks...and yet STILL took a terrible toll of the FJ. The Commonwealth defenders of Tobruk in the first siege were "exhausted" - and still held.

 

Just an add on.....And I'm not interested or trying to start a what if...But my knowledge of where and when German units were at any particular time is not my first import on ww2...but if the Germans and their Italian allies had attacked Malta via the para route etc....the units and kit and logistics involved at the time they would have been inovolved...where actually doing what at that time in reality? And how does this affect the war as it happened? I.E. if German para div or regt 1001 with logistics support built up or whatever to allow invasion and then carry on supplying afterwards etc...what did these units and supply logistics actually do in real life and if they were doing Malta for want of a better word...where would they NOT be doing at the same time...Sounds simplistic as a question but I'm interested....Does this like Greece maybe effect somewhere else in any major way?

 

As for Crete I just mean an example of how close it was for the Para's with an uncontested drop. If the Defenders had been in the right spot how much more casualties would there have been. Also look at how many casualties the Germans suffered at Stalingrad from Soviet AA.

 

Steve - the Para's did NOT have an uncontested drop, the defenders WERE in the right spots. At Chania and Heraklion they did do what they SHOULD have done - got out of their positions and attacked the formating FJ...at Maleme they didn't, the first of several questionable decisions made there.

 

Point is there are a lot more than 6.000 paras to begin with, there'se nearly 20.000 of them. Even with 25% out of action, and you are assuming the Germans learned nothing from Crete while the British have, that's still too much for the ground troops to prevent them from creating an enclave somewhere. At Crete the British had a lot more troops and basically 4 positions to defend, the 3 airfields and Suda itself, the Germans attacked only the airfields and won at Maleme which was enough to break the defence. At Malta they have less troops, still 3 airfields and a port to protect, a credible threat of a seaborne landing that will force them to disperse forces to the coast, and a lot more paras to deal with. They will also get no reinforcements like layforce to bolster the defence with fresh troops, the chances of a merchantman making it to Malta are around 25% and no sane commander will risk troopships at those odds. The only advantage compared to Crete is more AA but it's badly short of ammo.
BTW if the British block the airfields the axis has total air superiority and Malta has ceased to be of any use to the allied effort, you can't have it both ways, if there is a viable strip for defending fighters then the Germans have a chance of capturing and using it.

 

I don't think anybody seriously thinks that the Commonwealth forces of Malta would have just laid down. But really, we've heard much here thats apologism.

If I were in Kurt Student's shoes, I would be licking my chops at the prospect of a Malta drop.

The Axis forces have more in their favour than against. I have no background loyalty to some service or another colouring mu opinions. Generally, if you've served in the British military, you are going to approach a debate like this with opinions that are tainted by your service loyalty. A nationalist would suffer the same.

I am looking at the problem of Malta from a pure command standpoint. You've been given your orders, now do what you can to make it work.

The German Parachute Corps showed on Crete that they were capable enough to roll with the tide of battle and alter their plans to suit the situation their hashed up drop found many of them in. I would surmise the same for Malta. I would also suggest that the islands Flak positions would not have lasted very long under a concentrated air assault designed specifically to suppress them. Once the island loses it's heavy weapons support, the game is essentially over once a good lodgement is gained.

There is no reason to suppose that German and Italian paratroopers were incapable of such machinations. This, and the many factors in their favour, add up to a very good chance of operation 'Hercules' being a success.

You can argue about weapons and equipment till the cows come home. You are not seeing this from a planning standpoint. Obstacles are there to be overcome, simple as that.

As Urqh so rightly pointed out, no plan survives first contact. So, things were undoubtably to go wrong. But, they went BADLY wrong on Crete, and the FJ still won througjh, and against a larger force of people.

Malta's garrison was not more than 30,000 people, of which only half of them were actual soldiers. The rest were service personnel, nurses, etc.

They would have been outnumbered, lacking in almost everything, isolated from their fellow units almost immediately. Even under favourable conditipons, barely three in every teneffectives actually fire their weapons in a firefight, while the rest do what comes naturally. Of these three, only one in that three is a 'natural' that will lift the morale of the unit by his performance.

The British on Malta were RAGGED after 22 months of seige, and after nearly 18 months of 2.5 airraids per day.

If they lasted more than two weeks before Gort called a halt, I would be most surprised. It would have been just another Allied disaster.

At least I give ya'all SOURCED opinion. It doesn't just invent itself in my head. Many others in my old hobby, and quite a few accounts of the Med War agree with distinguished historians like Alfred A. Nofi.
Malta would have FALLEN, sooner or later, but fall it would have. What it would have cost is a matter for real speculation, but Malta's fall was guaranteed....pity that Rommel was too headstrong and pigheaded to do what he told the High Command he would do, namely, returning the air assets to Maltese skys in good time. But of course, without the Luftwaffe, there would have been no victory at Gazala, no victory at Tobruk, no Field Marshall's Baton, and no El Alemain. Rommel was not one for listening to those that knew better. He thought, like all headtrong people, that HE was always right.

It is to our great benefit that he wasn't.

 

Unfortunately its a what if....I don't like them precicely because its not history. But I do love the sealion what if...I unfortunately have to concur with Volga...The British island homeland I would like to state would survive..however elsewhere...our ww2 history with islands and fortresses speaks for itself...So why is Malta the one difference...? I don't think it is...it would fall...we have a long line of history to prove it.

 

THe point of the 7,000 is that was the Max capacity of all the German and Italian transport and glider capacity.
Question what is to prevent the British from sending in troop reinforcement themselves.

 

Yes,of course! But without it you can cancel your operation! That was the case of "Fall Gelb" where the aircraft with the officers and the plannings for that case where caught after a mistake.

 

Yep but that was not a mistake, that was bad judgement by the allies. The mistake was the aircraft landing in Belgium...That was bad luck I suppose, but it changed nothing....If the allied head was so firmly fixed on set options a reluctance to change tack. But getting back to Malta....The British through the second world war, had many fortresses...I may be mistaken, and have missed the obvious, but once attacked...did any survive...? The list is lenghy. Malta I personally believe would have gone the same way. We are not good at island fortresses...or islands in general. The mindset of command on what route to take once battle commences and looks like going against us led to the usual command decisions in strategy. That is history rather than what if. Malta would be different?

 

Urqh, it hasn´t changed anything but it was a typical case of bad luck. The plannings of main operations can be done very well but its would be enough to make a little mistake and all is gone. A better sample was Edward VIII. He talked at a party with some Diplomats and heard that the USA was able to get into the Italian Army codes. A few glasses later he said this to a Italian Diplomat and all the long hard work from the US Secret Service was blown away in some seconds. Bad luck for them!

 

Looking at urqh's previous question, most of the land units earmarked for C3 were basically sitting idle at the time, but would be missed later on. Folgore and Ramke (that was a piece of 7FJ) ended up at El Alamein, they definetly would need reorganization begfore going anywhere if they took part in C3. Most of the regular infantry remained to fight in Sicily or were sent to Tunisia, as were a lot of the German paras. The air assets went East with Rommel. IMO if C3 occurs Rommel has to stop at the border, he cannot get to El Alamein without the LW assets. This may actually help him defensively as the British may go off half cocked, a Crusader like battle without Tobruk at his back is a much better proposition than a straigh attrition battle like El Alamein. Of course Rommel being Rommel he's also likely to go East as soon as he gets the planes back.

 

We are widening this debate now.

Operation Aida, the drive to take the Delta was to be taken in conjunction with Herkules. It was brought forward to late May in order to strike the British before they launched their own attack from Gazala.

Rommel was very successful taking Tobruk on 21st June where Kesselring joined him to order the Luftwaffe back to attack Malta. K pointed out that Malta was already recovering from the the hammering of April and that aircraft and subs operating out of Malta were again being to strangle Axis supply. K demanded that Rommel halt his advance short of the border.

Why allow the British time to recover and Rommel contended that opening up Benghazi and Tobruk negated the need for reducing Malta?

In a normal Army Kessring being the force commander would have got his way but this was Germany and Rommel sent von Rintelen to appeal direct to Hitler and the High Command
- Jodl agreed immediately that the Luftwaffe should continue under Rommel to hammer the British, as did Hitler when he heard, Kesselring and Rader objected but Goering agreed with Rommel.

On 22nd June Hitler cabled the Duce who also agreed that Rommel's attack should continue after sending Cavallero to ascertain the battle plan. On 29th the Duce and his white charger flew to Derna in preparation for the triumphal
entry into Alex planned for the next week.

So it does seem the Axis commanders were as split as we are in this debate.

 

That is not a problem, for us! I like it if debates going this way without any harsh or rude wirds, because there are popping up some new facts, interesting opinions or at minimum some interesting POV´s. I´m sure that we won´t be able to agree at here but it is a good debate, Gentleman. Please go on.