WI Italy had undisputed control of the Central Med in 1940

[King Midas]

Would the Italian army in Libya do much better than in our TL?

This thread https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=180687 got me thinking about Italian North Africa.

In OTL the original Italian offensive in North Africa bogged down at Sidi Baranni, just a day's drive into Egypt from Libya.

There are two schools of thought why.
1) The general in charge, Rodolfo Graziani, has been historically nicknamed "The Slug." Mussolini and he had a relationship similar to Lincoln and McCellan: "If you aren't using that army, might I borrow it for awhile?"

2) Graziani claimed that he didn't have the supplies to march further, and then go into battle, and if the Regia Marina would kindly send him some trucks, fuel, ammuntion etc, he would be glad to leave the fortified camps around Sidi Baranni and head toward Alexandria.

Let us assume that for whatever reasons (20 German Bismarks is a bit much , but whatever), Italy had undisputed control over the supply lines to North Africa.

Could the Italian army make a sucessful offensive in North Africa?

Note, the reader can define sucess in either of two ways, either taking Alexandria: or just making a creditable showing in North Africa rather than one of the worst debacles in the history of warfare.

IMO, The Italians still had serious equipment, morale, and mobility problems that would make a victory in North Africa problematical, but it would be a lot nearer than OTL.

 

[Falecius]

This would require the Italians take Malta early in the war. I'm not sure the RM had the capability to do this against the much stronger RN.

 

[von Adler]

The Italians had enough resources for one front or one operation. For them to do better;

1. Pull back the merchant fleet (with vital raw materials) before declaring war.
2. Pull bach the air force and navy from East Africa as well as the regular division.
3. Disband the Celere divisions and use the freed up tanks and motorised units to build up in North Africa.
4. Go for Malta IMMEDIATELY upon declaration of war.
5. Build up Nort Africa. Three armoured divisions, all M11/39 and all M13/40, armoured cars, two motorized divisions and ALL supplies.
6. No idiotic attack in Greece.

Perhaps then the Italians can be a credible threat to Egypt.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Well said von Alder. Assuming Italy takes Malta early (possible), concentrates on an all-Africa strategy early on, and through luck manages to hold back the RN, then the Africa Campaign will fare better than OTL.

Assuming Balbo lives, he'll be more aggressive, and if he has the full resources of the RE early, before the Commonwealth troops can flood in, has the real possibility to push deep into Egypt before the Commonwealth forces change the playing field.

Limiting factor will remain Logistics. Tobruk just isn't enough of a port. Tripoli, even if the port authority problems are cleared, is too far away. Italy doesn't have the trucks. They'd need a closer port, and even if things go implausibly wankish for them and they take Alexandria the RN is still in the eastern Med in sufficient strength to prevent naval exploitation of this coup. The RM is caught in a vice between the East and West RN fleets.

Eventually British Commonwealth forces arrive en masse as OTL and the balance shifts.

 

[Markus]

Graziani did have a point, actually several.

The average Italian infrantry division was badly short of firepower: they had 24 75mm and 12 100mm guns, obsolete ones of course. A British division had 75 25pdrs.

While early war UK tanks were bad, the Italian ones were even worse and last but not least the UK forces were 100% motorized, the Italian ones lacked organic motor transport making them not very useful in the desert to put it mildly.

Even if by some miracle they make it to the Quatarra Depression I see no way how they could make it past that unflankable position.


My things-to-do-list would look like:

1.Take Malta ASAP.
2.Take the Halfaya Pass.
3.Get guns, trucks and better tanks to Libya.

 

[Jimbrock]

It was very possible to take Malta immediately after the DoW. IIRC, there was a submarine attack in the Grand Harbour that almost resulted in an Italian victory, so if the Italians go all in for Malta it could happen. The Maltese themselves would probably help thim kick out the British at that point.

 

[Life In Black]

I'm not sure the RM had the capability to do this against the much stronger RN.

Why would the Royal Marines fight the Royal Navy?!

How would the Italians or the Axis for that matter gain control of the Med? As good as the RM was, there's no way it could take on the Royal Navy.

 

[ranoncles]

The Italian military is much maligned for a variety of reasons. Some of them are indeed down to poor equipment, poor training & doctrine and poor leadership but most are down to poor strategy IMO.

On several notable occasions, the Italians fought extremely well so there wasn't too much wrong with the basics.

It started going wrong when Mussoline decided to declare war without actually wanting to fight one seriously. The attack on France was poorly planned and executed, mostly because the army wasn't allowed any time to prepare. On an aside, the army should have had plans ready since France was the obvious opponent there.

Then there was the invasion of Egypt, again poorly planned. If you are going to fight in a desert, you need to be properly prepared. Same thing with the Greek campaign. No proper planning, just ordering troops forward.

And to compound these mistakes, Mussoline spread out his small army over multiple fronts.

If Italy had concentrated on North Africa, it had both the manpower and equipment (just think wat their 8th Army in Russia could have done in NA) to tackle the British, certainly before the British became too strong in mid-1942. And effective use of both the fleet and the torpedo-bombers could have neutralized Malta just as effectively as Malta did to the Axis...

 

[Riain]

I read Van Creveld's book Supplying War again yesterday, well the chapter about the desert war anyway. It shows how when things got tough the Italians used 100,000 tons of warships to escort a convoy of 20,000 tons of merchant shipping. It also mentions that the Italians started the war with 1.7 million tons of merchant shipping, lost a lot but with new construction, German and French ships and salvage still had 1.3 million tons in 1942. Further it says that tonnage targets to Africa were usually met. So the real problem isn't crossing the Med or Malta, it's moving stuff inside Africa itself.

Undisputed control of the central Med won't make any difference since the stuff will pile up in Triopli because of the huge difficulty moving it the 900 miles to the front. Perhaps, and just perhaps, undisputed Italan control of the cewntral Med will allow Benghazi to be fully utilised and smaller forward ports as well relieving the pressure on the overburdened trucks which have to carry the supplies from Tripoli.

Sorry.

 

[Life In Black]

How come none of the Axis didn't think to create an artificial harbor, or focus on building a rail network for North Africa? I know it would have been costly, and would have spelled doom for the Axis earlier if they failed, but look what happened anyway.

 

[Riain]

No patience or resources once the war started. They did build 40km onto the Benghazi-Barce line toward Derna.

The funny thing is that the few railways that were built went exactly the wrong way to support that war once it started. The longest line from Tripoli went west for 120km and the longest line from Benghazi went east 110km, this was the one that was extended by 40km during the war. The lines that were in the right direction to gap this distance were 10km and 56km, nothing in light of the 1016km distance between these 2 cities.

I wonder if the war would have gone differently if these little networks were reversed, and the longest lines were in the right direction to close the gap. The OTL 950km gap between railheads could have been 786km, which I think may have changed the minds of the people who IOTL only built 40km of track during the war.

 

[Mostlyharmless]

I read Van Creveld's book Supplying War again yesterday, well the chapter about the desert war anyway. It shows how when things got tough the Italians used 100,000 tons of warships to escort a convoy of 20,000 tons of merchant shipping. It also mentions that the Italians started the war with 1.7 million tons of merchant shipping, lost a lot but with new construction, German and French ships and salvage still had 1.3 million tons in 1942. Further it says that tonnage targets to Africa were usually met. So the real problem isn't crossing the Med or Malta, it's moving stuff inside Africa itself.

Undisputed control of the central Med won't make any difference since the stuff will pile up in Triopli because of the huge difficulty moving it the 900 miles to the front. Perhaps, and just perhaps, undisputed Italan control of the cewntral Med will allow Benghazi to be fully utilised and smaller forward ports as well relieving the pressure on the overburdened trucks which have to carry the supplies from Tripoli.

Sorry.

If the Italians controlled the Central Mediterranean, they would unload the cargo at Tobruk or perhaps even Bardia. They should also be able to use something like the German F-lighters (Marine-fahrprahme or MFP) to ship cargo forward along the North African Coast. Of course, excluding the British Fleet from the Central Mediterranean might be difficult.
I thought that the Italians started with 3,245,670 tons of merchant shipping (from http://www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/Fleet/Fleet1.htm) but they left quite a lot outside the Med. in June 1940 .

 

[Riain]

The Axis forces needed between 60,000-100,000 tons a month, Tobruk could barely handle 20,000, usually less than half that. And Tobruk isn't really central Med, its getting toward the eastern Med and is only about 150 miles from the British port/railhead of Mersa Matruh which has few supply problems for any British forces based there which want to attack Tobruk, loss rates for shipping to Tobruk were 4 times that of shipping to Tripoli/Benghazi.

 

[King Midas]

The Italians had enough resources for one front or one operation. For them to do better;

1. Pull back the merchant fleet (with vital raw materials) before declaring war.
2. Pull bach the air force and navy from East Africa as well as the regular division.
3. Disband the Celere divisions and use the freed up tanks and motorised units to build up in North Africa.
4. Go for Malta IMMEDIATELY upon declaration of war.
5. Build up Nort Africa. Three armoured divisions, all M11/39 and all M13/40, armoured cars, two motorized divisions and ALL supplies.
6. No idiotic attack in Greece.

Perhaps then the Italians can be a credible threat to Egypt.

Agree on pt 1, 4, and 5.

Donno what a Celere division is. The semi motorized ones?

re 6: How about a non idiotic attack on Greece?
(I know. we need a pimpslap smilie )

Agreed, Greek neutrality was probably in all side's best interest.

2: Not sure about that one. First, Italian East Africa was something of another "world's largest self supporting prison camp" yet was a concern for Cairo. "Well, if we don't hold them, they might take Kartoum!" And do what? Vandalize Gordon's statue? Having an army there makes the CW keep worrying about its southern flank. Secondly, the last thing the 10th army needs is more troops.

 

[King Midas]

Well said von Alder. Assuming Italy takes Malta early (possible), concentrates on an all-Africa strategy early on, and through luck manages to hold back the RN, then the Africa Campaign will fare better than OTL.

Assuming Balbo lives, he'll be more aggressive, and if he has the full resources of the RE early, before the Commonwealth troops can flood in, has the real possibility to push deep into Egypt before the Commonwealth forces change the playing field.

Limiting factor will remain Logistics. Tobruk just isn't enough of a port. Tripoli, even if the port authority problems are cleared, is too far away. Italy doesn't have the trucks. They'd need a closer port, and even if things go implausibly wankish for them and they take Alexandria the RN is still in the eastern Med in sufficient strength to prevent naval exploitation of this coup. The RM is caught in a vice between the East and West RN fleets.

Eventually British Commonwealth forces arrive en masse as OTL and the balance shifts.

Tripoli, or did you mean Bengazi?

Assuming the Italians control the Nile River delta, where is the Eastern CW fleet harbored? Not a snark, just not too familiar with available ports East of Alexandria? Somewhere on the canal?

 

[King Midas]

Graziani did have a point, actually several.

Thanks. I've always felt so.

The average Italian infrantry division was badly short of firepower: they had 24 75mm and 12 100mm guns, obsolete ones of course. A British division had 75 25pdrs.

Well, to be fair, an Italian Division wasn't worth much more than a British regiment.

While early war UK tanks were bad, the Italian ones were even worse and last but not least the UK forces were 100% motorized, the Italian ones lacked organic motor transport making them not very useful in the desert to put it mildly.

Even if by some miracle they make it to the Quatarra Depression I see no way how they could make it past that unflankable position.

Ah. That would be where the Sahariano camel brigade comes in.
(A good, tough unit, but a single brigade doesn't count as much of a front breaker). The rest of the Infantry could do one thing that the Italians were quite good at. Sit in a position and hold it. Maybe the Sahariano and the Folgore division working together could break the El Alamein line?

My things-to-do-list would look like:

1.Take Malta ASAP.
2.Take the Halfaya Pass.

Adding Sollum to Bardia for shipping couldn't hurt.

3.Get guns, trucks and better tanks to Libya.

Like Von Adler's point 5 above. Build a mechanized army rather than a horde of riflemen.

 

[King Midas]

Why would the Royal Marines fight the Royal Navy?!

How would the Italians or the Axis for that matter gain control of the Med? As good as the RM was, there's no way it could take on the Royal Navy.

The Royal Marines would dispute that last statement Sir!

Seriously, I wanted to avoid that question so that we could discuss the land war. But since you asked: I have no idea how likely any of the ideas below are, but...

1) Malta in Axis hands
2) Better Regia Marina equipment or doctrine
3) Vichy France, or at least the French fleet, join the Axis.
4) There is some kind of animal. Seal? Walrus? Whatever, if Germany masses an invasion army on the north coast of France (not really intending to use it, but to look like an invasion is about to be launched), then Britain would redeploy everything to the defence of the Home Island.
5) A Med version of the Battle of Midway: The Regia Aeronautica caught the RN at just the worst moment, and inflicted crushing losses on the Royal Navy. The central Med is a NoGo zone for the RN in the Autumn of 1940.

 

[von Adler]

Tobruk was a good enough harbour, what was lacking was cranes, dock workers and a harbour organisation - what did exist was mostly destroyed in the British capture.

The Italians need to focus on the Libyan infrastructure early war - expand the narrow guage railroad that ran from Tripolis to Benghazi to Tobruk and the border and increase supply of locomotives and rolling stock there.

They also need to build more air fields for the Regia Aeronautica to deploy from.

 

[Cook]

How would the Italians or the Axis for that matter gain control of the Med? As good as the RM was, there's no way it could take on the Royal Navy.

This overlooks how difficult it was for the Royal Navy to operate in the Central Mediterranean and the reluctance they had operating between south of Sardinia through to North of Cyrenaica. It was only with heavy losses that convoys made it through to Malta before late 1942.

 

[Riain]

Tobruk was a good enough harbour, what was lacking was cranes, dock workers and a harbour organisation - what did exist was mostly destroyed in the British capture.

The Italians need to focus on the Libyan infrastructure early war - expand the narrow guage railroad that ran from Tripolis to Benghazi to Tobruk and the border and increase supply of locomotives and rolling stock there.

They also need to build more air fields for the Regia Aeronautica to deploy from.

Tobruk was thought to be able to handle 1500 tons per day but only occasionally reached 600 tons, compared to Benghazi's 2700 tons a day but only occasionally reached as high as 800 tons.

There was no narrow gauge railway that ran between Tripoli and Benghazi and this is the Axis' biggest problem, getting supplies from the biggest and safest port forward some 1000 miles to the front.