June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

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Tim Smith
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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#61

Post by Tim Smith » 11 Aug 2010, 15:08

cormallen wrote:Original post states :
"Italian parachute regiment.
Italy had 3 parachute battalions in 1940. They would be used to neutralize Malta coast defenses before the assault transports arrive."

I know he is wrong about numbers (etc) but they do seem to have a fairly usefull role in this plan...
Italy did have 3 parachute battalions in June 1940, but only 1 was fully trained. The other 2 were new formations and still in training, so it would have been sheer murder to throw trainees out of an airplane over Malta.... I'm not sure even Mussolini would be that ruthless.

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heading for 'sealion delusions' territory again

#62

Post by Dave Bender » 11 Aug 2010, 15:37

That's a very poor comparison.

- Britain contains about 94,000 sq miles. Malta contains 121 sq miles.
- 1940 Britain was defended by over a thousand aircraft. Malta had 4.
- 1940 Britain was defended by multiple army divisions including some armor. 1940 Malta had a single infantry brigade.
- 1940 Germany had just fought a series of wars (Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France). The Wehrmacht needed to refit and build up ammunition supplies before another major war. Italy was fresh.
- Britain is hundreds of km from Germany (i.e. German logistical hub). Malta is 93 km from Sicily.
- The 1940 Italian Navy was large, experienced and relatively professional. The 1940 German Navy was green as grass. Most of the German ships had been in commission only a couple years. Not even long enough to work the bugs out of the steam plants. Furthermore Italy had power projection experience going back to 1911 when they invaded North Africa. During the 1930s Italy projected military power to both Spain and Ethiopia. Compared to earlier military operations moving one or two infantry divsions 93 km to Malta would be a piece of cake.


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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#63

Post by Baltasar » 11 Aug 2010, 15:42

cormallen
cormallen wrote:And your 'weld something together' does rather have us heading for 'sealion delusions' territory again?
The only thing Malta and the British isles have in common is that both are British territory. We're not talking about facing off the vast majority of the RN and RAF.
Certainly possible to have the Italians build a force pre-war that would be happily capable of this sort of thing but this WI sort of suggests that it can be done very ad hoc with what they find in the back of the shed...
I'd happily agree with that, but this would require the Italian leadership to actually have any plans at all, which they seemed to be notoriously short of. As it is, it might actually be more realistic to have them suddenly think of invading Malta without being thoroughly prepared.


JonS
JonS wrote:
Baltasar wrote:During Crete, the Germans used basically everything afloat for that, ...
Mmm. Possibly not the best example you could have come up with
Well, it was the first one to spring to mind. And although losses were quite horrible, they did succeed...


Jon G.
Jon G. wrote:That's a rather big assumption. The Italians hardly had any specific plans for the kind of war they ended up fighting. AFAIK, most Italian pre-war planning centered around conflict with France, Yugoslavia and/or Greece.
I believe they even had no useful plans for those either. Contingency plans may be, but their upper echelon was riddled with rather selfish generals with too much ego and too few ideas about how to fight a war.
Jon G. wrote:The question remains, would it have been worth the cost? The Italians thought that the fall of France would force the British to the negotiation table. Since it didn't, would the capture of Malta do? Like, 'look, we took Malta, now hand over your empire to us if you please'
That's perfectly true, Malta would only be a logical target of any worth if the Italians assumed that the war would last long.


Tim Smith
Tim Smith wrote:If it's a failure, though.....not good for Mussolini's blood pressure!
Sounds like a win win situation for the Germans... either the Italians manage to win a fight for once or Mussolini dies of a heart attack. ;)

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#64

Post by Terry Duncan » 11 Aug 2010, 15:54

The 1940 Italian Navy was large, experienced and relatively professional.
So tell us where she had conducted an amphibious invasion on a hostile and defended shore?
THAT is a list of passenger ships....
Having looked at them, yes.
Nor did such an operation that was successful normally get slapped together in an ad hoc fashion at the last moment.
This is the problem, between Italy thinking there might be a chance to do something and that chance passsing, there would only be a very few weeks.
I find these exercises endlessly fascinating, just like a train wreck, and especially when events and capabilities are twisted to fit as required.
Yes, this is often the problem, as even a basic and sensible idea is often soon overcome with strange ideas that nobody else will notice, or that problems will just go away.

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#65

Post by Jon G. » 11 Aug 2010, 16:48

Baltasar wrote:...JonS
JonS wrote:
Baltasar wrote:During Crete, the Germans used basically everything afloat for that, ...
Mmm. Possibly not the best example you could have come up with
Well, it was the first one to spring to mind. And although losses were quite horrible, they did succeed...
Actually, the Italian contribution to the Axis invasion of Crete may be the closest historical example we'll ever find of an improvised Italian amphibious operation.
Jon G.
Jon G. wrote:That's a rather big assumption. The Italians hardly had any specific plans for the kind of war they ended up fighting. AFAIK, most Italian pre-war planning centered around conflict with France, Yugoslavia and/or Greece.
I believe they even had no useful plans for those either. Contingency plans may be, but their upper echelon was riddled with rather selfish generals with too much ego and too few ideas about how to fight a war...
That's taking it too far. The Italians were spectacularly unprepared for the war they ended up fighting, but they weren't unprepared altogether.

Down through the 1930s, most large Regia Marina warships were built in direct competition with similar French ships - i.e. each new class of battleship, cruiser, destroyer and so on was usually built to outdo whatever new battleship, cruiser, destroyer etc. which the fiscally and industrially much stronger French had just come up with. Italian warships usually prioritized speed over guns and armour and probably wouldn't be too suitable for an operation - such as supporting an assault landing - where they would have to stay in the same position for long.

And all those cute little tankettes which proved useless in the desert were actually developed with operations in hilly terrain - such as the Alps, or large parts of Yugoslavia and Greece - in mind.

The big white elephant was the RA, which had earned something of a reputation in the 1920s and 1930s. But the Italians had lost out in the technological developments of the late 1930s (for example, they didn't have a good monoplane fighter plane in mass production when war began), but by the time Italy entered the war most still thought highly about the capabilities of the Italian air force.

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fiscally and industrially much stronger French

#66

Post by Dave Bender » 11 Aug 2010, 17:48

Historical 1938 GDP. (in millions of 1990 American dollars)
187,402. France
143,981. Italy.

The French economy was only 30% larger then the Italian economy. French colonies were a large financial drain as they had to fight wars almost continually in places like Vietnam and Morocco. France also maintained the second largest army in Europe (Soviets were first) throughout the 1920s and 1930s and that was another large financial drain. France poured a large amount of money into building the Maginot Line during the early 1930s. During 1936 the Marxist Popular Front government approved a massive (14 billion franc) increase in French military spending.

Without the idiotic Italian invasion of Ethiopia they might actually have been in a stronger financial position then France.

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#67

Post by Gooner1 » 11 Aug 2010, 18:17

Jon G. wrote: All that aside, I am sure it could be done, or at least the Italians would have had a fair chance, but it would probably have to be some coup-de-main kind of thing, right on the heels of a DoW, and relying on British/Maltese unpreparedness for an immediate assault.
Catching Malta unprepared is clutching at straws I think.

Consider this from Lt.Col. Weldon, Royal Artillery Malta.

"Naturally the outbreal of war in England caused an immediate state of emergency to be observed in Malta. All troops were confined to their war stations and every weapon was ready for instant use as no one doubted that Italy would join in and attack the Island without any formal declaration of war." <>
"Since 1935 there had been false alarm after false alarm; the troops had stood to their guns, beach posts had been manned and long hours spent on watch at frequent intervals only for the scare to die downand relapse into the limbo of the forgotten past. No sooner had everyone taken up the old routine of life than yet another bombastic utterance from Il Duce sent everyone scuttling back to their war stations. Latterly, of course, these scares had been frequent and everyone was fed up with them. Therefore it was with a feeling of real relief that the pitifully inadequate garrison of Malta received the news that at last the fight was on."

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#68

Post by Jon G. » 11 Aug 2010, 18:24

I'm curious that the GDP difference isn't bigger. What is your source?

Be that as it may, Italy had a number of problems which France didn't have to the same degree:

- Italian colonies were also financial liabilities, and unlike French colonies they didn't produce anything useful; eg. the only use of Libya was as a dumping ground for excess population and a side-track for disgruntled army officers.

- A large part of its population tied to an inefficient agricultural sector. Meaning that once Italy went to war a large part of its productive effort couldn't be mobilized for anything else than it already did, namely producing food. Just something as basic as mobilizing for war (an exercise which included drafting civilian horses into the military) would almost certainly hurt the Italian economy far more than the same exercise would hurt the French. Imports weren't to be had, because

- Italy had a desperate shortage of foreign currency, and gold reserves were very small. Italian foreign trade, such as it was, was largely reduced to primitive barter. Who else would sell bombers for dried codfish, as the Italians did to the Norwegians?

- An almost complete lack of strategic materials, such as oil, coal, rubber and so on, which were all needed for modern 20th century warfare. See foreign currency situation, above (or here ) regarding Italy's chances of acquiring these items by trade.

As far as I know, French military spending was fairly modest - the army was large, but it was also a mobilization army - until German rearmament kicked in. In fact and AFAIK, one of the reasons behind the Maginot Line was that it would keep defense spending low.

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#69

Post by Tim Smith » 11 Aug 2010, 18:36

Actually the main Italian technological weakness for both tanks and aircraft was low-powered, outdated engines.

For tanks, the more horsepower the engine has, the more armour and armament the tank can carry. So it's the engine that enables a good tank design, not the armour or gun. But Italian tank engines were very small and weak. Italian M13/40: 125 hp. British Cruiser Mk IV: 340 hp - well over twice the power.

Italy produced fighters with good, aerodynamically-efficient airframes, but lacked engines of sufficient horsepower to get the best out of them. Italian Macchi MC.200: 870 hp. British Hurricane I: 1,030 hp. The MC.200 could have been faster and carried heavier armament with 1,200 hp, which would have been enough for it to beat the Hurricane handily. (The Pratt and Whitney R-1830 engine design, which the Fiat A.74 engine was based on, reached 1,200 hp, so the Fiat engineers should have been able to accomplish the same - but didn't.)

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#70

Post by Tim Smith » 11 Aug 2010, 18:52

Gooner1 wrote: Catching Malta unprepared is clutching at straws I think.
Depends on whether Malta is able to carry out frequent air recon patrols with her existing air group. If the alert only goes out once the invasion fleet is in sight from the island, that may be too late - as it was for the Germans on D-Day.

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#71

Post by JonS » 11 Aug 2010, 21:13

Baltasar wrote:JonS
JonS wrote:
Baltasar wrote:During Crete, the Germans used basically everything afloat for that, ...
Mmm. Possibly not the best example you could have come up with
Well, it was the first one to spring to mind. And although losses were quite horrible, they did succeed...
Wait, what? The seaborne invasion of Crete succeeded? This is new!

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#72

Post by cormallen » 11 Aug 2010, 21:25

Hi Jon

I have a 1939 Whitaker's almanac somewhere ...I'll have a look at what that has on Franco-Italian economic balance if I can find it? IIRC it lists govt revenue etc...

alan

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Catching Malta unprepared

#73

Post by Dave Bender » 11 Aug 2010, 22:16

Historically Malta was unprepared for a serious invasion attempt during June 1940. Changing that requires an additional departure from the historical timeline.

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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#74

Post by phylo_roadking » 11 Aug 2010, 22:20

Point being that they did not send in those when the Italians were attacking Malta... because the Italians didn't do it.


But they WERE prepared to steam right up to the Italian coast and shell coastal targets :wink: So saying they didn't charge down on Malta because the targets didn't put themselves there is a bit of a non-starter.
Afaik they also didn't concentrate the majority of their air assets in the area, which also should have an inpact on the outcome.
A while back (wow, this time last year!) in one of the long discussions about both Malta and air ops there and airfields - it turns out that the British DID "concentrate" air assets on Malta....even at time when there were only a handful of fighters flying - including June-July 1940 :wink: Bomber Command squadrons transiting to the Middle East staged through Malta....stayed there a few weeks, and carried out bombing raids on Italian mainland targets!!!....THEN flew on to Egypt! 8O It was defensive fighter cover that Malta was short of right at that point! :wink:
Well, it was the first one to spring to mind. And although losses were quite horrible, they did succeed...
Wait, what? The seaborne invasion of Crete succeeded? This is new!
Well, they GOT there :lol: Admittedly on the 7th day after the landings IIRC, while the Commonwealth forces were busy heading south toot sweet towards Sphakia.
For tanks, the more horsepower the engine has, the more armour and armament the tank can carry. So it's the engine that enables a good tank design, not the armour or gun. But Italian tank engines were very small and weak. Italian M13/40: 125 hp. British Cruiser Mk IV: 340 hp - well over twice the power.
It's perhaps ALSO worth noting two MORE severe weaknesses of Italian tanks of the period - weak suspensions that broke frequently on stony desert flats....much like Malta's stony terrain 8O....and brittle armourplate - that even old 18-pdrs firing solid AP shot is going to embarass severely! :D
Regarding the use of paratroops, Malta was criss-crossed by low walls seperating farmers' fields, which would have made it difficult to use glider-borne troops* and quite possibly painful for paratroopers. Also, the island is so small that even the smallest of navigation errors might have your stick of paratroopers ending up in the sea, rather than atop important objectives
The FJ landings around Heraclion suffered particularly because of the stony terrain IIRC - lncluding dropping on a Cretan cemetary - those crepe-soled boots and rubber rings didn't do much good if you broke your back on the edge of a marble tomb! 8O Swap that for the small fields of Malta, the terrain crisscrossed with dry stone walls...
*Some of the earliest German aid to the Italians was Ju-52 troop transports flying soldiers from Bari to Albania, so I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Italians would have been able to persuade the Germans to station some Ju-52s and gliders in Sicily.
Jon - when were these flights? Because JUNE 1940 puts the LW right in the middle of being short 2/5s of its Ju52 force, and having used up most of its (relatively few to start with) gliders in the West.

Also - this brings up the comparison with the flotillas sent by sea to Crete; just like the many small caiques and yachts of 1941, individual 1940 DFS 230s couldn't EACH carry more than a handful of men plus equipment...it took a lot of them to land a sizeable force.
Last edited by phylo_roadking on 12 Aug 2010, 01:54, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: June 1940. Italy invades Malta.

#75

Post by Dave Bender » 12 Aug 2010, 01:49

DS 230s couldn't EACH carry more than a handful of men plus equipment
We can nail that down a bit tighter by looking at some historical 1940 DFS 230 glider assaults.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Eben-Emael
Group Granite.
85 men and 11 gliders. These were the pioneer that landed on Fort Eben Emael. They were carrying lots of additional explosives (mostly shaped charges) for this mission.

Group Steel.
92 men and 9 gliders. Normal airborne infantry. They captured Veldwezelt bridge.

Group Concrete.
96 men and 11 gliders. Normal airborne infantry. They captured Vroenhoven bridge.

Group Iron.
90 men in 10 gliders. Normal airborne infantry. They captured Cannes bridge.

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