Phylo,
"discussing" with you is as tiresome as it's pointless. Just drop your "humorous" comments and be more straight forward, it'd also help those of us who're not native English speakers. If you need a lecture on how to do opposed landings, I do suggest you read up on it.
Humour? Unfortunately I was being perfectly serious.
But you want straight forward? Ok....
You mean apart from the MGs, and rifles, and mortars, and land mines....
Light guns haven't been part of the equation until now.
Don't be so bloody stupid as to say that light guns have NEVER been part of the equation; the capacity of the defenfders of Malta to defend the (small) number of (small) beaches, each with very limited debouchement, has been discussed
ad infinitum on this board. Don't be so stupid as to say they haven't. And by better and better-informed posters than yourself.
How about YOU bringing some new data to this ENDLESS bloody debate instead of rehashing the SAME tired old assumptions and comments that proponents of this idea are normally reduced to within a handful of pages...and have been here already.
OR JUST TRY THE SEARCH FUNCTION. There is
NO aspect of the Malta situation that has
NOT been discussed previously on this board.
Straightforward enough now?
Let's put this thread's whole debate into context....
Four months before BARBAROSSA, it has been suggested that the Axis mount a "huge" air assault on Malta to soften up the defences...followed by an airborne assault that will decimate the FJ and the LW's transport capacity in an attempt to land on terrain that was far worse than Crete.
it has likewise been suggested that it would be a simple job to bring MFPs that don't yet exist down a canal from the
North of Europe to the South of Europe...a Canal that could not even be relied on in the middle of a nice
wet European winter.
YOU have suggested that the RM could stand off and bombard the island's defences...from a range where those defences would not be visible, and from the wrong side of the island for the island's airfields and major anchorages...in an environment where it would be
anything but safe to attempt directed observed fire from, say, a spotter aircraft.
YOU have suggested that the Axis forces could used "improvised landing vessels"....li
ke at Crete...they didn't use improvised landing vessels at Crete, they put a division onto two flotillas of local fishingboats and yachts and headed for the island's
many northern beaches and small fishing harbours....
Need it be said (again) that
while the Royal Navy was active north of Crete - they didn't get there?
Does it never ever strike proponents of this idea that if the Germans gave up on the idea in 1942 - with an FJ force that had spent some time training for the operation in Southern France, with a new range of heavier-lift gliders...in a Mediterranean where the RN was a shadow of what it had been
before Crete in May 1941...in an island enviroment with no more airfields than late 1940/early 1941 to have to take from the defenders...where the terrain was exactly the same as it had been in 1940/41...there might JUST have been some very good reasons why they didn't do it in late 1940 or early 1941
when there was FAR more going against them?
Until the naval losses off Crete, the RM had given up major fleet actions bar convoy escort; each time they gone out looking for the RN in 1940, they'd ended up turning and running for it. Cunningham dragged his coattails SO many times...
and the RM had stayed in port...but
THIS time they're going to come out and pin themselves to a land bombardment and amphibious landing support operation for
how many days???
Each time this issue is debated on AHF - the proponents of the idea sound more and more desperate, grasping at more and more straws. This time is no different.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...
Looks like the British were quite aware of the risks at them...