magicdragon wrote:Transit rights via Vichy territory could have included coastal shipping, rail and road routes which would have partly reduced the need for airlift capacity. Some of the supplies could have been sourced from Vichy stock? Some of the aircraft use by the Germans could have been captured French types so the spares could have been sourced from local stocks.
I doubt the Germans would undertake an operation of this magnitude if it had to rely, even in part, on captured enemy stock. The Luftwaffe just swept across all of Europe on German air frames maintained with German parts and German ordnance. Why revert to inferior and unfamiliar equipment?
Besides which if this operation was conducted between the fall of France and the invasion of Greece there would have been very few other large scale operations demanding lots of Ju52s.
Apart from Seelowe, which would have called for the largest German airborne operation to date.
Malta is the nearest air base and its 1,103 miles away? You can react very quickly but you are not getting there without the mother of all efforts?
Air attack is not the only option available to the British. Distance between Scapa Flow to Narvik is over 1400 klicks, yet the allies managed to land over 24,000 troops to retake the port.
Do you think they would put in the same effort to protect a possession as strategically vital as Gibraltar?
Methinks yes.
BTW, do you know how far an invasion force would have to travel inland to threaten the airfield at Tangier?
My guess is the hardest part would be traversing around all the shell craters that the RN punched into the tarmac
The Italians conducted 14 raids over a 3 year period with no raid involving more than 10 planes and the average raid involving 3 planes - this does not suggest overwhelming force effort. The Vichy French conducted 2 much larger air raids but left it at that. The proposed Tangier effort would be less than the Vichy effort but would be on a daily and on-going basis with a view to denying the RN and RAF unrestricted use of the Gib airfield.
I was referring to the effort expended against Malta.
Malta and Guadalcanal were success because RN and USN made a major effort to replenish and resupply both places.
Are we assume Britain would not do the same with regards to Gibraltar?
The point of using of Tangiers is to force the RN to expend ships, planes and men in a campaign which would only weaken its efforts in the Atlantic and Mediterranean in late 1940 to accomplish absolutely nothing more than restore a position - not gain a strategic advantage.
How does retaining Gibraltar weaken the allies effort elsewhere in the Mediterranean? If anything the loss of that position would ensure the loss of Malta, and thereby gifting the Axis a secure LOCs from Europe to North Africa
Even if the British invade Tangiers the Luftwaffe could get out it’s flyable planes, destroy its equipment and the rest of the German garrison walks into neutral Spanish Morocco and at worst interment - many ending up back in Germany in the coming months with a bruised ego and a suntan.
I wonder how receptive OKW would have been to that suggestion
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
~Babylonian Proverb