Taking Gozo as a siege warfare alternative to C3/Herkules

[T. A. Gardner]

But it would take a typical German construction regiment several months at a minimum to do it.

You're assuming - you consider it obvious - that Germany undertakes perhaps its most atypical operation of the entire war, one on which its strategic theater position largely depends, and just attaches a "typical German construction regiment." It takes time to train commandos to scale cliffs, to retrain paratroopers for the specific mission and to avoid the errors of Crete, it ships MFP's across Europe by massive special road convoys, it grants a special allocation of fuel and then...

...and then it just figures "yeah any old construction unit will do."

...it doesn't look at a map of Gozo.

...or Germans don't realize that bulldozers are more powerful than men.

...or Germany has like 5 bulldozers and Goering is playing with 4 of them.

I mean yeah, if you assume the position against which you are arguing will be planned and executed in a stupid way then of course you win.

Seems like a total waste of time to think that way - making arguments that assume, and rely upon, others being stupid.

Nothing but Whataboutism coupled to more ad hominem

[daveshoup2MD]

Some history on the Gozo field:

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/VII/AAF-VII-9.html

With the invasion of Sicily impending, the aviation engineers worked on bases in Tunisia for combat planes and troop carriers, a simple enough task now that the rains had ceased and the soil was good. More complicated were the new requirements for fighter fields on tiny islands in the Mediterranean. The British were expanding their bases on Malta, and another airfield could be squeezed on minute Gozo, which lay just to the north. One company of the 2d Battalion, 21st Regiment, began work there on 8 June 1943. They had to destroy stone walls, smooth out ancient terraces, and bring in 70,000 bags of sand from Malta. By working day and night, the aviation engineers and three hundred civilians had two fighter runways of compacted earth ready on 20 June, a week ahead of schedule, a feat that won the praise of Air Marshal Tedder, although, as it turned out, the usefulness of the field was limited by its tendency to become too dusty or muddy.

Other references suggest the project required steel matting (not something easy to move) and the engineer unit included 200 soldiers, moved with their equipment in nine LCTS with 27 tractors, bulldozers, etc;

https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitst ... ctions.pdf

https://chindits.files.wordpress.com/20 ... pendix.pdf

https://www.forgottenairfields.com/airf ... t-386.html

All in all, this seems to have required the sort of resources the Allies had in abundance by 1943, but the Axis never did...

[daveshoup2MD]

The link is to a film shot on location on Gozo; gives an idea of the topography:

[url][https://youtu.be/LN7lWnXCDk4?t=4/url]

Not exactly "welcoming" for am amphibious landing...

Looking at Google maps, beaches are minimal, there's one small harbor, no airfield before 1943, and generally looks like a "challenging" objective for an airborne or seaborne assault.

Other than that, great plan. Getting field artillery ashore would be "interesting".

[Cult Icon]

Sources to back up the claims on the German camp?

Bias is not a source.

[glenn239]

Looking at Google maps, beaches are minimal, there's one small harbor, no airfield before 1943, and generally looks like a "challenging" objective for an airborne or seaborne assault.

Gozo was undefended wasn't it? Why would an island with no defenses pose a "challenging" objective for sea or airborne forces? Sprained ankles and parking tickets?

https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitst ... limpse.pdf

In terms of google maps, there are various suitable locations on the island for the small amphibious beach unloading types in Axis service by 1942, (Siebels, MFP's, etc). Should be good for at least 500 or 1,000 tons per day between the various locations if the proper sea transport was used. Dunno about the utility of the island for artillery interdiction, but a garrison there could put artillery on Malta's northern beaches, (making amphibious assaults there better covered), and draw the center of gravity of Malta's defenses northwards at the very least.

[T. A. Gardner]

If a single aviation engineer battalion were sent to Gozo, they'd have with them this engineering equipment (per TOE 5-415)

37 2 1/2ton dump trucks
14 4 ton dump trucks
13 crawler tractors that can be configured to be bulldozers or pull earth scrapers
10 towed earth scrapers
4 truck mounted air compressors with 8 pneumatic hammers
10 road graders
2 crawler mounted excavator (aka 'steam shovel')
4 crawler mounted cranes
3 1.5 yard cement mixers
1 8 ton road roller
1 rotary trenching machine
9 rotary sweepers
1 asphalt heating truck
1 asphalt spreader
1 tractor drawn lawn mower

That's for the full battalion.

[AnchorSteam]

Looking at Google maps, beaches are minimal, there's one small harbor, no airfield before 1943, and generally looks like a "challenging" objective for an airborne or seaborne assault.

Gozo was undefended wasn't it? Why would an island with no defenses pose a "challenging" objective for sea or airborne forces? Sprained ankles and parking tickets?

https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitst ... limpse.pdf

In terms of google maps, there are various suitable locations on the island for the small amphibious beach unloading types in Axis service by 1942, (Siebels, MFP's, etc). Should be good for at least 500 or 1,000 tons per day between the various locations if the proper sea transport was used. Dunno about the utility of the island for artillery interdiction, but a garrison there could put artillery on Malta's northern beaches, (making amphibious assaults there better covered), and draw the center of gravity of Malta's defenses northwards at the very least.

They sure are putting you though the wringer on this thing, aren't they?

Its a bit of a sacred cow thing to a lot of Commonwealth types, but the fact is you may have found the best plan for actuallytaking Malta down that I have ever seen. If Italy alone had tried to do this in July of 1940 they might have triggered an evacuation.
... and then we would have had threads about how having a a couple of hundred-thousand extra mouths to feed dragged Italy's whole war effort down.

From Xlendi going counter-clockwise around Gozo to San Phillip Bay, I see 4 landing areas and 3 tiny ports not under observation from the rest of Malta that could be used to quickly unload small ships (under 500 tons) straight to the road net. The lack of defenses and your air-superiority make taking it a simple prospect.
Then what?


Even Marsalfon Bay is tiny, so Paratroopers will be the only real source of quick reinforcement if Malta decides to counter-attack with some of the half-dozen battaltions they have over there. Keeping them supplied will also be by air-drops .... I think the idea of a airstrip there is something you should forget about.

This means that the most crucial (IMHO) aspect of this is the cannon you will need to crush Malta both structurally and emotionally. Guns with a range of 30km will be needed .... which is a good reason to drop the Italian 1940 option; they didn't have any.

So instead of putting great effort into making Malta the most bombed target of the war, it would be a relativly low-effort excercise to do as much damage with some artillery. Maybe the Germans can bring their K-12 gun down from France and fire a few shells from Sicily.
However; the tiny landing areas mean that you have to operate within certain limits and you certainly can't build up the forces to take Malta on Gozo.

You STILL would have to crate another landing force based at Sicily for the big landing on Malta itself.
You would have to do that, and the Brits would have to know you had that ready to go, before you could force Malta to capitulate.
You also have to do some critical damage to some part of their infrastructure, too. After all, they didn't surrender Singapore until after the Japanese took their water supply.

[daveshoup2MD]

Looking at Google maps, beaches are minimal, there's one small harbor, no airfield before 1943, and generally looks like a "challenging" objective for an airborne or seaborne assault.

Gozo was undefended wasn't it? Why would an island with no defenses pose a "challenging" objective for sea or airborne forces? Sprained ankles and parking tickets?

https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitst ... limpse.pdf

In terms of google maps, there are various suitable locations on the island for the small amphibious beach unloading types in Axis service by 1942, (Siebels, MFP's, etc). Should be good for at least 500 or 1,000 tons per day between the various locations if the proper sea transport was used. Dunno about the utility of the island for artillery interdiction, but a garrison there could put artillery on Malta's northern beaches, (making amphibious assaults there better covered), and draw the center of gravity of Malta's defenses northwards at the very least.

Other than something like 80 percent of the island's coastline being cliffs and the interior being largely mountainside, hillside, and farmland bounded by stone walls? And, of course, not having any handy airstrips for the German glider-borne and airlanding troops to land on, and that the British in Malta being all of 10 miles away, no, no challenges at all. - beyond drowning, being burned alive, getting shot, being blown up, GBI from amputations, major lacerations, and crushing injuries, etc.

There's also the minor issue that - as demonstrated by the utter failure of the Italian attack on Grand Harbor by surface combatants in July, 1941 "the decimation of Decima Mas" - Axis intelligence on the British defenses against surface action was limited, to be charitable, and those same British defenses were quite capable of defeating the best the Axis had ... so that reality, coupled with the reality the Axis blanched when considering the Malta operation, would suggest the liklihood of the Axis managing to gain the air and sea superiority necessary to put any worthwhile force ashore in Gozo, and manage to re-supply it, would seem ... slender.

Certainly the Italians and Germans of the day never appear to have considered it worthwhile, which suggests even they saw the chances of success as ... unlikely.

[daveshoup2MD]

If a single aviation engineer battalion were sent to Gozo, they'd have with them this engineering equipment (per TOE 5-415)

37 2 1/2ton dump trucks
14 4 ton dump trucks
13 crawler tractors that can be configured to be bulldozers or pull earth scrapers
10 towed earth scrapers
4 truck mounted air compressors with 8 pneumatic hammers
10 road graders
2 crawler mounted excavator (aka 'steam shovel')
4 crawler mounted cranes
3 1.5 yard cement mixers
1 8 ton road roller
1 rotary trenching machine
9 rotary sweepers
1 asphalt heating truck
1 asphalt spreader
1 tractor drawn lawn mower

That's for the full battalion.

So split it 3-4 ways for a company, that's still about 25-30 construction vehicles, which given state of the art in US yellow gear in the early 1940s, is probably close to equivalent to the same number of light tanks, at least ... so, a half dozen or more LCM/LCT equivalents, probably.

[T. A. Gardner]

So split it 3-4 ways for a company, that's still about 25-30 construction vehicles, which given state of the art in US yellow gear in the early 1940s, is probably close to equivalent to the same number of light tanks, at least ... so, a half dozen or more LCM/LCT equivalents, probably.

It's also more heavy construction machinery than you'd find in a corps worth of German construction engineer units...

With the US construction units, the heavy machinery is mostly in a pool for the battalion and handed out to the companies as required for a mission. The dump trucks double as motor transport for the men in the unit. Not included on that list were the HQ, administrative, supply, and maintenance vehicles in the unit.

[T. A. Gardner]

This is an aviation engineer battalion probably in France



An alternative to Marston matting (the steel interlinked plates). This is a heavy wire mesh laid over heavy tarpaper to make an all-weather surface for aircraft operation. It's quick and easy to accomplish.

[TheMarcksPlan]

They sure are putting you though the wringer on this thing, aren't they?

I always welcome substantive engagement; it's the low effort posts that really irk me. I have to put half the forum on ignore to make a thread readable.

So instead of putting great effort into making Malta the most bombed target of the war, it would be a relativly low-effort excercise to do as much damage with some artillery.

Exactly. Render Malta useless. Maybe force its capitulation, maybe use Gozo as big additional element to make C3/Herkules more formidable later.

Its a bit of a sacred cow thing to a lot of Commonwealth types, but the fact is you may have found the best plan for actuallytaking Malta down that I have ever seen.

Thanks. Part of the resistance stems from the sacred cow dynamic, part from a psychological disposition to deeply resent - and feel threatened by - the notion that somebody else thought of something. Standard internet dynamics.

From Xlendi going counter-clockwise around Gozo to San Phillip Bay, I see 4 landing areas and 3 tiny ports not under observation from the rest of Malta that could be used to quickly unload small ships (under 500 tons) straight to the road net. The lack of defenses and your air-superiority make taking it a simple prospect.

Yes, good point. You'd want to use harbors not under line-of-sight observation, which makes Mgarr harbor less useful initially.

Even Marsalfon Bay is tiny, so Paratroopers will be the only real source of quick reinforcement if Malta decides to counter-attack with some of the half-dozen battaltions they have over there. Keeping them supplied will also be by air-drops .... I think the idea of a airstrip there is something you should forget about.

The airstrip is small factor with relatively small benefits. Feel free not to consider it. To the extent I'm defending the idea, it's mostly due to the vehemence of bad arguments (Germans can't build airstrips).

the cannon you will need to crush Malta both structurally and emotionally.

What do you mean "structurally"? IMO it's sufficient to hit soft targets - airfields, ports, cities. To reduce hard targets with really big artillery is probably feasible in the long run but the alternative to that long run hard siege is, IMO, a landing on Malta itself from Gozo and the sea (supported by artillery from Gozo and the other C3 elements). Which brings up your next point:

You STILL would have to crate another landing force based at Sicily for the big landing on Malta itself.
You would have to do that, and the Brits would have to know you had that ready to go, before you could force Malta to capitulate.
You also have to do some critical damage to some part of their infrastructure, too. After all, they didn't surrender Singapore until after the Japanese took their water supply.

At least one historian of Malta (Woodman) considered her surrender inevitable absent the PEDESTAL convoy. If the Gozo batteries are up and running in, say, March, then a series of earlier convoyed and independent supply ships don't reach Malta or, if they do, are probably sunk by shelling in the harbors before unloading.

Singapore is much shorter siege - maybe a month. Here I'd guess the Axis waits at least four months to see if Malta capitulates before pressing C3/Herkules amplified by a powerful Gozo boost.

[AnchorSteam]

This is an aviation engineer battalion probably in France
...

You can tell it's WW2; the men doing something actually outnumber the ones standing around watching them!
I'd ask what the modern equivalent to such units are like ... but it would probably be too depressing.

In fairness to the Germans, they had plans for all sorts of things, even tank-deployed infantry bridges for assaulting major forts! But the Western campaign of 1940 showed them that tactical surprise was worth more than engineers. Why drag a bridge around with you if you can just capture a whole bunch of them if you move quickly enough? Barbarossa, and even Crete, did not teach them otherwise.

It is the Italians we should look to for this, and since they had such a low-speed approach to warfare they ought to have had something like real engineers in at least some of their units.

[TheMarcksPlan]

a garrison there [Gozo] could put artillery on Malta's northern beaches, (making amphibious assaults there better covered), and draw the center of gravity of Malta's defenses northwards at the very least.

In all likelihood Axis would take at least the northwestern part of Malta and dare the garrison to immolate itself attacking them:



They do this after establishing their Gozo/Comino base, not in the initial assault. The volume of field artillery and even mortar fire that the Axis could bring from Gozo/Comino, relative to Malta's ammo supply/stocks, would make holding those northwest extremities infeasible or at least immensely costly.

If you can turn this into an attritional land battle there's just no way for the British to win.

...unless they do a mega-reinforcement of Malta which, if feasible, would require conceding to Japan.

[AnchorSteam]

....
At least one historian of Malta (Woodman) considered her surrender inevitable absent the PEDESTAL convoy. If the Gozo batteries are up and running in, say, March, then a series of earlier convoyed and independent supply ships don't reach Malta or, if they do, are probably sunk by shelling in the harbors before unloading.

Singapore is much shorter siege - maybe a month. Here I'd guess the Axis waits at least four months to see if Malta capitulates before pressing C3/Herkules amplified by a powerful Gozo boost.

I see you have your timing right. The Axis ideas were always so backwards to me, because I think that Malta had to fall before Gazala, not after. Pausing for Malta to fall would have given the 8th army all the time it needed to stop Rommel at the Egyptian border once again, and Rommel could not wait or Gazala would have been a British offensive, and likely a successful one.

Anyway, I don't think you will be able to get anything heavier than 17cm or 21cm guns ashore, and even those only because they break down into two loads. great for transport, but they take hours to set-up or break down. Evading counter-battery fire could be a serious problem, so it would do you some good to look up what Malta had.... other than guns emplaced under cover to fire out to sea. Those you don't have to worry about, its the mobile army field guns and the heavy guns in open-pit emplacements that will be your primary foes here.