by David Row
Chapter 10 - Afrika Korps
16th March
Two He111's of the German 10th Air Corps went on an armed reconnaissance mission during which they attacked units of the British Mediterranean Fleet west of Crete. Upon returning to base, the crews report torpedo hits on two heavy naval vessels which they describe as battleships. This supposed success meant a substantial reduction in the Royal Navy's strength in the Mediterranean. German leaders urge the Italian navy to get involved and to cooperate with the German attack on Greece that is planned for April 6, by sending their vessels forward into the eastern Mediterranean north and south of Crete. The Italians point out that the ships they are most worried about are the carriers and the Luftwaffe seems to have missed these, but they will do what they can with the light forces available to them.
British convoys are still bringing units of the army into Greece and Crete. Priority has been given to take the New Zealand Division to Crete (as it is considered vital to protecting a line of retreat if needed), but the Australian formations are steadily growing in Greece itself. The defence infrastructure of Crete itself is considered inadequate, and the New Zealanders are being used in an improvement program; this will take some time, especially as vital equipment such as AA guns is not available in the needed quantities.
The supply situation is made worse in Egypt due to mining raids on the Suez Canal by German aircraft. As a result badly-needed supplies are unable to get ashore. The British solution is, almost bizarrely, to hang nets over the canal so they can at least see where the mines land and deal with them.
20th March
In Hawaii Admiral Bloch states in a letter that the depth of water at Pearl Harbor is 45 feet, and for that and other reasons, he does not recommend anti-torpedo baffles. CINCPAC agrees, until such time as a light efficient net is developed. No-one seems to have pointed out to the Admiral how shallow Taranto harbour is (some 40 feet).
It has taken Rommel much longer than he anticipated to get all his force unloaded and ready for operations. Losing two of the supply ships to air attack didn't help (although at least one of the two ships was already unloaded). In fact is has taken so long that the following convoy is already on its way to Algiers with the next part of his force. Fortunately for the Italian navy, the Mediterranean fleet is preoccupied with the operations planned in the Eastern Mediterranean in support of Greece, and so far the convoy has only been harassed by aircraft from Malta, sinking one transport ship.
The Vichy government is doing everything it can short of declaring war on Britain to show it is cooperating with Germany, whose veiled threats about what will happen if they DON'T cooperate are becoming increasingly blunt. Fortunately for them, Hitler is preoccupied with the preparations for Barbarossa at the moment. Their current position is to offer the Axis all help possible in Algeria, including port facilities, fuel, and food supplies. There is growing opposition and resentment to this, which is being suppressed by the regime with an increasingly heavy hand.
In Egypt, General O'Connor is looking at how best to allocate his troops to deal with what he expects to be an attack on Tunisia once Rommel's force is established in Algeria. His main problem is that no sooner do more forces arrive, they are tasked to something else, and as a result he has had little in the way of substantial reinforcements. Currently XIII Corps consists of three divisions, 2nd Armoured, 6th Australian and 4th Indian. He has 7th Armoured refitting in the delta and a South African Brigade as his reserves. The Free French expect to have about a division in Tunisia once they have finished relocating from Ethiopia, plus what will effectively be a somewhat under-armed armoured brigade.
His main problem is equipment. While considerable supplies have been arriving, much of this has gone to Greece and Crete with the ANZAC forces. While the base workshops have repaired what was repairable after the campaign across the desert, much of the transport simply had to be written off for spares. Fortunately a considerable amount of Italian equipment is available; indeed the Free French are outfitted with Italian trucks and support vehicles. Because of the transport shortage and the poor infrastructure in Libya, he intends to position his forces in a number of locations where, as far as possible, they can be supplied at sea until he can build up enough strength to foray into Algeria (assuming, of course, that the politicians will let him). One brigade of 2nd Armoured will be forward in Tunisia in support of the Free French forces until their Armoured Brigade is ready to deploy. The 4th Indian Division will be at Tripoli. The 6th Australian Division plus a brigade of 7th Armoured will be at El Agheila and Benghazi. He is still not happy with the state of training of 2nd Armoured, who he feels are insufficiently prepared compared to 7th Armoured, so the remaining two brigades will be held around Tobruk where they will keep training (the advanced Brigade is the one which saw combat in the Cyrenaica campaign).
He would prefer to have his forces further forward ready to intervene faster in Tunisia when it proves necessary, but at the moment his logistics simply don't allow it. He takes comfort in the fact that Rommel has equally troublesome logistics problems to solve, and at least his transports aren't being sunk out from under him by the Royal Navy and RAF. The Free French are occupying forward positions on the Tunisia-Algeria border, and if attacked will fight a delaying action until he can reinforce them.
22nd March
The Italian convoy to Algiers, which had managed to avoid interception by the Royal Navy so far, runs into a force of cruisers and destroyers from Force H. The forces fleet carrier is unfortunately in dock, so instead a surface force of cruisers and destroyers has been sent. Air cover for the convoy is limited; there is now a Luftwaffe airfield operating near Algiers, but this so far only consists of a squadron of fighters and one of Stukas. The Royal Navy attacked the convoy just after dawn, and sank four merchant ships and three escorting destroyers for the loss of one destroyer and damage to two cruisers. The Luftwaffe dive bombers attacked as the force was retreating west, but only managed to land one hit on HMS Southampton. Fortunately the Stukas are not from Fliegerkorps X, and are more used to dealing with army support than with ships
23rd March
Luftwaffe Stuka divebombers, with a fighter escort, conduct a raid on Malta. A total of thirteen German planes are shot down while the British lose two fighters. British authorities decide to withdraw all bombers and flying boats from Malta as a result of the raid. As air bases are now available in Tunisia, there is less need to have the longer-ranged aircraft so vulnerable to enemy attack, and it seems likely they will next be needed to intervene in Tunisia or Greece in any case.
The Vichy regimes in Syria and Lebanon, which have been in secret discussions in Cairo with the Free French and the British, come to an agreement. In a similar manner to Tunisia, a considerable number of people will resign; those who wish will be transported to France, or to a neutral or allied country of their choice. In return, the two countries will declare for the Free French. The decision has been helped along by subtle hints pointing out that the forces in the desert have little to do at the moment, and Syria and the Lebanon are really quite close. The British are keeping quiet about the fact that they are still short of equipment and transport, while the presence of the veteran 7th Armoured Division is being mentioned. However the agreement will not be made public for some days. The more cynical among the allies reckon this is to allow certain parties to get away with ill-gotten gains; they are quite correct in this assumption.
This will leave Vichy as only controlling French Morocco, Algeria and (oddly) Madagascar out of its former colonies, a serious political blow to them when it becomes public.
The Italian convoy that had scattered when intercepted by the Royal Navy straggles into Algiers. The Vichy regime, desperate to show its compliance with German 'requests', starts unloading operations immediately. This is just as well, as that night the RAF pays a visit in the form of a bombing raid by Wellingtons, which sinks one of the ships in the harbour and sets another on fire. With the convoy losses at s
ea, and now this, the supply convoy has lost over half the equipment sent.
25th March
In Vienna's ornate Belvedere Palace today, the Yugoslav premier, Dragisa Cvetkovich, put his signature to the pact which binds his country to Germany and the Axis. He had left behind in Belgrade a government and country deeply divided, with the Serbs passionately pro-British and the Croats equally pro-German.
After the signing, the premier said that his chief aim was peace and security for the Yugoslav people. Von Ribbentrop welcomed Yugoslavia as a "new partner", and promised that Germany would respect the country's territorial integrity and not make military demands. Nobody believes him, least of all the Yugoslav premier, and there are disturbances in Belgrade when it becomes known that Yugoslavia has signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany.
Increasing Axis activity in the form of air reconnaissance has been observed south and west of Greece and Crete and there are daily attempts to observe the harbour at Alexandria. It is suspected from this additional interest in the activities and whereabouts of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet that the enemy was planning some form of surface action. Secret intelligence intercepts confirmed that there would be attacks on British convoys but in planning the response it was most important to ensure that the Italians did not get any idea that this was known or suspected. While a number of the infiltrating reconnaissance planes have been shot down, they are starting to come over at high altitude, and this is making it very difficult for the Goshawks to intercept them (like most carrier planes, they are optimised for performance below 20,000 feet). A request is made to London for a squadron of Spitfires to make interception more likely.
Despite the damage done to the previous convoy, another one is ready to leave Naples. Rommel is pressing hard for more men and equipment, as he wants to attack Tunisia before the allies can rebuild their strength. Intelligence reports show that Imperial troops are arriving in Greece in numbers, and if they are in Greece they obviously can't be in North Africa. Indeed, Rommel wants the men and equipment brought forward as soon as they land, which raises the problem that the mechanised equipment requires desertification - modifying the equipment on arrival had been normal practice when the Italian workshops in Cyrenaica had been available, but apparently no-one in the supply services seemed to have realised these were now were now being used by the Allies. Rommel sends off a blistering telegram to Berlin, as a result of which the equipment will be modified in Naples so as to be ready to operate as soon as it lands.
At the moment, the contact between the Afrika Korps and the Allies is in a series of small units dug in around the western border of Tunisia. It is the aggressive patrolling of the German units that makes Rommel eager to attack immediately, as he sees the Free French as the weak link in the Allied forces.
26th March
The heavy cruiser HMS York was hit by Italian explosive motor boats launched from the destroyers Crispi and Sella while she was lying in Suda Bay, Crete. Badly damaged, the ship was beached in shallow water, with both boiler rooms and an engine room out of action.
Although the shipment of Hurricanes via Malta has helped, the RAF in the Eastern Mediterranean is still short of planes, and more are requested from Britain. There is currently a good supply of fighters available in the UK, as only limited operations are being undertaken against France, and it is hoped another delivery run can be made as soon as the carriers are ready again. This delivery run will become a steady process; a carrier loaded with aircraft will escort a Gibraltar convoy, then the fighters will be delivered to Malta where some will remain and others will fly on to North Africa. Priority will be given to planes other than the Hurricane, which is still being delivered via the cross-Africa route.
Given the build-up of Rommel's forces in Algeria, plans are being made for a fast convoy to be escorted through the Mediterranean direct to Alexandria carrying equipment and tanks. The base workshops have repaired most of the vehicles that were repairable, but shortages in certain classes remain.
27th March
At 2.30 this morning in Belgrade the Yugoslav regency council, headed by Prince Paul resigned; his nephew, King Peter, who is 17, took over and appointed as his Prime Minister General Dusan Simovich, the chief of the air staff. Simovich had organized the coup after two days of anti-Nazi demonstrations. Soon after a radio announcement of the successful coup, King Peter was cheered as he drove through Belgrade. Hitler does not take the news well.
In Washington, the secret AngloUS staff talks (ABC1) which began in January ended today with broad agreement on plans for strategic cooperation in the event of US entry into the war against Germany or Japan or both.
In fourteen meetings since 29 January the two sides have discussed the American plan, put forward by Captain Turner of the US Navy and Colonel McNarney of the US Army. The result is plan ABC1. Its main argument is that Germany must be defeated first. The US would therefore give strategic priority to the Atlantic and to Europe, although the US navy would be used offensively in the Pacific as British staff officers have drawn attention to the vulnerability of Singapore.
Britain leases defence bases in Trinidad in the West Indies to the U.S. for 99-years, in exchange for another 30 Frigates to be built in the USA.
In a US research laboratory, a team of physicists reports the discovery of a new isotope of uranium which it calls plutonium-239.
30th March
In Belgrade the new Foreign Minister makes efforts to remain on good terms with Germany. He assures the German Minister that they would respect international treaties concluded by their predecessors, including accession to the Tripartite Pact. However the Yugoslav Army takes up positions on the frontier anticipating a German invasion. Meanwhile Hitler has approved the plan to invade Yugoslavia on the 6th April.
HMS Implacable arrives in the United Stated for her full repair work. She will also get a refit and some new equipment, and is expected to be operation again in July. The USN personnel and naval designers who board her to start arranging the work are amazed at how well the ships structure has stood up to so much damage; indeed, the hangar deck armour had not been seriously penetrated. Although the damage above this was severe, it was mainly to the easily-repaired hangars, and the report sent to the USN points out that similar damage would have sent any US carrier to the bottom. Although the Essex class carriers are too far along to redesign, consideration is given to modifying the follow on class according to the lessons of the Implacable's survival.
The Richelieu makes her first raid on Algiers; accompanied by destroyers, a night bombardment of the port area causes considerable damage and disruption. Unfortunately it doesn't catch any ships in port, but the damage done to the facilities will slow loading and unloading of the next convoy. The battleship retired west after the bombardment, covered by FAA fighters. The mission itself is pushed by the Allied propaganda machine as a sign of how the Free French are still in the fight against Germany (with the obvious comparison that the Vichy regime is not).
31st March
The new night fighters and the first of the centimetric AI radar sets are taking an increasing toll of Luftwaffe bombers. Night fighters and AA guns destroyed over 70 planes this month, and more are damaged. The losses are starting to be a problem for the Luftwaffe, who in addition to mounting heavy raids on England are committing increasing number of planes to the Mediterranean and are trying to prepare for Barbarossa. It is suggested that the raids on England are paused now summer is approaching to allow the planes and men to be rested and made ready for deployment in the east.
The cruiser HMS Bonaventure with a Mediterranean Fleet cruiser force is escorting a convoy from Greece to Egypt when she is torpedoed and sunk by the Italian submarine Ambra some 90 miles south of Crete. The need to protect the troop convoys to Crete is occupying Cunningham's fleet, and only occasional forays can be made against the convoys from Italy to Algeria, which are being left to Force H and the strike force at Malta.
The Vichy governments in Syri
a and the Lebanon publicly declare for Free France. To those familiar with the region, there is an interesting lack of the politicians who used to be in charge in the current regimes. The British 6th Infantry Division will move into the area (one Brigade to the Lebanon, two to Syria) until Free French forces can take over. In the meantime the Free French will take over the running of the two colonies. While the declaration is as recently agreed, Middle East command is worried that the deteriorating situation in Greece might make some of the Vichy representatives reconsider, and they want to make sure they have forces on the ground in case.
The acquisition of Syria is particularly important to the Free French, as there are some 35,000 troops in the country which are now under their command. This will allow them to form a full Corps within the next few months. Heavy equipment will still be a problem, but it is hoped that orders from the USA will fill much of this shortage. They hope to move a Brigade to Tunisia to strengthen its defences once transport and support is available - this will give them a full division and an armoured brigade in the colony, backed up by British forces in Tripoli, which it is hoped will be sufficient to deter a German attack at least in the near term.
2nd April.
The New Zealand division under Major-General Sir Bernard Freyberg finish their concentration on Crete. It had been intended to then transport them onto Greece to join the force there, but the Australians in Greece have still not taken up the originally agreed positions, and so they are to wait on Crete until the situation is clear. In the meantime, they are busy improving the defences and facilities of Crete, which are in poor condition, and making an airbase ready for staging Sparrowhawk fighters to help guard the convoys between Greece and Alexandria
