Allied Victory at Crete 1941?

[Sea Skimmer]

Seems like a topic worth discussing since it was such a close run thing, and the allies had significant intelligence from ULTRA on what was coming, but responded poorly.

So three aspects. First, what does it take for the allies to win on Crete and repel the German air-sea invasion? Second, what would it take for the allies to sustain a presence on the island vs supporting Malta and the Desert War, considering Crete may be largely self sufficient in food, and interlinked as a third issue, just how many German forces would this divert from Barbarossa and Malta and indeed, even from the Desert War itself concern air power and the threat to Axis shipping that historically began to divert around Malta.

[CaptHawkeye]

For starters it seems like the Allies very nearly fought off the invasion as it was. It would have helped if Allied Command didn't order Freyberg not to destroy the airfield at Maleme because the defense seemed to be going so well it should be intact for the RAF's triumphant return to the island!

The Allies used what little firepower they had well at first. German paratroopers took a bunch of casualties to focused mortar fire on landing areas. Compound this with the insanity of dropping men and their weapons separately and even a poorly equipped bunch like the Greek Army becomes much more effective at inflicting lots of casualties real fast. I'm not sure what kinds of heavy artillery the Allies possessed on Crete though, if they possessed any. The Fallshirmjager had some impressive light weight artillery.

If you want the Allies to win on Crete it seems to me that concentrating more forces for a defense-in-depth inland would be better then coastal concentration in fear of an amphibious invasion. As it was the original configuration of the defense damn nearly wiped out the Fallshirmjager.

As for Crete becoming Malta 2.0, it's possible. Maybe even easier if the British supply it through the Suez and don't try to run convoys right through the Mediterranean. You now have a nice base to bomb Romanian oil fields from too. I can't imagine the Luftwaffe won't have to concentrate at least a token force in the region.

Crete's positions makes it an ideal jump off point for an invasion of Greece one day too, which the Allies would probably be better off not doing. But the Wehrmacht can't know that and Churchill loved to give every indication he planned on taking the Balkans one day. The Wehrmacht kept around 2 divisions in the Normandy area, which they considered a possible but unlikely point to invade. I can't imagine they'd spare much more than that for the Balkans. They were very, very committed to the Eastern Front after all.

[Sea Skimmer]

I've gotten the impression the attack on Maleme was never that close to being wiped, and as long as the Germans had anywhere to land they could keep coming into it. Men and weapons had to drop separately thanks to Germany having such an awful parachute.

[CaptHawkeye]

Oh the Germans were going to take Maleme one way or another no doubt, it's the most important strategic position on the whole island. Which should have made its destruction a priority since it's not like Crete had any RAF presence. If Maleme is destroyed it would be bad news for the Fallshirmjager, who doubtfully dropped with equipment for repairing cratered runways. I'm not sure about the details of Maleme's destruction plan though. Airfields are hard to keep disabled, especially when they're just big fields.

Then again the Germans were so serious about supplying the Fallshirmjager on the island they landed Ju-52s on Maleme airfield while it was still in range of mortar fire, so they might be willing to put up with a cratered runway. Not sure though, it would depend on just how short a landing distance those JU-52s have, and if you're ok with never flying them again.

If the supply situation can be kept as it is then I think the Fallshirmjager will break eventually. The amphibious invasion won't arrive before the Royal Navy assets are removed and that's a few days at least. Ultimately I think the battle was such a fragile situation for the Fallshirmjager any one change in details might have turned it around. Better artillery, more tanks, RAF coverage, etc.

I thought the Germans had to drop low because they didn't want to expose aircraft and men to counter fire for too long. So they dropped them low and fast for a short trip, but being loaded up with equipment would make it harder to slow down as a man descended. What was wrong with the parachute?

[Sea Skimmer]

Ju-52s were landing under rifle and machine gun fire even at one point, and on the other fields, so such risks would be accepted, but craters on the runway will completely destroy aircraft that hit them, bit different then accepting some of the men being killed by gunfire. Given the poor state of equipment, I doubt the demolition charges existed to completely crater the field, but a combination of craters, rocks and stakes might have been effective enough. The Germans had limited paratroopers, and even with the field, limited total transports, so I don't think they were certain to take it under any situation, they certainly were going to take it with over a regiment parachuting down and only about one British battalion holding the field and the hills overlooking it due south.

Right now I am trying to find a proper sized version of this map below, which seems to be what is needed to plan a better defense. It is absurdly easy to find maps of the British/Greek counterattacks but finding good ones of the initial dispositions is annoying as hell right now.
http://historicalresources.files.wordpr ... 20-may.jpg

[Lord Revan]

Ju-52s were landing under rifle and machine gun fire even at one point, and on the other fields, so such risks would be accepted, but craters on the runway will completely destroy aircraft that hit them, bit different then accepting some of the men being killed by gunfire. Given the poor state of equipment, I doubt the demolition charges existed to completely crater the field, but a combination of craters, rocks and stakes might have been effective enough. The Germans had limited paratroopers, and even with the field, limited total transports, so I don't think they were certain to take it under any situation, they certainly were going to take it with over a regiment parachuting down and only about one British battalion holding the field and the hills overlooking it due south.

Right now I am trying to find a proper sized version of this map below, which seems to be what is needed to plan a better defense. It is absurdly easy to find maps of the British/Greek counterattacks but finding good ones of the initial dispositions is annoying as hell right now.
http://historicalresources.files.wordpr ... 20-may.jpg

could you use normal anti-tank mines to make an airfield unuseble?

[Sea Skimmer]

Given enough of them, sure, any other mine will work too, ideally you'd lay them above ground and wire them to tripwires, fragmentation for blast based AT mines could be increased by piling rocks and scrap metal around the mine. The standard British AT mine of the time was the fairly lightweight Hawkins mine, but it will still wreck a plane. Problem is, what are the odds anyone shipped anti tank mines to a Greek Island when most units lacked enough rifles for every rifleman? Since opposing a seaborne invasion was given priority I'd bet all the mines around were laid on the beach, but its pretty likely that few or none existed. Some kind of engineer unit was down the road from Maleme attached to the defending brigade, but I've yet to identify who it was.

[CaptHawkeye]

Gliders attacking Maleme crash landed in rocky areas along the coast next to the airport but this led to crash fatality rates of around 40-50%. Not acceptable at all for a situation already likely to produce heavy casualties even if the landings go perfectly, not really acceptable at all period. If the glider troops took that much damage just from landing on some rocks, Ju-52s trying to land on potted, mined, and obstacled runways will be fucking insanity. The Luftwaffe will be more dangerous to its own men than the defenders will.

[Sea Skimmer]

Ju-52 is a fair bit tougher then a glider I'd reckon, even if it can catch fire. Its really an issue of doing a good enough job though, the airfield was just a large grass area that presented multiple landing approaches for aircraft, and obstructions and mines could be cleared. Craters not to a useful degree. I do wonder how easy it might be for Ju-52s to land on the beaches further west, little but Greek civilian bands would have existed in this area to oppose them.

Course, one also must consider if the airfield was destroyed, Student might launch a better plan too, and not attempt to take three airfields at once with only limited parachute and glider forces. In the historical plan almost if not all glider and parachute forces had to go into the first attack, leaving nothing but air landed mountain troops as follow on forces. If all the glider and parachute troops had gone after just one or two fields instead, the allies would have a much bigger problem. Overall allied mobility was pretty low on the island.

[CaptHawkeye]

A better initial plan would make the defenders situation much harder to be sure, and would compensate for some of the equipment problems inherent to the Fallshirmjager. Maleme can't be better than any other field on the island for that since airfields are about as humble as airports can get. Much depends on getting the Fallshirmjager a reliable supply line as soon as possible. Without one even Greek civilians on the island had the potential to kill a lot of paratroopers and did too. I read somewhere that Greek civilians shot at the Germans with freaking muskets.

Now if it was the Japanese were defending the island, there'd be wooden bunkers placed all on the beaches with dug in tanks and widely scattered artillery dotting the coastal areas. If the Japanese didn't prepare for an airborne invasion, the occurrence of one would probably be taken as immediate cause for failure and would be followed by a massive banzai charge for the Emperor! Because the Fallshirmjager land without weapons in hand it might work too!

I think at the end of the day though the British just didn't take defense of the island that seriously. They were more concerned with Malta and Gibraltar at the time.

[PainRack]

I can't remember the title of the book, but I read that the secrecy of Ultra prevented Freyberg from concentrating his forces at any decisive point, as it might betray the secret of signals intelligence. So, would allowing Freyberg to rework his defence plan to take into account where the Germans were landing, invasion timing and etc break the invasion?

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm not sure if ULTRA could tell him precise landing zones but it would have been pretty obvious Maleme and the other airfields were prime targets. ULTRA did in fact warn Freyberg that an airborne landing was going to happen but the British believed it would be subsidiary to an amphibious invasion. So not enough defense was allocated for the airfield.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Ultra warned that airfields were the main target, and that the amphibious landing was to be smaller then the airborne assault. The first warnings of airborne attack came almost a month ahead of time, detection of the amassing transports, and warnings to also expect an amphibious attack only came much later on.

I think the coastal defense issue is in fact overblown, having done some research and found worhwhile maps. While major forces were spread along the coast around each airfield, much of this had to do with protecting the line of supply for each airfield from paratroopers as well as covering some good landing zones, particularly a big one east of Maleme which indeed the Germans did use. Few forces, almost none really, forces were actually deployed along the beaches, the fear seems to have been more that paratrooeprs landing away from the airfields would seize beachheads, then a need to meet the Nazi amphibious troops at the waters edge.

Apparently due to a near total lack of transport on the island each airfield garrison had only a 3 day of supplies on hand, so it was totally possible for a German paratrooper force seizing the one and only coastal road to isolate them and starve them out. Certainly they would have quickly run low on ammunition. This also meant that almost all reserve movement had to be by foot march, though few forces could be designated as reserves in the first place. A major shortage of radios was also a critical problem and pretty much cost the airfield at Maleme, alongside some poor decisions by lower ranking commanders. It looks like more radios alone, provided of course they didn't die from air attack during the first days fighting, might have won the day at Maleme.

Maleme airfield was in fact obstructed, and partly encircled by barbed wire, could not find any details of the obstructions or the demolition plan but the engineer detachment in the area was most of a Royal Engineer company that would have certainly had the required manpower and training to blow it to a moonscape of the explosives could be had.

Comically the RAF thought that 1 squadron of Hurricanes with 100% reserve of pilots and planes could be useful over the island if sustained at that strength, but it did have a plan to send in multiple squadrons of fighters and bombers once an invasion began. Problem is almost all the forces that might have done this were sent to Iraq.