Carnage al Dente
Chapter VII - Italy at War
Human players: Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, USA, Soviet
No Canada and Von Rosen replaced Gamla Stan at Japan. Maxyboy now switch from France to USA.
Recap: France just turned Vichy and after that, Italy and Japan declared war on the remaining Allies. Soviet has beaten Finland and puppeted Turkey. Now, they are at war with Persia and has been for some time.
February 13th, 1940
Even if France had fallen, the war in Europe was not entirely over. The Belgians, supported by a few French divisions and soon a few from Luxemburg, still struggled in a five-province pocket. This area did shrink even though Germany did not have a great many troops around. They would soon be vanquished.
During this time, Persia fell to the Soviet Union.
Authors note: We had carefully tried to create House Rules to limit Soviets ability to wage war on minors without affecting the diplomatic balance. It worked well in last game but not in FtM as threat did not seem to build at all. The Allies/Commies offered for SOV to not attack more minors as long as Axis didn’t either. Axis felt this was a good “deal” during the circumstances.
February – April, 1940
The Italians attacked Gibraltar with 23 brigades versus 16. The Brits however, was mostly motorized and dug in. Add to that the cover of the fortified city and support by a strong naval force who shelled the Italians continuously (-25%). That was not all. The Brits had allocated four squadrons of Hurricanes and two groups of two squadrons of tactical bomber each. The interceptors of RAF quickly proved vastly superior to those of Regia Aeronautica and the attacking force quickly lost air cover and British bombs was added to that of the war ships. The Italians pulled back after losing 6 men for every killed Brit. It was far from impressive and the Italian state press greatly increased the British death toll in order to be able to explain it for the civil Italy.
The second attack was initiated a few weeks later. The Brits had now reinforced to 7 divisions but the Italians had an army corps of Germans waiting to take on the battle once the Italians were spent. This battle proved even more disastrous. The Italians were utterly spent and broke even before the Germans had move through the one single province they needed to traverse in order to reach the battle. The Axis planes one again lost the battle in the air. The Italian losses were stunning and the British losses were insignificant.
The third attack was done in April. This time, the Germans lead it with minor back up from Italy and with more than one Italian army corps waiting to take over the battle. It had been problematic to assemble these troops as the Spanish roads got completely clogged by supply trucks and transport planes was brought in to support troops who did not get enough supply. The Germans fared none better than the Italians and also this attack was thrown back by the victorious Brits.
After the third failure, the Axis came to the conclusion that Gibraltar could not be taken from a Brit determined to defend at all costs. Instead, they chose to focus elsewhere as the Brits clearly had designated so much forces here. Chances were that a gap could be found somewhere else…
Authors note: This was of course a huge disappointment for especially Italy. As is obvious, I had planned to close the Med from the west, forcing the Brit to travel around Africa, severely damaging his flexibility. Still, the attack on Spain had other objectives…
February – April, 1940
When France fell, the plan was that all Axis nations simultaneous would start raid British convoys. By making Spain puppets, Italy had based submarines in their Atlantic harbors before Gibraltar sound was closed. Due to a mixture of misfortune, a German error and clever British navy, 4 out of 6 German uboats were sunk as they left port on their first mission. The other 2 was damaged and had to return to safety. Thus, Axis was without Germany as they launched the convoy war. This was another blow to the grand plan.
As I turned out, the Italian submarines were quite efficient without the Germans, thanks to the Spanish bases. With the help of the Japs, the Allies initially lost some 30-35 convoys each week. As Italy could change convoy patterns to better intercept the Brits and the two German wolf packs could join the fray in April, the Allied (mostly British) toll on convoys rose to some 40-45 each week. This got to be extremely taxing… During the first two and a half months, Italy only lost two submarine groups (in the Med) with a few other getting damaged. The submariners quickly got a hero-status in the Italian press.
British raiding in the Med was close to zero. Italian convoys had escorts, for sure, but the main reason was that RN had sent most of their submarines to the Pacific. There, they managed to give the Japs plenty of headaches and as they had failed to build enough convoys they ended up lacking transports for supply and recourses for a while.
February 14th, 1940
As the first attack on Gibraltar commenced and the convoy war was just getting started, the Italian Africa corps went on offensive.
Authors note: The Italian Africa Corps is very weak. Its objective is not something glorious as “taking Suez”. It is designed to be big enough to worry the Brit but small enough to be expendable. Plain and simple – this is just a force to tug at the British player’s attention.
March 1st, 1940
The Italian Africa Corps have been making quite rapid progress in roughly two weeks. As they cautiously tries to cover up their rear, fearing amphibious attacks, their ability to attack the Brits have trickled away to nothing with only a single cavalry brigade up front.
March 9th, 1940
Nevertheless, The Brits found the weak spot and had troops to put there, simultaneous as armor divisions (LARM/ARM, MOT, MOT I think) attacked from the east.
Authors note: Bear in mind that this is in the middle of the three attacks on Gibraltar, so 7 British divisions, 4 INT and 4 TAC is locked there.
The Italian leadership quickly realized they had no ability to repel this attack and they used all their ability to try and minimize their losses when the landed motorized divisions tried to cut the Italian Africa Corps in half.
March 15th, 1940
Unsurprisingly, the Italians were thrown back. One infantry division and a motorized brigade was caught in the British trap and lost. The cavalry division and the lone brigade were saved albeit in a terrible state.
More surprising to the Italians, however, was the fact that the Brits did not continue their push. Both the cavalry- and motorized divisions were in almost complete disorder and the westernmost infantry division east of Tobruk had taken some punishment, while the Brits seemed more or less unaffected. Tobruk could have been conquered easily, but the Brits seemed happy with their victory and pulled back their main forces.
The Battle of North Africa was over for this time after about a month of offensives and smaller battles – with Britain as the obvious winner. The Italian troops just could not match the Brits it seemed.
April 23rd, 1940
After the land-battles of North Africa, things were quite for a while. Then the leadership of Italy got news of immense naval battles in the Pacific and the Eastern Indian Ocean between the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. As quite large parts of the Royal Navy seemed to be tied up there, and Kriegsmarine had won a great battle in the North, the Regia Marina started to prowl the Med.
Authors note: I was quite sure that UK/Zid wanted early clashes with the RM to give them a Royal Beating, buying themselves a secure back (as I did as UK in last game). I did not want to give him that luxury and had made no movement at all with RM, but held them secure at Venetia.
The Regia Marina started to patrol the Med but it turned out that United Kingdom had left it empty, except one or two submarines. A small French detachment was sunk without further ado but otherwise little happened. Finally, Italian submarines spotted a British taskforce consisting of five battleships and seven light cruisers. The Italian taskforces wanted confrontation but the Brits sailed to the Nile delta, by the Suez Canal, and stayed there. The Italian admiral did not want to attack into this area having the ports of Alexandria in the back. The Brits had more ships there and it could quickly become nasty. Thus, nothing happened.
April 8th, 1940
During a couple of months, three Italian militia divisions had been roaming free in East Africa, securing a few ports and other areas without any opposition. In April, however, a first British division landed here and was soon followed by a few more resulting in 3 or 4 divisions. Still, the going was slow and they were too few to effectively crush the militia. This would not be a quick win for the Brits even if the Italian militia had no chance of actually winning.
Just like in northern Africa, the Italian force was enough to be a concern and pull at the British attention but small enough to be expendable. The point was obviously to give the British leadership full hands. Still, it appeared the Brits had done this very well and the Italians had failed to find a weak point – except possibly the fact that the British Sub-hunting capacity was low.
March, 1940
During early spring, Hungary joined the Axis. This was welcomed.
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Next chapter: The war in the Pacific
