If they can push to Suez and beyond, Italy may yet prevail. But if they fail to seize Suez, the Allied naval power will be able to starve them of supplies to the point where they will look as the French do now. An airborne invasion of Malta would also tip the balance in Axis favour, for a time at least, but it would be of limited utility if the Italian Air Force is crippled (not sure if it is).
I'm thinking along the same lines... if Suez and Malta remains in British hands, which really isn't a given, the
British will prevail and ultimately destroy the
Italian Army in Northern Africa. If one of them falls, things may still be salvaged, if both fall, or the Italians get to
Iraq, the
Allies will be out of the Med for for the rest of the war (or until the US mount operation Torch). This would mean that
Turkey becomes more likely to join the
Axis, and that
Italy can concentrate on reconquering East Africa, and putting more pressure on the Red Army.
The state of the
Italian Air Force is unclear, they didn't seem to manage to stop
British bombing when it was in range of
Tobruch Air Base, but the bombers had escorts, and were lightly damaged from a couple of Air Battles, so most likely the
Italians were conserving supplies or holding back to strike at un-escorted bombers. There are a lot of
British Wings in the Area, I count at least 5 CAG, 5 Tac, 2 Ftr, 3 Int, and 4 CAS in Arabia, Northern Africa, and the Eastern Med... of course, these are not optimally based, but the RAF manages to bomb the Italian spearhead several times a day. Now, if I was them, I'd just use those Tacs to Log-bomb their supply lines and watch them grind to a halt, but of course the AI is flying Ground Attack missions... One advantage is that the
Italian losses must be enormous compared to the
British ones, even when a battle isn't happening hundreds of Tacs are bombing large groups of men and machines in open terrain, in nice summer weather, several times per day... so hundreds of kils every, single, day, that's got to hurt.
At least that H Arm DAK division is likely to require a lot of supply ... which, as much as any forces on the ground, was the great determinant of those key ebbs and flows across North Africa. Let’s hope the RN can do some real convoy strangling in the Med.
Yes, I believe supply will be the determining factor here...
British bombardments and the long battle for the city of Alexandria must have destroyed a good bit of infrastructure, and from what I could see occasionally tagging to the UK since we've had 8-10 spies there, the
Italian force in the area is positively huge, with
Italian Light Tanks and
German Heavy Tanks, and a lot of Infantry. The Heavy tanks haven't even gotten into the fight yet as the Infantry is moving faster than them, the battle for Alexandria was Infantry vs Infantry even though the
Italians had Light Tanks one province away from the fight. This new Italian blitzkrieg is exemplified by Infantry routing the enemy through vastly superior numbers and constant rotation of forces, while the Tanks push up the rear, and occasionally push a battle over the edge when it's been going on for days already... Let's see just how good Italy's convoys and logistics networks is... and how bad the UK is at blockading it....