Recent content by MattII

Or the can dog-leg south through New Zealand, at much less additional cost.

Hm, has the Channel Dash happened here?

A simple press release won't do much. It will take a much bigger operation to convince the Germans.

How much firepower does Weygand have in FNA? How much is currently in Sardinia?

Sicily can't be taken without French North Africa, and Weygand is reluctant to all that without Germans first going ahead with Fall Blau. My idea with Sardinia was that it might provoke the Germans into going through with Fall Blau, thus giving Weygand reason to go to the Allies without a fight.

Everyone knows Sicily is a potential target, and, so is garrisoned, Sardinia I'm not so sure about. The issue is, Sicily can't be taken until you have French North Africa. My idea was that taking Sardinia would goad the Germans into Case Blue, and thus, give Weygand all the cause he needs to...

What forces do the Axis have in Sardinia?

What air assets are currently in Sardinia? The closest point between Libya and Sicily is ~275 miles. Bombers can do it, sure, but fighters? Those would have to come from airfields closer, which means Malta and Pantelleria, or Tunisia. Except French North Africa isn't yet a place they can launch...

Pantelleria is ~85 km^2, only slightly larger than Gozo (~67 km^2), and substantially smaller than the island of Malta (~246 km^2), so there's no way it's going to be able to sustain high-tempo operations for long, or in any real numbers. I was thinking an out-of-the-blue attack, like Torch...

Except in my idea it would be the prelude to Sicily. An island in the middle of nowhere with no strategic value, except that it's not in the middle of nowhere, because it's not far to the south of Corsica, which is part of Metropolitan France, and thus, such a move might prompt the Germans to...

So Narvik will be a blood-bath. That points to Sicily, if they can woo Weygand over, or Greece if they can't. Of course, the latter would depend rather a lot on who owns what in the Aegean. Of course, for a dark-horse suggestion, going for Sardinia might be enough to panic the Germans into...

How heavily guarded is Narvik at this time?

You don't think the fact that Sweden was 95% surrounded by Axis occupied territory had anything to do with it?

Huh, okay. So hitting Narvik might do some good after all? Of course, I doubt they could do enough damage to put the port out of action for long, and the losses at this stage would probably quickly become extortionate.

Narvik was on no interest to the Germans once they took it, so wrecking it would do precisely nothing.