“I also request that the problem of occupying Madeira and the Azores should be considered,” said Hitler, “together with the advantages and disadvantages which this would entail for our sea and air warfare. The results of these investigations are to be submitted to me as soon as possible. As to the Vichy French, now let them prove their pledge of alliance with us and use the ships they sit on in Casablanca and Dakar to support such a move.”
This extended campaign would deny the British these valuable outposts as staging areas for counter-operations against Gibraltar and Spain, while at the same time affording Germany valuable refueling stations for its navy. They would also sit astride the convoy routes Britain used to move supplies and resources to and from Freetown and around the Cape of Good Hope.
Gibraltar, however, was the real prize. Once the German Army had hold of the fabled “Pillars of Hercules,” the British would be denied this vital base, and it would soon serve German/Italian needs while they continued the fight to destroy what remained of the British outposts in the Mediterranean. Then the Axis Powers could finally voice the old Roman claim when they once referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, our sea. Malta would be completely isolated and fall within a month. The British position in Egypt would be in grave danger, as the Germans could move forces to North Africa easily by sea, while the British would have to rely on supply lines thousands of miles long, around the Cape of Good Hope. The British Army in North Africa would be effectively cut off.
The Kriegsmarine had returned to friendly ports after the abortive sortie to harass the British convoy shipping in June of 1940. They began the operation with a game of shadow boxing, aiming to draw the attention of British heavy ships, but encountered a mysterious adversary that seemed to foil their every move, sinking the tanker Altmark and forcing them to backtrack north to refuel with an alternate supply ship. A strong battlegroup of the German fleet had then sortied, Bismarck and Tirpitz leading the way beneath the heavy grey overcast, intending to strike south for the Atlantic. There they met the Royal Navy on equal terms for the first time at sea since the big sea duels of WWI. They learned, much to their great surprise, that new and powerful weapons of war were now threatening to upset the careful balance that would decide naval supremacy in the Atlantic, and by so doing, decide the war.
Suddenly Raeder’s plans were all thrown to the wind. The development of rocketry had received passing attention in Germany before the war, but now it was given the highest possible priority. If the British could field these weapons, or the Russians as it was later learned, then so could Germany. Seeing that the application of the weaponry was apparently limited, and observed on no other Russian ship, the Germans concluded it must have been a new prototype, deployed in battle for the very first time.
There had not been a hint or whisper of these weapons in the Mediterranean, and no British ships seemed to have them. Yet the impact they had in German war planning was nonetheless significant. What if Soviet Russia had these weapons ready for use as a land based system? This, among other reasons, prompted Hitler to postpone the immediate invasion of Soviet Russia until intelligence could be developed on the scale of deployment for these new weapons.
In the short run Doenitz argued that no rocket cruiser could in any way harm his U-boats, and was glad to see that his budget for new construction was dramatically increased, while that of Raeder diminished. The Germans would finish the fitting out of only one more major capital ship, the Oldenburg. The third big battleship Hitler had ordered long ago, the Brandenburg, was summarily cancelled, and the steel allotted for the project was diverted to the production of small screening ships like destroyers, and more U-Boats, and the completion of the large fleet carrier the Germans had captured from the French in Saint Nazaire. The name itself would also transfer to that ship, and carrier Joffre would soon be christened CV Brandenburg.
As for the fast AA cruiser De Grasse, Raeder managed to preserve enough of his resources to convert this ship to a hybrid escort cruiser/carrier, the Hannover, named after the old pre-dreadnought battleship from an earlier day. These two ships, would join Peter Strasser in the shipyards and were expected to reach completion by mid-1941 to bring Germany’s carrier fleet to a respectable four ships.
Yet Raeder had much more planned, just as he had explained it to Doenitz earlier. His navy would play an important role inOperation Felix, and that attack would be supported by the core of his new battle fleet in a gamble to break the back of the Royal Navy by seizing Gibraltar. Raeder would send out his gladiators once again, hoping to draw the Royal Navy into another pursuit and battle at sea. He would fling his newest battle squadron down through the Faeroes Gap and into the heat of the action. And they would be led by the greatest champion the German Navy had ever put to sea-battleship Hindenburg.
Raeder could see the ships moving in his mind’s eye, even as he visualized them on his battle map in the operations center at Wilhelmshaven. If his Admirals and Kapitans kept good heads on their shoulders, then he could guarantee Hitler that his segment of the plan would be accomplished-disrupt the Royal Navy so badly that any hope of reinforcing Gibraltar or landing forces in Portugal or Morocco would be impossible. This he could do, rockets or no rockets. Every variable and factor in the equation of his thinking told him that his fleet was ready for the task as Germany prepared to strike at another hinge of fate-Gibraltar.
Part VII
“You must never underestimate your opposition.”
Chapter 19
The Allied situation in the Mediterranean theater was far from secure by mid 1940. The twin blows of Italian hostility and the metamorphosis of France from ally to enemy had left the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth allies to stand alone. Most of their strength lay in Egypt under General Archibald Percival Wavell, a tall, broad shouldered, thick necked man who had been in the British Army since the Second Boer War. He had also spent a year as an observer with the Russian Army, and learned the Russian language before serving in the First War. Now he found himself elevated to Commander-in-Chief Middle East, which encompassed all of East Africa, Greece, the Balkans, and Palestine
It was an enormous task considering the fact that Wavell’s force in Egypt was vastly outnumbered by the Italian colonial armies in Africa. By August of 1940 it consisted of the British 7th Armored Division, 4th and 5th Indian Divisions, the 2nd New Zealand Division and mixed forces comprising three British brigades. Plans were underway to reinforce Wavell with a South African Division and a pair of Australian Divisions that were still forming. The R.A.F. could at least muster an assortment of 300 planes, and the Royal Navy at Alexandria had three battleships, four cruisers and 12 destroyers.
Against this force the Italians could boast they had numerous field armies, amounting to over 75 divisions, though most were undermanned and ill equipped. They also had twice as many battleships in theater, good fast cruisers and destroyers, and a robust submarine fleet. Regia Aeronautica had 400 planes in Libya with another 300 in the horn of Africa, and three times as many more in at home aerodromes. The threat Italy represented on paper looked very serious, and this led Wavell to adopt an early policy of cautious containment, like a man staring down a bee hive on his back porch, and wondering whether the first tentative jabs would result in a whirlwind of stinging reprisal.