What if we ignored N. Africa and the MTO?

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 16:07:18 -0000, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


Because there is no way the invasion could have been successfully launched
in 1943.

I disagree.


The troops,

There were as many divisions available as they were used between June
6th 1944 and August 1st 1944 on the Normandy bridgehead.

landing craft

Allies had enough landing craft to perform Husky in summer 1943 and
Torch in autumn 1942. There were certainly enough craft to land the
five divisions of the first wave and immediate support.

and aircraft were simply not available

Allies had in ETO and MTO at least twice as much aircraft (without
counting strategic bombers) than Luftwaffe had in total. Throughout
1943, Luftwaffe was incapable of preventing Allied air, naval and
ground operations in the Mediterranean. In case of 1943 invasion,
Allied assets that couldn't have been used in the Mediterranean (Air
Defense of Great Britain) would have been utilised.

Some 5000 ships and landing craft, 600,000 tons of supplies and 200,000
vehicles had to be assembled

These were the forces needed to arrive to German border within three
months of D-day, but such requirement would not be necessary condition
for the success of 1943 invasion.

in addition to the armies and then there's the little matter of winning air superiority
over the landing beaches. Without the decimation of the Luftwaffe in late 1943 and
early 1944 and lacking long range escort fighters any attempted invasion
would have been exceptionally risky.

Luftwaffe was incapable of defeating Allied air forces in the
Mediterranean. By mid 1943, Allies had twice as much fighters
available as Luftwaffe had. Allied did not need long range escorts for
air superiority over La Manche and bridgehead.


As for the MTO it was simply not possible to isolate the German and
Italian armies and ignore them.

Operation Torch was not necessary. If it was skipped, Allies would
have had the resources to establish a second front in north-western
France in 1943.


Had they been able to seize the Suez canal and middle east

It's long way from El Agheila to Iraq.

they would have had access to virtually unlimited oil supplies from Iraq

The wells that would have been thoroughly wrecked by retreating
British. It would have taken at least six months to repair the
damages.

In addition, Italy lacked enough tankers to carry the oil.


As it was the forces captured when Tunisia fell were greater than
those captured at Stalingrad and not only was Italy knocked out of
the war but the Germans had to garrison that country as well
thus diverting troops who could have been used to defend
Northern France.

Italian troops were disarmed and sent to work in Germany thus freeing
Germans to man the garrison divisions deployed to replace Italian
divisions. Italians were more efficient working in German war economy
than in Italian one.


Drax