ot how did the british supply their forces in north africa

[dog of war]

curious as to how they were supplied .did the ships sail up the suez canal to cairo or alexandria , or did they have to sail from gibralter to malta to alexandria/port-said or what ever port is at the mouth of the suez ( my geography is not great)

suez canal seems like the best option to me , what am i missing here

[JasonC]

They occasionally ran fast convoys across the central Med at night, particularly when the airpower on Malta was temporarily strong. But for the most part it was too dangerous for merchant ships and they had to go clear around Africa. The main threat was German air based in Sicily and southern Italy, with minor additional threats from u-boats and Italian air. (Ju-88s were the main air threat, with both torpedos and dive bombing).

It wasn't hard to get through the canal to Egypt, but the Africa route reduced the thruput per ship enourmously, because it took so long. Early in the war, when the issue was still in doubt, German u-boats were also a problem off the west African coast. That was beyond practical air cover range and there weren't any escort carriers yet, so u-boats could operate on the surface, making them fast enough to run down freighters. But the main issue was just the tonnage delivered was a quarter what it would have been for the same shipping by a route through the Med, due to the extra time.

They still outsupplied the Germans by a large factor. British subs and air from Malta contested the crossing by Italian shipping, and the port at Benghazi was bombed to ruins. That meant nearly everything had to go by truck all the way from Tripoli. German trucks broke down rapidly on runs that long in the dust etc, and Italian motor vehicles were a nightmare. They never had enough truck lift to move supplies from Tripoli to the front.

This did create some variation in Axis strength as the front moved, though. Their supply thruput was doubled at Al Aghelia compared to at the Eygptian border.

When the Germans captured Tobruk, it gave them a port closer to the front, but it needed to be cleared and it was within range of British air attack from Egypt, the route was dangerous given British naval supremacy in the Med, anywhere the Luftwaffe wasn't going to sink them straight off, etc. It didn't really solve the German supply problem, which remained insufficient trucks and POL for them, bottlenecking everything else.

After Torch and El Alamein, it was a footrace, and supplies could be poured in to the western side on shorter hauls than to Egypt. The advance to Tunisia was so rapid it outran supplies and then air cover tied to those supplies, and this helped the Germans build up in Tunisia and hold the line.

Which was a trap however, since they were bound to lose everything they sent. There was never any logistical prospect of winning a fight on the other side of the Med channel against the naval superpower allies, able to pour in supplies at both ends of Africa. The best that can be said for it is it sucked off some shipping that would otherwise have built up for Overlord faster.

In what if discussions of the logistics of the campaign, people always raise the question, couldn't the Germans have won or at least dramatically improved their hand if they had taken out Malta relatively early, in order to have air covered passage to Libya without military interference? It would have helped at the margin but couldn't fix the main problems.

Which were, one, after you get stuff to Libya you still have to get it to the front by truck over a thousand miles of dusty desert road, with all the ports east of Tripoli too marginal or vulnerable to seriously help. And two, eventually the allies are just going to land behind you in the west anyway, so the farther east you drive, the more impossible it gets to defend the base of that supply chain. Once Tunisia is under seige from the west, there was no way you'd ever have thruput clear to the nile basin area. So all the drives east were chasing a mirage; there was no victory at the end even if they got to Cairo.

Not to mention the same shorter supply chain logic worked in the Brits favor at Al Elamein was operated for the Germans at Al Aghelia, only much more so. It was straight off the ships to the front, no long desert haul, and the Brits were never as POL constrained as the Germans to begin with.

The whole campaign never made logistic sense from the German side, as a sustained battlefront continually supplied. It was always going to be a coup de main attempt thing, or a delaying action.

[Panzer_M 2.0]

great post Jason.

[JasonC]

Thanks.....

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9226/ww2.html

Interesting to see an italian view of the naval battles - not a professional piece but heartfelt. Adds a few bits I was unaware of.

Showing how bloody the Italian subs battle was

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/SubLosses/SS_losses-italian.html

[Stalins Organ]

Not forgetting that India, Australia & New Zealand supplied a lot of material directly to Egypt - India had a sizeable ordnance industry able to supply small arms and ammunition, and Aus & NZ mainly supplied food & clothing.

by the end of WW2 India had 16 ordnance factories - I'm not sure how many they had in 1941 befoer Japan entered the war, and I suspect that after Dec 1941 much of their output went East rather than to Nth Africa, but they would ahve been a major source of small arms and ammunition.

australia & NZ also had small ordnance industries - but nothing like the Indian ones - their main output was food and clothing.

[John Kettler]

Anyone have a leakage loss percentage for the notoriously flimsy British petrol containers? As I recall, it was enough to be a headache to the planners, and troops used the vastly sturdier and more practical German produced Jerrycans (hence, the name) whenever they could obtain them.

Regards,

John Kettler

[dog of war]

where can i get information on the australian and nz ordance industry output (weapon types and components)

[John Kettler]

dog of war,

A royal pain, but finally success. Both the Australian National Archive and Oz At War were complete busts. Fortunately, there's Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_home_front_during_World_War_II

New Zealand was even worse. THE PACIFIC WAR COMPANION, by Marston, has a section specifically addressing New Zealand's contributions to the war effort.

http://books.google.com/books?id=w2QDfg9wUu0C&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=new+zealand%27s+contribution+to+wwii&source=web&ots=xT5QXOFjVD&sig=VLlWuY2BgVRWZ2HHRTqtOz0jiy8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA153,M1

Managed to find this. Bottom line, the principal weaponry produced by New Zealand was ships, some 500 vessels; the principal war product, food.

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Econ-c4.html

There was some production of standard weapons

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Econ-c6-24.html

Further examples here.

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Econ-c7-36.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[dog of war]

thanks to each of you