@Panther Looks cool! Thanks for sharing!
How did Afrika Korp get to Africa?
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This pretty much explains everything I just mentioned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_(World_War_II)
General Erwin Rommel, in de facto field command of Axis forces in North Africa, recognised its importance quickly. In May 1941, he warned that “Without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa”.[1]
Africa Korps was March 41 to May 43
Here’s another interesting Exert, citing some of the early failures of the allies to interdict axis logistics
“From January�April, the Axis sent 321,259 tons to Libya and all but 18,777 tons reached port. This amounted to a 94 percent success rate for convoy safety running the British interdiction. Of the 73,991 men sent by sea, 71,881 (97 percent), arrived in Africa.”
ANother inter -
@Caesar:
So I can’t find an answer on this. Does anyone know how Germany managed to send units into northern Africa? I am pretty sure the only Kreigsmarine units ever sent into the med was U-boats so did they rely on a merchant fleet, Vichy France, or the Royal Marina?
I have found an answer you are looking for!!! Check this out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Tarigo_Convoy
In mid-April, 1941, a five ship Axis convoy sailed from Naples, en route to Tripoli. It consisted of four German troopships (Adana, Arta, Aegina and Iserlohn) and an Italian ammunition ship (Sabaudia). The convoy was escorted by a “Navigatori” class destroyer Luca Tarigo (flagship) and two Folgore class destroyers, Baleno and Lampo, all commanded by Commander Pietro de Cristofaro. The convoy was delayed by bad weather, sailing in the evening of 13 April.
So in at least this instance there were German Troop Ships, with Italian surface ship support, and I’ve also read about German air support at a glance. I would argue that Axis Convoys were a bit of a mixed bag.
Probably alot of civilian vessels “confiscated” and re purposed.
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Thanks Gar. This is sweet
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Its amazing what you can google
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Its amazing what you can google
I googled this from time to time and couldn’t find any conclusive answer. I always assumed it was Italy who did it however I also know at least at some point, Germany had permission to land at a Vichy port.
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another interesting question is how they heck were they able to load or unload a tiger tank in an era where ships were still loaded with bags by pure manpower and small cranes that appear more dangerous than useful. A ship built for fishing or bulk carriage is totally unsuited for holding large armored vehicles.
there is one anecdote where Rommel finds a huge Quad-Carrier truck (UK made Morris C8s I think) and requisitioned two for his use for the rest of the desert campaign. Opening the glove box, he finds a pair of spatted sunglasses, the old-school kind, and approvingly put them on. What a find!
So, they didn’t even consider providing their troops with sunglasses (much less a big desert quad truck or two)? Such that even the supreme commander had to find them as loot? Seriously?
Maybe they would have won the war if they had found a container full of cut-off shorts and zinc oxide.
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there is one anecdote where Rommel finds a huge Quad-Carrier truck (UK made Morris C8s I think) and requisitioned two for his use for the rest of the desert campaign.
This is true - I read it in the book “In the desert with Rommel”.
As for sunglasses, I know the germans had all kinds of dust and flight goggles… and from what i can read - they were issues sunglasses too. The sunglasses just sucked.
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As for cranes being more dangerous that safe - haha I believe it.
But safety wasn’t the paramount concern in that era… it was more of a git-r-dun attitude; pushing the engineering of boats, cranes, men, and equipment to the maximum.
I wonder what kind work place incident/accident statistics occurred during the war period…
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Nice pics Garg. Thanks.
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I am pretty sure who ever dropped a tank by accident got a firing squad for treason.
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Interesting - I just noticed…
On the top photo it appears that they shipped the tiger tank separate from it’s turret? Looks like a Tiger chassis to me?
I wonder if it was a weight or just plain awkward shape issue?
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Good eyes, Garg. (I use my phone amd my eyesight is atrocious.) That is definitely a Tiger chassis . Must have been a weight issue.
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It could be replacement parts or maybe Germany used the Tiger body for something else like a bulldozer?
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Tiger tanks were loaded straight from manufactoring onto Railway.
They had a separate pair of tracks for this reason. Then arrived in Italy where they were shipped right to Tunesia.The Tiger you see in the pic has a dummy plate mounted and the tubes had been removed wich they had for the Desert to keep the Air Filter clean.
Also the Tigers for Africa were indeed lighter then those who served at the Ostfont.A lot of those shipped Tigers didn’t even see any action since they broke down shortly after the shipping due to some issues they had to begin with.
The tank was “untermotorisiert” wich means he would def. need a more powerful engine.
A main issue for all bigger german tanks.At this time Germany did not have mobil repairstations and troops dir the job.
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Thanks AetV.
It is funny, as I never imagined that pic was a late war one. Was only the Tiger that proves it is. U thought it was probably pre Tobruk. Glad Garg spotted my best (tank) friend! -
@aequitas:
A lot of those shipped Tigers didn’t even see any action since they broke down shortly after the shipping due to some issues they had to begin with.
And on a related point: German tanks, especially in the second half of the war, were hampered by vicious circle related to their design and production. Tanks like the Panther and the Tiger were formidable weapons, but they were mechanically complex; this made them difficult to produce (compared to the much less finicky T-34 and Sherman), and one of the side-effects of these manufacturing difficulties was that, compared to the Americans in particular, the Germans tended to allocate less of their production capacity to the manufacturing of spare parts for tanks rather than to complete tanks. As a result, it wasn’t uncommon for German armoured units to abandon broken-down tanks that could have been fixed and returned to combat if spare parts had been available. The Americans, by contrast, usually had plenty of tank spare parts available for maintenance and repair. And what compounded the problem for the Germans was that the complexity of their tanks not only caused manufacturing difficulties, it also gave their tanks a greater propensity to break down in the first place. The Tiger, moreover, had the additional problem of being extremely heavy, and this placed an enormous strain on its tracks, its running gear and its suspension, which likewise caused a maintenance burden; the lighter Panther didn’t have that problem to the same extent, though like all tanks it needed lots of maintenance attention.
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Man - looking at those rickety boats, sketchy cranes, and the (wooden?) decks; it’s a wonder that any personnel or equipment made it across the Mediterranean at all. Let alone whilst it was being shot at by the Allies.
I would go to jail if I told people on site to operate in the way that these photos appear.
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It should also be noted a big problem for Germany that USSR and US didn’t have was the fact that Germany didn’t use Diesel for their tanks, they ran off unleaded gas.
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I knew they unloaded them since they were in theatre in the org chart. Those are PzIIIs on the crane, the Tiger is heavier, could also be a bergestiger or ARV etc. Some of the African ports would have very rudimentary methods of getting close to the unloading area, I suppose that 1-2 just fell in the ocean for some collector to retrieve in the 21st century.
To second CWO Marc’s point, the Tiger is a defectively designed tank–it has too many flat 90 degree surfaces that don’t take advantage of sloped armor. The Russians consistently led in these tank-design innovations in both manufacture and application.
There is a myth that the Germans were the most advanced, technologically, when in reality their most useful advance was in the USE of armor on the battlefield.
The book I’m reading now (Tank Tactics, Stackpole) argues that of the Western Allies, only Canada took the correct lessons away from the use of tanks in WW1 and that even after Normandy and the early cold war, only the Russians had internalized the german Schwerpunkt method of massed attacks and decisive action. The US and UK continued to apply misguided lessons (tank destroyers, use of strategic bombers to support armor attacks, ineffective massing and coordination) even into the 60s and 70s that meant that they would have lost the conventional war over the Fulda Gap and would have required the Western Allies to use nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets, who had correctly learned the German mobility tactics and strategy, and beaten them with it.
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Good points. German armour was technologically sophisticated in some respects, but not in others. To give just two examples, both related to the T-34, it featured a Christie-type torsion-bar suspension, which gave superior mobility, and it had a diesel engine, which had some benefits in terms of crew survivability because diesel fuel (unlike gasoline) burns but doesn’t explode when hit by an enemy anti-tank shell. Germany, for all its technical prowess, had not yet developed a diesel engine powerul enough to power a tank, so this element of the T-34 was quite a shock to the Wehrmacht (as were other features, like the sloped armour mentioned by taamvan). And as taamvan also mentioned, the T-34 was designed for ease of manufacture, which proved to be another crucial advantage.
Regarding battlefield doctrine, the May/June 1940 campaign is an excellent illustration of taamvan’s points about faulty Allied disposition of armour (dispersed in an infantry-support role) versus German concentration at a decisive location (the Ardennes). Regarding that campaign, Kenneth Macksey has argued that another German advantage was something very modern-sounding: electronics (in reference to the fact that German armoured forces made significant use of radio to coordinate their actions).
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