In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 (Twentieth-Century Battles)

Each End of Empire game turn represents two months time. Each year consists of one spring turn, two summer turns, one fall turn, and two winter turns. Each hex is approximately 20 miles across. Units are mostly regiments but a few represent other sizes, each step represents approximately men.

Various sizes - mostly regiments and fleets Players: Six to 18 hours depending on scenario Components: When Romania joined the Allies and invaded Transylvania without warning, the Germans responded by unleashing a campaign of bold, rapid infantry movements, with cavalry providing cover or pursuing the crushed foe. Hitting where least expected and advancing before the Romanians could react -- even bombing their capital from a Zeppelin soon after war was declared-the Germans and Austrians poured over the formidable Transylvanian Alps onto the plains of Walachia, rolling up the Romanian army from west to east, and driving the shattered remnants into Russia.

Prelude to Blitzkrieg tells the story of this largely ignored campaign to determine why it did not devolve into the mud and misery of trench warfare, so ubiquitous elsewhere. The force was engaged by a British force, which had been alerted by a decoded radio intercept. The ensuing battle would prove to be the largest and longest surface engagement until the Battle of Jutland the following summer.

While the Germans lost an armored cruiser with heavy loss of life and Hipper's flagship was almost sunk, confusion in executing orders allowed the Germans to escape. The British considered the battle a victory; but the Germans had learned important lessons and they would be better prepared for the next encounter with the British fleet at Jutand. Most of the other men of the detachment and the 20th HAA Battery were killed or captured. By the end of the operation about of the commandos sent to Crete were listed as killed, wounded or missing; only men got off the island.

About 18, men of the 32, British troops on the island were evacuated; 12, British and Dominion troops and thousands of Greeks were still on Crete, when the island came under German control on 1 June. Colonel Campbell, the commander at Heraklion, was forced to surrender his contingent. Rethymno fell and on the night of 30 May, German motorcycle troops linked up with the Italian troops who had landed on Sitia.

On 1 June, the remaining 5, defenders at Sfakia surrendered. While scattered and disorganized, these men and the partisans harassed German troops for long after the withdrawal. Cretan civilians joined the battle with whatever weapons were at hand. In one recorded incident, an elderly Cretan man clubbed a parachutist to death with his walking cane, before the German could disentangle himself from his parachute.

The Cretans also used captured German small arms. The Crete civilian actions against the Germans were not limited to harassment; mobs of armed civilians joined in the Greek counter-attacks at Kastelli Hill and Paleochora; the British and New Zealand advisors at these locations were hard pressed to prevent massacres. Civilians also checked the Germans to the north and west of Heraklion and in the town centre.

Battle of Crete - Wikipedia

The Battle of Crete was the first occasion during the Second World War where the German troops encountered widespread resistance from a civilian population, which initially surprised and later outraged them. As most Cretan partisans wore no uniforms or insignia such as armbands or headbands, the Germans felt free of all of the constraints of the Hague Conventions and killed armed and unarmed civilians indiscriminately.

Between June 2 and August 1, persons from the village of Alikianos and its vicinity were killed in mass shootings known as the Alikianos executions.

• In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942.
• Navigation menu.
• The Quiet Revolution: The Emergence of Interfaith Consciousness.
• Military from Turn-The-Page Books - Browse recent arrivals.
• Combined Academic Publishers.
• Der Einfluss des Internets auf Randsportarten (German Edition);
• Fiber Optic Data Communication: Technology Advances and Futures.

On June 3, the village of Kandanos was razed to the ground and about of its inhabitants killed. After the war, Student, who ordered the shootings, avoided prosecution for war crimes , despite Greek efforts to have him extradited. Throughout the German occupation in the years that followed, reprisals in retaliation for the involvement of the local population in the Cretan resistance continued.

FIRST PERSON AND INTERVIEW ACCOUNTS

On several occasions, villagers were rounded up and summarily executed. In one of the worst incidents, around 20 villages east of Viannos and west of the Ierapetra provinces were looted and burnt in September , with over of their inhabitants being massacred. In August , over houses in Anogeia were looted and then dynamited. The same month, nine villages in the Amari valley were destroyed and people killed in what is now known as the Holocaust of Kedros.

Although the conquest of Crete was considered a grandiose victory of the airborne corps, [99] the German leadership focused on the heavy losses incurred. The German Air Ministry was shocked by the amount of transport aircraft lost, and Student, reflecting on the casualties suffered by the paratroopers, concluded after the war that Crete was the death of the airborne force. Hitler, believing airborne forces to be a weapon of surprise which had now lost that advantage, concluded that the days of the airborne corps were over and directed that paratroopers should be employed as ground-based troops in subsequent operations in the Soviet Union.

The German casualty rate was hidden from Allied planners, who rushed to create airborne formations. Gavin realised from the German experience on Crete, that airborne troops should jump with heavy weapons. The lack of such equipment contributed greatly to German losses during the invasion. The battle for Crete did not delay Operation Barbarossa. The delay of Operation Barbarossa was caused by the late spring and floods in Poland. The sinking of the Bismarck on 27 May distracted British public opinion but the loss of Crete, particularly as a result of the failure of the Allied land forces to recognise the strategic importance of the airfields, led the British government to make changes.

Shocked and disappointed with the Army's inexplicable failure to recognise the importance of airfields in modern warfare, Churchill made the RAF responsible for the defence of its bases and the RAF Regiment was formed on 1 February Operation Barbarossa made it apparent that the occupation of Crete was a defensive measure to secure the Axis southern flank.

Twentieth-Century Battles

For a fortnight, Enigma intercepts described the arrival of Fliegerkorps XI around Athens, the collection of 27, registered tons of shipping and the effect of air attacks on Crete, which began on 14 May A postponement of the invasion was revealed on 15 May, and on 19 May, the probable date was given as the next day.

The German objectives in Crete were similar to the areas already being prepared by the British, but foreknowledge increased the confidence of the local commanders in their dispositions. On 14 May, London warned that the attack could come any time after 17 May, which information Freyberg passed on to the garrison. On 16 May the British authorities expected an attack by 25, to 30, airborne troops in aircraft and by 10, troops transported by sea.

Product details

The real figures were 15, airborne troops in aircraft and 7, by sea; late decrypts reduced uncertainty over the seaborne invasion. The British mistakes were smaller than those of the Germans, who estimated the garrison to be only a third of the true figure. The after-action report of Fliegerkorps XI contained a passage recounting that the operational area had been so well prepared that it gave the impression that the garrison had known the time of the invasion.

Antony Beevor in and P. Antill in wrote that Allied commanders knew of the invasion through Ultra intercepts. Freyberg, informed of the air component of the German battle plan, had started to prepare a defence near the airfields and along the north coast. He had been hampered by a lack of modern equipment, and the lightly-armed paratroopers had about the same firepower as the defenders, if not more.

Ultra intelligence was detailed but was taken out of context and misinterpreted. Hinsley, the official historian of British intelligence during the war, wrote that the Germans had more casualties in the conquest of Crete than in the rest of the Greek campaign and that the losses inflicted on the 7th Fliegerdivision were huge [ vague ]. It was the only unit of its kind and was not rebuilt. Hinsley wrote that it was difficult to measure the influence of intelligence gained during the battle, because although Ultra revealed German situation reports, reinforcement details and unit identifications and although more intelligence was gleaned from prisoners and captured documents, it was not known how swiftly the information reached Freyberg or how he used it.

The German parachute warfare manual had been captured in , and after the war, Student said that he would have changed tactics had he known this. Field-signals intelligence was obtained, including bombing instructions and information from the Fliegerkorps XI tactical code. Lack of air cover prevented much British air reconnaissance north of Crete, but on 21 May signals intelligence enabled an aircraft to spot a convoy. After midnight the navy sank twelve ships and the rest scattered, which led to a second invasion convoy being called back.

The second convoy was intercepted during the morning of 22 May, despite the cost to the navy of a daylight operation, and no more seaborne attempts were made. Official German casualty figures are contradictory due to minor variations in documents produced by German commands on various dates. Davin estimated 6, losses, based upon an examination of various sources. Reports of German casualties in British reports are in almost all cases exaggerated and are not accepted against the official contemporary German returns, prepared for normal purposes and not for propaganda.

In , Playfair and the other British official historians, gave figures of 1, Germans killed, 2, wounded, 1, missing, a total of 6, men "compiled from what appear to be the most reliable German records". Exaggerated reports of German casualties began to appear after the battle had ended. The Press on 12 June reported that. Churchill claimed that the Germans must have suffered well over 15, casualties, while Admiral Cunningham felt that the figure was more like 22, The official historians recorded Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed and 64 damaged by enemy action and 73 destroyed and 84 damaged by other causes and in , Shores, Cull and Malizia recorded losses of aircraft destroyed and 64 written off due to damage, a total of aircraft between 13 May to 1 June.

The British lost 1, killed, 1, wounded, 11, taken prisoner from a garrison of slightly more than 32, men and there were 1, dead and wounded Royal Navy personnel. A large number of civilians were killed in the crossfire or died fighting as partisans. Many Cretans were shot by the Germans in reprisal during the battle and in the occupation. German records put the number of Cretans executed by firing squad as 3, and at least 1, civilians were killed in massacres late in Royal Navy shipborne anti-aircraft gun claims for the period of 15—27 May amounted to: At least 15 aircraft appeared to have been damaged For the German occupation of Crete, see Fortress Crete.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Battle of the Mediterranean. Battle of Crete order of battle. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. May Learn how and when to remove this template message. Between 13 May to 1 June, in combat, 73 non-combat, 64 written-off and damaged but repairable. The British feared a propaganda coup if a sovereign monarch under their protection were to be captured and helped him to escape. Europe and the Mediterranean , Square One Publishers, p. Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved November 22, Retrieved November 19, The Second World War 4: The first convincing demonstration of this potential in operational conditions came in May , when the entire plan for the German airborne capture of Crete was decrypted two weeks before the invasion took place.

New Zealand History online. Greece sacrificed much for the greater good - Neos Kosmos". The Royal Navy is Bloodied in the Mediterranean. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan — Edited by David Dilks , G. Putnam's Sons, New York.

The Hunters and the Hunted. Naval Institute Press, pp. University of the West of England. Archived from the original on 1 April Retrieved 21 May Crete , pp. Archived from the original on 6 April Retrieved 29 May Intelligence and Military Operations. It appears that General Freyberg was introduced to Ultra only shortly before the battle of Crete began and therefore had no time to become familiar with its proper interpretation.

This situation was exacerbated by the fact that 'he was forbidden to show it the information derived from Ultra to anyone or to discuss it with his intelligence staff. This number includes those missing in action. The total number excludes several hundred RN PoWs. BR 2 rev. Hitler and the Middle Sea. Germany's lightning airborne assault. The Battle and the Resistance. The Royal Navy and the Mediterranean: November — December Whitehall History in association with Frank Cass. Greece and Crete Second World War, —; a popular military history.

Churchill, Randolph Spencer; Gilbert, Martin Davin, Daniel Marcus Retrieved 4 November British Standard Destroyers of the s. Gill, George Hermon Australia in the War of — 2. Retrieved 24 November Greene, Jack; Massignani, Alessandro The Naval War in the Mediterranean — Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat. Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria.

Just two of seventeen merchant ships that set out for Malta reached their destination. In Passage Perilous presents a detailed description of the operations and assesses the actual impact Malta had on the fight to deny supplies to Rommel's army in North Africa. The book's discussion of the battle's operational aspects highlights the complex relationships between air and naval power and the influence of geography on littoral operations.

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.