His 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions had been holding the line in the south, and with the support of several Italian divisions, they had managed to stop O’Connor’s drive up the coast. Nehring knew the end was near. But he still had a fairly cohesive force, and a reputation that was already under the shadow of Hitler’s criticism. Some back home had labeled him a defeatist, so he decided that if this battle would be lost, he would try and redeem himself with one last counterattack.
Nehring got to a telegraph station and sent off a signal to Berlin. “Unable to communicate with v.Arnim. Americans breaking through to Tunis. My Korps mow moving to counterattack. – Nehring.”
The remnants of the once proud 5th Panzer Army would move north that night, a long march that would bring them to the village and airfield of Oudua, about 18 kilometers south of Tunis. When Nehring got there, he saw the last of the planes forming up on the airfield to flee from the scene. An aide ran to him.
“Herr general! There is room on that transport. It will take you to Sicily.”
Nehring could already hear the artillery of 15th Panzer opening fire on the forward flank of the American penetration around Bour Amri. “No,” he said. “My men are fighting, and so I stay here and fight with them. You go in my place, Hans. Get to OKW—that is an order—and tell them that General Walther Nehring fought with his Korps to the last.”
The man was shocked, but saluted stiffly, and then ran off into the growing chaos on the airfield. As dawn broke, a flight of three American fighters came swooping down and began strafing the field, and his plane would never get off the ground. Three planes exploded, sending dark acrid smoke up into the grey dawn, and the bright hot orange fire of the aviation fuel lit up the field.
The Germans would find 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment and give it a bruising wallop that morning, along with Company A, 1/66th Cavalry in the 2nd Armored Division. It was the last German counterattack on anything approaching a division scale level of the war in North Africa.
Just a few brief months ago, five German Panzer divisions had surged against the American lines, driving through Faid Pass to Kasserine, and on to Tebessa, where they were finally stopped by Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division, General George Patton, and a lot of guts. After that, the dark rain fell heavily on Rommel’s command car, and he was soon gone, off for one last gallant ride through the Syrian desert to Damascus.
The men he had fought with, von Bismarck, Fischer, Randow, von Arnim and so many others, would all soon come to the bitter end in Tunisia. Walther Nehring had never been fated to be captured there, having been posted to the Ostfront before this happened. This time, his determination to go down fighting would see him join von Arnim in an Allied prison camp for the duration of the war. That last attack, which would soon be countered by CCA of 2nd Armored, would be known as the ‘Battle of Morraghia’ the deepest penetration the Germans made on the flank of Patton’s drive. It would end at the Old Roman Road, the thoroughfare of another conquering army, so very long ago.
* * *
When Hitler received the news of the sudden collapse of the entire northern front in Tunisia, he went into a rage. Kesselring was there at the time, trying to convey the urgency of the situation in Tunisia, but to Hitler, the lines noting positions on the map were all he could see. The Hermann Goring Division was still on its front line, but Hitler did not know it had been largely destroyed by the time Kesselring arrived. The same could be said for other German divisions that suffered heavily, like the 164th Light in the center, or 327th Infantry on the north coast. To Hitler’s eye, all seemed in order. He was therefore shocked when word came, in the midst of his conference with Kesselring, that the front in the north had collapsed and a general retreat to Tunis was now underway.
“How is this possible? What is going on there?” He shouted at Kesselring. “You leave to come here and confer with me, and the entire front is now a shamble! What is von Arnim doing?”
It was soon reported that von Arnim himself was now in enemy hands, and that, more than anything, communicated the gravity of the situation now underway in Tunisia.
“This is outrageous!” said Hitler. “Outrageous! Von Arnim has surrendered? I will have every member of that man’s family rounded up and executed!”
That was a threat that the Führer never followed through on, but it conveyed the degree to which he was stunned and dismayed by what had happened. Both Hitler and Mussolini had counted on a long and grudging defense in Northern Tunisia. As long as they could keep the Allies fighting there, then they could not plan other operations aimed at either Greece, Italy or even Southern France.
The signal received from Nehring offered one brief moment of hope, and the Führer waited all night for word on this counterattack. Yet it was soon eclipsed by more reports that Weber had withdrawn all the way to Bizerte, and the British were closing in on that city as well. Everyone at OKW knew the end had come, a few days later than it had in the old history, but in no less convincing a way.
There would be continued fighting for Tunis and Bizerte for another seven days, but then, on the 20th of May, General Giovani Messe accepted surrender terms for all Italian Army forces under his control. Walther Nehring was in Allied hands, and the Germans forces in Tunisia formally surrendered under the command of Major-General Gustav von Vaerst, who had taken over for Nehring, and General Weber who had organized the last defense at Bizerte.
The long and bitter struggle that had begun so long ago, with the Italian incursion into Egypt and “O’Connor’s Raid,” was now over. The shock of the defeat lay upon Hitler for weeks after, for there had been no Stalingrad, and this was the greatest setback the German Army had suffered in the war to date, with over 150,000 German Army soldiers taken prisoner. The 10th, 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, the veterans of North Africa, were stricken from the Army roster, though the Reichsmarshall immediately gave orders that his division was to be rebuilt. It was said that counting the Italian losses, Axis casualties and POW’s exceeded a quarter of a million men.
The key to that victory had been the steady rise in proficiency of the Allied air forces, which had come to dominate the skies over the battlefield, and were instrumental in choking off supplies. By the end, the Allied air supremacy was so pronounced, that British and American destroyers could sail with impunity and shell enemy positions all along the northern coast, as far as Bizerte.
Admiral Raeder’s fleet had been ordered to Toulon by Hitler even as the final Allied operation got underway on May first. Timing the transit of the Straits of Messina at night, the fleet endured a raid by American B-24’s, which sunk a destroyer and two Italian Cruisers, and put light damage on the forward deck of Fredric de Gross , also straddling the Bismarck with two bombs that spent themselves on the ship’s heavy side armor. But the two precious carriers got through unscathed, and their fighters, led by Marco Ritter, cost the Americans 14 bombers and six defending night fighters.
Raeder reached Naples on May 3rd, lingering there for no more than a day before transiting the Tyrrhenian Sea, past Rome and over the northern tip of Corsica where German air power was thick enough to protect the fleet. So Hitler still had one Ace to play when the time came, and would be glad he had not ordered the fleet to make a last gasp attack that would have led to certain disaster. In his mind, he would at least have some floating steel as a defense against any subsequent Allied invasion, and so Raeder’s final hour would not yet come.
When 62 B-24’s struck the very next day and put damage on the Prinz Heinrich, Hitler ordered the fleet to move to Genoa. A large commercial port, it had not been used as a naval base by the Italians, with La Spezia further south, but it would serve the Germans very well. The Reichsmarshall was pressed upon to send a flak brigade there to beef up the AA defenses, and Raeder’s fleet settled in, as far from Allied Bombers as it could get in the Med.
The Grand Admiral was decorated for his campaign in the Black Sea, and then told to begin a general survey of the Italian Navy to see if any
of their ships could be incorporated into a combined fleet. He was to make plans aimed at repelling future Allied amphibious operations, with Sicily uppermost in the Fuhrer’s mind as the most logical point to be attacked next.
That had been the initial thinking of the Allied leaders at their Casablanca conference, but the final plans had not yet been decided, and there was a strong contingent within the British War Planning Division that was favoring another objective, one that a certain Lord Nelson had fingered long ago as being worth 50 Maltas. In our story, another Admiral would take that same torch, and carry it to the TRIDENT conference in May of 1943.
Part III
Time is Money
“Remember that time is money . He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea. ”
—Benjamin Franklin, 1748
Chapter 7
Admiral Nelson had been operating from the Maddalena Islands for many reasons, and now he sought to put some of them in writing in an appeal to the First Lord of the Admiralty in a letter dated 21st June, 1804. He settled sideways in his chair, favoring the bruise on his side that had bothered him for some time. For months on end, he would ride the restless swells of the sea, and could think of only three occasions when he set foot off the decks of HMS Victory in that time. To say that he was relentless, and endlessly patient at the same time in his watch on the French at Toulon, would be an understatement.
Lord Nelson had just related the disposition of his fleet, which was largely gathered off Toulon, daring the French to sally forth and engage. He had most of his ships of the line, with triple rows of cannon on either side, a formidable presence at sea, and sheer destruction when he set them loose to war upon the enemies of the Crown.
Tonight, he was writing to the Right Honorable Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, to see if he might impress upon him the importance of a certain island—Sardinia.
“Either France or England must have it,” he wrote, “and the loss to us would be great indeed. From Sardinia we get water and fresh provisions; the loss would cut us off from Naples except by a circuitous route, for all the purposes of getting refreshments, even were Naples able to supply us.”
Nelson had spent countless hours drafting his long-winded orders to this ship or that, directing them to seek out wood for the fires, and fresh water and provisions, always along the accommodating coast of Sardinia. He considered its position as absolutely essential to the logistical support of the Royal Navy in the Med, and so he presently had all of 15 heavy ships, the backbone of his fleet, covering that island by standing off Toulon, for he deemed the threat of an easy French occupation of Sardinia to be most dire.
Nelson knew that the French had a large garrison of over 7,000 men at Toulon, and all they wanted was one day when his watch might falter. In that single day, they could be quickly ferried to Sardinia, and Napoleon would have the place. Yet to be here, off Toulon, also meant that he could not have his ships at La Maddalena, which was his preferred roosting place. So on this night, he was petitioning Lord Melville for more ships, carefully prefacing this letter with a dispatch listing the dispositions of his entire fleet.
He had 15 ships off Toulon, two on either side of the straits of Gibraltar, six at Malta, five in the Adriatic protecting the trade ship routes, four more at Naples courting the favor of the Monarch there. That left him with only a handful of ships elsewhere, carrying messages and dispatches, under repair, provisioning, or limping back to Gibraltar after storm damage. Then he made his pitch….
“I can barely keep a sufficient force at sea to attend to the French Fleet. I have no ships to send to Maddalena, but not less, my Lord, than ten Frigates, and as many good Sloops, would enable me to do what I wish, and what, of course, I think is absolutely necessary…. If I were at your Lordship’s elbow, I think I could say so much upon the subject of Sardinia, that attempts would be made to obtain it; for this I hold clear, that the King of Sardinia cannot keep it, and if he could, that it is of no use to him; that if France gets it, she commands the Mediterranean; and that by us it would be kept at a much smaller expense than Malta. From its position alone, it is worth fifty Maltas.”
One had only to look at the map to see what Nelson knew implicitly. Sardinia sat between the Tyrrhenian Sea to the east, and the Central Med. It had good ports and anchorages at Cagliari in the south, where a squadron of frigates could vex and harry ships approaching the Sicilian Narrows, or attempting to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea. There was a bay that served as a good anchorage at Oristano on the west coast of the island, and Porto Torres was north near Sassari. From there ships could get out into the Central Med easily, and patrol the waters between Sardinia and Mallorca.
Lord Nelson’s favorite haunt was in the northeast, which would later become the Italian naval base at La Maddalena. It was an excellent anchorage and commanded the Bonifacio Strait, which Nelson could close any time he choose. This would force the enemy over the tip of Corsica if they wished to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea, and went a long way towards denying the French access to the Eastern Med. From that anchorage, Nelson’s fleet could also send out patrols to survey the coast of Italy, including the ports at Livorno, La Spezia, and Genoa, and the French ports of Nice, Toulon and Marseille.
Malta could do none of that. In fact, it could do nothing at all, for as the Allies now contemplated where to go after Tunisia decades later, in 1943, it was still in enemy hands.
* * *
“Malta ,” said Montgomery. “It sits like a steel barb south of Sicily, right astride the sea lanes from Benghazi and Tripoli, which means our plan to invade Sicily simply cannot proceed unless we first reduce and occupy that bastion. It is as important now to the Germans and Italians as it once was to us, and we simply must have it.”
He was addressing a large and distinguished audience, which included Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, Brooke, O’Connor, Alexander and Wilson; Admirals King, Tovey and Mountbatten, and Generals Arnold and Tedder for the respective Air Forces. Dubbed the TRIDENT conference, which had originally been scheduled to take place in Washington D.C., it was now happening in London, and on the 25th of May 1943, even while the last embers of the fighting in Tunisia were cooling. The group would meet to review the many plans put forward for future operations, and then reach a consensus that would go to Churchill and Roosevelt for final approval. Montgomery was called to give his front row seat military appraisal of how the Allies should now proceed, and Patton would do the same.
“Yet consider the time involved in planning such an attack,” said Eisenhower.
“It’s been in the works for some time,” Montgomery countered. “The Germans took the place with a lightning quick airborne drop.”
“Yes, but that option is simply not on the table for us any longer.” Eisenhower had conferred with the Air War Planning Division over the prospects of an Allied airborne operation over Malta, and the report he had received was discouraging. When the Germans took the place, they had liberal air cover flying from bases on Sicily, under 100 miles away. Malta was now 250 air miles from fields around Tunis and Bizerte, and 220 miles from Tripoli.
Malta already had a strong Luftwaffe presence, which had been too far off to do much in the battle for Tunisia, except cover the eastern outlet of the Sicilian Narrows, but was a real threat to any airborne operations, particularly when backed up by fighters from Sicily.
“Malta will have to be taken by sea,” said Eisenhower, “just like the Operation Corkscrew plan for the seizure of Pantelleria. We’ll have to clear them both before we contemplate any serious invasion of Sicily—unless we scrap your plan altogether and revert back to the Operation General Patton proposed against Palermo. Frankly, I have my doubts about that one as well. In the meantime, some of the planners, including your own British team, are still advocating Sardinia as an alternative. In fact, you folks drew up plans for the invasion of Sardinia in 1941—Operations Yorker and Garroter .”<
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“Circumstances were entirely different back then,” said Montgomery. “In my opinion, Malta might be reduced by a combined naval and air bombardment, followed by a quick landing staged from Tunis and Tripoli. In effect, we use our naval/air power to clear the way for the sea based invasion General Eisenhower now suggests. As for Pantelleria, we can neutralize that this very month, and at least have commandos there by June 1st. The operation against Malta could then be launched as early as June 15th.”
“Perhaps Admiral Tovey could speak to the possibility of reducing Malta by sea power.”
Tovey spoke in response: “It would mean that our heavy ships would have to run the Sicilian Narrows, and under threat of air attack from Sicily the whole while. We’ve achieved dominance in the air over Tunisia, but that may soon be contested. The Germans are already strengthening the Luftwaffe in southern Italy and Sicily, and Sardinia as well. A further consideration is that Admiral Raeder’s fleet remains a clear and present danger. A major naval operation against Malta would invite Raeder’s fleet to sortie—not against Malta, but towards the Sicilian Narrows, effectively threatening our naval line of communication back to Algiers, Oran and Gibraltar. Unless Raeder is decisively defeated, that threat would persist in any operation aimed at Sicily, particularly the southeastern tip of that island as in General Montgomery’s plan. In that light, I might propose that Admiral Cunningham lead this attack on Malta, with my squadrons waiting northeast of Algiers to deter any such move by Raeder—in effect, forcing him to transit the Tyrrhenian Sea if he sought to intervene.”
“His fleet would have to run the Straits of Messina again,” said Admiral King.
Nexus Deep (Kirov Series Book 31) Page 6