Rommel

  

 German troops arrive in three weeks.

Tanks of the 15th Panzers, 120 of them,

off load at the end of May.

Two months from now.

 Two months gives the British time to train

their green troops.  It gives them time to 

plot their fields of fire, fortify positions,

string barb wire and lay mines.

 The Tommy's are untested.

Their leadership green and uncertain.

The speed of desert warfare should 

knock them for a loop.

Italians generally perform better when led by Rommel.

But in this frontal assault the Brits are stubbornly

holding their ground.

Then, late in the afternoon, Rommel delivers 

a sharp armored hook into the coastal flank

of the British line.  The English defense collapses.

Mersa el Brega falls to the Nazis.

Two months early.

 How much time do you think armies put into

practicing retreat?  It's not easy to do.  

In this instance the British formations disintegrate.

Military order becomes a mob heading for the exit.

Rommel's forces stay close on their heels,

gobbling up territory all along the way.

* * * * *

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

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good morning jeremy

  

N O  !

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   dad

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Cyrenaica

  

 Operation Compass

At the end of 1940 the British route Italian forces

arrayed along the Libyan border with Egypt.

British Desert Generals

Thinking the Italian threat in Libya is extinguished

Churchill guts his army in North Africa by sending

its best troops off to the Balkans in a futile attempt

to save Greece from a Nazi invasion. 

Rommel in North Africa 

The legendary Desert Fox arrives in February 1941.

The British, Italians and Germans, even Hitler,

expect the Afrika Korps will launch their first attack

on British forces sometime in May, giving Rommel

the needed time to acclimate himself to the realities

of desert warfare.

Italian POWs

What's there to acclimate to?  

Rommel begins planning his offensive the day

he arrives, catching a plane to scout the terrain.

His men haven't even begun to show up.  No problem.

He'll use the Italian forces still under Axis control.

They got shellacked by the British but Rommel

is confident they will perform for him.

There are no bad men, just bad leaders.

Charge of Italian M13 tanks 

The tanks don't arrive for weeks.

We don't need German tanks when we've got Italian

ones.  There are no excuses for delaying this attack.  

The British are in disarray.  Their new generals

are inexperienced and uncertain.  

Surprise them with a swift, hard kick.  

In the desert it is all about speed.

Tobruk becomes a famous last stand.

This fortified harbor is manned by a division 

of Aussies.  They're not much for spit-shined 

salutes but they behave with a nasty disposition

good enough to stop the Afrika Korps 

in its tracks.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

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good morning justin

  

R A G E

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East

  

Bedding down in the Tube.

Screw the Brits.  They aren't worth it.

Goering will send bombers nightly to 

burn London to the ground.  Then Hitler

will call it a day.  He's out of time and

patience.  Churchill is no longer a threat.

Leave it to the U-boats to strangle the life

out of England.

The prize to the East.

It's always been about Russia.  To be a great power

Germany needs the vast spaces and resources

of the Soviet empire.  All that stands in the way of

the Nazis seizing these riches are the corrupt and

incompetent Bolsheviks.  Just kick in the door.

Hitler's nemesis.

Stalin is no fool.  The Nazi plan all along has been to

defeat Russia and take control of the land west of the

Urals.  The Kremlin needs to buy time.  Give Stalin

another two years and he believes he can raise an army

that will stop the Germans.  Hitler knows he can't wait

long to act.  His army is mobilized.  Make use of it.

Mussolini with Hitler.

Italy was in over its head.  Il Duce wanted Rome

to achieve greatness on the back of a peasant 

economy.  All their flashy signs of empire were 

bargain basement second rate.   Loyalty to 

Mussolini was the governing rule to attaining

military command.  Now the Duce needs Hitler's

aid to prevent the British from throwing him

out of Africa.  Does Germany really want Britain

to control the Mediterranean, Benito asks 

his friend, Adolf.

North Africa.

This is Germany's southern flank.  The Mediterranean's

outlets to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are bracketed 

with British fortresses at Gibraltar and Suez.

Vast amounts of oil wait here for anyone capable

of taking it from England's army based in Egypt.

It's been somewhat neglected; a backwater posting.

Rommel.

He found his calling commanding tanks across the

desert's flat, open spaces.  Unconstrained.  

Nothing to hinder rapid movement in force.

No woods to block the way.  No rivers to ford.

Just kicking up the dust when you let those

Tiger diesels rip.

* * * * *

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

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good morning jacob

  

P O R T A L S   T O   K A T M A N D U

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Britain Alone

  

Home Guard 

Office workers, truck drivers, bricklayers.  

All able men called to duty.  No kids.

The war suddenly becomes one of 

defending your own home.

Royal Navy on station.

So long as there are British planes flying over

the Channel there will be ships of the Royal Navy

 sending Hitler's triumphant army into the drink.

Guaranteed.

Democracy's last stand in Europe.

The first desperate weeks of June was a time of 

improvisation by the British army.  Make do with

what you have to protect England from invading

Nazis.  With time the army becomes more mobile,

more efficient in their plans of crushing a German

assault on the beach.  Churchill and his generals

know Germany's forces have no idea what it takes 

to succeed in an amphibious landing.  If Hitler is

reckless enough to try a Channel invasion, 

Churchill is confident of victory.

Hitler's inner circle.

Generals close enough to Hitler to know his plans

for Britain's defeat have concluded the exercise

is a bluff.  Germany does not have the fleet of 

vessels it would take to ferry and supply a large

invasion army.  In a couple months the weather

will turn bad.  There isn't time to train the troops 

to execute this complex and risky assault.

So it turns out the Luftwaffe, Hitler's air force,

is the only tool available to force his will upon

Churchill and England.

Dowding's state of the art System.

The Germans knew of radar.  They just didn't appreciate

how decisive its use could be.  Why would they?

Their plans were aggressive - all about taking land

from others.  Radar has to do with defense.

Here's how Dowding's system dealt with a typical

scenario.  

Once a German bomber is detected by radar 

it has twenty minutes to make it to its target.

An RAF fighter then has sixteen minutes to

intercept the raiding party.

That leaves four minutes for the people

manning this defense system to decide the

 proper response for the attack.

Spitfire

As good as anything the German's had, meaning

the Messerschmidt 109.  They mixed it up daily 

over the Channel and across the southern English

countryside.  During the course of the Battle of Britain

there were about twenty-five Luftwaffe aircraft falling

out of the sky each day onto the rural landscape.

It made for poor morale among Luftwaffe flyers.

* * * * *

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

    

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J O E

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Sea Lion

  

English Channel.

The Channel is like a castle's moat, preventing the

ravaging of England by invading armies - a cataclysm 

periodically experienced by other European nations.

Napoleon marched his army a thousand plus miles

from Paris to Moscow but he dared not attempt 

crossing a twenty mile channel.

Assault on Britain.

Hitler's generals figured they'd need 13 divisions,

about ninety thousand troops, in the first wave.

Another two hundred thousand troops would soon

follow.  This would include 3 armored divisions.

Tanks.

Britain could muster maybe 6 divisions total 

to meet the assault if this were June, following 

Dunkirk.  Were the attack made in October

the number of British defenders would double.

River Barges.

Hitler gave his army a month, until mid-August,

to prepare for Sea Lion, his Channel invasion.

Germany's rivers and canals were being stripped

of their barges in order to ferry troops from French

ports to English shores.  Normally, the barges

safely sailed calm waters.  Now they may venture

onto rough seas, loaded with troops and military

hardware.  RAF pilots routinely sink and damage a

number of these invasion craft gathering in places

like Calais.

Kriegsmarine doesn't share in glory.

The German Navy read about the Battle of France

in the newspapers like everyone else.

The greatest victory in German military history and

Grand Admiral Raeder is simply a bystander.

Half his surface fleet is off the coast of Norway

sitting on the ocean's bottom.

Raeder tells Hitler, his Navy cannot protect German

troops crossing the Channel from the Royal Navy.

Hitler's go to guy.

Hermann Goering.  Reich Marshall.  

A six star general who designs his own uniform.

A World War I fighter pilot ace.  Hitler's oldest

Nazi friend.  They've been together since before

the '23 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.  Goering

took a bullet in the pelvis.  Crazy times.

He's been fighting opioid addiction ever since. 

Now Goering is Air Minister and he tells Hitler

there will be no need for an invasion.

His Luftwaffe will have the Brits begging 

for peace.

Ace up the sleeve.

Dowding's secret weapon.  Radar.

Mounted atop a three hundred foot tower

these powerful beams detect German planes

taking off anywhere along the Channel's

French coastline.  You also get an idea where

the planes are headed and how many there are.

It's a real force multiplier.  No more wasting

aircraft and pilot time on long patrols.

And you can efficiently allocate your fighter 

strength to match the enemy threat.

Here's the best news yet.

The Germans don't yet know anything about it.

Brilliant.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER EASY

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