How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

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RPKUPK
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How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by RPKUPK »

So Spain starts out very friendly to the Axis. Can one influence Spain further with diplomacy points or intimidation to allow German troops to transit through Spain to attack and capture Gibraltar?
Or does Axis declare war on Spain and consequently invade??
AlbertN
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlbertN »

I believe only the latter.

Technically also the Influencing could work - but since Allies have more and stronger influence, if Axis starts to influence Spain, Allies can influence it - and do so at double speed than the Axis. (In a game with Diplomacy, frustrating to watch all minors get to break their trades with Germany simply because USA, UK, URSS, France til it lasts >> Germany + Italy).

I've not seen a beach at Gibraltar and I doubt the unit hereby present can be bombed into oblivion for a paradrop.

So... invading Spain is the -only- option (unless the Brits leave the hex vacant... but who'd do that?)
Numdydar
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by Numdydar »

I found the best way in SC:WiE was to completely conquer France by having the Italians capture Algeria. Send a bunch of Air, destroy the unit and para drop in. I assume something similar can be done here.

Not exactly easy, but its better than trying to capture Spain. Waaaayy too much additional coastline to defend against.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlvaroSousa »

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

I found the best way in SC:WiE was to completely conquer France by having the Italians capture Algeria. Send a bunch of Air, destroy the unit and para drop in. I assume something similar can be done here.

Not exactly easy, but its better than trying to capture Spain. Waaaayy too much additional coastline to defend against.

That is the best way to do it. Shut the port off from supply with a lot of forces.
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RPKUPK
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by RPKUPK »

Thanks N & A!
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlbertN »

But isn't a port non reduceable under value of 1, and thus ever supplying a single unit?
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlbertN »

Tried the airforce way. It does not really work. 3 turns of 12 Axis bombers (of both types) - German and Italians, bombing the hell on Gibraltar simply does not cut it.
Sometimes the bombers do not even dish 4 damage in their 24 runs.

I am not saying to change that - but a British beach should be added at Gibraltar.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by marion61 »

Every game so far that I've played the allies, the axis AI just takes Spain and Portugal, and Gibraltar falls soon afterward. Now if I could just get those crazy panzer crews to stop committing suicide by driving out into the desert to die. To be fair, the brit armor does the same thing. They just evaporate after a few turns.[:)]
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by alohaptd »

In a game vs. AI the Influence route worked for me. Intimidation was not used. Made Gibralter capture a breeze, fell in one attack with two panzer units brought down from France.
aspqrz02
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by aspqrz02 »

That would have been interesting.

The General Staff (German) estimated they could support only a reinforced Corps against Gibraltar ... one Sturm (Heavy Infantry) and two Regular Infantry Divisions, a couple of heavy Artillery Regiments (but not RR Guns or the superheavies they used against Sevastopol ... there were no standard gauge rail lines in Spain, and no connected rail line runnin north south) and, IIRC, one, maybe two, Assault Gun Battalions.

This was their estimate of what the Spanish rail and road net could support.

They only allowed for the 1 (or two) Assault Gun battalions for the simple reason that the only land approach is, IIRC, less than a klick wide at its narrowest ... trying to push two Panzer divisions through that, then up a mountain, would have been ... interesting ...

In the game, as in so many other WW2 games (but not this one at the moment) Gibraltar should be counted as a Sevastopol type fortress, and would have to be reduced over several months as was Sevastopol.

There's no way a coup de main could have been undertaken against it ...

* No beaches worth spit. The biggest are unsuitable for landing craft and might, barely, allow a single company to be landed at what is effectively the base of a cliff and swept by MG and artillery fire from protected positions.

Then there's this little problem for the 'phibs and escorts ... called the RN. The landings will be opposed.

* How many Paradrop operations can you recall from WW2 where paras were dropped on a mountain? None?

Then there's the other problem, one often not handled well in WW2 games, the Paras and the air transport capacity needed to handle them.

What most people don't know is that the operations against Belgium etc. fairly gutted the paratroop infantry division(s) which were, barely, rebuilt in time for the Crete operation.

Even worse, and even less well understood, is the fact that the Germans lost something like 75% of all their Ju-52s during those earlier operations ... and the Ju-52 production rate was such that those losses hadn't been fully replaced by the time of the Crete invasion, which is one of the key reasons the German operations there almost came a crupper ... they couldn't drop a lot all at once, and the cycle time for each drop was almost way too long ...

Could the Germans have reduced the fortress? Sure, just like they did with Sevastopol ... and it would have taken at least as long, assuming they could manage their supply lines through suddenly partisan infested Spain.

And, regardless of whether they do or not, the Allies almost instantly pick up the Canaries, making the South Atlantic convoy routes that much safer, and, assuming the Germans pick up Portugal as a job lot with Spain, the Allies also get the Azores (heck, the Portuguese, allies of the Brits since the 14th century) would probably have urged them to do so and turned a blind eye after proforma public protests ... and with the Azores in allied hands the southern half of the mid Atlantic gap (not covered by allied ASW airpower) is suddenly no longer a gap, reducing the effectiveness of German U-Boats dramatically.

Unintended consequences.

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demyansk
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by demyansk »

They might have to do a Skorzeny drop and capture the commanding General.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by aspqrz02 »

And what good would that do? Command would then devolve to the next in the chain of command and the Commandos would be killed.

It's not as if the CO of The Rock was someone superspecial or something.

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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlbertN »

Uh? You make it sounds like Gibraltar is that huge emplacement where entire divisions and divisions of troops can defend it.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by Majmac »

This article give good reasons why an attempt to invade/reduce Gibraltar was never taken in WW2. The amount of aircraft that staged out of there for Operation Torch is huge!
Query through a search engine with "Did-Germany-in-WW-II-ever-seriously-consider-conquering-Gibraltar?"
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by aspqrz02 »

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith
Uh? You make it sounds like Gibraltar is that huge emplacement where entire divisions and divisions of troops can defend it.

Take a look at a map of The Rock. It is a giant natural fortress ... honeycombed with bombproof tunnels for thousands of men, protected gun and improved gun, machine gun and fighting emplacements that are equally protected and there is one ... count it, one ... viable assault route, across a sandy, flat, open, narrow neck land around a klick wide at its narrowest which then faces onto rising, rocky, mountain.

Surrounded on three sides by water with no viable assault beaches, easy to resupply by water, at night, and with attacking routes open to naval gunfire support from ranges that the only land based artillery that would have been available (no big RR guns, since no RR, and no superheavies for the same reason) probably cannot reply at.

And rocky enough so that an Eben Emael assault won't work.

No fortress is impregnable, of course. If the Axis was prepared to pay the cost, in manpower and logistic support, sure, they could have taken it ... but it would have taken as long, at least, as it took them to take Sevastopol ... and the cost in manpower and logistic support would have had to have come from elsewhere. Do you wish to pull the entire DAK from Africa and abandon it to the Allies? Or huge chunk of elite manpower and even bigger chunk of logistic support from Barbarossa?

And what's the gain?

When Franco met Hitler at Hendaye he made it plain that the Germans would basically have to pay for the entire Spanish economy, which was fifth rate in normal times and in dire straits after the Civil War, in order for Spain to go actively Axis. Hitler considered it ... and rejected it ... delusional as he was he realised that it wasn't worth the cost.

What could he have got? Some Tungsten for high speed machine tools and AP Tank/AT rounds?

I suspect he, or the General Staff, probably pointed out the problems Spanish Partisans caused Napoleon ... the 'Spanish Ulcer' ... and the recent Civil War and that, frankly, the Falange was sitting on a ticking time bomb just waiting for allied support for the ex-Republicans.

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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlvaroSousa »

Gib will have a beachhead this patch.

Spain being influenced by Gib was an error. It was supposed to be removed release and I forgot.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlbertN »

I think the 'If Gibraltar is Axis, Spain turns Axis' should stay.

There is an AAR that show that UK can commit to protect French North Africa. If they want to keep Gibraltar they just need to keep the Axis air away.
Otherwise it turns in a not that important hex anymore.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by AlvaroSousa »

Gibraltar in itself is vitally important. Spain really had no interest in war unless the UK was out of it or close to collapsing.
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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by aspqrz02 »

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa
Gibraltar in itself is vitally important. Spain really had no interest in war unless the UK was out of it or close to collapsing.

I think the emphasis is wrong ... it was really a case of Spain really had no interest in war unless Germany was winning ... which meant had knocked the USSR out of the war

You might think they are the same, but they aren't.

Britain has quite happily (well, maybe not happily, but certainly definitively) fought decades long wars with continental powers ... even at quite (seemingly) ruinous expense ... Spain, like a lot of minor European powers, historically, might have signed on with Germany if Germany had managed to (seemingly) gain the upper hand in Europe, but that's not the same as beating the Commonwealth. Even by itself, the Commonwealth had a bigger, stronger, more robust economy than German and its putative slave states.

As for Gib being the sticking point, not so ... the Spanish demands given to Hitler at Hendaye were ...

* the handing over of Gibraltar once the UK was defeated (recognising that it was unlikely to be taken by force)

* the cession of French Morocco and part of French Algeria

* the attachment of French Cameroon to the Spanish colony of Guinea

* German supplies of food, petrol and arms to relieve the critical economic and military situation faced by Spain after the civil war

The latter demand was the critical one ... Spain relied on imported food to avert famine and fuel and raw materials to keep what was left of their economy ticking over. That came almost entirely from seaborne imports via the Atlantic ... and this occurred only on the sufferance of the RN and Commonwealth navies.

Franco made it clear he wanted supplies up front and in huge quantities to replace the immediate loss of imports that would have occurred the moment he actively threw in with the Axis.

The thing was, as Hitler well knew, the Germans simply didn't have those supplies of fuel, food and raw materials to spare.

If they'd managed to, say, take all of European Russia, then they may have had such, or not ... but there was no way they could defeat the Commonwealth.

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RE: How to get to Gibraltar as Axis to capture it?

Post by tyronec »

Gib will have a beachhead this patch.
Doesn't seem right to me, IMO the only way Gib could be taken is by land assault from Spain, and then with some difficulty. The defences in place make the Atlantic wall look feeble. There just aren't any beaches to assault from, I think the game has it right as it is now.

Malta is different, it is a big island compared to Gib so reasonable that you could make a sea assault.
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