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[Subtitles by KerbalKraken]
In the evening hours of the 18th of April, 1943,
a low droning sound swept over the Mediterranean Sea.
65 'Junkers 52's, the Luftwaffe's primary transport aircraft,
scrambled over the waves, in one of the most desperate gambits of World War Two.
"Fortune favors the bold", they say.
The sun was setting, no Allied fighter had been seen.
In tense silence, they scanned the erstwhile empty sky.
Perhaps this time they could all get through in one piece.
Suddenly, a shout cut through the wireless, the dream of safety banished with a single cry.
"P-40s, 6 o' clock high."
They had been found, the game was up. As the Allied pilots swooped in, one remembered.
One man's misfortune is another man's luck, for the allies, the slow and vulnerable formation was a jackpot.
Like hungry sharks they rushed at the Junkers with a vengeance, guns blazing in the evening sun.
Desperation hit. Passengers firing their guns at the onrushing tide.
As spitfires tangled with Messerschmitts up high,
one Ju-52 after the other erupted in flames before smashing into the cold grave of the sea.
One person was watching this spectacle from afar.
Hunched over his radar scope Brigadier General Kuter recounts,
The Palm Sunday Massacre was one of the worst tragedies in the Luftwaffe's history.
Ecstatic Allied pilots could barely contain themselves, claiming 146 planes destroyed.
In the end, 58 Junkers were grounded, producing the first three American Aces in a day, in a single sortie.
In reality, 24 Ju-52s had gone down, while 35 crash-landed in Tunisia.
10 fighters were lost, the Allies lost seven. An impressive tally, crushing for the Germans.
The question is, 'Why did Germany and Italy ever endeavor to supply the beleaguered Afrika Korps via air in the first place?'
To answer this question we need to look back at the last moments of Rommel's Afrika Korps.
Pushed back, Rommel and the Italians launched one last offensive in February, 1943.
For the Luftwaffe, this marked a final, nostalgic, high point in offensive tactical air support;
The one last Huzzah for the Ju-87 Stuka in Africa.
Victory was short-lived, and the offensive worsened the Axis supply situation.
Already before the offensive, General Walter Warimont, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht's senior operation officer,
had linked the logistical situation in Tunisia to a house of cards.
The German army group in Africa had 350,000 men, of which 120,000 were combat personnel.
To maintain this force, a minimum monthly supply consumption of 69,000 tons was estimated.
90,000 tons were better, but a successful defense needed 140,000 tons.
To meet these goals, extra shipments were needed, with the Italian Merchant Navy
doing the initial heavy lifting, and paying the price. As Ehlers notes,
The Axis knew they were sitting on the Damocles sword. As Levine notes,
But Eisenhower had no time to spare. The invasion of Sicily was set for that summer,
and unless Operation Husky was to be postponed, The Allies were against the clock.
The first order of business was to cut off Tunisia.
Intelligence and Reconnaissance became the Allied Ace, providing the schedules, dispositions, and whereabouts of German and Italian convoys.
The Axis in Africa suspected as much, but their warnings fell on dead ears back home.
For the Allies, it was now just a question of tightening the noose, giving it a bit of a squeeze, and see the whole house collapse in on itself.
In the meantime, the Luftwaffe already brought in supplies.
Its primary transporter, the fabled Junkers Ju-52, held up to 2 tons of cargo. Not bad for the time,
but it was slow and vulnerable.
The Messerschmitt Me-323, aptly named 'Gigant', or 'Giant', managed an impressive 12 tons, but few were available.
Back in January 1943, the Luftwaffe operated 440 air transporters to and from Africa, a considerable fleet.
This allowed them to fly in replacements, as well as 13,500 tons of supplies.
Considering supply needs, this was a token contribution, but shipping was still covering logistical requirements somewhat.
This was soon to change; The Allies ramped up their anti-shipping effort considerably.
Once again, Germany underestimated just how little the word "Overkill" meant for their adversaries.
Next to tighter coordination between the services and more fluent dissemination of intelligence, submarine commanders ran riot among Axis merchant shipping.
Crucially, the advantage the Allies held in the air was put to full effect.
Aerial reconnaissance over the Mediterranean was near complete, and next to Wellingtons and Beaufighters,
new B-25 Mitchell bombers equipped with radar beefed up the Allied anti-shipping operations considerably.
By mid-March, 1943, few ships, save the fast, solitary German KT ships had any chance of making the gauntlet without incident.
Nevertheless, another 30,000 men were sent to reinforce the Afrika Korps in March.
The losses the Axis shipping suffered were considerable.
13% of all material, 27% of fuel, and 28% of vehicles sent never made it to the shores of Tunisia.
Now, these figures might not look THAT bad, but remember that this is based on the total amount ever sent.
In March alone, 41% of all tonnage was lost at sea. Only 43,000 tons actually made it.
As more and more big cargo vessels were given the opportunity to shake Poseidon's hand in person,
the overall logistical capacity dwindled further and further.
Throughout March, the Allies threw 800 operational aircraft into the war.
The Axis answered with barely 200, a sizeable chunk of which [were] operational in name only.
The rolling thunder of falling bombs made life impossible for what remained of the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica.
The Axis still had SOME tactical success in the air, but the strategic and operational tide turned indefinitely with every passing day.
The Germans and Italians in Tunisia lived on borrowed time.
At the end of March, Montgomery threw his "Stize" in advance. Until May, the Allies would steadily advance towards Tunis.
To keep the Luftwaffe from making a fuss, their last remaining positions were placed under constant pressure.
Sometimes attacked in 15 minute intervals, the message to the Luftwaffe was clear:
As one German pilot recounts,
In April, Allied bomber formations of 200 to 300 craft at a time obliterated ports and airfields,
going as far as hitting the main Axis supply hub in Naples.
The loss of the German torpedo-bombing school at Grosseto was another ill-sustained loss.
Such long-ranged missions did not inflict direct casualties.
The Axis were warned by the Freya and Würzburg radar, but smashed up airfields
and constant dispersing of aircraft kept the Axis on the backfoot.
Reacting, rather than acting, became the norm.
But for all the tragedy going around, the hammer was still to come down one more time,
Annihilating a last German effort that should, perhaps, never have been attempted.
Beginning of April found Luftwaffe transport crews in an unenviable position.
They had already sustained some losses, but the job of supplying Tunisia was now handed squarely to them.
With little more than an "Off you go, make us proud" to prepare them.
As shown earlier, the Luftwaffe did not, in fact, have the capacity to fulfill this task,
and it is doubtful whether any air force at the time could have in their place.
During March, 12,000 men and 8,000 tons [of supplies] were ferried by air, barely 10% of the supplies needed a month.
Next to the usual suspect, that being the Junkers 52 and the ME-323, bombers were stripped down and placed on transport duty.
Theoretically, this allowed the Axis 250 supply runs each day.
Flexible loading and unloading systems were established, with crews naturally encouraged by the
constant threat of another uninviting bomb carpet to prepare aircraft in record time.
Maintenance was limited to bases in Sicily, and planes unable to return were cannibalized, so that even in death they could still serve.
Still, the massacre that followed was one of the most severe blows to the Luftwaffe ever experienced.
With Axis shipping neutered, Allied focus shifted towards cutting off Tunisia by air.
Operation Flax would [do just] that, and Brigadier General Kuter, mentioned earlier, was the brainchild of this operation.
Whenever ULTRA and Y-Service intel suggested an Axis transport run the next day, aircraft and crews would be prepped for exactly such a mission.
Building on their numerical strength, Flax was an aerial blockade laid out in depth with long range P-38 fighters building up the first cordon.
Spitfires and P-40s were used in the second layer, closer to the coast.
At the same time, bombers and fighter-bombers targeted Axis airfields in Tunis and Sicily.
The first Flax mission was on April the 5th, the success on this day showed what was to come.
As with all kill claims during World War Two, the actual success was organically exaggerated in the confusion of combat.
Allied pilots claimed 201 kills, but actual German losses on the day were around
35 destroyed in the air and on the ground, another 50 damaged, with an additional 20-30 Italian causalities.
Considering the Allies only lost 20 aircraft, this was a good tally.
Over the next days fighters clashed as the Luftwaffe sought to reestablish a semblance of control.
Dogfights often ended in draws, but the Allies had the luxury of being able to sustain the attrition,
something the Axis could definitely not.
The Luftwaffe tried another Six major transport runs, with Flax providing [a sufficient counter.]
On the 10th of April, the Luftwaffe lost 6 Ju-52s. The next day, 19 went down. And the trend continued along these lines.
The fighting was bloody, one-sided, and the losses were catastrophic.
One noteworthy engagement happened on April 22, with 14 Messerschmitt Giants
making the hop alongside Ju-52s, hoping to deliver 170 tons of fuel. As one survivor remembers,
Not a single Gigant made it. Out of 138 crew members, 19 survived.
Germany now shifted their transport run to night-time, but the game was up.
The Allies cancelled Flax five days after this victory. It was no longer needed, the German aerial transport fleet lay in ruins, their effort, disintegrated.
Now, if we look at the transport missions between the 1st of April and the 11th of May,
around 140 Axis transporters were lost. (Excluding auxiliary transporters.)
Altogether, around 200 transporters may very well have been brought down,
with an additional 200-250 aircraft of all other types (mainly fighters) lost in aerial combat escorting these transporters.
In comparison, if we only look at the intercept mission during Operation Flax, the Allies lost 35 aircraft.
However, the number does go significantly higher if you incorporate the losses sustained in the full scope of Operation Flax.
For the Luftwaffe, this was worse than a catastrophe.
The lost aircraft were tragic, the lost crews were a calamity.
Germany possessed little flexibility in their transport air service, with pilots in the fleet being instructors or cadets.
Creed had been bad, but now you had Stalingrad and Tunisia in quick succession.
Germany lost crucial instructors, and a part of their up-and-coming replacement pilots.
As Horst Boog comments in his Magnum Opus,
Until Tunisia, the Luftwaffe transport arm had been greatly neglected, seen as little more than a means to an end.
So back-trodden was its reputation that any officer showing promise was kept far from it, and those who wanted to make a career kept away by virtue.
This resulted in a service branch with very little gravitas, unable to ever influence a decision that saw it flying from one massacre to the next.
Once again, Horst Boog comments,
While the Luftwaffe sustained dreadful losses, the fact that they had managed to pull off this operation for more than two weeks in the face of overwhelming opposition
is actually remarkable. It having never been able to supply enough material, the question then is,
"Why was it attempted in the first place?"
Well, when the Axis missed the point of no return, they had little other choice.
In early March, Rommel was called back and von Arnim took over. That was perhaps the last moment to evacuate,
but the Allies would have increased the pressure immediately. Remember, Tunis is not Dunkirk, both from the distance and material involved.
For example, the Italian fleet was not ready to set sail to cover an evacuation, the Luftwaffe was on its last leg,
and the Allies tapped comfortably in Axis communication. In any case, once the date was missed,
the Allied blockade prevented any major evacuation. Army group Afrika was now stuck in Tunisia,
its solitary worth now lay in tying up the Allies.
On the one hand, Hitler and Mussolini knew that the Allies would eventually strike at Italy,
but trying to keep a presence in Africa for as long as possible, even if elongated by dreadful losses, could have been part of the motivation.
After all, we now know that the Allies were on the clock for the invasion of Sicily, while the weather still permitted it.
As well as that, with no one in the Oberkommando putting a word in for the transport units and having the gravitas to carry it,
it was no wonder that these underappreciated assets were squandered in such a matter-of-fact way.
We know now that the German high command was relatively unphased by the losses sustained by Flax,
until, and beyond, Palm Sunday, Even though more than 100 transport aircraft had already been destroyed.
Tunis became Germany's Dunkirk, just that salvation never came. And when they did finally try to evacuate in
early May, desperation was rife. It made BF-109 pilots sit on the laps of their crew chiefs to get them out,
storing another man in the fuselage of their thin craft.
Somehow, a last flight of 17 Ju-52s broke through on the 10th of May, taking with them as many men as they could.
Most were not so lucky. When the Germans finally planned to surrender, Italian General Giovanni Messe sent one last message to Rome.
Although there was no hope and resistance could not be kept for long, they would continue to fight. Mussolini's reply was swift:
"Stop the fighting. You are promoted to Marshall of Italy. Honor goes to you and your brave men."
The Allies took around 300,000 POWs, and with them, the Afrika Korps and Italy's colonial aspirations became history.
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As always, have a great day, good hunting, and see you in the sky.