Quote:
Originally Posted by JuJu70
Good job on Gabbiano.
I noticed that you included alot of tanker objectives. The problem is that Italy didn't have many tankers to start with, and on top of that of ~3,000,000 GRT of shipping, about 1/3 was outside the Mediterranean on 6/10/40. That includes all major ocean-going freighters and fleet tankers. In fact, most of them were either scuttled or requisitioned by the US and other countries in 1941 and on (even a country like Venezuela did this). So, a tanker in the Mediterranean should be a rare sight. Most fuel was transported to North Africa in drums, occasionally in tankers, but fairly small ones.
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Well, they lost part of their merchant fleet, but they also could use German ships that were interned in Italian ports, and I guess that they also grabbed Yugoslavian and Greek ships after the 1941 invasion.
With regard to tankers, I'm thinking about revamping the current traffic, pulling them out of ordinary convoys and leaving only the all-tanker convoys. There is two of them by now, one route being Napoli-Tripoli-Tarento, and the other one Brindisi-Tripoli-Napoli, both with a 33% spawn rate every 10 days and a maximum of three tankers.
I guess that before Rommel's arrival the requirements for fuel would be far less than later on, so I could reduce the frequency previous to February-March 1941, and make these convoys more frequent after that date.
The main problem I have is that there is very little info about Italian convoys in the net. I got some info about single convoys checking the Italian wikipedia (not yet implemented), but little more. There is a two-volume Italian official history about that, "La Difesa del Traffico con l'Africa Settentrionale" but it's been impossible for me to find them at a reasonable price, and most of my budget has already gone in books about the British submarines.