1938. Italy decides to scrap all of its surface navy and focus only on subs and frogmen. How effective would they be against the brits?
1938. Italy decides to scrap all of its surface navy and focus only on subs and frogmen.
1938. Italy decides to scrap all of its surface navy and focus only on subs and frogmen. How effective would they be against the brits?
Not very
Fricking stupid
>go all-in on subs against the world's leading expert in antisubmarine warfare
fricking genius
the bongs would simply have churned out cheap ASW escorts like they did anyway in WW2
>scrap all of its surface navy
brits win via a superior surface navy
The biggest losses the axis inflicted on the allies came from submarine attacks. Both german and italian submarines destroyed countless ships all over the Atlantic. It's not unrealistic to presume that a force entirely made out of submersibles, submarines and other underwater warfare assets would be more effective than say battlecruisers or battleships
How is a submarine going to escort troop ships and supply vessels to North Africa?
But you NEED those capital ships or your submarine fleet geys ASW’d over time.
>The biggest losses the axis inflicted on the allies came from submarine attacks.
They were attacking trade ships not equipt for combat.
>Hey our special Ops teams do a lot of damage relative to their size
>What if we made our ENTIRE ARMY special forces?
The germans basically did. And they were a thorn in the ass for most of the war. All subs with little to no surface ships.
>muh Bismarck
Bismarck was an obsolete piece of shit that was actually inferior to the Vittorio Veneto class and only sank the Hood because of a lucky shot. More of a symbol than and asset
>The germans basically did. And they
lost.
The Germans didn't do that until they were forced to. The German Navy played a massive role in the occupations of Norway and Denmark, had Germany not taken Norway the war probably would have ended a few years earlier. The German surface fleet was very important during the early war.
Somewhere there’s a graph showing tonnage sunk by the Germans on a decline since 1942 with more losses on their side each year.
The Germans wanted to pursue a fleet composed of cruisers and submarines. The British feared that and convinced the Germans to build battleships and aircraft carriers instead by offering them a treaty.
The biggest losses the Allies inflicted on the Axis navies came from antisubmarine attacks. Both British and American escorts and aircraft destroyed nearly a thousand submarines all over the Atlantic and Mediterranean. It's not unrealistic to presume that a force entirely made out of submersibles, submarines and other underwater warfare assets would be totally raped
You never hear about Italian submarines of WW2.
>Raid on Alexandria
>Submarine nets? Lmao, frogmen can cut em
>Place limpet mines on them ships
>Get captured
>Oi bruv, what were you doin'?
>Say nothing until the mines go off
>Great success
tl;dr
Okay now do the same to a fleet that is actively sailing and not stationary as well as being on maximum combat readiness. Maybe a situation like shelling the Italian coast line?
>actively sailing
No can do, at least not with a manned torpedo with a top speed of 3 knots.
>1939 The Italian Army in Africa surrenders because all of their supply ships are immediately sank or seized when trying to depart Italian ports.
Ineffective and they'd actually frick the nips a fair bit too since the RN would suddenly have a bunch of extra surface ships. Also apparently observation of a bong strike on an Italian port by air helped inspire the plans for Pearl Harbor so that goes missing too.
What's with PrepHoleners and their awful reading comprehension?
Look at the amount of explosive power between their legs
It's a modified torpedo, but it doesn't explode on impact. It instead carries limpet mines, which the frogmen then attach to ships in harbour.
They should have used the German Black
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neger_(torpedo)
Italy's mistake was not taking Malta at the begining of the war
Damn would have it been cool had the Italian surface fleet sortied after hitting HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Decima Flottiglia MAS forgot to tell anyone what they where doing.
>forgot to tell anyone what they where doing.
#justitalianthings
subs during the era were only useful for raiding and picking off the rare capital ship that was unguarded in very niche scenarios, if they encountered an actual fleet they would get fricked