Page 252 - Il Mediterraneo quale elemento del Potere Marittimo - Atti 16-18 settembre 1996

238 J. DAVID BROWN

The cumulative effect ot this effort was very soon fele. Of 64 ships despatched
to Tunisia in December, 14 were sunk outbound and two were caught rerurning.
24 000 tons of stores and fuel out of 85 000 tons loaded were lost with the ships.
More alarming was the implication for the transport fleet- 50 000 gross rons of
shipping had been lost at sea in this last month of 1942 and the rotai output of
the ltalian yards for the first half of 1943 was expected to be only 70 000 tons
and not ali would be suitable for rhe Tunisia roure. Complete disaster was delayed
by an agreement between Pierre Lavai, stili Prime Minister of Vichy France, even
though his entire country had been occupied, and the German authorities that
440 000 tons of French merchant shipping in Mediterranean harbours should be
put at the disposal of the Axis. Many of the 123 ships concerned had been lying
idle since 1940 and required repairs, but the first put to sea for Tunisia inJanuary
1943.
Despite the losses in December 1942, the Tunisian army's essential require-
ments had been met. Not so the Axis army in Libya, retreating afrer El Alamein.
Few ships had got through to Tripoli in November or December and when Rom-
mel was forced to withdraw into Tunisia, in latejanuary 1943, his large army would
have to be provvisioned through Tunisian ports.
Early inJanuary, Rommel's staff estimated that to sustain a successful defence
ofTunisia the two armies, Rommel's 1st and von Arnim's 5th would require 150 000
tons of army and air force stores each month: at the December figure of average
loads per ship would have required 123 arrivals and, at December's rate of Ioss,
15 7 departures.
Kesselring's originai estimate of the two armies' requirement had been 110 000
tons, divided between Tripolitania and Tunisia and even this total was unattaina-
ble through lack of shipping. It was difficult to understand how the demand was
increasing as the area under Axis contro! was decreasing and Vice Admiral Wei-
chold, the German Iiaison officer on the ltalian Naval Staff commented that the
armies' demands invariably mounted as the capacity to fulfil them diminished. In
mid:January, Kesselring reported to Hitler that he could deliver 60 000 tons that
month: Hitler, more concerned a t that moment about events in the Stalingrad area,
merely noted this figure.
In fact Kesselring's organisation did improve considerably on his promise,
but although average cargo loads increased and bad weather reduced losses, only
70 000 tons of fuel and supplies, out of 88 000, loaded reached Tunisia. These
were sufficient for von Arnim to mount a successfullimited offensive in the third
week of January and the arrivai of three convoys without loss in early February
enabled von Arnim and Rommel to co-operate in mid-month in an offensive which
forced the Ailies in the Kasserine area to retreat from a position where they were
threatening to break through the coast and back on to the defensive.
Fewer ships sailed for Tunisia in February, and half of them were those which
had been transferred by the Vichy French, but efficiency in the loading arrangements