The garrison had been stripped of its best crew-served weapons, which were sent to the mainland; there were twelve obsolescent St. Étienne Mle 1907 light machine-guns and forty miscellaneous LMGs. [51], In the afternoon of 21 May 1941, Freyberg ordered a counter-attack to retake Maleme Airfield during the night of 21/22 May. The transfer of Fliegerkorps VIII north, ready for Barbarossa, eased the Royal Navy evacuation of the defenders. Roadside memorial in Galatas, Crete, to the men of The Welch Regiment, British Army, who died in the Battle for Crete in 1941. They were soon assigned to Advance Detachment Wittman, which had assembled near Prison Valley reservoir the day before. Discover and book WWII – The Battle of Crete … [79][80] At a meeting in Athens on 27 May, Luftwaffe Generals Richthofen, Jeschonnek, and Löhr pressed Schuster to get the tanks delivered somehow before "... the Englander claws himself erect again". Between 2 June and 1 August, 195 persons from the village of Alikianos and its vicinity were killed in mass shootings known as the Alikianos executions. Mar 13, 2018 - Battle of Crete WWII - pin by Paolo Marzioli [83] The battalion-sized force was split up, with a 200-man detachment under Laycock at Souda to cover the retreat of the heavier units. On 22 April, the HQ in Crete was ordered to burn all material received through the Ultra link, but Churchill ruled that the information must still be provided. Some of the troops that were evacuated from the mainland were sent to Crete to increase the strength of the troops on the island.Having control of Crete was an important strategic advantage for th… At 13:30 on 28 May, the Italians believed that three cruisers and six destroyers of the Royal Navy were steaming up towards the northern coast of Crete in support of Allied troops, but the Royal Navy was fully occupied evacuating the Crete garrison. [129], Damage to the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, the battleships HMS Warspite and HMS Barham, the cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Dido, HMS Orion, and HMAS Perth, the submarine HMS Rover, the destroyers HMS Kelvin and HMS Nubian, kept them out of action for months. [11] In a 1948 RAF staff publication, Luftwaffe losses were given as about 4,500 parachute and glider troop casualties and about 170 Ju 52s lost or severely damaged; losses in fighter and bomber units were small due to the lack of air opposition. Map of Canea area, 20 May 1941 . Heavy equipment like the Leichtgeschütz 40 were dropped with a special triple-parachute harness to bear the extra weight. Colonel Campbell, the commander at Rethymno, was forced to surrender his contingent. [114], Hinsley wrote that it was difficult to measure the influence of intelligence gained during the battle, because although Ultra revealed German situation reports, reinforcement details and unit identifications and although more intelligence was gleaned from prisoners and captured documents, it was not known how swiftly the information reached Freyberg or how he used it. [32], On 17 May, the garrison on Crete included about 15,000 Britons, 7,750 New Zealanders, 6,500 Australians and 10,200 Greeks. Troops were stationed about its perimeter, to prevent a landing that might block the retreat. After air attacks on Allied positions in Kastelli on 24 May, the 95th Gebirgs Pioneer Battalion advanced on the town. Following this communication, King issued an order to recall both Gloucester and Fiji at 14:57. The British mistakes were smaller than those of the Germans, who estimated the garrison to be only a third of the true figure. Italian bombers from 41° Gruppo sank the destroyer HMS Juno on 21 May and on 28 May damaged another destroyer, (HMS Imperial), beyond repair. [citation needed], British and Commonwealth troops used the standard Lee–Enfield rifle, Bren light machine gun and Vickers medium machine gun. [41] The tanks were in poor mechanical condition, as the engines were worn and could not be overhauled on Crete. The Greeks put up determined resistance, but with only 600 rifles and a few thousand rounds of ammunition available for 1,000 ill-trained men, they were unable to repel the German advance. Many Cretan civilians were shot by the Germans in reprisal during the battle and in the occupation. [94] In another recorded incident, a local priest and his teenage son broke into a small village museum and took two rifles from the era of the Balkan Wars and sniped at German paratroops at landing zones. The next day, through communication failures, Allied tactical hesitation, and German offensive operations, Maleme Airfield in western Crete fell, enabling the Germans to land reinforcements and overwhelm the defensive positions on the north of the island. [86] On the afternoon of 27 May, an Italian convoy departed from Rhodes with the intention of landing a brigade from the 50th Infantry Division Regina, supported by 13 L3/35 light tanks. Layforce and three British tanks were joined by the men of the 20th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery, who had been assigned to guard Souda docks and refused to believe that an evacuation had been ordered. The British squadron was under constant air attack and, short of anti-aircraft ammunition, steamed on toward Milos, sighting Sagittario at 10:00. Buckley, based on British intelligence assumptions of two enemies wounded for every one killed, gave an estimate of 16,800 casualties. Great Britain: John Murray. Germany and the Second World War, Volume 3, Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, p. 549, Oxford University Press, 1995, sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFBeevor1991 (, Cunningham, Paragraph 78 and Paragraphs 1–54 of the last section. [24] The desire to regain prestige after their defeat by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain the year before, may also have played a role in their thinking, especially before the advent of the much more important invasion of the Soviet Union. [63] The transports were defended by a torpedo charge by Sagittario, which also laid a smoke screen and traded fired with the British force. Poor design of German parachutes compounded the problem; the standard German harness had only one riser to the canopy and could not be steered. •Maps •Monsters •Thanks •Updates •Walkthrough •Weapons: Maps. [116] Davin wrote that his estimate might exclude lightly wounded soldiers.[117]. [85] Freyberg concurrently ordered his troops to withdraw to the south coast to be evacuated. Alikianos, located in the so called Prison Valley, was strategically important and it was one of the first targets the Germans attacked on the opening day of the battle. Paratrooper German Soldiers Ww2 German Army Ww2 German Military Photos Military History Battle Of Crete. ); b) maps of the main actions; and c) a little more about what happened outside of Maleme. At 14:13 King and Rawlings exchanged messages about the shortage of ammunition within both Force C and Force A1, with Rawlings expressing concern about the orders given to Gloucester and Fiji. The bridge was damaged in the fighting, which slowed the German advance and gave the Allies time to evacuate 18,000 troops to Crete and 23,000 to Egypt, albeit with the loss of most of their heavy equipment. 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