World War: MEDITERRANEAN THEATER: Crete Against the Skies

In spite of air raids, in spite of the al most constant presence of Jerries on reconnaissance, the chores of anticipation went on. Husky Major General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, in command of the whole is land’s expectancy, still rode to work in a broken-down two-horse carriage, with his feet cocked up and a pipe in his mouth.

In little Suda village the soldiers and sailors and Greek stevedores kept at their perilous labors of unloading freighters laden with munitions for the slimly equipped defenders. The keyed-up troops marched along country lanes renamed Wavell’s Way, 42nd Street, Greenery Street.

High on the hills, among the shining olive trees, the stubby vines, patches of already plumply headed wheat, fields of potato just being put in behind primitive wooden stakeplows, sat the tiny chapels.

There devout peasants devised rituals against what they knew was to come.

Even the antiquity of the place and its traditions seemed braced against the expected. Cretans reminded themselves that their island had been the abode of the mighty Minos, whose forces went forth to great naval conquests; that the greatest god of them all, Zeus, had spent his boy hood on Mount Ida ; that an air attack on Crete would be flying in the face of classical omen, for it was from Crete that in cautious Icarus flew to man’s first crash landing.

Last week the expected Germans came.

Their attack on the 160-mile-long island was the most ingenious they have yet es sayed.

Out of the Blue. The evening of May 19 closed in quietly. There was a low-lying broken overcast. Apprehension was strung to battle pitch, for R.A.F. reconnaissance had seen extensive preparations on the air fields of southern Greece.

Early in the night the Luftwaffe’s evil incubus fell over the island. Soldiers said later the scene was like a bad dream : flares shedding their unnatural light, Stukas making their unnatural shriek. The big, new Messerschmitt nos came in to strafe. The objects of this first phase were to confuse the defenders, cripple as many R.A.F. planes on the ground as possible, make Crete’s three main airfields incipient citadels for the invaders by ringing them with craters, knock out the anti-aircraft defenses.

Some time after midnight the second phase began. About 100 Junkers and Focke-Wulf transport planes flying in vies (V-shaped formations) at about 400 feet, swept in over the Canea-Malemi-Suda Bay area (see map, p. 23). Each outside plane disgorged about ten men wearing leather jackets, crash helmets, kneepads and pistols, with two little tin boxes of iron and chocolate rations strapped to their chests.

As they floated down, the men were not easy marks, for they were only in the air about 25 seconds and as they fell they swung violently like human pendulums. Planes in the center of the formations dropped rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, light mortars and ammunition hung from bunched, distinctively marked parachutes. It took each man about ten minutes to get out of his harness and arm himself. Then he picked a shell hole or clump of trees or other cover and waited.

At the first hints of dawn, new waves of transport planes came in with more parachutists. This time the planes towed gliders, both aqua-gliders and land-skidders, in trains of from two to four apiece. The gliders cast off from their towing planes and swept down in the dim light, mostly in the Candia and Rethymno sectors. The aqua-gliders had outboard motors which propelled them to prearranged landings. When glidatroops disembarked they pointed their gliders toward objectives and rendezvous as indicators for later airborne forces.

By the time it was light, fighting was well under way. The German aims were about as simple as an attacker could desire: seize as much as possible of the road along the coastal plane, seize the three main airdromes and all subsidiary flat fields. The main attack was on Malemi Airfield; those to the east were feints.

The first day’s fighting went fairly well for the British. No statements were made about General Freyberg’s strength, but it was guessed that he had the remnants of two Greek divisions and an improvised division of his own New Zealanders with a sprinkling of British and Australians. All during the day this force rounded up German parties, disposing of all except the one threatening Malemi. The transports and gliders kept coming, at higher cost: in the daylight they were easier targets, and in their reckless disregard of expense, the Germans crash-landed many planes. As the day ended, the British claimed they had killed or captured 1,800 of the first 3,000 who landed.

Disguise? Of those first 3,000, the British charged that fully half were disguised in New Zealand battle dress. BBC warned: “Every German soldier must know that whoever, in violation of the rules of international law, fights in an enemy uniform, must expect to be shot at once when taken prisoner.” German spokesmen at once denied the charge, saying that the men were wearing khaki uniforms, similar to those of the German African Corps, for use in warm climates.

Winston Churchill reiterated the charge, and added that there were also Germans in British uniform, but hedged on whether or not they would be executed. The German High Command offered a very good reason why they were probably not: if the British executed Germans, the German Army would order “suitable reprisals against British prisoners of war in a proportion of ten-to-one.” In any case, the British claimed that the initial confusion did not bother them.

Fighters’ Flight. The third day brought sorry news. The first premise for an air invasion is air supremacy, and the Nazis quickly achieved it. An R.A.F. bulletin announced that all fighter aircraft had been withdrawn, explained: “Experience in this war has already proved that it is impossible to develop satisfactory fighter defense from a few comparatively ill-equipped airports if these are subjected to high-scale enemy air attack.” So, the condition on which all who fought in Greece blamed the defeat there, now obtained in Crete: there were no defending R.A.F. planes to be seen. And on Wednesday and Thursday, although “Tiny” Freyberg said his men were “fighting with splendid courage,” they lost the island’s three key points: Candia, Rethymno, Canea (including Malemi Airfield).

Driven from Crete by these losses was a fugitive from injustice, George II of Greece. The King was separated from his troops by parachutists in the first hours of fighting, but he eluded them, rode on muleback for two days across Crete’s sharp spine, embarked for Alexandria in a British destroyer.

Plane Over Ship. Back home the British were not interested in German casualty figures; they knew the enemy did not care about losses. They wanted to know: How many live Jerries are in Crete? How long can they hold on with nothing but air-carried supplies and arms? Will our fleet keep seaborne support at a distance? Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham, who had long since proved himself a fighting man, did not flinch from his patent duty—to interpose strong forces between Crete and Greece and stop whatever came by sea. But sending his ships into those narrow waters was precisely what the Germans wanted. Dive-bombers went for the fleet all out.

Within a week the Germans claimed, probably with exaggeration, to have sunk eleven cruisers and damaged six others; to have sunk eight destroyers and damaged four others; to have damaged one battleship; to have sunk five speedboats and one submarine.

First Lord of the Admiralty A. V. Alexander called these claims “even more exaggerated than usual,” officially listed the Royal Navy’s losses as two cruisers and four destroyers. Further admitting that “two battle ships and several other ships” had been damaged, “but not seriously,” he insisted that “so far the Royal Navy has prevented any landing of a sea-born expedition, although a few shiploads of troops in Greek caiques may have slipped through.”

But it was evident that in spite of Sir Andrew’s willing ships the Germans were making landings at Kisamo Bay and all along the western tip of the island, while the British Fleet had apparently withdrawn—an admission not only that it was unable to keep off the seaborne enemy, but that the warships could not protect themselves from air attack. This was the most clear-cut —and for the British most disheartening—circumvention of and triumph over sea power by air power in World War II.

Rehearsal? With British defenses knocked out of the air and swept aside on the sea, there was not much hope left of holding Crete. The land forces—most of whom had not long since put up a magnificent show in Greece—were equally magnificent in their tenacious defense of the island. They counterattacked time & again in the face of dive-bombing and increasing light-artillery fire, and at one time succeeded in driving the attackers from both Candia and Rethymno.

From Egyptian bases the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Germans. But after four days of complete silence, the German High Command, generally cautious in announcing successes on land, said at week’s end: “The western portion of the island . . . is securely in German hands.” This week German tanks, possibly airborne but probably also seaborne, appeared in action, and the British admitted that the Germans had broken out from Malemi.

If this meant, as German spokesmen claimed, that the German Army could not be shaken from the western end of the island, it probably would be only a matter of time until the whole island would fall into its hands. If that were the case, what would it mean strategically?

It would mean:

¶ The British Navy would have lost its only good advance operating base in the Eastern Mediterranean.

¶ The German Army would have lost some of its costliest equipment and some of its most expensively trained man power.

¶ Cyprus, the last British island possession in the area, would be in great danger.

¶ The Libyan scene of action would be only 250 miles from an advance base of the Luftwaffe. Alexandria, the final big fleet base, would be only 340 miles away, the Suez Canal, 550 miles.

¶ The least which could be said of the naval aspect of the invasion was what the German news agency Dienstaus Deutschland said: “Any sea power which does not enjoy air supremacy within the area chosen for its activity is subjected to most dangerous risks.”

¶ Significant data on the invasion of an island had been learned by both sides.

Conditions were dissimilar to conditions which would prevail for an invasion of Britain: the body of water to be crossed was three times as wide at Crete, the terrain was completely different, population at Crete was scattered and unorganized for defense, the military objectives were few and simple, and, most important of all, the R.A.F. had no secondary fields to fall back on. But conditions at Crete were extraordinarily like those which would prevail in an assault on Ireland.

There were certain observable German tactics which would probably not be varied much in an assault on either Britain or Ireland: dependence on night cover for the first shock attacks, the use of gliders mainly for initial surprise (because of their ability to land silently on the sea by night), the lack of mechanized and motorized equipment at least during the first phase of the operation. The principal lesson of the attack was the extent to which the invaders depended upon airborne assault alone, and the time it was able to maintain itself unsupported from the sea. It put the defence of Britain more squarely than ever upon the shoulders of the R.A.F.