Did that program have any actual effect on the war? I was a great story (I remember reading the book when I was a boy) but I never heard that it made a real difference.
I believe so. Even Euan Montague's hyped up original didn't say it was spectacular, but there's some evidence it at least delayed German reaction.
FUSAG on the other hand was spectacularly successful. But for a far higher input cost. Maybe this one's biggest effect was to help justify the investment in FUSAG?
The article states it caused substantial reduction in casualties. If forces were actually redirected, which it seems they were, any other conclusion is unlikely.
I knew what the story was about, directly from the title (I'm sicilian).
When I first read about the story when I was a teen, I believed without question that it made a huge difference.
Now, I'm not so sure. It's enough to look at a map to see that invading sardinia doesn't really give you much in terms of invading italy. Perhaps just a closer airbase. But they had north africa, malta, and not spain…
> It's enough to look at a map to see that invading sardinia doesn't really give you much in terms of invading italy.
Sardinia was an important air base for the Axis campaigns in North Africa, so it's invasion could have been interpreted by the Axis as way of degrading the Axis forces rather than a launch pad for an invasion of Italy.
Those small islands surprise me. Crete was an important airbase too (and a nazi propaganda film of a fleet taking off from Crete was the inspiration of the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" in "Apocalypse Now")
