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Originally Posted by bash
I don't mention Gilbralter being nuked to suggest the straight would be closed. It's does mean there's no friendly force/port for an American convoy in the Strait. By 1998 I wouldn't consider the French as allies, not enemies but definitely not allies. I don't see the French having any reason to let an American convoy into the Med unless it was specifically to evacuate American forces.
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Right, but why risk war with the US by refusing the convoy passage? The US has already proven itself more than willing to huck a nuke or several at its enemies. Is that a risk the French would take to stop a convoy headed for Yugoslavia, a country in which it has little to no strategic interest c. 1998 (compared to other parts of the world)? Americans in Yugoslavia are not going to be able to help Germany stop France from annexing the Rhineland. Why turn them back so they could divert to NW Europe instead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by bash
I would assume the Italian and Greek navies are coral reefs and their air forces non-existent by 1998. If the French are going to let an armed American convoy sail into the Med I don't see why they won't let some airliners through. They'll have a faster transit, you know they don't carry heavy weapons, and if they so much as sneeze in the wrong direction they'd get shot down.
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Maybe so, but the Italians and Greeks still presumably have operational SAMs. As recent events have shown, airliners are
very vulnerable to SAMs.
As you pointed out, when it comes to the Balkans, the writers made some decisions that are pretty hard to explain/justify, but that's what I'm trying to do.