9 ports versus 19 ports alone from Sicily to Perpignan. I would say that's a good exchange. Plus the small, but worthy Spanish army. Plus the additional seatransport.You add 9 ports in Spain and conquered Portugal to the list of palces to defend; they are on mainland Europe, but pretty far from the main theater, so an Allied landing could occur anywhere from Cadiz/Malaga all the way up to Calais. That's quite an Atlantic Wall to defend. And it leaves you open to, say, a landing at Cadiz and a beachhead around Gibralta/Malaga sucking up a lot of your troops and then a landing at. say, Bilbao driving between the Ebro and Pyrennes to Barcelona making all of Spain a giant pocket.
Offsetting that, I expect that taking Gibraltar and closing the staits would make the Med an isolate Axis lake and would free up troops from within the Mediterranean basin. How, BTW, is the campaign in Iraq going?
Cadiz and Bilbao have no Allied supply points, landing there would be a very bad idea. Also, even if they were in supply i doubt the Brits have enough resources to cut off the Iberian Peninsula via Bilbao. What they are capable of is maybe to break the naval blockade i want to put up and reinforce Gibraltar. Or, if/when Gib falls they could re-invade Gibraltar later that year. Invasions on mainland Europe will need supply points and there are only supply points at Calais and Normandy. And Lisbon. In the Med, there are much more possible Allied supply points: Sicily, Anzio, Marseille, Tunis, Algiers, Malta, Salerno, Genua.
Then, now is the only reasonable time for such an operation. In these few turns before the mud cease fire much can't be gained in Russia anyway, plus i couldn't afford diverting that many troops in the midst of an eastern summer campaign.
The war in Iraq? Stalemate. The last action there was when the Brits unsuccessfully attacked an Italian Armoured Corps some turns ago. Before that, in late summer 41 iirc, i tried to cross the Tigris river east of Baghdad to cut off the British, but that failed, too.
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