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Day 630 May 22, 1941

Crete. At 3.30 AM, Australian and New Zealand troops launch a counterattack to retake Maleme, during which New Zealand Lieutenant Charles Upham wins his first VC. They reach the airfield but are repelled by German 5th Mountain Division. With control of Maleme airfield, General Student sends more Junkers Ju 52 transports bringing in 2 battalions of fresh troops. The airfield is still under Allied artillery fire and many Junkers are destroyed with considerable casualties but, during the day, Germans establish control on the West end of the island. Allied commanders, many miles from Maleme, are mistakenly under the delusion that Germans are using Ju 52 transport planes to withdraw from the island. They withdraw the ANZAC troops to prepare a counterattack to regain the airfield.

Royal Navy has a disastrous day off Crete. They know from Ultra intercepts that a flotilla of small vessels is carrying German troops and supplies from the island of Milos, but this is delayed by the late arrival of Italian escort (torpedo boat Sagittario). British warships search overnight but make the mistake of continuing after sunrise and come under heavy German air attack. At 10 AM, cruisers HMS Naiad (6 killed) & Calcutta (14 killed) and destroyer HMS Kingston (1 killed) are damaged by bombs. At noon, destroyer HMS Greyhound is sunk (76 killed) and battleship HMS Warspite is badly damaged (43 killed, 69 wounded, under repair in USA until December 18). Anti-aircraft cruisers HMS Gloucester (722 killed) and Fiji (257 killed) try to fend off the Stukas but they run out of ammunition and are sunk. Most survivors from Greyhound, Gloucester & Fiji are rescued by destroyers HMS Kingston & Kandahar.

Overnight, Iraqis with Italian light tanks counterattack British forces in Fallujah. There is fighting all day but the British hold the town with reinforcements from RAF Habbaniya (capturing 6 light tanks).

Operation Rheinübung. British aerial reconnaissance confirms that German battleship Bismarck and cruiser Prinz Eugen have left Grimstadfjord, Norway. Luftwaffe surveillance of Scapa Flow, Scotland, is not so accurate. They are fooled by dummy wood & canvas warships and report to Bismarck’s Admiral Lütjens that British Home Fleet is still at dock.

At 1.40 PM 400 miles Southwest of Iceland, U-111 sinks British SS Barnby (1 killed, 44 survivors taken to Iceland). At midnight 50 miles off Sierra Leone, U-103 sinks empty British tanker Grenadier (all 49 hands rescued by the Spanish tanker Jose Calvo Sotelo and Portuguese SS Ganda).

Convoy Disaster Off Crete

Since there were not enough aircraft to carry out both the initial landing and the rapid build up of forces on the island, a flotilla of 63 requisitioned Greek vessels had been put together in advance of the attack to carry part of the 5th Gebirgs Division to the island.
Most of these commandeered vessels were caiques - a type of fishing boat dependent on a sail and a small auxiliary engine - and the rest of them a motley mix of coastal freighters.

There were to be two flotillas; one was to carry some 2,300 Gebirgsjager to Maleme; the other to carry 4,000 to Heraklion.
On the night of 19 May, the first flotilla arrived at the island of Milos and anchored there. But with the situation on Crete grown critical, a change of plan occurred and both convoys were ordered to sail to Maleme. The first convoy departed on 20 May escorted by one small Italian corvette. At around 22:00, making only 7 knots, and still some 18 miles from the landing beaches at Maleme, they were picked out by the probing searchlights of a British naval task force led by Admiral Rawlings.
Unknown to the ships crews, they had been spotted that aftemoon by a British reconnaissance aircraft. For two and a half hours the British hunted the caiques and freighters down, sinking 12 of them. The survivors straggled back north towards Greece, leaving many of the Gebirgsjager floating in their Iifejackets in the warm waters.

The III Battalion of the 100th Gebirgsjager Regiment was decimated by the naval action and virtually disappeared as a fighting force. In the moming, Italian boats and planes mounted a rescue effort, and as the Ju52s resumed the airlift of the 100th Gebirgsjager Regiment into Maleme, the troops in the planes dropped life-rafts to their comrades below.
Some 178 survivors were rescued by seaplanes and another 64 by launches. By 16:00 in the afternoon on 22 May, the rescue effort had been completed, and miraculously only 300 of the 2,331 on board the ill-fated flotilla were dead. A few managed to reach land, suffering from exposure but still carrying their weapons!

The second flotilla set sail southwards from Milos on 22 May. At about 09:30 they came within range of another naval task force under Admiral King, but were saved by the timely arrival of Luftwaffe aircraft that forced King to break off the attack. This second flotilla was recalled to spare it the same fate as the first, and no further seabome landings were attempted until the island was in German control.
22 May saw renewed action by the Luftwaffe against the British naval task forces in which two cruisers and a destroyer were sunk, and two battleships and two cruisers damaged. After these attacks, Admiral Cunningham, commander of the Meditenranean fleet, decided that he could not risk further losses by operating during the day near Crete or in the Aegean Sea, and withdrew.

By midnight on 22 May, the whole of I Battalion of the 100th Gebirgsjager Regiment had been brought in, followed by II Battalion, I Battalion of the 85th Gebirgsjager Regiment and then the 95th Gebirgs Engineer Battalion under Major Schatte.
That evening the 5th Gebirgs Division's commander, Generalmajor Julius Ringel, flew in with orders to clear the British out of Crete. He assumed command of all forces in the Maleme area, and set about organising the forces there into three Kampfgruppen (battle groups). Kampfgruppe Schatte was to protect the Maleme area from any westem threat and push westwards to capture Kastelli. A second group, made up of paratroops under command of Oberst Ramcke, was to strike northwards to the sea to protect the airfield and then extend eastwards along the coast. The third, under the command of Oberst Utz, was to move eastwards into the mainland, in a flanking movement across the mountains.

The New Zealand commanders had already opted to withdraw to strengthened positions in readiness for the German advance, but in effect, as Freyberg's chief of staff later remarked, 'this amounted to accepting the loss of Crete'.

On 23 May, the three battle groups moved cautiously forward. I Battalion of the 85th Gebirgsjager Regiment headed eastwards of Kampfgruppe Utz and reached the village of Modi in the aftemoon, where it was engaged by New Zealand troops. To outflank the enemy position, I Battalion of the 100th Gebirgsjager Regiment marched across the mountains to the south, and after abrisk fire fight the village fell.
Next, advancing up the bare slope of a tactically important position known as Hill 259, the Gebirgsjager fought hand-to-hand with the New Zealand defenders. During the night they pulled back to avoid being cut off, and moved their artillery back southeast of Platanias. As a result of these actions, Maleme airfield was left virtually undefended.

On each line of advance, the German troops were harried incessantly by Greek and Cretan irregulars. Numerous reports were already circulating that these bands had carried out atrocities on the German dead and wounded - some of whom were apparently tortured before dying. Then, on the west of the island, the 95th Engineer Battalion came under attack from armed civilians (including women and children), and as aresult the 5th Gebirgs Division announced that henceforth, for every German soldier killed in this fashion, 10 Cretans would be shot in reprisal. The Luftwaffe also dropped leaflets waming the population of the measures that would be taken against partisan activity.

5th Gebirgsjager Division-Hitler's Mountain Warfare Specialists by Michael Sharpe

German soldiers survey the beached wreck of the cruiser York