Bengasi Port

[Dili]

Panuco tanker could not dock in Bengasi due to her draft. Page 310

http://www.reteparri.it/wp-content/uploads/ic/RAV0053532_1996_202-205_18.pdf

Page 311 says Panuco goes to Tripoli and transfers to Ennio and Caucaso and these smaller tankers will unload in Bengasi

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Then further in the text more polemics about what makes the Panuco unable to unload at Bengasi.

 

[Andreas]

Not sure what the issue is? That Benghazi was only suitable for smaller vessels was known from mid-1941. Too many wrecks I believe.

All the best

Andreas

 

[Dili]

No issue, just information.

 

[diciassette2000]

The port of Benghazi was built by the Italians between 1929 and 1939 even if at the time of Italy's entry into the war it was not yet completely completed in the service structures. There were still several construction sites. Until that date, travelers and materials often had to be lowered via nets on the maone which were then towed to land. It was an artificial port closed by the breakwater or main of the total development of 1600 meters. The port basin measured approximately 170,000 square meters and was separated from the port by an under-pier. Between the two piers there was the port mouth of about 280 meters. The depths were 14 meters. The internal basin, however, had a depth of 6 to 9 meters even if during the whole conflict dredging continued in an attempt to deepen it. (Grosso-The ports of Libya and the military genius 1941-1942)
All the best
Maurizio

 

[diciassette2000]

In the study compiled by the Plans Office of the Navy General Staff dating back to May 1938 it was recognized that the theoretical potential of the Libyan ports, also using maones or barges (small and very small vessels with almost zero draft) for the landfill would allow the simultaneous inflow and unloading of ships to the following extent:
Tripoli: 5 cargo ships and 4 for troop transport.
Benghazi: 3 cargo ships and 2 for the transport of troops (however reduced to only 3 ships overall, excluding the possibility of carrying out operations at anchor once the hostilities have started).
Tobruk: 3 cargo ships and 2 troop ships;
with a landing capacity of one thousand men per hour and unloading a quantity of goods oscillating, in '38, between the thousand tons per day of Benghazi and the two thousand tons of Tripoli.
The above figures corresponded very exactly to the logistical capacity of ports in peacetime. However, they no longer corresponded to the reality of the facts as soon as the war began to widespread destruction in the equipment of the Libyan ports and in the masonry structures of the ports themselves. It can be assumed that by mid-1941 the logistical capacity of the port of Tripoli was already reduced by approximately 50%. Benghazi and Tobruk, then, when these ports returned to Italian hands after the British occupation, they were never able to unload more than two or three steamships at the same time at a rate that, only in exceptional cases, reached 7-800 tons per day. Indeed, in Benghazi, for many weeks in 1940 and for almost the whole of 1941, it was never considered convenient to send convoys formed by large steamships because that port had no way of unloading them. Traffic for Benghazi, between the Italian re-occupation (April 6, 1941) and the second British occupation (December 27, 1941), was in fact limited only to a few rare small-tonnage steamers coming isolated from Italy (P.fi EGYPT, CYCLICIA, cist OSSAG, CAPO D'ORSO), and to the boats of local use used to shuttle along the Libyan coast to sort the materials that flowed to Tripoli towards the operational front. Only in August 1941 six medium-tonnage merchant ships were launched in Benghazi, among which the OSSAG tank (but this was the maximum peak of the whole 1941).
La Marina Italiana nella seconda guerra mondiale vol6 Roma 1978
All the best
maurizio

 

[Andreas]

I think this is overly pessimistic. The actual unloading figures show that Benghazi handled over 900 tons daily average in e.g. August, and well over 700 tons daily average in May and July 1941.

Similarly Tripoli managed over 2,000 tons/day averages in June, July and August 1941.

Much of this analysis seems to ignore the coastal traffic, which did not unload itself.

Capacity of Tripoli and Benghazi Harbours, 1941

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All the best

Andreas