Battistelli Pier Paolo - El Alamein 1942

A Crossroad of Strategic Opportunities

The First British Offensive: Operation Compass

Rommel Arrives

From Tobruk to El Alamein

The Opposing Forces

The Commanders

The Soldiers

The Kit

The Tactics

The Axis Defence Line

Panzer Army Africas Strength

Eighth Armys Strength

Training

Planning for Operation Lightfoot

The Break-in

The Axis Reaction

The Dog Fight

The Dog Fight Continues: Action at Snipe and Woodcock

9th Australian Division Fight in the North

Operation Supercharge

Tell el Aqqaqir

The Breakout

The Pursuit

El Alamein as a British Victory

El Alameins Place in History

Why the Battle was Won

The Turning Point of the Western Desert War

The author wishes to thank Dr Christopher Pugsley, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and the series editor Jo de Vries for their help. Thanks also to the following for their help in securing sources and photos: Lieutenant Colonel Filippo Cappellano (Rome), Professor Piero Crociani (Rome), Dr Andrea Molinari (Milan), Count Ernesto G. Vitetti (Rome).

1The first units of the German Afrika Korps arriving at Tripoli harbour in February 1941, after the Italian defeat at Beda Fomm.

2Field Marshal Erwin Rommel along with the Italian Governor of Libya, General Bastico.

3Rommels command staff posing in front of a captured AEC Matador armoured command vehicle.

4Rommel aboard his half-tracked command vehicle, named Greif (griffin).

5General Montgomery, wearing the Australian bush hat, standing atop a Crusader tank.

6Eighth Armys infantry advancing First World War style, with bayonets fixed.

7Italian medium tanks of the Ariete Division.

8German soldiers in the desert.

9Two Tommies manning a 2in. mortar.

10German infantry marching in the desert.

11A Universal Carrier and a Matilda infantry tank.

12A German Panzer IV tank.

13A German 88mm dual purpose gun in action.

14Loading ammunition into a M3 Lee/Grant tank.

15Close inspection of an abandoned German 88mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun.

16An officer leading his men, holding a Webley pistol.

17A lone Italian sentry of the Folgore Division overlooking the Qattara Depression, south of El Alamein.

18A German engineer laying a mine in a desert track.

19Italian 75mm self-propelled guns in the desert.

20A short-barrelled 75mm Panzer IV German tank in the desert.

21M3 medium Lee/Grant tanks moving in the desert.

22The 2 pounder British anti-tank gun.

23The American-built M4 Sherman tank.

24A column of Valentine tanks crossing a mine-cleared lane at Alamein.

25A Valentine tank carried by a Scammell tractor.

26Clearing lanes across the Axis minefields at El Alamein.

27A German command unit with motorcycles and a command Panzer III tank.

28A line up of M4 Sherman tanks ready to go into action.

29The new 6 pounder anti-tank gun.

30A column of Italian light tanks in the desert.

31A light M3 Stuart (or Honey) tank moving past a destroyed German Panzer III medium tank.

32The early version of the long-barrelled 75mm gun Panzer IV German tank.

33Two German Panzer IV tanks with the short-barrelled 75mm gun.

34For you the war is over, a smiling Tommy guarding Afrika Korps prisoners of war.

35A German 50mm anti-tank gun, towed by a light half-tracked tractor.

36A Crusader and a Lee/Grant tank moving in the desert.

37A German defence pit with a heavy, tripod mounted MG34 machine gun.

38The Universal or Bren Carrier.

39Infantry advancing along with Valentine tanks.

40A Crusader tank damaged and abandoned.

41A Blenheim light bomber flying low over a British motorised column in the desert.

42Tanks burning in front of the wire marking Rommels devils garden of mined boxes on the Alamein defence line.

43German General von Thoma.

44An infantry squad in the desert, all wearing the khaki drill shirts and shorts.

45Eighth Armys soldiers capture the crew of a German Panzer III tank in the desert.

46A destroyed Italian medium tank in the desert.

47A German 20mm anti-aircraft gun mounted on a British 15cwt Bedford lorry.

48Rommel with a group of Italian and German officers.

49Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount of El Alamein, posing after the war in front of the relic of an Italian tank.

50Marching past the wire.

Front cover: A Crusader tank of 7th Armoured Division. Perched on top the soldiers include: Ted Fogg, Jack Gadsden, Cyril Livings, Mick Savage, Sep Houghton and Phil Titheridge. Courtesy of Roger Fogg, The Desert Rats Scrapbook (The History Press, 2010)

The Mediterranean and the Middle East were only to become theatres of war in June 1940, following Italys declaration of war against France and Great Britain, and shortly before the fall of France. The strategic situation in Europe during the summer and autumn of 1940 would greatly influence events in these theatres: the German threat against the British Isles and Italys thrust towards the Balkans largely reduced any interest in both the Mediterranean and the Middle East, where a sideshow war was fought until December of the same year.

The Italian forces, numerically stronger than their enemy, although lacking any suitable degree of motorisation, were to miss countless opportunities to advance into Egypt and seize the delta area, whose control would have changed the fortunes of the war. Only a few months after the German threat against the British Isles disappeared, Britain was able to intervene in the Middle East in an attempt to change the situation.

The offensive started in December 1940 by General Richard OConnor led to the destruction of a portion of the Italian Army and the seizure of the eastern half of Libya, Cyrenaica directly threatening Tripoli. This was, seen from the other side, a strategic goal comparable to the seizure of the Nile delta; in either case, one side might have prevailed over the other, thus bringing to an end the whole campaign. In fact, either the Nile delta for the Axis powers or Tripoli for the British were, with their large harbours, the main source for reinforcements, new units, men, weapons and materiel, and all the vital supplies needed to wage a war. Their seizure would have deprived the enemy of every resource, while, on the other hand, by controlling them both sides could feed new forces into the war. Basically, the occupation of these key positions was the reason that no side was able to gain the upper hand, other than temporarily, and to seize a decisive victory.

This is precisely what happened during the following months; in February 1941 the first units of what would have been the Deutsches Afrika Korps, the German corps in Africa, arrived at Tripoli. Meanwhile, the threat of a German intervention in the ItaloGreek war temporarily shifted British attention toward the Balkans, resulting in a new phase of the war in the Western Desert. In April 1941 German and Italian forces, led by the still largely unknown General Erwin Rommel, attacked and seized back the whole of Cyrenaica apart from the key position of Tobruk (the largest harbour in Cyrenaica), the control of which would have shortened the Axis supply lines. At the same time, events taking place elsewhere gave a definitive shape to the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres: German seizure of the Balkans in April, followed by the seizure of the island of Crete in May, put an end to the last British foothold in Europe. This made the Middle East, and the Western Desert in particular, the last land theatre of the war where Britain could face Germany and Italy, the latter also being primarily involved in it because of her ambitions to become the only Mediterranean power. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June turned, from a German point of view, the Mediterranean and the Middle East into secondary theatres of war.