Meanwhile the divisional commander’s column was still
struggling towards Mechili. It had been delayed by adverse conditions – bad
going, sand storms, and seas of shifting sand – and did not reach the objective
until the morning of the 5 April.
Mechili was a trigh cross-roads settlement in which 8th Army
had set up a dump and a strong point into which had been brought 3rd Indian
Lorried Brigade. This unit had orders to halt the German advance upon Msus and
presently added to its strength was the headquarters of 2nd Armoured Division,
‘M’ Battery Royal Horse Artillery, 3rd Australian Anti-tank Regiment, and a
small number of miscellaneous units. These had fled into the box for the
protection of the major units. On the German side there was anxiety in the
columns pressing towards the place for they were running low on fuel. Rommel
had to seize Mechili before he could swing his Corps northwards to Derna and
ordered that the objective be seized without delay. He had flown over his
columns following their progress through the desert and landing where necessary
to give them detailed orders. Other Fieseler Storch aeroplanes from the command
went out to locate and to direct the widespread columns on to their target.
During the night, guided by Verey pistol flares, by searchlights shone into the
air, and by a number of similar devices the Panzer company was brought up to
Mechili.
The most northerly column of the trans-desert group was made
up of the panzer regiment (minus the company with the southern column), a
motorised artillery battalion, the anti-tank companies, and parts of Ariete
Division. At Bir e! Gerrari the column turned on to the Benghasi-Mechili track
but as a result of map error found that it was confronted by an impassable salt
lake. Confusion piled upon confusion as the original error was compounded by
poor navigation and, as a result of this, the whole column drove round in wide
circles for some time and then ran out of fuel leaving the panzer regiment
stranded in the desert.
On the Via Balbia the reconnaissance battalion fighting
against Australian infantry and artillery rearguards captured Benghasi in the
bright moonlit pre-dawn of 4 April. The town and its airfield were handed over
to the advanced guard of Brescia Division and the battalion then swung towards Mechili
to add strength to the panzer ring which was beginning to surround the ‘box’
there. Other small units which had been separated from the columns came in and
Rommel led in 8th Machine Gun Battalion and then directed it to advance upon
Derna and to cut the Via Balbia. Parts of the British force encircled at
Mechili were ordered to break out towards Derna and by unlucky fate they
encountered the machine gun battalion also heading for that town who flung them
back into the Mechili box. But there were other delays to the machine gun
battalion advance particularly around the Derna airfield and not until the
reconnaissance battalion arrived during 7 April, to reinforce the attack and to
bring it forward again, was it possible to cut the road. The town and the aerodrome
fell quickly and more than 1000 prisoners were taken including two generals,
Neame and O’Connor, and much equipment including several tanks.
The 8th Army reacted and established a series of blocking
points. At nightfall on 7 April the 9th Australian Division supported % tanks
had taken up position astride and thus blocking the Via Balbia. The Australian
left flank was at Acroma, a town 15 miles west of Tobruk, and there was a small
British force garrisoning the important box at El Adem to the south of the
town.
The fighting around Mechili rose to a climax. Even though
the Panzer regiment from the northern column was still stranded for lack of
fuel other units of other columns had arrived to strengthen the encircling
forces. During the night of 7/8 April the main attack went in. The Santa Maria
detachment stormed from the east, the machine gun battalion from the north, and
a group of 10 tanks of the southern column drove up to strike at the southern
side of the box. Part of the British garrison thrust along the western track
mounted on vehicles and armoured cars, but this escape attempt was brought
under fire and was turned back by anti-tank guns and the machine guns of an
Italian motor cycle company. Isolated small groups of British soldiers, which then
struck to the south-east, broke through the ring but the main garrison stood
fast and fought it out. The British and the Imperial troops battled on until
the panzer company broke into the box and beat down all resistance. Five
generals were among the prisoners but of more use to the Germans were the
supplies and fuel which they seized, for these enabled their drive to continue.
The 2000 prisoners brought problems for the northern column had still not
arrived in force and the remaining German troops were thin on the ground. Not
until the evening of the 8th had sufficient forces been gathered to renew the
advance northwards to reach the coastal road and by the time that the Axis
troops arrived at Tmimi the British had already evacuated it. The advanced guard
of Brescia Division, whose task it had been to hold the British while the
outflanking movement was carried out, had failed in this and did not arrive at
the objective until 8 April.
With the seizure of Tmimi the province of Cyrenaica had been
recaptured, the British had been thrown back, some of their principal
commanders captured, and their armour beaten in battle. But the Australian
Division had withdrawn in good order towards Tobruk and thus, although the Axis
forces had gained a tactical victory, they had not defeated the British in the
field.
There were other gains both in strategy and morale.
Strategically the British Army fighting in Greece was now aware that its rear
communications were threatened by the German victory in the desert. In the
matter of morale Axis prestige rose, not only in the Arab countries but also
among the people of Italy and in the Italian Army, for that force began to
regain much of the confidence which it had lost as a result of earlier defeats.
All this had been accomplished with only a small loss of men
and, although the fall-out of armoured vehicles was quite considerable, due to
the long and exhausting march through the desert, the German recovery service
was able to return most tanks to their units. Losses in soft-skinned trucks
were made good from stocks captured from the British.
The greatest praise must go to Rommel for his incredible
ability, energy, and resource. He seemed to be at every part of the front,
leading an attack here, guiding a column there, and it was due to his fierce
drive that the offensive succeeded. He was now supremely confident. He had
grasped the secrets and the tactics of desert warfare. Not only did he have the
measure of the terrain but also that of his enemies. Now with adequate supplies
he could advance and he made no secret of the fact that he planned the final
objective to be the Suez canal.
On 9 April orders were issued to continue the pursuit of the
British towards Tobruk with all possible speed, and 5th Light Division, with
the reconnaissance battalion in the van, stormed eastwards leaving the Italians
to carry out security duties around Mechili.
Tactics
Tactics are defined as the art of handling troops in the
field to gain a desired end easily and smoothly. Weapons determine tactics and
to a very great degree it is the ability to recognise the potential of a new
weapon which shapes the course and the outcome of battles. It was Rommel’s
flair for combining the new weapons of blitzkrieg, the tank and the dive-bomber
with the classic foot and guns, which brought him tactical victories on so many
occasions and, although his ability had been demonstrated as early as the
French campaign of 1940, it was in North Africa that this military genius truly
flowered.
He had come to Africa with tactical doctrines based on
European experiences and then found that some of these had little or no
relevance to the new theatre of operations. Faced by new problems the Germans
applied themselves with their customary vigour and in the lulls between the
summer and autumn fighting of 1941 produced tactics in which at first only the
men of 15th Panzer Division were trained and these innovations having proved
themselves in the winter campaign of 1941 and the spring campaign of 1942, they
were developed as a battle drill and introduced into other panzer units.
Rommel’s doctrine was that all arms — infantry, guns, and
tanks — should fight as fully integrated parts of a whole and that thereby they
would be able to bring down a maximum concentration of effort upon any chosen
target within the shortest possible time. In the desert this chosen target was
the British armour whose destruction was the key to tactical success. One of
the first discoveries made by panzer men in the desert was that the force did
not need to move in column, which had been the practice in Europe, for given firm
going the advance could be made in line abreast. Out of this knowledge evolved
the tactic of a panzer unit advancing to contact already formed for battle and
not having to waste time in deployment manoeuvring. A whole panzer division
could move forward as a series of ‘boxes’ or ‘handkerchiefs’, each box forming
an individual battle group and echeloned with a depth four times that of its
front. The various components of the division were usually located within the
box in the same position. The armoured brow made up of a tank battalion with
artillery support. Then followed the second panzer battalion with heavier
artillery and engineers, all forming another box. On the ‘enemy’ side of the
divisional ‘box’ ranged the reconnaissance detachments and the anti-tank guns
while located in the centre of the box were the soft-skinned vehicles and
divisional headquarters. Behind this mass of trucks there were the heaviest
guns of the divisional artillery and at the rear the infantry component, the
remainder of the artillery, and the tank recovery details.
The course of the desert war was marked by short but intense
bursts of furious activity followed by longer periods during which the winning
side consolidated its gains and built up its strength for a further advance
while the losing army constructed defence lines and brought up fresh supplies
of men and materials to replace the losses which had been suffered. Thus the
fighting, when it took place, was of a fluid nature and it was the cut and
thrust of armoured conflict which characterised it; actions in which the
fortunes of war changed almost hourly. Nevertheless, the idea of tank versus
tank battles was considered by the Germans to be a wrong application of
armoured power. Rommel chose to use instead the ‘bait’ tactic which he had
applied with such success during the fighting in France. In this the panzer
force would advance to contact and then retire ‘baiting’ the British whose
standard reaction was always to mount a charge. When this happened the tank men
of 8th Army, their vision obscured by clouds of dust and sand thrown up by the
withdrawing panzers, would thrust towards and then be impaled upon the fire of
a screen of guns. This simple tactic seldom failed until Montgomery arrived in
the desert and halted these heroic but futile assaults.
This gun-line tactic was effective only given certain
conditions; and in North Africa these conditions obtained for many years. The
first of these was that the British ‘attacking front’ did not exceed the ‘gun
density’. It must be appreciated that the most effective German tank destroyer
was the 8.8cm gun and that this weapon could outrange every British tank gun.
Thus one single gun could fight a battle with a squadron of tanks engaging the
first tank at distances greater than a mile and would have had time to smash
the other vehicles of an attacking wave before they could bring fire to bear.
The British tank commanders unwittingly aided the German gunners by committing
their forces piecemeal. Most tank attacks went as single regiments and it was
rare that the ‘attacking front’ covered a two-regimental width. Thus the 8.8s
could select their targets at leisure in the certain knowledge that their shot
could penetrate 8.3cm of armour plate at a range of 2000 yards.
The second condition which made the gun line effective was
that the British tank gun had a shorter range than the German gun which it was
fighting. Until this situation changed the gun line remained the standard and
most successful tactic used by the Panzer Army, for theirs was a concept of
guns versus tanks.
The inclusion of the 8.8cm in their armoury ensured that the
outcome of such a battle was nearly always victory for the artillery and so
effective was that gun that it may be claimed with some accuracy that the
German success at Gazala was built upon the forty-eight 8.8cm pieces which
Rommel had under command. There were two other first-class anti-tank guns on
the German establishment, the 5cm and the Russian 7.6cm, the latter considered
to be the best anti-tank gun in the world.
Another of the advantages enjoyed by the Germans was that
their anti-tank guns and their tank guns could fire high explosive as well as
solid shot. Thus their guns could bring fire to bear upon the British anti-tank
gun line and by high explosive shells destroy it or at least neutralise it. It
was not until the summer of 1942 with the introduction of the 6-pounder
anti-tank gun and the Grant tank gun, both of which pieces fired high explosive
in addition to armour piercing shot, that 8th Army was able to deal effectively
with the Axis anti-tank gun lines.
Against the three first-class German anti-tank guns the
British could oppose at first only with the 2-pounder, a weapon of such poor
performance that it could only be fired with hope of penetration against the
thinner side plates of enemy armour at ranges below 200 yards. Being thus
almost totally ineffective this weapon could neither support a British tank
assault nor could it defend infantry against panzer attack. To act as an
anti-tank gun the 25-pounder was pressed into service and weapons were taken
from their main task, that of supplying protection for the foot soldiers. Being
therefore without proper artillery support the British infantry relied for
protection upon the armour and this restriction bred among the tank units the
feeling that they were being prevented from achieving their prime purpose —
manoeuvre — by being tied down to the foot troops. The infantry, on the other
hand, was convinced that the armour deserted it in time of need.
The German armour depended upon the two main types Panzer
III and IV and during the years of campaigning these were up-gunned and
up-armoured so that their already great capabilities were enhanced and their
effectiveness increased. Both of these types were capable of subduing any tank
which the British could put into the field. On the British side the Matilda was
a slow vehicle with a maximum speed of 16mph and a main armament of the
2-pounder gun; the Matilda was to all intents and purposes defenceless. The
Grant tank which came into the battle at Gazala, during the summer of 1942,
helped in part to restore the imbalance through its 7.5cm gun, but this weapon
had only a limited traverse and was set too low in the hull. Thus the Grant
could not take a ‘hull down’ position but had to expose itself almost
completely in order to fire its main armament.
German attacks against British positions followed a battle
drill. A preliminary reconnaissance would determine the sector to be attacked
and an armoured thrust would be made to divert attention from the main thrust.
This main effort would be made by several ‘boxes’ of tanks which would advance
at a given speed with carefully regulated intervals between the individual
tanks and the individual ‘boxes’. The assault would roll forward and by a
combination of fire and movement the position would be taken. Once this had
happened a gun line would be formed to protect the flank while the panzers
pressed the attack forward.
Reconnaissance was of the pattern common on European
battlefields and in the early months Panzer II vehicles were used to screen the
front and flanks of a battle formation. These lightly armoured and undergunned,
obsolete vehicles were pushed forward of the main body about 8 miles, that is
to the extreme range of their wireless sets. Up with the forward reconnaissance
detachments was also a small but highly specialised group whose task it was to
listen to wireless messages which passed between the British armour and its
commanders, and to lay this intelligence before the divisional commander so
that the direction and size of British thrusts could be countered.
The movement of Axis supply columns was made difficult by
British patrols; one German report warned that not even the tracks behind their
own lines could be considered as absolutely safe from enemy attack, and for a
short time a convoy system was introduced. A continual problem had been the
delay which occurred while the fighting group waited for its supplies of fuel
and ammunition to catch up, and to overcome this a number of soft-skinned
vehicles loaded with these essential supplies travelled with the battle group
and were protected from attack by being held in the middle of the divisional
box. An officer of the quartermaster’s department was attached to tactical
headquarters, forward with the battle group, and was linked by radio to the
main quartermaster’s department back at Corps.
In the fast-moving fighting on the desert battlefields the
problems which usually confronted a military commander were increased and the
difficulties of fighting a modern battle from the rear, which had been
encountered even in the slow-moving days of the early campaigns in Europe,
proved impossible to resolve in Africa. Situations arose which demanded
immediate solutions. It was, therefore, essential that not only the divisional
commander but the whole of his tactical headquarters, the forward observation
officer for the artillery, and the panzer regiment’s commander be well forward
to control and to direct operations. The whole command echelon was carried in
special armoured vehicles. It was also essential that the elaborate communications
procedures which had obtained in Europe be simplified and for this purpose the
divisional commander’s vehicle was fitted with an ultra short-wave radio so
that he could both listen in to the orders being given to the panzer regiment
and give his own instructions direct, without going through the standard but
time-wasting practices. The remainder of the leading group as well as all the
other boxes listened in on the medium-wave band and were directly linked with
the divisional commander. Thus he could deploy his forward units and coordinate
the panzer assault with that of the supporting arms in the rear boxes. Between
the divisional reconnaissance groups and headquarters there was a signals link
mounted in an armoured vehicle. A simple system of set pattern orders made the
transmission and execution of battlefield manoeuvres a speedier process than
had been the case in Europe and constant practice of the manoeuvres as well as
of other battle drills reduced time-wasting and in the artillery units enabled
these to go into action with surprising speed.
The presence of generals, even of the Corps commander
himself, upon the battlefield not only speeded up decision making but improved
the morale of the fighting soldier for he could see for himself that the
commanders were undergoing the same privations and sharing the dangers of
battle with him. To the German front line soldier in Africa the generals were
not shadowy figures in a headquarters miles removed from the fighting but were
physically present upon the field of battle. This personal presence helped to
produce a good esprit de corps. By contrast the Italian and British High
Commands were remote and their decisions arrived at usually after staff
conferences had often been overtaken by events leaving new crises to be
resolved. It was not uncommon for Rommel or indeed any senior commander to take
over the direction of a battalion in battle, a situation which may not have
been very comfortable for regimental officers but did produce results. It is recorded
that once, at Mechili, while flying over his advancing columns Rommel saw a
unit halted for no apparent reason and radioed to the officer commanding that
unless the advance was renewed he would land his Fieseler Storch and take over
command. The unit moved on.
Erwin Rommel
The personality of Erwin Rommel dominated not only the Axis
armies but, indeed, the whole African campaign. As a young officer during the
First World War he had been awarded the highest German decoration for bravery,
the Pour le Merite, for an action on the Italian Front and in the inter-war
years he had produced a number of textbooks on infantry tactics. After serving
as commander of Hitler’s Escort Battalion in Poland Rommel had taken over
command of 7th Panzer Division and in a most determined way had converted the
minor role of his division into the spearhead of the panzer force which
defeated the western Allies during 1940. Hitler had personally chosen Rommel to
command the Africa Corps and was to have his faith justified.
If only Rommel’s faith in Hitler had met with the same
loyalty then, there is no doubt that the Axis powers would have been
strategically successful in the fighting in Africa but Rommel was the victim of
his superiors. The supplies which they promised him either never arrived at all
or were reduced in number before they reached Africa. He was to see artillery
pieces of new and startling power, which had been promised to him, sent to the
5th Panzer Army in Tunisia. His armies were halted when the flow of petrol stopped,
the artillery ceased firing for lack of ammunition, the tanks he asked for were
diverted to other fronts, and against all these breaches of faith he could make
no protest for he was entangled in an extraordinary hierarchy of command.
Africa was an Italian theatre of operations and Rommel as
commander of only the mobile forces of the desert army was subordinate to an
Italian general. Then the person of Kesselring, the German Supreme Commander
South was interposed and the Commando Supremo in Rome was often in accord with
Kesselring’s points of view. Between Rommel and Hitler there also stood the OKH
and the OKW, not to mention Benito Mussolini who was not only the de facto Head
of the Italian State but also a personal friend of Hitler.
Each and all of these layers of obstruction prevented Rommel
from achieving the objectives which he had set himself and his men. He was a
tireless soldier and demanded of his troops the same indifference to hard
conditions and to privations that he himself had. He drove his men hard and his
vehicles to the limits of their endurance, allowing his soldiers little tune
for rest and his panzers less than adequate time for maintenance. His whole
attention was concentrated upon the objectives of righting and winning the
desert war. Not for him the problems of logistics and the difficulties of
supply. His attitude to his desert quartermasters can be best summed up in the
plea which Churchill made on another occasion, ‘Give us the tools and we shall
finish the job’. But for the greater part of his service in Africa Rommel was
bedevilled by two factors which negated the victories which he won and
prevented him exploiting the successes which had been achieved. The first of
these was a lack of supplies and the second was the over elaborate command
structure which allowed him no freedom of action or of manoeuvre.
Rommel led his men from the front and the charge that he
neglected staff duties to direct operations personally is a valid one but the
peculiar conditions of desert warfare demanded the presence of a taskmaster on
the battlefield.
He was a poor subordinate and like Nelson preferred not to
see — or in his case hear – the orders, warnings, and injunctions which his
superiors at every level of command gave him on the conduct of operations. With
the ebb of the Axis tide at El Alamein in October 1942 the Commando Supremo had
its revenge upon the man who had come to the desert and had made it an area
which bore the imprint of his military genius. Demands for his resignation were
made each time his understrength armies were forced from one untenable position
to another. And always he had to face the lack of supplies, the unkept
promises, the demands to carry out some other task above the capabilities of
his armies until at last he returned to Hitler to make one more desperate plea
for supplies that would enable a bridgehead in Tunisia to be held.
Flamboyantly, Hitler promised Rommel that he would lead an Axis army against
Casablanca — so little knowledge of the true situation did the German leader
have — and with that Rommel had to be content. He never returned to Africa and
thus avoided seeing the Army which he had so often led into victories pass into
the bitterness of final defeat.
