Wavell had been looking for an opportunity to attack the
Italians since before the invasion of Egypt, and had ordered a study into the
possible problems presented by an advance into eastern Libya as early as 11
September 1940. After Graziani’s force had been immobile around Sidi Barrani
for a month he ordered Lieutenant-General Wilson to begin planning for a rapid,
limited attack involving the 7th Armoured Division, the 4th Indian Division and
the Mersa Matruh garrison. By this time the Italians had four divisions and
Raggruppamento Maletti ensconced in a chain of ten fortified positions located
roughly on a line running south for the thirty-odd miles between Maktila and
Bir Enba on the edge of the coastal escarpment, and then west along the
escarpment for a further twenty miles to Sofafi. Starting at the coast, Sidi
Barrani was held by the 4° MSVN Division, with the 1° Libica Division holding
Maktila and a fortified camp to the east of the town. The 2° Libica Division
occupied three camps around Tummar, Raggruppamento Maletti one at Nibeiwa, and
the remaining four at Rabia and around Sofafi were held by the Cirene Division.
Further west, the Catanzaro Division was concentrated near Buq Buq, the
Marmarica west of Sofafi and around Halfaya, and the 1st and 2nd MSVN Divisions
were located near the border at Sidi Omar and the Sollum-Fort Capuzzo region
respectively.
The information painstakingly gathered by the 11th Hussars
and Jock Columns showed that while the Italian camps were generally well
constructed and laid out, frequently with protective minefields, anti-tank
ditches and wire, they were too far apart to provide mutual support. This was
especially the case in the centre of the Italian line where the camps at
Nibeiwa and Rabia were separated by almost twenty miles, an opening dubbed the
Enba Gap. Graziani later claimed to have brought this to the attention of the
commander of 10° Armata in November 1940, but whether that was ex post facto
justification or not, nothing was done. Initial planning discussions involved
only Wilson, his Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-General O’Connor and Major-General
Creagh, in part because the raid on the Maktila camp had stressed the
importance of tight security. The resulting scheme, codenamed Operation
COMPASS, was largely O’Connor’s and envisaged a two-pronged attack. The
northern prong involved an advance along the coast road to attack the 1st
Libica Division at Maktila and thus distract Italian attention from the Enba
Gap, by a 1,800 strong force drawn from the troops holding Mersa Matruh.
Christened ‘Selby Force’ after its commander Brigadier A.R. Selby, it was made
up of the 3rd Battalion The Coldstream Guards, three companies drawn from the
Northumberland Fusiliers, the South Staffordshire Regiment and Cheshire
Regiments respectively, a detachment from the Durham Light Infantry, and tanks
from A Troop, 7th Hussars.
The main blow was to be delivered from further south. The
7th Armoured and 4th Indian Divisions were to carry out a sixty mile approach
march to a concentration area approximately fifteen miles south-east of
Nibeiwa. They would then attack through the Enba Gap, with the 4th Armoured
Brigade heading north toward Azziziya, midway between Buq Buq and Sidi Barrani.
Its running mate, the 7th Armoured Brigade, was to form a screen between the
Gap and the Italian camps at Rabia and Sofafi, and act as an exploitation
reserve. While the armour was rampaging around the Italian rear areas as Hobart
had envisioned the 4th Indian Division would attack the Italian camps around
Tummar from the rear. Supplies for the operation were to be stockpiled in two
large dumps forty miles west of Mersa Matruh from 5 November, well inside the
disputed zone between the two armies. Field Supply Depot No.3 was located near
the Sidi Barrani–Mersa road ten miles from the coast, and No.4 Field Supply
Depot a further fifteen miles to the south, a hundred mile round trip across
difficult terrain for the transport units tasked to shuttle the materiel
forward from dumps near Qasaba. Each Depot was stocked with sufficient fuel,
ammunition, hard scale rations and water for personnel and vehicle cooling
systems to last for five days, the period of the attack.48 Thereafter the
forces involved were to withdraw and revert to their former defensive posture.
The plan may have been straightforward, but preparations
proved to be less so. Wavell had originally intended to keep knowledge of
COMPASS from an increasingly impatient Churchill until the planning and
preparation was complete, to avoid raising unrealistic expectations and
long-range micromanagement from London. This strategy succeeded until the Italians
invaded Greece on 28 October 1940, for the effort to assist the Greeks
threatened to remove aircraft, troops, anti-aircraft guns and transport needed
for COMPASS. Ironically, this placed Wavell in virtually the same predicament
as his opposite number Graziani; on 5 November Mussolini informed the latter
that he ought to be attacking in Egypt to tie up British forces that might
otherwise be sent to Greece. In order to avoid having the forces allocated to
COMPASS stripped away Wavell therefore revealed the operation to Secretary of
State for War Anthony Eden when the latter visited the Middle East on
Churchill’s orders on 8 November; the latter was becoming increasingly
dissatisfied with what he perceived as Wavell’s failure to make the best use of
his reinforcements. Churchill reacted with characteristic aggression on
learning of COMPASS, insisting that any success should be exploited to the
full, and his dissatisfaction with Wavell was reinforced when he saw the
content of a cable from him to Chief of Imperial General Staff Field Marshal
Sir John Dill pointing out that ‘undue hopes [were] being placed on this
operation which was designed as a raid only. We are greatly outnumbered on
ground and in air, have to move over 75 miles of desert and attack enemy who
has fortified himself for three months. Please do not encourage optimism.’
Churchill’s response was equally forthright, expressing shock and the opinion
that Wavell was ‘playing small’ and thus failing to rise to the occasion in the
spirit required. This may have been the driver for a memo Wavell sent to Wilson
while the COMPASS force was moving to its jump off positions, which
acknowledged that it was ‘possible that an opportunity may offer for converting
the enemy’s defeat into an outstanding victory’, and asking that if so all
ranks be ‘prepared morally, mentally and administratively to use it to the
fullest’.
Be that as it may, it was too late for Churchill to
interfere for good or ill as COMPASS was scheduled to begin on 9 December 1940.
Security remained tight, and the Western Desert Force’s senior commanders were
not informed of the plan until 2 November 1940; Wavell briefed the senior
commanders in Kenya and the Sudan the same day. O’Connor issued strict
instructions that nothing was to be committed to paper until shortly before the
attack commenced, and the troops were not to be informed until they were en
route to their assembly areas. The latter thus had no idea that Training
Exercise No.1 carried out near Mersa Matruh on 25–26 November was actually a
full-scale rehearsal for COMPASS, and that Training Exercise No.2 was in fact
the opening stages of the Operation. The first unit to move was the 7th RTR,
which reached Field Supply Depot No.4 en route to an ‘exercise’ area in the
vicinity of Bir el Kenayis, forty miles south west of Mersa Matruh, on Thursday
5 December. Having only been in Egypt for two months, this was the unit’s first
foray into what desert veterans referred to as ‘the blue’, and its early start
was necessary because the forty-five Tank, Infantry, Mk.IIs with which the unit
was equipped were only capable of eight miles per hour cross country. Despite
this the unit was O’Connor’s ace in the hole, and not merely because the
Italians were unaware of its presence in Egypt. The twenty-six ton Matilda, as
the vehicle was popularly known, weighed over twice as much as the Italian
M11/39, and the former’s 78mm cast armour was not only twice as thick but also
impervious to Italian anti-tank weapons. The 4th Indian Division, commanded by
Lieutenant-General Sir Noel Beresford-Peirse, followed on 6 December, and
remained dispersed around Bir el Kenayis for thirty-six hours, to give the
impression of routine training; an Italian reconnaissance aircraft flew
overhead during a well attended church parade on 7 December.
The 7th Armoured Division, commanded by Brigadier J.R.L.
Caunter in lieu of a temporarily hospitalised Creagh, left its nearby harbour
area for the forward concentration area on 7 December; as this was only fifteen
miles from Nibeiwa the division went into hard routine on arrival, with no
fires or unnecessary movement. The air preparation for COMPASS began the same
night, with a raid by eleven Malta-based Wellingtons that destroyed or damaged
twenty-nine Italian aircraft at Castel Benito airfield near Tripoli. The
following night a mixed force of Wellingtons and Blenheim Mk.IVs destroyed ten
more at Benina, while other Blenheims attacked Italian forward airfields. Even
obsolete Bristol Bombay bomber/transports from No. 216 Squadron were pressed
into service to bomb the Italian forward positions. No. 202 Group’s fighter
contingent were employed in creating and maintaining air superiority over the
COMPASS ground forces; almost 400 fighter sorties were made in the first week of
the Operation, with some pilots carrying out four in a single day. In the
process they claimed thirty-five Italian machines shot down and a further
twelve possibles for a loss of six RAF aircraft and three pilots.
That lay in the future, however, and by the late afternoon
of 8 December the 4th Indian Division had also reached the concentration area
near Nibeiwa and O’Connor had set up his forward HQ nearby at a location
codenamed ‘Piccadilly Circus’. This was no mean feat in itself, involving as it
did moving some 36,000 men and in excess of 5,000 vehicles undetected across
sixty miles of open desert. The move may not have gone totally unnoticed, for
an Italian reconnaissance pilot reported 400 vehicles at various points
approximately forty miles south-east of Nibeiwa at around midday on 8 December,
but no account appears to have been taken of his report. O’Connor’s force
carried out its final preparations and moves up to start lines under cover of
darkness on the night of 8–9 December. The 7th Armoured Division moved up into
the Enba Gap, and sent back guides to direct 7th RTR and 11th Indian Brigade to
their jump off positions for the opening attack on the Nibeiwa camp. To the
north the noise of Selby Force moving into position was concealed by Royal Navy
gunfire. A Bombarding Force consisting of HM Monitor Terror, the minesweeper
Bagshot and the gunboats Aphis and Ladybird had sailed from Alexandria at 20:00
on 7 December. Terror and Aphis were to concentrate on Italian strongpoints and
transport parks, while Ladybird was to shell gun positions and troop tents just
to the west at Sidi Barrani; the latter was intended as cover for a Commando
raid against Italian communications and pipelines, but the landing was
prevented by heavy seas that also prostrated the raiders with seasickness. The
bombardment began at 23:00 on 8 December and lasted for ninety minutes,
although dust and misdropped flares from supporting Fairey Swordfish from HMS
Illustrious made spotting difficult.
The Italian camp at Nibeiwa was occupied by Generale Pietro
Maletti’s Raggruppamento, with a battalion of M11/39 medium tanks, a battalion
of L3/35 Light Tanks and 2,500 Libyan infantry. The camp measured a mile by a
mile and a half and was protected by a perimeter wall, an anti-tank ditch and
berm, barbed wire and a perimeter minefield. However, on the night of 7–8
December a reconnaissance patrol from the 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade
located a gap in the defences at the north-western corner of the camp where
supply columns passed back and forth; approximately twenty tanks, mostly
M11/39s, were deployed outside the camp in a screen to protect this weak point.
The action began shortly before 05:00 on Monday 9 December with an hour long
diversion against the eastern side of the camp, followed by a light shelling on
the south-east corner of the camp at 07:00. The main attack commenced at 07:15
with a simultaneous artillery concentration from seventy-two guns on selected
targets within the perimeter and attack by two Squadrons of the 7th RTR against
the north-western gap. The vehicles in the protective tank screen were
unmanned, and the Matildas proceeded to pick them off at leisure before
advancing into the camp proper, followed at 07:45 by the 2nd Battalion The
Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders and the 1st/6th Rajputana Rifles.
As at Nezuet Ghirba back in June, some of the Italians
attempted to make up for operational incompetence with raw courage. Artillery
men fired ineffectually at the Matilda IIs at point blank while others attacked
the armoured behemoths with hand grenades, and the British were obliged to
bring up artillery pieces to reduce some stubborn groups of defenders. Most
were simply overawed by the speed and surprise of the assault, however, and by
10:40 Nibeiwa camp had been secured at a cost of fifty-six British and Indian
casualties. Italian losses are unclear, but the dead included Generale Maletti
and his aide-de-camp son, who had been cut down as they emerged from the tent
where they had been awaiting breakfast. The British captured between 2,000 and
4,000 prisoners and twenty-three tanks along with numerous transport vehicles,
water and supplies. The latter included large numbers of dress uniforms and
associated accoutrements, freshly made beds and a positive cornucopia of food
and drink. According to a journalist on the spot, the latter included freshly
baked bread, fresh vegetables, jars of liqueurs, hundreds of cases of Rocoaro
brand mineral water, huge amounts of spaghetti and macaroni and Parmesan
cheeses the size of wagon-wheels.
While this was going on the 4th Armoured Brigade was forging
northward. Elements of the 11th Hussars reached the Sidi Barrani-Buq Buq road
at 09:00, and within a few moments had captured eight trucks and fifty POWs.
They were joined by the rest of the Brigade shortly thereafter, which had taken
another 400 POWs at Azziziya when the garrison surrendered without firing a
shot. With Sidi Barrani thus cut off from reinforcement the 11th Hussars began
probing to the west while the 7th Hussars crossed the road and patrolled north
toward the coast. Back to the south-east the 5th Indian Brigade had attacked
the next camp in the chain, Tummar West, with the arrival of the 7th RTR at
around 11:00, although the latter had lost six Matilda IIs immobilised by mines
leaving Nibeiwa. Preparations were complicated by a sandstorm and the arrival
of the Regia Aeronautica, which scattered bombs randomly into the dust cloud. However
the Matildas and infantry from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers attack
finally went in through another gap in the defences at 13:30.
The Tummar West garrison put up stiffer resistance and the
Fusiliers were obliged to fight through with grenades, bayonets and
rifle-butts; one group of dug-outs in the centre of the camp held out until
Matildas were brought in to crush the shelters under their tracks. By 16:00 the
surviving defenders had been pinned down in the south-east corner of the camp, and
they surrendered after negotiations by an Italian general and thirteen senior
officers, putting another 2,000 POWs into the British bag. The garrison of the
Tummar East camp had been reduced substantially when two M11/39 tanks, six
trucks and a large number of infantry sallied forth to assist their neighbours
and unwittingly traversed the frontage of the 4th/6th Rajputana Rifles and a
machine-gun detachment from the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers. The tanks were
knocked out with Boys anti-tank rifles and the infantry driven back into their
camp, leaving 400 dead and wounded behind them. The 7th RTR’s sixteen running
Matilda IIs redeployed and penetrated Tummar East in the early evening but the
attack was called off due to the onset of darkness and a thickening of the
ongoing sandstorm.
Word of events at the Tummar camps was carried by survivors
to the main Italian force engaged with Selby Force east of Sidi Barrani. The
senior Italian officer there, Generale di Corpo Sebastiano Gallina, had
informed Graziani that afternoon that the entire area of his command was
‘infested’ with British mechanised forces against which he had no effective
counter. The commander of the infestation came forward to 4th Indian Division’s
HQ near Nibeiwa at 17:00 and expressed his pleasure with progress. Although
nothing had been heard of Selby Force, the fact that 4th Armoured Brigade had
been left largely unmolested astride the Sidi Barrani-Buq Buq road suggested
that the Italian garrison at Sidi Barrani and Maktila were being kept occupied,
while the camps at Rabia and Sofafi had also remained passive. O’Connor
therefore instructed the 7th Armoured Division to despatch the 8th Hussars to a
blocking position west of Sofafi, and ordered the 4th Indian Division to reduce
the remaining camps at Tummar East and Point 90 the next day, and to send its
reserve formation, the attached 16th Infantry Brigade commanded by Brigadier
C.E.N. Lomax, north to join the 4th Armoured Brigade in preparation for an
attack on Sidi Barrani; Lomax moved off on receipt of the order and covered
part of the distance during the night.
Operations on 10 December were again hampered by sand storms
but began well with the surrender of the Tummar East camp at dawn without a
fight. The 16th Infantry Brigade was on the move by 06:00, prompted in part by
Italian artillery fire on its exposed night position. After a stiff fight
involving the 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at Alam el
Dab, eight miles or so east of Azziziya, the Brigade was in position across the
routes running west and south from Sidi Barrani by 13:30. Eager to press his
advantage, Beresford-Peirse engaged in some hasty reorganisation. The 4th
Armoured Brigade was ordered to cover the 16th Infantry Brigade’s left flank
with the Cruiser-equipped 2nd RTR and to send the 6th RTR to reinforce Selby
Force, and the 7th RTR’s remaining serviceable Matilda IIs were assigned to
assist Lomax as well. That done, the 16th Infantry Brigade was ordered to
launch an attack on Sidi Barrani, which began with a divisional artillery
concentration at 16:00 hours. Within thirty minutes the attackers had passed
right through the town in spite of a severe sandstorm, and at 17:15 the 6th RTR
overran the Italian defences east of the town. The action cost the 16th
Infantry Brigade 277 casualties but left the remnants of the 1° and 2° Libica
and 4° MVSN Divisions trapped against the sea in a pocket ten miles long and
five miles deep, bloodied but as yet unbowed; a subsequent attack at around
midnight by the 6th RTR was rebuffed, largely due to the efforts of Italian
artillerymen, and reduced the unit’s strength to twelve tanks.
Thus by the end of the second day of Operation COMPASS the
Italian camps north of the Enba Gap and Sidi Barrani itself were in British
hands. The exception was the camp at Point 90, where elements of the 2nd Libica
Division continued to hold out. The impact of all this on the Italians only
became apparent on the third day, 11 December. The Italian troops bottled up
east of Sidi Barrani began to give up as soon as the British renewed the attack
at dawn, the 1st Libica Division formally surrendering by 13:00, and the 4th
MVSN Division by nightfall. To the south, patrols from the Support Group found
that the Cirene Division had abandoned the camps at Rabia and around Sofafi
during the night. The last to give in were the 2nd Libica holdouts at Point 90.
When the Italian commander responded to demands for surrender by saying that he
intended to fight to the death, a deliberate attack was organised by the
3rd/1st Punjab Regiment, supported by seven Matilda IIs from the 7th RTR, two
of which turned up at the last moment after hasty repair, and two RA Field
Regiments. They found 2,000 Libyan troops waiting patiently to surrender
complete with packed luggage, the fight to the death threat being merely a face
saving ploy by their commander. By nightfall on Wednesday, 11 December 1940 the
British had captured between 20,000 and 38,300 prisoners, seventy-three tanks,
237 guns and over 1,000 transport vehicles. The fighting cost the British and
Indians 624 killed, wounded and missing, with 153 of these coming from the 1st
Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Operation COMPASS had
therefore far exceeded expectations for a limited raid within three days. In
the process the military situation on Egypt’s western border was totally
recast, prompting a shift in British thinking.
