The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins

At 10 p.m. on 30 August 1942 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s German-Italian Panzer Army Africa launched an attack on the southern sector of the front at El Alamein. The operation, which the Germans called Brandung (“Surf”), was meant to outflank the left wing of the British Eighth Army, get into its rear and open the road to Alexandria and the Suez Canal. From the very first night things began to go differently from the plan: the minefields proved deeper than expected, British aircraft circled over the columns, and within a few hours the Afrika Korps had lost its commander and one of its division commanders. The next day the German tanks, instead of racing towards the coast, ran straight into a prepared defensive position on Alam el Halfa ridge. So began the battle that was to be the Axis’s last attempt to conquer Egypt.

Some chronologies record under 10 August that Rommel began an offensive at El Alamein and was back on his start lines by September, and under 30 August the beginning of the Battle of Alam el Halfa. Nothing of the kind happened at the front on 10 August: both armies were digging in after the July fighting, and Rommel did not attack until the night of 30–31 August. The second half of the first entry, on the other hand, is accurate – at the beginning of September his troops did indeed return almost to their starting positions.

A race against time

After the First Battle of El Alamein, which ended in the last days of July, both sides knew that the lull would not last long. The last appreciation of the situation by General Claude Auchinleck, drawn up on 27 July, predicted that Rommel would attack before the end of August, most probably in the southern sector. Rommel himself reasoned in much the same way. He knew that great convoys carrying tanks, guns and men were sailing round Africa to Egypt and that within a few weeks British superiority would become overwhelming. If he was ever to take Egypt, he had to strike now.

In August his army did indeed rebuild itself. According to German and British tallies, the number of serviceable German tanks rose over the month from 133 to 234, and of Italian tanks from 96 to 281; reinforcements arrived by air from Crete, among them the 164th Light Division “Afrika”, Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke’s parachute brigade and the Italian Folgore Parachute Division. Most of the Italian tanks, however, were obsolete and worn out, and the most dangerous German machines – Panzer IIIs and IVs with long-barrelled guns – made up only part of the tank park. On the other side, the Eighth Army had some 700 tanks at the front, including about 160 American Grants with 75 mm guns, and ever more 6-pounder anti-tank guns.

Rommel’s most serious problem was fuel. His supply lines stretched back to ports hundreds of kilometres away – Tobruk, Benghazi and, at worst, Tripoli – and ships sailing from Italy fell prey to submarines and aircraft. In this war of supply Malta played a key role. The Pedestal convoy, from which the tanker Ohio reached the island on 15 August, gave Malta the fuel and stores that allowed its submarines and aircraft to go on attacking Italian convoys. According to figures cited in the literature, in August the Axis lost at sea roughly a third of the supplies sent to Africa and more than 40 per cent of the fuel. Rommel demanded several thousand tonnes of petrol and ammunition from the Italian Comando Supremo and from Marshal Ugo Cavallero before the attack began; only part of it had arrived by the end of August. The tanker San Andrea, carrying more than three thousand tonnes of fuel, was sunk by Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers on the very day the offensive began, and further tankers went to the bottom in the first days of September.

The final decision was settled by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, German Commander-in-Chief South. He promised to make fuel available from Luftwaffe stocks – between 1,000 and 1,500 tonnes, according to German sources – and to fly it in if the ships failed. Rommel’s staff officers, Siegfried Westphal and Friedrich von Mellenthin, advised waiting for the tankers; Rommel decided not to wait. The timing was dictated as well: the attack had originally been planned for the full moon around 26 August, and every day of delay meant darker nights and more British tanks at the front. Rommel was also ill – for weeks he had been suffering from stomach complaints and exhaustion, and at the end of August he even asked Berlin for a replacement. When the request was not granted, he led the offensive himself.

Plan Brandung

The El Alamein position was a narrow bottleneck: from the sea to the Qattara Depression, impassable to tanks, it was about 60 kilometres. The northern and central sectors of the front were strongly fortified, so Rommel chose the southern one, between the New Zealanders’ positions around Alam Nayil and the hill of Qaret el Himeimat on the edge of the depression. He believed this sector to be thinly held and lightly mined.

Under the plan, the Italian XXI Corps, with the German 164th Division and part of Ramcke’s paratroopers, was to feign an attack in the north and pin down the defenders. The main blow was to be delivered by the German 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions of the Afrika Korps and the 90th Light Division, supported by the Italian XX Corps with the Ariete and Littorio Armoured Divisions and the Trieste Motorised Division. The strike force was to pass through the minefields by night, advance 40–50 kilometres east by dawn and then wheel north towards the coast road, cut the Eighth Army off from its rear and destroy it in an open battle of manoeuvre – the kind Rommel had won at Gazala. Everything depended on speed: the plan did not allow for prolonged fighting, as there would not be enough fuel for it.

Montgomery’s trap

On the other side, much had changed in August. After Winston Churchill’s visit to Cairo on his way to Moscow, Auchinleck was dismissed, General Harold Alexander was appointed Commander-in-Chief Middle East, and on 13 August Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army. The new commander forbade any thought of further retreat, ordered the plans for withdrawal to positions on the Nile to be destroyed and announced that the army would fight where it stood. In mid-August Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks took over XIII Corps in the southern sector.

Montgomery knew Rommel’s intentions. The British were reading German signals enciphered on the Enigma machine (the intelligence code-named Ultra), and in the second half of August they learnt of an appreciation in which Rommel announced an attack on the southern flank. The exact date was not known from the intercepts – Rommel issued the attack order only the day before – but the direction and intention were clear. The preparations of Auchinleck’s staff also proved useful: as early as July it had foreseen such a manoeuvre and identified Alam el Halfa ridge as the key to the defence. Historians still argue over how much of the battle plan was Montgomery’s own idea and how much he inherited from his predecessor and his deputy chief of staff, Eric Dorman-Smith; in his memoirs Montgomery claimed it as his own.

The defensive plan was simple. The southern sector, roughly 20 kilometres from the New Zealand positions to Himeimat, was thinly held but heavily mined. It was screened by two brigades of the 7th Armoured Division – the 7th Motor Brigade and the 4th Light Armoured Brigade – which were to inflict as much loss as possible on the enemy and then fall back. The main position lay behind them, on Alam el Halfa ridge, some 25–30 kilometres south-east of El Alamein station. It was held by two brigades of the newly arrived 44th Infantry Division with artillery, and at its western end the 22nd Armoured Brigade dug in with 92 Grants and several dozen light tanks. Montgomery issued an order that broke with the practice of previous months: the tanks were not to charge the German anti-tank guns but to fight from prepared, stationary positions, together with the artillery and anti-tank guns. To their left stood the 8th Armoured Brigade, with the 23rd Brigade and its Valentine tanks in reserve.

According to Montgomery’s chief of staff, Major General Francis de Guingand, the British also planted a false “going” map on the Germans, on which the treacherous sandy areas in front of the ridge were marked as good for vehicles. Whether the ruse actually influenced the German commanders’ decisions is not known; historians treat the story with caution.

The night of 30–31 August

The attack went in by the light of an almost full moon. In the north and centre the Italians and Germans carried out their diversionary attacks according to plan; the strongest of them, on Ruweisat Ridge, brought temporary gains that were retaken by a counter-attack at dawn. In the south the columns of the Afrika Korps and the Italian XX Corps entered the minefields at about two in the morning. It immediately became clear that the fields were much deeper than reconnaissance had suggested, and the British outposts stronger than had been thought. Engineers cleared gaps under fire, and aircraft appeared overhead. Fairey Albacores of the Fleet Air Arm dropped flares to illuminate targets, and Vickers Wellington bombers bombed the crowded vehicle columns.

That same night the Afrika Korps lost its leadership. The corps commander, General of Panzer Troops Walther Nehring, was badly wounded by a bomb splinter during an air raid, and the commander of the 21st Panzer Division, Major General Georg von Bismarck, was killed in front of the British minefields – according to some sources by a mine, according to others by artillery or mortar fire, or in an air raid. Major General Gustav von Vaerst, commander of the 15th Panzer Division, took over the corps, and Colonel Carl-Hans Lungershausen the 21st Division. Rommel even considered breaking off the operation, but after consulting his chief of staff, Fritz Bayerlein, he decided to continue it in modified form.

At dawn on 31 August the leading elements of the Afrika Korps stood only a few kilometres beyond the British minefields, not 40–50 kilometres to the east as the plan had envisaged. There was no longer either time or fuel for a deep sweep towards the coast. Rommel therefore shortened the outflanking move and ordered the panzer divisions to wheel north earlier – straight at Alam el Halfa ridge, in other words where the Eighth Army was waiting for them.

31 August: the attack on the ridge

Regrouping after the night’s fighting took many hours, while the 7th Armoured Division harassed the columns’ exposed flank. Only at about 1 p.m. did the 15th Panzer Division move off, followed an hour later by the 21st. The march over soft, sandy ground was slow, and the tanks consumed far more fuel than had been assumed.

Towards evening the German tanks reached the western end of the ridge, where the 22nd Armoured Brigade stood. New Panzer IVs with long 75 mm guns opened fire at long range and knocked out several Grants, and the British brigade’s most forward regiment suffered heavy losses. The Grants, with their main gun mounted in the hull, could not take full advantage of cover. But the line held. When the Germans came closer, they ran into fire from tanks, anti-tank guns and the artillery of the 44th Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. An attempt to outflank the British position was stopped by anti-tank guns. At dusk, with fuel running out, Vaerst pulled back his tanks. In that day’s fighting, according to the British official history, each side lost about 20 tanks; the Italian armoured divisions, delayed in the minefields, did not arrive in time to take part.

Throughout the night of 31 August to 1 September British bombers circled over the Axis divisions crowded into the low ground in front of the ridge. The Western Desert air force, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Coningham and supported by the first American squadrons, enjoyed decisive superiority over the front; German fighters rarely got through to the escorted bomber formations. The attacks went on day and night, and their chief victims were the lorries carrying fuel and ammunition without which the tanks could not fight.

Place in the war

After the first two days the battle was effectively decided, although it went on for almost another week. On 1 September the 21st Panzer Division, probably for lack of fuel, hardly moved, and the 15th Division’s attack on the eastern flank of the 22nd Brigade was stopped by the 8th Armoured Brigade. On the morning of 2 September Rommel decided to withdraw, citing to the high command the lack of fuel, the enemy’s air superiority and the loss of surprise. Montgomery did not throw his armoured divisions into a pursuit, for which some historians later criticised him. The only major British attack, Operation Beresford – a night assault by General Bernard Freyberg’s 2nd New Zealand Division and the British 132nd Brigade on the night of 3–4 September – broke down with heavy losses. By 5 September the Axis forces were back almost on their start lines, retaining only the captured British minefields near Himeimat. According to the British official history, the Axis lost some 2,900 killed, wounded and missing in the battle (about 1,850 of them Germans) and 49 tanks, and the Eighth Army about 1,750 men and 67 tanks.

Rommel attributed the defeat above all to air power and the lack of fuel. He did not know that the British had learnt his intentions from intercepted signals. All three causes were linked: fuel was short because ships were going to the bottom on routes the British knew about thanks to intelligence, and aircraft and warships from Malta and Egypt were able to sink them. Alam el Halfa was the Axis’s last offensive in Egypt. From then on the initiative in North Africa lay with the Allies, and Rommel – who in September left for Germany for medical treatment – could only wait for Montgomery’s blow. It came at the end of October, in the Second Battle of El Alamein, and a few days after it ended the Allies landed in French North Africa.

For Montgomery it was his first victory and the beginning of his legend; for the soldiers of the Eighth Army, proof that Rommel could be beaten if one did not play by his rules. The debate among historians over how much of the credit for this victory belongs to the new commander and how much to Auchinleck’s preparations, material superiority, air power and intelligence continues to this day. What is beyond doubt is that at Alam el Halfa, for the first time in this campaign, British tanks, infantry, artillery and aircraft fought a battle according to a single plan – and that the Axis lost it before its tanks reached their objective.