The Battle of Leros

Before dawn on 12 November 1943 German landing craft approached the north-east coast of the island of Leros in the Dodecanese, and early that afternoon parachutes opened over the Rachi ridge, at the island’s narrowest point. So began the Battle of Leros – the most important and the last major engagement of the Dodecanese campaign. After five days of fighting, on 16 November, the British commander, Brigadier Robert Tilney, surrendered, and late that evening the commander of the Italian garrison, Rear Admiral Luigi Mascherpa, also gave up. According to figures cited in the literature, some 3,200 British and some 5,350 Italian soldiers were taken prisoner.

Chronologies record under 12 November: “Germans defeat British forces in the Dodecanese islands off the Turkish coast”, and under 16 November: “The Battle of Leros ends with the surrender of British and Italian forces”. Both dates are correct, and both entries concern the same engagement. The first needs one clarification: on 12 November the Germans had not yet “defeated” the British in the islands, but had only begun landing on one of them – Leros. Kos had already fallen on 3–4 October, and the British abandoned the remaining islands after the fall of Leros. The second entry matches the course of events.

A fortress without an umbrella

Leros, a small island deeply indented with bays, had been a heavily fortified naval base under Italian rule, with an excellent deep-water harbour at Portolago (today Lakki). Benito Mussolini is said to have called it the “Corregidor of the Mediterranean”. After the announcement of Italy’s capitulation on 8 September 1943, the Italian garrison of some 7,500–8,000 men, most of them sailors and battery crews, rejected the German demand to surrender. In September, in line with Winston Churchill’s design, British troops began to arrive on the island – this was the start of the Dodecanese campaign. The Prime Minister hoped that seizing the Italian islands would open the way to the Balkans and persuade neutral Turkey to enter the war.

From the beginning of the campaign the British weakness was the lack of air power. The Germans had seized the only airfield in the Dodecanese, on Kos, on 3–4 October, and from then on Leros lay beyond the range of single-engined fighters flying from Cyprus and North Africa. The Luftwaffe bombed the island from 26 September almost daily; according to figures cited in the literature, between 7 October and 11 November it attacked an average of eight times a day. General Dwight Eisenhower, focused on the campaign in Italy, refused to divert larger air forces to the Aegean, and talks with the Turks about the use of their airfields came to nothing.

Defenders and attackers

At the beginning of November the British garrison of Leros numbered some 3,000 men from three infantry battalions: the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers (Lieutenant Colonel Maurice French), the 4th Battalion The Buffs and the 1st Battalion King’s Own Royal Regiment, reinforced by detachments of the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Boat Squadron. Some of the Buffs reached the island only at the end of October – on the night of 23–24 October the destroyer HMS Eclipse, which was carrying them, sank after striking a mine. On 5 November Brigadier Robert Tilney took command. Instead of keeping reserves in the interior of the island, he spread his forces along the coast to defend every beach, which was later judged to be one of the causes of the defeat.

The Italians had thirteen coastal batteries and more than a dozen anti-aircraft batteries, but most of the guns stood in open emplacements and had been the target of air raids for weeks. Rear Admiral Mascherpa, who had earlier objected to being placed under a British commander, was on strained terms with Tilney. The British brigadier assigned the Italians solely to the defence of the fixed positions and made no provision for their taking part in counter-attacks.

The German operation was prepared by Lieutenant General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, commander of the 22nd Infantry Division, who had taken Kos a month earlier. The landing was originally planned for 9 October under the codename Leopard, but it was delayed when British warships destroyed a German convoy on the night of 6–7 October. For several weeks the Germans gathered fresh landing craft, dispersing and hiding them among the Aegean islands. In the end the operation – codenamed Taifun (“Typhoon”) in some sources – was carried out by three battalions of the 22nd Division, a battalion of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger (PL) Regiment and seaborne troops of the Brandenburg unit – in all, according to the British historian Ian Gooderson, about 4,500 men. They were supported by Ju 87 and Ju 88 dive-bombers, which flew some 190 sorties over the island on 7–11 November.

12 November: landings and paratroops

British motor torpedo boats and an Italian MAS boat spotted the German vessels between 3 and 3.30 a.m., but the warning reached headquarters late – it was not even certain whether these might be British ships bringing reinforcements. At about 4.30 a.m. the first troops landed on the north-east coast. Some of the landings failed: Italian batteries drove off a convoy heading for Gurna Bay, and in the north a battery near Blefuti sank two landing craft and forced the rest to turn back, with several dozen Germans who had already got ashore being taken prisoner. In the east, however, below Mount Clidi and near Pandeli Bay, the Germans secured footholds and after heavy fighting took the Italian battery on Clidi.

Early in the afternoon bombers and fighter-bombers attacked the isthmus between Gurna and Alinda Bays, and at 1.27 p.m. Ju 52 transports dropped – according to various sources – between about 470 and 600 paratroops onto the Rachi ridge. Jumping from low altitude under the fire of Italian and British anti-aircraft guns cost them heavy losses, but the survivors held on to the ridge and cut Leros in two. The 4th Buffs and a company of the King’s Own in the south of the island were cut off from the rest of the garrison. After capturing one of the batteries the Germans shot its commander, Second Lieutenant Antonino Lo Presti – the first of several such murders of Italian officers during the battle.

13–15 November: counter-attacks without cover

On the night of 12–13 November the Germans brought in reinforcements, and in the morning they dropped another wave of paratroops. Counter-attacks by the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the King’s Own, carried out by shattered companies without communications and without air support, ended in heavy losses. The Buffs in the south fared better, taking some 130 prisoners. The Italian gunners often defended their positions to the last gun; after taking the Ciano battery on Clidi, the Germans shot its officers. Mascherpa asked General Mario Soldarelli on Samos for reinforcements and air cover – in vain.

The Royal Navy did what it could, but only at night. Destroyers shelled German positions and landing craft, and on the night of 14–15 November they landed some 500 men in the harbour of Lakki, including companies of the 2nd Battalion Royal West Kent brought over from Samos. By day the Luftwaffe ruled the skies over and around the island. On 13 November a Dornier Do 217 sank the destroyer HMS Dulverton, which was carrying supplies for Leros, with a Henschel Hs 293 guided missile; 78 sailors were killed. British aircraft from Cyprus and Africa reached the island rarely and only for short periods.

On 14 November the British retook some positions and, with the help of the Italian artillery, prevented the paratroops from linking up with the seaborne troops. That same day, however, the Germans took Alinda and Grifo Bays and the heights of Clidi, Vedetta and Appetici. The commander of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice French, was killed in the fighting for Appetici. On the night of 14–15 November the Germans broke into the small town of Leros, where Italian sailors defended the castle to the end. On 15 November the fighting swung back and forth, but the German footholds kept growing while the defenders were running out of ammunition and strength. On the night of 15–16 November the Germans landed – according to British estimates – another thousand men with artillery; the commander of the Long Range Desert Group, Lieutenant Colonel John Easonsmith, was killed in the fighting in the town.

16 November: surrender

On the morning of 16 November the Germans attacked Mount Meraviglia, where Tilney’s headquarters was located. The Italian battery on its slope put up a fierce defence, but when German troops approached the command post in the afternoon, the brigadier judged the situation hopeless and surrendered at about 5.30 p.m. Mascherpa, who at midday had rejected a German call to surrender, laid down his arms only at around 10 p.m., after further demands from the Germans and from Tilney himself. Some Italian batteries that had not received word of the surrender were still firing on 17 November. The Buffs, cut off in the south, did not know of the surrender and made no attempt to escape, so almost the entire battalion was captured; about 90 men of the Royal West Kents got off the island.

According to the figures given in the literature, some 3,200 British (including about 200 officers) and some 5,350 Italians were taken prisoner. After the surrender the Germans shot several more Italian officers, among them Commander Vittorio Meneghini, captain of the destroyer Euro, which had been sunk in October. In the following weeks the prisoners, Mascherpa among them, were shipped to Piraeus.

Losses

The data on losses are incomplete and inconsistent. According to British tallies, the British lost some 600 killed and missing in the Battle of Leros, of whom fewer than two hundred fell on the island, while the rest were lost at sea with the ships that were sunk. Italian losses are estimated at about 300 killed and missing, and those of the Greek navy at several dozen; about 20 civilians were also killed. A German communiqué issued after the capture of the island gave 1,109 killed, wounded and missing, while other tallies speak of about 500 killed and missing. The Germans also lost many landing craft and several dozen aircraft.

General Henry Maitland Wilson, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, reported the fall of Leros to Churchill with the words that the island had fallen “after a very gallant struggle against overwhelming air attack” and that success had been within reach. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brooke, had written in his diary as early as October that Middle East Command had got itself into a position in which it could neither hold Leros nor evacuate it, and that the only hope would be airfields in Turkey.

Its place in the war

The fall of Leros sealed the fate of the whole Dodecanese campaign. On 17 November dive-bombers attacked Samos; on the night of 19–20 November British and Greek troops were evacuated from the island through Turkish waters, and some 2,500 Italians surrendered on 22 November. Earlier, on 18 November, the Germans occupied Patmos, Fournoi and Ikaria. Only the islet of Kastellorizo remained in Allied hands. The Germans held the Dodecanese until the end of the war; the garrisons on Rhodes and Leros surrendered only in May 1945.

The Germans handed Rear Admiral Mascherpa over to the authorities of the Italian Social Republic, set up by Mussolini after his rescue. Tried together with Admiral Inigo Campioni, the former Governor of the Italian Aegean Islands, he was sentenced to death for having defended the island against the Germans and was shot in Parma on 24 May 1944. After the war both men received Italy’s highest military decoration, the Gold Medal of Military Valour. Their fate was part of the wider tragedy of the Italian soldiers who refused to collaborate with the Germans after Operation Achse – tens of thousands were deported to camps, and thousands died on overcrowded prisoner ships. General Müller, the conqueror of Kos and Leros, was convicted in Athens after the war of war crimes committed on Crete and executed in 1947.

For the British the Battle of Leros was a painful and humiliating defeat. It was later called the last major defeat of the British Army in the Second World War and one of the last great German victories, and in Britain it was compared with Gallipoli – another of Churchill’s ventures in the waters off the Turkish coast that had ended in disaster. Above all, the assumption that the islands could be held without command of the air had proved false: the Luftwaffe, though already weaker on other fronts, gave the Germans in these waters an advantage that decided the fate of both the ships and the garrisons.

The defeat also had political consequences. Turkey, whose entry into the war had been one of the aims of the campaign, became more firmly attached to its neutrality on seeing that the Allies could not hold even the islands off its coast. The Americans, who had distrusted Churchill’s Mediterranean plans from the outset, saw Leros as confirmation of their fears. A few days later, at Cairo and Tehran, Churchill once again put to his allies the possibilities of operations in the Aegean and of bringing Turkey into the war, but they found no support. The main effort of the Western Allies was directed towards the landing in France in 1944, and the eastern Mediterranean remained a secondary front until the autumn of 1944, when the Germans withdrew from Greece.