Operation Battleaxe

At dawn on 15 June 1941 the troops of Lieutenant General Noel Beresford-Peirse’s Western Desert Force went into the attack on the border between Egypt and Libya. Operation Battleaxe was the largest British offensive in the desert since the winter. It was meant to destroy the German and Italian forces at Sollum and the Halfaya Pass, then push west and break the siege of Tobruk, which had lasted two months. After three days it ended in failure. The British took Fort Capuzzo and beat off a German counter-attack, but they did not break the defences of the pass, and on 17 June a manoeuvre by the two German panzer divisions of Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel threatened to cut off their infantry. By the evening the British troops were back on their start lines. They had lost more than 90 tanks; the Germans had lost only twelve beyond recovery. It was the first battle in Africa in which sizeable German forces fought on the defensive, and the first in which the British in the desert learned the painful lesson of German 88 mm anti-aircraft guns used against tanks.

Clarifications

Popular war chronologies record under 15 June that Battleaxe tried to relieve besieged Tobruk and failed, and that the British suffered a heavy defeat at the Halfaya Pass, known as “Hellfire Pass”. The relief of Tobruk was indeed the operation’s further objective, though the first stage was about defeating the enemy on the frontier, and the British never came anywhere near the fortress. At the pass they suffered their first and most painful setback, but the fate of the operation was decided by the mobile battle in the desert around Sidi Omar and Sidi Suleiman on 16 and 17 June. The name “Hellfire Pass” stuck to Halfaya among British soldiers precisely after the fighting of June 1941.

Background: the “Tiger cubs” and pressure from London

For the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Archibald Wavell, the spring of 1941 was a string of defeats. In April Rommel took Cyrenaica from the British and seized the Halfaya Pass on the Egyptian frontier, and in Tobruk an encircled Australian and British garrison had been holding out since 10 April. The corps sent to Greece had to be evacuated, and at the end of May Crete was abandoned. At the same time Wavell was fighting a war with Iraq and finishing the campaign in East Africa, and on 8 June his troops entered Syria and Lebanon, which were controlled by the Vichy government.

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, nevertheless saw the main opportunity in the desert. From decrypted German signals he knew that Generalleutnant Friedrich Paulus, sent out to Africa, had judged Rommel’s position to be difficult. In April he forced through the dispatch of the Tiger convoy, with tanks and fighters, across the Mediterranean instead of round Africa. The convoy reached Alexandria on 12 May and, according to the British official history prepared by the team of Major General Ian Playfair, brought 82 cruiser tanks, 135 infantry tanks and 21 light tanks. Churchill called them his “Tiger cubs” and kept asking when they would go into action. A first, small attempt, Operation Brevity, won the British only the Halfaya Pass in mid-May, and on 27 May the Germans retook even that.

On 28 May Wavell issued his orders for Battleaxe. The Western Desert Force was first to defeat the enemy on the frontier and secure the Bardia–Sollum–Capuzzo–Sidi Azeiz area, then destroy his forces around Tobruk and El Adem, and finally reach Derna and Mechili. That same day, however, Wavell wrote to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General John Dill, that the infantry tanks were too slow for the desert and suffered losses from the powerful German anti-tank guns, while the cruiser tanks were little better than the German medium tanks. He did not think the first stage would fail, but he feared that afterwards there would not be enough strength left for the second. The timetable was set by the tanks: unloading, desert modifications and overhauls took longer than expected, and the 7th Armoured Division had effectively not existed as a fighting formation since February. Its commander, Major General Michael O’Moore Creagh, secured a few days for training, and the attack was fixed for 15 June, to the irritation of Churchill, who bombarded Wavell with questions.

Plan and forces

The British had about 25,000 men. According to the official history, about 90 cruiser tanks, including 50 new Crusaders, and about a hundred heavily armoured but slow Matilda infantry tanks went into the battle. There were too few lorries to bypass the frontier defences in a wide sweep; they had to be taken.

The main task went to Major General Frank Messervy’s 4th Indian Division, with the 22nd Guards Brigade and the 4th Armoured Brigade with its Matildas placed under its command. On the right, Brigadier Reginald Savory’s 11th Indian Infantry Brigade – Scottish Highlanders of the Cameron Highlanders, a Rajputana and a Mahratta battalion, and two squadrons of Matildas – was to take the Halfaya Pass simultaneously from above, from the plateau, and from below, from the coastal plain. In the centre the Matildas and the Guardsmen were to attack Point 206 and Fort Capuzzo. On the open desert flank on the left, the 7th Armoured Brigade with the cruiser tanks and the 7th Armoured Division Support Group were to advance on Hafid Ridge, west of Capuzzo, and destroy the German tanks when they moved to counter-attack. If a great tank battle developed, the Matildas were to join Creagh – when, the two divisional commanders were to agree between themselves. The Tobruk garrison was given no task in the first stage.

Beresford-Peirse placed his headquarters at Sidi Barrani, more than five hours’ drive across the desert from the battlefield, because only from there did he have reliable communications with the air force. The Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Middle East, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, was instructed to accept the risk of weakening other fronts for the sake of Battleaxe and, according to the official history, assembled 98 serviceable fighters and 105 bombers. Many of the crews, however, had no experience of fighting the Germans.

Rommel’s preparations

After retaking Halfaya the Germans set about fortifying the frontier properly. Responsibility for it lay with Generalmajor Walter Neumann-Silkow’s 15th Panzer Division, while the Sollum–Musaid–Capuzzo area was held by three battalions of the Italian Trento motorised division. At the Halfaya Pass, on Point 206 and on Point 208 on Hafid Ridge, well-camouflaged strongpoints prepared for all-round defence were built. The pass was defended by a German–Italian battle group under Hauptmann der Reserve Wilhelm Bach, a battalion commander in the 104th Rifle Regiment and a pastor by profession, which according to German accounts numbered about 900 men, supported by Major Pardi’s Italian artillery.

The defenders’ most dangerous weapon was the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun, which could also fire over open sights. On the frontier the guns were dug in so that, as Rommel wrote, with their barrels horizontal almost nothing showed above the ground. According to the official history there were few of them: probably five in the Halfaya area, four on Hafid Ridge and four with the 8th Panzer Regiment. Much of the damage was also done by the more numerous German 37 mm and 50 mm anti-tank guns.

Rommel expected an attack. At about 9 p.m. on 14 June he put the Sollum front on alert, and Generalmajor Johann von Ravenstein’s 5th Light Division, stationed south of Tobruk, was to be ready to march to the frontier. What worried him most was the shortage of fuel – in his memoirs he wrote that his movements would be dictated more by the fuel gauge than by tactical requirements. According to the official history the 8th Panzer Regiment had about a hundred tanks and the 5th Panzer Regiment 96; in both, roughly half were gun tanks. Italian tanks did not fight in the battle.

15 June: Halfaya, Capuzzo and Hafid Ridge

In the air the first day belonged to the RAF, which won local superiority. On the ground it brought mixed fortunes. At the Halfaya Pass everything went wrong. The battery that was to support the attack on the upper end of the pass got stuck in soft sand, and the commander of the squadron of Matildas of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment, Major Miles, led his tanks into the attack without covering fire. The hidden guns opened fire at close range and, according to the official history, destroyed eleven of the twelve tanks attacking above the pass, Miles’s among them. The Cameron Highlanders were thrown back. Below, four of the six Matildas ran onto mines that were thought to have been cleared and blocked the road for the rest. The Rajputana and Mahratta battalions went for the pass several times and were thrown back each time; in the last attack the commanding officer of the Rajputana Rifles was killed.

In the centre things went better. At about 10.30 a.m. the 4th Royal Tank Regiment attacked Point 206 and drew a battalion of the German 8th Panzer Regiment into the fight, and at about 1.30 p.m. Messervy sent the 7th Royal Tank Regiment against Fort Capuzzo, and it broke through the defences. Point 206 and the fort fell, and the Guardsmen took several hundred prisoners. The infantry, however, arrived late, and the tanks waited a long time on the captured ground instead of reorganising and replenishing their ammunition. German counter-attacks in the evening were beaten off. For the 15th Panzer Division it was a day of anxiety: Halfaya was cut off, and the threat of a breakthrough towards Bardia had not passed.

On the desert flank the 7th Armoured Brigade reached Hafid Ridge at about 9 a.m. and found a fortified position in front of it. The cruiser tanks, supported by only a single troop of field guns, attacked three times, “rather blindly”, as the official history puts it. Their 40 mm (2-pounder) guns had only armour-piercing shot and could not deal effectively with gun crews. In the afternoon, when the Germans seemed to be withdrawing, the Crusaders crossed the second ridge and ran into anti-tank fire at close range; within minutes more than ten of them were destroyed or damaged. In the evening a battalion of the 5th Panzer Regiment came up from the west, and the 7th Armoured Brigade was down to 48 serviceable tanks. The day’s balance was thus mixed: defeat at Halfaya, success in the centre, failure at Hafid.

16 June: the counter-attack at Capuzzo and the fight at Sidi Omar

Rommel knew the British position better than their own command did: radio interception and captured documents gave him a fairly accurate picture of their strength, losses and orders for the following day. He decided that the 15th Panzer Division would attack Capuzzo at dawn to pin down the Matildas there, while the 5th Light Division, which had reached Sidi Azeiz by midnight, would swing round the British through the desert towards Sidi Omar and Sidi Suleiman, into their rear. “Today the matter will be decided. The fighting will be hard, so you will understand that I cannot sleep,” he wrote to his wife at 2.30 in the morning.

The counter-attack on Capuzzo collapsed. The Matildas of the 4th Armoured Brigade, the 31st Field Regiment and an infantry battalion of the Buffs shattered the 8th Panzer Regiment. According to Rommel, of the 80 tanks with which the 15th Panzer Division had gone into action, 30 were left by late morning; the rest had burned out or were awaiting repair. The Scots Guards, who had taken Musaid during the night, then captured the barracks at Sollum. Messervy, however, judged the situation too tense to hand the Matildas over to the armoured division. At Halfaya the Indian brigade renewed its attack twice, again without result. The encircled defenders of the pass were running out of supplies but held on.

In the west the 7th Armoured Brigade and the columns of the Support Group fought the 5th Light Division all day, and the battle moved along the frontier towards Sidi Omar. German tactics proved deadly. Panzer IV tanks fired high-explosive shells from a range at which the British 2-pounders could not reply and forced the British field artillery to withdraw. When the British tanks moved forward, the German ones fell back behind a screen of anti-tank guns. The Crusaders and the older cruiser tanks also broke down frequently. By the evening the two British armoured units had only about twenty serviceable tanks left.

Rommel realised that the moment of decision had come. In the afternoon he ordered the 15th Panzer Division to leave only the bare minimum at Capuzzo and move to the northern flank of the victorious 5th Light Division, towards Sidi Suleiman. “A battle can often be decided by a mere unexpected shift of the main weight,” he noted. In the evening, guessing that the British intended to attack the next day with their combined armour, he ordered both divisions to move off at 4.30 a.m., ahead of them. Creagh and Messervy, meanwhile, agreed that on 17 June the Matildas would at last pass to the 7th Armoured Division, and Wavell flew in to Sidi Barrani.

17 June: Rommel’s manoeuvre and the retreat

At dawn both German divisions attacked. The 4th Armoured Brigade held the 15th Panzer Division, but further south the 5th Panzer Regiment pushed back the 7th Armoured Brigade and at about 8 a.m. reached Sidi Suleiman. The Guardsmen at Capuzzo and the Indians at Halfaya were in danger of being cut off. Communications were failing, and only at 9.30 was Creagh able to report that he had just 22 cruiser tanks and 17 Matildas, and to ask Beresford-Peirse to fly to him. The Germans intercepted the message. “It sounded suspiciously as though the British commander no longer felt equal to the situation,” wrote Rommel, who decided to draw the net tight and directed both divisions on the Halfaya Pass.

Wavell decided that the decision had to be taken on the spot and flew with Beresford-Peirse to the headquarters of the 7th Armoured Division near Halfway House. When they landed at 11.45, Messervy was already acting: he had concluded that only an immediate withdrawal would save the Guardsmen, and at 11.00 he had ordered the infantry to fall back from Capuzzo and Halfaya. Wavell approved his decision, cancelled the planned attack by the 7th Armoured Division and called off the operation, after which he flew back to Cairo, where the business of the Syrian campaign awaited him.

The withdrawal was covered by the remnants of the two armoured brigades and by the air force; according to the official history only one German dive-bombing raid was effective, but it caused almost a hundred casualties. The German divisions reached the Halfaya Pass soon after 4 p.m. and turned north instead of barring the way to the British, who slipped out through the gap between Sidi Omar and Halfaya. Rommel was furious at the lost opportunity. By nightfall the British troops were back on the Sidi Barrani–Sofafi line, and the Germans and Italians had returned to their positions on the frontier.

Losses

According to the British official history the Western Desert Force lost 122 killed, 588 wounded and 259 missing, 969 men in all. Of about 190 cruiser and infantry tanks, 27 cruisers and 64 Matildas were lost – in action or through breakdowns – 91 in all. Many of them were only damaged, but the British had no recovery equipment and had to abandon them. The RAF lost 33 fighters and three bombers.

German documents cited by the official history show 93 killed, 350 wounded and 235 missing. Only twelve German tanks were destroyed beyond recovery, and about fifty were damaged or broken down – the Germans, who remained in possession of the battlefield, could recover and repair them. The Luftwaffe lost ten aircraft. Italian losses cannot be established precisely; some studies give close to 600 killed, wounded and missing. Both sides greatly overestimated the enemy’s losses: the British spoke of almost a hundred German tanks destroyed, Rommel of more than 220 British.

Why Battleaxe failed

The official history points above all to haste. Some of the crews had not sat in a tank since February, some had received tanks of new types a few days before the battle, and the armoured brigades had not trained together. One had fast cruiser tanks, the other slow, short-ranged Matildas – like “ill-matched partners in a three-legged race”. The Matildas were moreover given two roles at once: assaulting fortifications with the infantry and supporting the cruisers in a tank battle. Beresford-Peirse, five hours’ drive away, could not direct the battle in time, and British communications were unreliable and easy to intercept.

In his summing-up of the “Battle of Sollum” Rommel paid tribute to his opponent: he called Wavell’s strategic plan excellent and his boldness in concentrating his forces a quality that set him apart from other British commanders. The British weakness, in his view, lay in the slowness of the infantry tanks and their guns, which were too small and had no high-explosive shells. He called Halfaya, held by Bach – and by Major Pardi’s Italian artillery, as Rommel pointedly stressed – the key to victory. On 9 July Bach received the Knight’s Cross for this defence and promotion to major.

The Germans drew the British tanks into the fire of concealed anti-tank guns and saved their own tanks for fighting infantry and artillery. They also had an efficient tank recovery and repair service, which the British almost entirely lacked. During the battle the British did not yet fully recognise the role of the 88 mm guns, but the “eighty-eight” soon grew in their eyes into a legend.

Its place in the war

For Churchill the defeat was, as he wrote, “a most bitter blow”: victory was to have destroyed Rommel’s forces, relieved Tobruk and driven the enemy back beyond Benghazi, and it was for this that the Tiger convoy had been risked. A few days later he decided to replace Wavell with the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Claude Auchinleck. Creagh was replaced by Brigadier William Gott, and Beresford-Peirse was transferred to the Sudan in October.

A week after the battle Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and for Hitler the Libyan desert became a secondary theatre; for Britain, however, it remained the only place where its army was fighting the Germans on land. For five months both sides built up their strength. Tobruk had to wait for relief until November and Operation Crusader, in which the British, now as the Eighth Army, bypassed the frontier defences in a wide sweep through the desert – which in June, for lack of transport, they had been unable to do. The German–Italian garrison of Halfaya, cut off at that time, capitulated only in January 1942, and Bach was taken prisoner. Rommel, who at Sollum had shown for the first time how to combine defence with an armoured counter-stroke, was promoted to General der Panzertruppe on 1 July 1941.