Swordfishes over Tobruk

On 5 July 1941 General Claude Auchinleck took over command of British forces in the Middle East in Cairo from General Archibald Wavell. More than seven hundred kilometres to the west, in Tobruk, besieged since April, the Australian and British troops of Major General Leslie Morshead were holding out for the third month, and the fortress’s only supply route was the sea. From his first day the new commander had to answer the prime minister’s question of when, and indeed whether, he would relieve Tobruk.

Some war chronologies combine three items under this date: Auchinleck’s assumption of command, the sinking of an Italian destroyer in Tobruk harbour by British torpedo aircraft, and the sinking of two more there on 20 July. The first concerns July 1941. The other two describe events of exactly a year earlier: on 5 and 20 July 1940, when Tobruk was the main Italian naval base in eastern Libya, Fairey Swordfish aircraft from the carrier HMS Eagle, operating from a landing ground in Egypt, sank three destroyers in its harbour. In July 1941 the port was in British hands and no Italian warship could lie there. Both stories are worth recalling: the July raids of 1940 and Tobruk a year later, when the roles had been reversed.

Auchinleck in Cairo

Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to have Wavell and Auchinleck exchange posts after the failure of Operation Battleaxe, and informed both generals of his decision on 21 June. Auchinleck flew from India to Cairo on 1 July (the British official history says more generally that he arrived at the end of June), spent several days taking over from his predecessor and formally assumed command on 5 July. Wavell flew to India.

The new commander-in-chief was responsible for an area stretching from Libya to Iraq and from Syria to East Africa. When he took up his post, the campaign against the Vichy forces in Syria and Lebanon was still in progress, the resistance of the last Italian groupings in East Africa was flickering out, and since 22 June Germany had been at war with the Soviet Union, which in London aroused both hope and fear: hope that Erwin Rommel would get no reinforcements, and fear that after a quick victory in the East the Germans would strike through the Caucasus or Turkey at Iraq and the Suez Canal.

Churchill made his position clear at once. As the British official history summarises his telegram, it was for Auchinleck to decide whether and when to resume the offensive in the Western Desert, taking into account the Germans’ temporary preoccupation in Russia, the situation of Tobruk and the flow of reinforcements to the Axis forces in Libya, as well as the dangers that would arise if the operations in Syria were to become bogged down. An answer was expected as soon as possible. Auchinleck replied that he understood the importance of the problem, but that a new offensive in the desert was out of the question until the base in the Middle East was secure: Syria and Iraq had first to be occupied and consolidated and Cyprus made safe.

Behind this reply lay a dispute that would last all summer. In London the Cabinet’s Defence Committee believed that the initiative in the desert had to be seized as soon as possible and the Germans forced to fight in Africa while they were busy in Russia, preferably no later than September – until then, it was judged, the Germans would not threaten the Middle East from the north, whereas a Soviet defeat might change everything. Auchinleck and the other commanders-in-chief in Cairo replied that Battleaxe had shown how an attack by untrained divisions ended. To retake Cyrenaica he needed at least two, and preferably three, fully equipped and well-trained armoured divisions, whereas he had one, the 7th Armoured Division, and that without its full complement of cruiser tanks. The new American Stuart tanks had first to be modified for desert conditions. The telegrams settled nothing, and the Chiefs of Staff summoned Auchinleck to London. He flew there on 29 July together with the air commander in the Middle East, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, and persuaded the Cabinet to wait until November for the offensive.

On the other side of the front, too, commanders were changing. On 12 July, according to the British official history, General Italo Gariboldi was replaced as Italian commander-in-chief in Libya by General Ettore Bastico. Benito Mussolini hoped that the new commander would stand up to Rommel better and not allow the war in North Africa to become a German war.

Tobruk in July 1940: an Italian base

A year earlier Tobruk had looked quite different. When Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, the port was the main base of the Regia Marina in eastern Libya, the closest to the Egyptian border. It was home to Turbine-class destroyers, torpedo boats and auxiliary vessels, while the old armoured cruiser San Giorgio, permanently moored, served as a floating anti-aircraft battery. Transports from Italy put in at Tobruk with troops and supplies for the army of Marshal Italo Balbo and then, after his death over Tobruk on 28 June, for the forces of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani. Two of the destroyers, Zeffiro and Ostro, had arrived there on 1 July, after escaping British cruisers on 28 June in the action in which their flagship Espero was sunk.

The commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, wanted to cut the Italian supply lines to Libya from the first days of the war. Surface ships, however, could not enter a defended harbour, and RAF bombers dropping their bombs on it from high altitude achieved little. Cunningham therefore decided to use the torpedo aircraft from the carrier Eagle. Their crews were experienced, and the machines – slow and, at first sight, obsolete – could drop a torpedo from very low altitude and at close range.

The attack of 5 July 1940

At the beginning of July 1940 No. 813 Squadron of the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Navy’s air arm, moved from its base at Dekheila near Alexandria to a landing ground near Sidi Barrani, close to the Libyan border. On the morning of 5 July a British Sunderland flying boat photographed Tobruk harbour: it held several destroyers, torpedo boats and a number of merchant ships. In the late afternoon nine torpedo-armed Swordfish took off from Sidi Barrani. RAF airmen of No. 211 Squadron carried out reconnaissance and bombed the airfield, while fighters of No. 33 Squadron patrolled over the target.

According to Italian accounts, the alarm was raised at 8.06 p.m., but the aircraft were spotted only when they were already over the harbour, at about 8.20 p.m. Most of the destroyers’ crews were spending the night aboard the ships Liguria and Sabbia, and only the crews of the anti-aircraft guns had stayed on board the warships. The Swordfish, meeting no fighters, came down low over the water and dropped their torpedoes from a few hundred metres. The attack lasted a few minutes. The first torpedo struck Zeffiro forward, near the magazine; the explosion broke the destroyer in two, and the ship sank after about half an hour. A torpedo blew the bow off her sister ship Euro, which was beached; refloated, she did not return to service until the spring of 1941. The transport Manzoni sank, and the freighter Serenitas and the Lloyd Triestino liner Liguria were hit – according to the British official history Serenitas sank, while Italian sources say she was beached. All the aircraft returned to base. In his report Cunningham stressed that he owed the success to cooperation with the RAF.

The second attack: 20 July 1940

Two weeks later the British came back. On 19 July the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and British destroyers defeated two Italian cruisers off Cape Spada, and the damaged Giovanni delle Bande Nere escaped to Libya. The British command believed she had taken refuge in Tobruk and that same day sent RAF Blenheim bombers over the port, followed in the evening by torpedo aircraft. The cruiser was not at Tobruk – she had put in at Benghazi – but the destroyers Nembo, Ostro and Aquilone were there, moored in the same place as two weeks earlier.

Six Swordfish of No. 824 Squadron, also from Eagle and also flying from Sidi Barrani, appeared over the harbour at about 10.30 p.m. The night was cloudy and the anti-aircraft fire heavy, so the aircraft circled for a long time looking for targets. They did not go in to attack until about 1.30 a.m. on 20 July. At 1.32 a.m. a torpedo hit the freighter Sereno, which slowly went to the bottom. At 1.34 a.m. another struck Ostro near her after magazine; the explosion and fire sank the destroyer within ten minutes. According to Italian figures, 42 of her crew were killed or missing and 20 wounded, among them her captain. Three minutes later a torpedo hit Nembo amidships; she rolled over onto her side and settled on the shallow bottom, with the loss of 25 sailors. The British lost one aircraft, which made a forced landing in Italian-held territory on the way back. The Italians removed the guns from the wrecks of Nembo and Ostro and mounted them ashore in the defence of Bardia.

Within two weeks, then, the Swordfish had sunk three destroyers and several merchant ships at Tobruk, without losing a single aircraft in the attack of 5 July. The Italian navy learned that a port so close to the Egyptian border offered its ships no safety. The British drew the opposite conclusion: a small number of torpedo aircraft, used by surprise, at night or at dusk, could inflict greater losses on a fleet in harbour than a whole squadron of cruisers. Four months later the same idea, applied on a large scale, produced the attack on Taranto.

Tobruk a year later: a fortress supplied by sea

In July 1941 the wrecks of Italian warships lay in Tobruk harbour, but this time it was the British who had to defend their ships against air attack. The fortress, surrounded by Rommel’s forces since April, was supplied by the Mediterranean Fleet’s Inshore Squadron: destroyers, sloops, minesweepers, gunboats, small merchant ships and landing craft. The destroyers left Alexandria timed to enter Tobruk after dark, unload ammunition, food and replacements in an hour or two, take on wounded and prisoners, and be far from the coast before dawn. The soldiers called the route the “Tobruk Ferry”. The ships were hunted by German Ju 87 dive-bombers and Ju 88 bombers, often escorted by Bf 109 fighters. The harbour was regularly bombed and mined from the air. British fighters, withdrawn from the fortress to airfields in Egypt in April, could cover the ships mainly at the beginning and end of the voyage; as the British official history notes, almost every fighter in the Western Desert was sometimes assigned to this task.

July 1941 brought further losses. On 30 June the Australian destroyer HMAS Waterhen had been bombed and sunk. According to Royal Navy records, in the first days of July the destroyers HMS Decoy and the Australian HMAS Stuart, leaving Tobruk, were damaged by near misses and had to go for repairs. On the morning of 11 July, on her way back from the fortress, the destroyer HMS Defender was hit by German aircraft. The Australian HMAS Vendetta towed her for a while, but she sank a few miles north of Sidi Barrani; none of her crew was lost. During the night of 14–15 July Vendetta was damaged alongside the quay in Tobruk itself, and during the night of 22–23 July bombs damaged the destroyer HMS Hero in the harbour. German aircraft also sank at least two landing craft carrying supplies along the coast. Even so, the deliveries did not stop: besides the destroyers, the fast minelayers Abdiel and Latona, each able to carry several hundred tons of cargo, ran into the fortress.

The naval air arm that a year earlier had sunk Italian destroyers at Tobruk was fighting elsewhere in July 1941. Swordfish of No. 830 Squadron from Malta attacked convoys bound for Tripoli and mined the approaches to that port. Fleet Air Arm Albacore torpedo bombers, operating together with RAF bombers, bombed by night the small ports on the Cyrenaican coast through which the Axis forces brought supplies closer to the front: Bardia and Derna. The waters around Tobruk, however, remained the domain of Axis aircraft, and every run of the “Tobruk Ferry” was a risk.

Place in the war

The July 1940 attacks on Tobruk were among the first proofs that the old Swordfish biplanes could strike effectively at ships in harbour, and a foretaste of the night at Taranto. They also exposed the weakness of the Italian anti-aircraft defences and the risk of keeping ships within range of British aircraft. In January 1941 the port was captured by the Australians, and in April it became a besieged fortress that Rommel was unable to take by storm.

Auchinleck’s assumption of command opened a new chapter in the war in North Africa. By resisting London’s pressure for a rapid offensive, the new commander gained time to rebuild his army. In the summer and autumn of 1941, at the demand of the Australian government, the ships of the “Tobruk Ferry” relieved most of the garrison: in August the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade arrived in the fortress, and in September and October the British 70th Infantry Division and a Czechoslovak battalion. In September the forces in the desert were organised as the Eighth Army, and on 18 November Operation Crusader began, which at the end of November brought relief to Tobruk and in December forced Rommel to retreat from Cyrenaica. The success proved short-lived: in June 1942 Rommel took Tobruk in a single assault, and in August 1942 Churchill dismissed Auchinleck, just as a year earlier he had dismissed Wavell.