The Western Desert campaign (Desert War) took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya and was the main theatre in the North African campaign of the Second World War. Military operations began in June 1940 with the Italian declaration of war and the Italian invasion of Egypt from Libya in September. Operation Compass, a five-day raid by the British in December 1940, was so successful that it led to the destruction of the Italian 10th Army (10ª Armata) over the following two months. Benito Mussolini sought help from Adolf Hitler, who sent a small German force to Tripoli under Directive 22 (11 January). The Afrika Korps (Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel) was formally under Italian command, as Italy was the main Axis power in the Mediterranean and North Africa.
In the spring of 1941, Rommel led Operation Sonnenblume, that pushed the Allies back to Egypt, except for the siege of Tobruk at the port. At the end of 1941, Axis forces were defeated in Operation Crusader and retired again to El Agheila. In early 1942 Axis forces drove the Allies back again, then captured Tobruk after the Battle of Gazala but failed to destroy their opponents. The Axis invaded Egypt and the Allies retreated to El Alamein, where the Eighth Army fought two defensive battles, then defeated the Axis forces in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. The Eighth Army drove Axis forces out of Libya to Tunisia, which was invaded from the west by the Allied First Army in Operation Torch. In the Tunisian campaign the remaining Axis forces surrendered to the combined Allied forces in May 1943.
The British Western Desert Force (renamed Cyrenaica Command (CYRCOM) and later the Eighth Army) had been reduced in early 1941 to send units to Greece, rather than complete the conquest of Libya, just as German troops and Italian reinforcements arrived. British Commonwealth and Empire troops released after the conclusion of the East Africa Campaign were sent to Egypt and by summer, the surviving Commonwealth troops had returned from Greece, Crete and Syria. From the end of 1941, increasing amounts of equipment and personnel, including US supplies and tanks, arrived for the Eighth Army. The Axis never overcame the supply constraints limiting the size of their land and air forces in North Africa and the desert war became a sideshow for Germany, when the expected quick conclusion of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, was not achieved.
Background
Libya
Cyrenaica (Libya) had been an Italian colony since the Italo-Turkish War in 1911–1912. With Tunisia, part of French North Africa, to the west, and Egypt to the east, the Italians prepared to defend both fronts through a North Africa Supreme Headquarters, under the command of the Governor-General of Italian Libya, Marshal of the Air Force, Italo Balbo. Supreme Headquarters had the 5th Army (General Italo Gariboldi) and the 10th Army (General Mario Berti), which in mid-1940 had nine metropolitan divisions of about 13,000 men each, three Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (Blackshirt) divisions and two Libyan divisions, each with an establishment with 8,000 men. Italian army divisions had been reorganised in the late 1930s from three regiments each to two; reservists were recalled in 1939, along with the usual call-up of conscripts.
Morale was considered high and the army had recent operational experience. The Italian navy had prospered under the Fascist regime, which had paid for fast, well-built, well-armed ships and a large submarine fleet but it lacked experience and training. The air force had been ready for war in 1936 but by 1939 had stagnated; the British did not consider it capable of maintaining a high rate of operations. The 5th Army, with eight divisions, was based in Tripolitania, the western half of Libya, opposite Tunisia and the 10th Army, with six infantry divisions, held Cyrenaica in the east. When war was declared, the 10th Army sent the 1st Libyan Division to the Egyptian frontier from Giarabub to Sidi Omar and XXI Corps from Sidi Omar to the coast, Bardia and Tobruk. The XXII Corps moved south-west of Tobruk to act as a counter-attack force.
Egypt
The British had based forces in Egypt since 1882 but these were greatly reduced by the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. The small British and Commonwealth force garrisoned the Suez Canal and the Red Sea route. The canal was vital to British communications with its Far Eastern and Indian Ocean territories. In mid-1939, Lieutenant-General Archibald Wavell was appointed General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the new Middle East Command, over the Mediterranean and Middle East theatres. Until the Franco-Axis armistice, French divisions in Tunisia faced the Italian 5th Army on the western Libyan border. In Libya, the Royal Army had about 215,000 men and in Egypt, the British had about 36,000 troops and another 27,500 men training in Palestine.
British forces included the Mobile Division (Egypt) under Major-General Percy Hobart, one of only two British armoured training formations. In mid-1939 it was renamed the Armoured Division (Egypt) and on 16 February 1940, it became the 7th Armoured Division. The Egypt–Libya border was defended by the Egyptian Frontier Force and in June 1940, the headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division under Major-General Richard O'Connor took command in the Western Desert, with instructions to drive back the Italians from their frontier posts and dominate the hinterland if war began. The 7th Armoured Division, less the 7th Armoured Brigade, assembled at Mersa Matruh (now Marsa Matruh) and sent the 7th Support Group forward towards the frontier as a covering force, where the RAF also moved most of its bombers. Malta was also reinforced.
The HQ of the 6th Infantry Division, which lacked complete and fully trained units, was renamed the Western Desert Force on 17 June. In Tunisia, the French had eight divisions, capable only of limited operations and in Syria, three poorly armed and trained divisions, about 40,000 troops and border guards, on occupation duties against the civilian population. Italian land and air forces in Libya greatly outnumbered the British in Egypt but suffered from poor morale and were handicapped by inferior equipment. In Italian East Africa, there were another 130,000 Italian and African troops with 400 guns, 200 light tanks and 20,000 lorries. Italy declared war on 11 June 1940.
Prelude
Terrain
Until 1943 the war was fought in the Western Desert, which was about 240 mi (390 km) wide, from Marsa Matruh in Egypt to Gazala on the Libyan coast, along Litoranea Balbo (Via Balbia), the only paved road. The Sand Sea, 150 mi (240 km) inland, marked the southern limit of the desert at its widest points at Giarabub and Siwa. In British parlance, the term "Western Desert" applied to the desert of Egypt west of the Nile but also came to describe eastern Cyrenaica in Libya. From the coast, a raised, flat plain of stony desert extends inland about 500 ft (150 m) above sea level and runs south for 120–190 mi (200–300 km) from the coast to the edge of the Sand Sea. Scorpions, vipers and flies abound in the region, which was inhabited by a small number of Bedouin nomads.
Bedouin tracks linked wells and the more easily traversed ground; navigation was by sun, star, compass and "desert sense", good perception of the environment gained by experience. When Italian troops advanced into Egypt in September 1940, the Maletti Group got lost leaving Sidi Omar, disappeared and had to be found by aircraft. In spring and summer the days are miserably hot and the nights very cold. The sirocco (gibleh or ghibli), a hot desert wind, blows clouds of fine sand, which reduce visibility to a few metres and coat eyes, lungs, machinery, food and equipment; motor vehicles and aircraft need special oil filters and the barren terrain means that supplies for military operations have to be transported from outside. German engines tended to overheat and the life of their tanks' engines fell from 1,400–1,600 mi (2,300–2,600 km) to 300–900 mi (480–1,450 km) and this problem was made worse by the lack of standard spare parts for the German and Italian motor types.
Supply
Axis
Italian supply shipments to Libya went about 600 mi (970 km) west around Sicily, then approached the coast of Tunisia before going on to Tripoli, in order to avoid interference from the British aircraft, ships and submarines based at Malta. In Africa, supplies had to be hauled huge distances by road or in small consignments by coaster. The distance from Tripoli to Benghazi today is 1,020 km (630 mi) and to El Alamein was 1,780 km (1,110 mi). A third of the Italian merchant marine was in ships berthed in British-controlled ports and was interned after Italy declared war. By September 1942 half of the remainder had been sunk, although much was replaced by new shipbuilding, salvage and transfers of German ships. From June 1940 to May 1943, 16 per cent of supply shipments were sunk.
Tobruk was pressed into use in June 1942 but Allied bombing and its long approach route led this effort to be abandoned in August. The Germans assumed that the maximum distance a motorised army could operate from its base was 200 mi (320 km) but on average about a third of Axis lorries were unserviceable and 35–50 per cent of the fuel deliveries were consumed transporting the remainder to the front. Fuel oil shortages in Italy, the small size of the ports in Libya and the need to meet civilian demand, required the inefficient dispatch of large numbers of small convoys. Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, German army high command) concluded that German forces in Libya could not be supplied for a decisive offensive unless Italian forces were withdrawn to Italy, which was politically impossible.
British
The geographical position of Italy made it possible for it to close the Mediterranean if war came and force the Mediterranean Fleet based in Egypt to rely on the Suez Canal. In 1939, Wavell began to plan a base in the Middle East to support about fifteen divisions (300,000 men), six in Egypt, three in Palestine and the rest further afield. Many of the supplies needed by the British were imported from the colonies and the rest obtained locally by stimulating the production of substitutes. The plan for a garrison of nine divisions in Egypt and Palestine was changed to fourteen divisions by June 1941 and then to 23 by March 1942. Once the Italians declared war in 1940 and until 1943, merchant ships travelled east from Britain around the Cape of Good Hope, which made Egypt as distant as Australia and New Zealand. The Middle East Supply Centre (MESC) operated in Egypt, Palestine and Syria to co-ordinate imports and create local substitutes for civilian rations and promote agricultural efficiencies. By March 1943 the MESC had replaced about 100 liberty ship deliveries' worth of imports with increased local production of potatoes, cooking oil, dairy products and fish; cattle drives from Sudan obviated the need for refrigerated shipping.
In 1940, British military forces had a base at the terminus of the Egyptian state railway, road and the port of Marsa Matruh (Matruh) 200 mi (320 km) west of Alexandria. Construction began on a water pipeline along the railway and the British surveyed sources of water. Wells were dug but most filled with salt water; in 1939 the primary fresh water sources were the Roman aqueducts at Marsa Matruh and Maaten Baggush. Water-boats from Alexandria and a distillation plant at Matruh increased supply but rigorous rationing had to be enforced and much water had to be moved overland to outlying areas. Not enough vehicles were available in 1939 and lorries were diverted to provide the Armoured Division with a better rear link. Only desert-worthy vehicles could be risked cross-country, which left tanks unable to move far from Matruh which was 120 mi (190 km) east of the Libyan border. From the border there was no water at Sollum or for another 50 mi (80 km) east of Sollum to Sidi Barrani, along a very poor road. An invader would have to move through a waterless and trackless desert to reach the main British force. In September 1940, the New Zealand Railway Battalion and Indian labourers began work on a coastal railway, which reached Sidi Barrani by October 1941 and Tobruk by December 1942, 400 mi (640 km) west of El Alamein, carrying 4,200 long tons (4,267 t) of water per day.
1940
Frontier skirmishes
On 11 June 1940, hostilities commenced. British troops were ordered to dominate the frontier and isolate Giarabub. They crossed into Libya that night, exchanged fire with Italian troops at Sidi Omar and discovered that some Italians were unaware that war had been declared. On 14 June, the British captured Fort Capuzzo and Fort Madalena, taking 220 prisoners. Two days later, the British raided a convoy on the Tobruk–Bardia road, killed 21 Italian soldiers and took 88 prisoners, including Generale di Brigata (Brigadier-General) Romolo Lastrucci, the 10th Army Chief Engineer. At an engagement near the frontier wire at Nezuet Ghirba, a mixed force of British tanks, artillery and motorised infantry defeated an Italian force of 17 light tanks, four guns and 400 infantry.
The British patrolled the frontier area as far west as Tobruk, establishing dominance over the 10th Army. On 5 August, thirty Italian tanks engaged the 8th Hussars in an inconclusive action and Wavell concluded that vehicle wear made it impractical to continue operations when an Italian offensive loomed. Sand wore out equipment quickly, shortening the track life of tanks. Spare parts ran out and only half the tank strength could be kept operational. A lull fell from August to early September as Operation Hats, a naval operation, reinforced the Mediterranean Fleet and helped to bring an army convoy of tanks and crews via the Cape. The British claimed to have inflicted 3,500 casualties with a loss of 150 men between 11 June and 9 September. Further afield, both sides established scouting groups, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and Auto-Saharan Company (Compagnie Auto-Avio-Sahariane) which ranged the desert, raided and observed their opponents' dispositions.