The Battle of Bardia was fought between 3 and 5 January 1941, as part of Operation Compass, the first British military operation of the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War. It was the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part, the first to be commanded by an Australian general and the first to be planned by an Australian staff. The 6th Australian Division (Major General Iven Mackay) assaulted the strongly held Italian fortress of Bardia, Libya, assisted by air support and naval gunfire and under the cover of an artillery barrage. The 16th Australian Infantry Brigade attacked at dawn from the west, where the defences were known to be weak. Sappers blew gaps in the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes and filled in and broke down the sides of the anti-tank ditch with picks and shovels. This allowed the infantry and 23 Matilda II tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment to enter the fortress and capture all their objectives, along with 8,000 prisoners.
In the second phase of the operation, the 17th Australian Infantry Brigade exploited the breach made in the perimeter and pressed south as far as a secondary line of defences known as the Switch Line. On the second day, the 16th Australian Infantry Brigade captured the township of Bardia, cutting the fortress in two. Thousands more prisoners were taken and the Italian garrison now held out only in the northern and southernmost parts of the fortress. On the third day, the 19th Australian Infantry Brigade advanced south from Bardia, supported by artillery and the six operational Matilda tanks. Its advance allowed the 17th Australian Infantry Brigade to make progress as well and the two brigades reduced the southern sector of the fortress. The Italian garrisons in the north surrendered to the 16th Australia Infantry Brigade and the Support Group of the 7th Armoured Division outside the fortress. In all, some 36,000 Italian prisoners were taken.
The victory at Bardia enabled the Allied forces to continue the advance into Libya and capture almost all of Cyrenaica, which led to Operation Sonnenblume, German intervention in the fighting in North Africa, changing the nature of the war in the theatre.
Background
Italian invasion of Egypt
Italy declared war on the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940. Bordering on the Italian colony of Libya was the Kingdom of Egypt. Although a neutral country, Egypt was occupied by the British under the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, which allowed British military forces to occupy Egypt if the Suez Canal was threatened. A series of cross-border raids and skirmishes began on the frontier between Libya and Egypt. On 13 September 1940, an Italian force advanced across the frontier into Egypt, reaching Sidi Barrani on 16 September, where the advance was halted until logistical difficulties could be overcome.
Italy's position in the centre of the Mediterranean made it unacceptably hazardous to send ships from Britain to Egypt via that route, so British reinforcements and supplies for the area had to travel around the Cape of Good Hope. For this reason, it was more convenient to reinforce General Sir Archibald Wavell's Middle East Command with troops from Australia, New Zealand and India. Nonetheless, even when Britain was threatened with invasion after the Battle of France and equipment was urgently required to re-equip the British Expeditionary Force after its losses in the Dunkirk evacuation, troops and supplies were still despatched to the Middle East Command. A convoy that departed the United Kingdom in August 1940 brought guns, stores, ammunition, and three armoured regiments, including the 7th Royal Tank Regiment, equipped with Matilda II tanks.
On 9 December 1940 the Western Desert Force under the command of Major General Richard O'Connor attacked the Italian position at Sidi Barrani. The position was captured, 38,000 Italian soldiers were taken prisoner, and the remainder of the Italian force was driven back. The Western Desert Force pursued the Italians into Libya, and the 7th Armoured Division established itself to the west of Bardia, cutting off land communications between the strong Italian garrison there and Tobruk. On 11 December, Wavell decided to withdraw the 4th Indian Division and send it to the Sudan to participate in the East African Campaign. The 6th Australian Division (Major General Iven Mackay) was brought forward from Egypt to replace it and Mackay assumed command of the area on 21 December 1940.
Geography
Unlike the Great Sand Sea, the coastal portion of the Libyan Desert is stony rather than sandy, but it is no less arid, and supports little vegetation. Close to the coast, the ground was broken by wadis. Military vehicles could traverse the stony desert with little difficulty, although the heat, dust and wind caused their rapid deterioration. Because it was so thinly populated, bombs and shells could be used with minimal risk of civilian casualties. Winter nights could be bitterly cold, yet the days could still be uncomfortably hot. There was almost no food or water, and little shelter from the cold, the heat or the wind. The desert was, however, relatively free from disease.
Planning and preparation
Italian
After the disaster at Sidi Barrani and the withdrawal from Egypt, XXIII Corps (Generale di Corpo d'Armata (Lieutenant General) Annibale Bergonzoli) faced the British from within the strong defences of Bardia. Mussolini wrote to Bergonzoli, "I have given you a difficult task but one suited to your courage and experience as an old and intrepid soldier—the task of defending the fortress of Bardia to the last. I am certain that 'Electric Beard' and his brave soldiers will stand at whatever cost, faithful to the last." Bergonzoli replied: "I am aware of the honour and I have today repeated to my troops your message – simple and unequivocal. In Bardia we are and here we stay." Bergonzoli had approximately 45,000 defenders under his command. The Italian divisions defending the perimeter of Bardia included remnants of four divisions. The northern ("Gerfah") sector was held by the 2nd CC.NN. Division "28 Ottobre"; the centre ("Ponticelli") sector by the 1st CC.NN. Division "23 Marzo" and elements of the 62nd Infantry Division "Marmarica"; and the southern ("Mereiga") sector by the 63rd Infantry Division "Cirene" and the rest of the 62nd Infantry Division Marmarica. Bergonzoli also had the remnants of the disbanded 64th Infantry Division "Catanzaro", some 6,000 Frontier Guard (GaF) troops, three companies of Bersaglieri, part of the dismounted Regiment "Cavalleggeri di Vittorio Emanuele II" and a machine gun company of the 60th Infantry Division "Sabratha".
These divisions guarded an 18-mile (29 km) perimeter which had an almost continuous antitank ditch, extensive barbed wire fence and a double row of strong points. The strong points were situated approximately 800-yard (730 m) apart. Each had its own antitank ditch, concealed by thin boards. They were each armed with one or two Cannone da 47/32 M35 (47 mm antitank guns) and two to four machine guns. The weapons were fired from concrete sided pits connected by trenches to a deep underground concrete bunker which offered protection from artillery fire. The trenches had no fire steps and the weapons pits lacked overhead cover. Each post was occupied by a platoon or company. The inner row of posts were similar, except that they lacked the antitank ditches. The posts were numbered sequentially from south to north, with the outer posts bearing odd numbers and the inner ones even numbers. The actual numbers were known to the Australians from the markings on maps captured at Sidi Barrani and were also displayed on the posts themselves. In the southern corner was a third line of posts, known as the Switch Line. There were six defensive minefields and a scattering of mines in front of some other posts. The major tactical defect of this defensive system was that if the enemy broke through, the posts could be picked off individually from the front or rear.
The defence was supported by a strong artillery component that included forty-one Breda Model 35 20 mm antiaircraft guns; eighty-five 47 mm antitank guns; twenty-six Solothurn S-18/1000 anti-tank rifles; forty-one Cannone da 65/17 modello 13 65 mm infantry support guns; a hundred and forty-seven Cannone da 75/32 modello 37 75 mm and 77 mm field guns; seventy-six Skoda 100 mm Model 1916 and Canon de 105 mle 1913 Schneider 105 mm guns; and twenty-seven 120 mm and Obice da 149/12 modello 14 149 mm medium howitzers. The large number of gun models, many of them quite old, created difficulties with the supply of spare parts. The older guns often had worn barrels, which caused problems with accuracy. Ammunition stocks were similarly old and perhaps as many as two-thirds of the fuses were out of date, resulting in excessive numbers of dud rounds. There were also several machine-gun models, with seven types of ammunition in use. The Breda 30, the principal light machine gun, had a low rate of fire and a reputation for jamming. The Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914 was a bulky and complicated weapon that was also prone to stoppages. Some of these had been rebuilt as Fiat-Revelli Modello 1935s which, while an improvement, were still unreliable. The principal medium machine gun, the Breda M37, had shortcomings, the main one being that it used 20-round strips of cartridges, which gave it a reduced rate of fire. Shortages of raw materials, coupled with the increased technological sophistication of modern weapons, led to production problems that frustrated efforts to supply the Italian Army with the best available equipment. The result was that the firepower of the Italian defenders was neither as great nor as effective as it should have been.
As a "mobile reserve" there were thirteen M13/40 medium tanks and a hundred and fifteen L3/35 tankettes. The L3s were generally worthless, the M13/40s were effective medium tanks with four machine guns and a turret-mounted 47 mm antitank gun for its main armament that were "in many ways the equal of British armoured fighting vehicles". The 20 mm of armour on the M13/40s, while much thicker than that of the tankettes, could still be penetrated by the British 2-pounder and the tankettes were no match for the British Matildas in either armour or firepower. None of the tanks at Bardia were fitted with a radio, making a coordinated counter-attack difficult.
Bergonzoli knew that if Bardia and Tobruk held out, a British advance further into Libya eventually must falter under the logistical difficulties of maintaining a desert force using an extended overland supply line. Not knowing how long he had to hold out, Bergonzoli was forced to ration his stocks of food and water so that O'Connor could not simply starve him out. Hunger and thirst adversely affected the morale of the Italian defenders that had already been shaken by the defeat at Sidi Barrani. So too did medical conditions undermine morale, particularly lice and dysentery, the results of poor sanitation.
Allied
The 6th Australian Division had been formed in September 1939 as part of the Second Australian Imperial Force. The Prime Minister Robert Menzies ordered that all commands in the division were to go to reservists rather than to regular officers, who had been publicly critical of the defence policies of right wing politicians. These policies favoured the Royal Australian Navy, which received the majority of defence spending in the interwar period. When war came, the Army's equipment was of World War I vintage and its factories were only capable of producing small arms. The Great War-era small arms, the Lee–Enfield rifle and the Vickers machine gun, were reliable weapons that would remain in service throughout the war; they were augmented by the new Bren light machine gun.
Most other equipment was obsolescent and would have to be replaced but new factories were required to produce the latest items, such as 3-inch mortars, 25-pounder field guns and motor vehicles; War Cabinet approval for their construction was slow in coming. The training of the 6th Australian Division in Palestine, while "vigorous and realistic", was hampered by the shortages of equipment. These shortages were gradually remedied by deliveries from British sources. No. 3 Squadron RAAF had to be sent to the Middle East without aircraft or equipment and supplied by the Royal Air Force, at the expense of its own squadrons.
Despite the rivalry between regular and reserve officers, the 6th Australian Division staff was an effective organisation. Brigadier John Harding, the chief of staff of XIII Corps, as the Western Desert Force was renamed on 1 January 1941, had been a student at Staff College, Camberley along with Mackay's chief of staff, Colonel Frank Berryman, at a time when O'Connor had been an instructor there. Harding later considered the 6th Australian Division staff "as good as any that I came across in that war, and highly efficient." Australian doctrine emphasised the importance of initiative in its junior leaders and small units were trained in aggressive patrolling, particularly at night.
As it moved up in December 1940, the 6th Australian Division was still experiencing shortages. It had only two of its three artillery regiments and only the 2/1st Field Regiment was equipped with the new 25-pounders, which it had received only that month. The 2/2nd Field Regiment had twelve 18-pounders and twelve 4.5-inch howitzers. Only A Squadron of the 2/6th Cavalry Regiment was on hand, as the rest of the regiment was deployed in the defence of the frontier posts at Al-Jaghbub and Siwa Oasis. The 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion had been diverted to Britain and its place taken by the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers. The 2/1st Antitank Regiment had also been diverted, so each infantry brigade had formed an antitank company but only eleven 2-pounders were available instead of the 27 required. The infantry battalions were particularly short of mortars and ammunition for the Boys anti-tank rifle.