240: British Build-Up

Description

With the Italians dug in around Sidi Barrani, Britain eyes its first counterstrike of the war. We look at the tug-of-war between Churchill’s demand for instant action and Wavell’s insistence on building a force that could actually sustain an advance across the sand.

The episode tracks the months-long influx of units and equipment—including the invaluable Matilda tanks—plus the logistics debates, convoy detours around Africa, and training cycles that shaped Operation Compass before a single shot was fired.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 240 - North Africa 1940 Pt. 4 - British Build-Up. This week a big thank you goes out to Julian for the donation on Ko-Fi and Lynn for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. While the Italians would be the first to launch a major attack in the Western Desert in 1940, with their advance on Sidi Barrani, the British were also preparing an attack of their own. This was because, even if the British military had the primary purpose of defending the Suez Canal that could still be accomplished by pushing the Italians back, and if everything went perfectly, pushing them out of North Africa altogether. There were many issues that would have to solved before such an attack could be launched though. Wavell, the commander of all of the British forces in the Middle East, would set to work trying to solve some of these problems while also fending off the constant badgering from Churchill to begin an attack as soon as possible. This episode will primarily focus on the British build up and the differences of opinion among Wavell and Churchill about just how much build up was required in the lead up to the first major British effort of the war, Operation Compass, which will be the focus of next episode.

During the summer months of 1940, before the Italian attacks in September, Wavell would go to London to have various discussions and meetings with British leaders about the situation and his plans for the Middle East in the months ahead. It would be not the first of the last time that Churchill and Wavell found that their opinions on how operations should be conducted were wildly divergent. To quote from Wavell’s writings about some of the discussions that were had: “In fact I found that Winston’s tactical ideas had to some extent crystallised at the South African War, just as his ideas on India’s political problems . . . had not advanced much from his impressions as a subaltern in the nineties . . .”. Some of this negativity could perhaps be explained away as the recollections of a person who did not like or get along with another person. But Wavell would be far from the only British commander during the war to criticize Churchill for his general lack of up to date military ideas and theories. Churchill did not necessarily understand how out of step he was with many of his generals, and honestly I am not sure he would have made any different choices even if he had understood. The British Prime Minister was also generally quite concerned about the propaganda victories that the Germans and Italians were achieving during the summer of 1940, to which could be added the invasion of British Somaliland as discussed at the end of the last episode. The news of the British evacuation of the colony would arrive in London right as Wavell was leaving London. The British leader in Somaliland, General Godwin-Austen, had little choice in the matter given the complete numerical superiority of the Italian forces and in fact when Wavell learned of the colony’s evacuation he fully supported his General on the scene. Churchill had some problems with the action though, particularly due to the fact that it appeared, at least to Churchill, that the British forces in the area had not put up much of a fight. He believed this because they had only suffered 260 casualties, and if you only suffer that many casualties how hard could you have really fought? Or at least that was Churchill’s logic. He even asked for Godwin-Austen to be suspended from command, a demand that he cabled to Wavell as he was on his way back to Egypt. Wavell refused to do anything of the sort, replying with a cable that ended ‘A big butcher’s bill is not necessarily evidence of good tactics.’. In this case Wavell was absolutely correct, more casualties for the British forces in Somaliland would have accomplished absolutely nothing.

During the summer and autumn of 1940 both Wavell and Churchill would become quite frustrated with one another for a variety of reasons. For Churchill, he so desperately wanted some bit of good news and some victory that could be celebrated that he became very frustrated with the fact that Wavell was not launching any kind of offensive efforts. This frustrated scaled almost directly with the number of reinforcements that arrived in Egypt, and as more and more arrived the tone in Churchill’s letters became more and more notable. Churchill would also become very detailed with how he thought the forces in Egypt should be organized and how they should prepare to defend the Nile delta. This included force tables and exact numbers that Churchill believed Wavell had ready for that defense or for other operations. For example in one letter from late August he would outline the 39 battalions that he believed Wavell would have available by October and how they should be used. When if you look at this now, while in broad strokes they are reasonable analysis, they largely ignored the realities of staging and preparing forces in the desert. They made sense on the map, but not in the sand. Wavell recognized this, while still being a bit frustrated at the level of exact oversight he was being given. He would write of this time period that ‘It showed clearly that Winston did not trust me to run my own show and was set on his ideas.’ while also then saying that when provided with a long list of specific instructions: ‘I carried out such parts of the directive as were practical and useful, and disregarded a good deal of it.’. Which is honestly exactly what I would expect a subordinate to do with an overly detailed edict from a distant manager. From Wavell’s perspective, one of the ways to gently push back against the messages from Churchill was to simply point out all of the areas where his statistics were wrong or were incomplete. The easiest area during the months of preparation before Compass was in the realm of equipment, which the British forces were short on, with artillery, weapons, and vehicles of all kinds woefully short of establishment. This gave Wavell the ability to say that yes he had 39 battalions, but they only had enough equipment for half that, and that equipment had to arrive before anything could happen.

Before Wavell could do anything, he needed more troops, and these would arrive throughout August, September, and October. Initially the plan had been to send the reinforcements through the Mediterranean, but when the main convoy reached Gibraltar the decision was made to diver around Africa. Obviously this would take more time, but was safer, and since it did not appear that the Italians were going to advance beyond their positions around Sidi Barrani, the safer route seemed the wiser. This included a major infusion of armored strength with multiple entire armored regiments arriving in September and then October. These reinforcements represented a major percentage of all available British armored strength at this time in the war, and what had been dispatched from the home islands in August were the only armored groups of substantial size avaialble. Along with full armored units there was a continuous trickle of tanks that were able to bring the 7th Armored Division, which was already in country up to full strength, including the addition of 50 Matilda infantry tanks which would give the Italians so many issues. The Matilda’s, in the case of North Africa the Matilda II tanks, were such a problem for the Italians because of their heavy armor. The tanks were designed as infantry support tanks, at a time when in the British army there was a major divide between medium tanks, which were designed more for speed, and the infantry tanks were were more heavily armed and armored and designed to work in conjunction with infantry units. Because of their intended purpose infantry tanks like the Matilda were often designed to be much slower than their medium tank counterparts, with the trade off being that they could have much more armor. This armor made them essentially impervious to most Italian anti-tank guns and tanks. The only thing in the Italian arsenal that could seriously threaten the Matilda’s was artillery, and there were availability and aiming issues with such guns. This made the Matilda incredibly valuable to any British attack in 1940, and really deep into 1941. Just because they had heavy armor did not mean that they were perfect though, and the Matilda would always have issues with its slow sleep and very problematic steering which was prone to break. Another major issue that British armor in general would have was a shortage, or in some cases the complete lack, of high explosive tank ammunition. This would severely hamper the ability of British tanks to engage anything other than Italian tanks with their main guns, because the armor piercing rounds that they had available were not designed for anything other than other tanks. But far more than just tanks arrived in the build up to Operation Compass, and in fact just about every type of required military supply and equipment would arrive in large numbers. Anti-tank guns, new artillery pieces, machine guns, more men of course. All of this would be an important part of attempting to make the first major British attack successful. Training was also a major concern, with the units available all going through intense training to acclimate them to the realities of modern desert warfare in 1940.

At the front, the British forces that had retreated from the Italian attacks at Sidi Barrani continued to improve their defensive positions, just in case the Italians decided to resume their march to the east. The key position for the British was near Mersah Matruh where the 7th Armored Division developed a series of defensive positions to defend against a possible Italian attack. During this time, the British were not completely defensive, and there would be some patrol actions that would see British armored units come into contact with Italian units. This included the introduction of one of the more famous tactical developments of the early war in North Africa, the Jock Column. The Jock Column was essentially a small reconnaissance force that included a mixed set of assets to help it both move through the desert but also to defend itself. At this time they were mostly made up of motorized infantry, armored cars, and towed artillery pieces. This save them at least some ability to defend themselves if they got into a scrap, but because everything was on wheels they also had good mobility that could be used for their reconnaissance purposes. While these were introduced at this time to the fighting, they were not necessarily a novel idea, and were somewhat reminiscent of what had been used during colonial wars for some time, in conflicts were mobility and wide ranging reconnaissance were a premium asset. These patrols were important because it allowed the British, along with some aerial reconnaissance, to gain a pretty good understanding of how the Italians had organized their defenses around Sidi Barrani. They had continued with their habit of building out fortified camps with new camps built at Maktila, Tummar, Nibeiwa, and Sofafi-Rabia. All of these were in the Italian style, so they had anti-tank defenses, minefields, and then barracks for the defending troops and their supplies. The British felt that they had identified one critical weakness though, and it was the wide gap between Nibeiwa and Sofafi-Rabia the southernmost camps. The gap was around 25 kilometers wide, and it would be referred to as the Enba Gap. The information gained during these raids would be critical to the planning for Operation Compass which was already underway.

the 7th Armored division was commanded by General O’Connor, and he had been given the task by Wavell of preparing for an attack against the Italian positions. The plan to begin an offensive had always been something discussed among the British, they were not going to stay on the defensive for the entire war. But it was not until the reinforcements arrived in Egypt that they had the forces to really act on any of their offensive hopes. This did cause some headache for various staff officers as they had to constantly scrap their plans for attacks based on new forces arriving, but it was a good problem to have in that everytime a reinforcement wave arrived the chances of success increased, the scale of the offensive could also increase. O’Connor hoped to use the Enba Gap as his entry point to allow him to defeat the Italian camps in detail, preventing each of them from supporting the one that was under attack. The plan would involve pushing through the Enba Gap and then focusing the first British efforts on the Nibeiwa fortified camp, which was immediately north of the gap. Once that camp had been neutralized the British forces would then continue to roll up the line with an attack on the camps at Tummar. Due to aerial reconnaissance the British knew that if they could get behind the Italian lines their attacks on the camps would be easier, primarily due to the fact that the minefields on the western sides were generally prepared. In theory, all this could be done in only a handful of days, with the hope being that within 5 days all of the Italian camps could be dealt with and the Italians would be pushed back to the Egyptian border. But to accomplish even this somewhat limited attack the logistics efforts were intense. Supply dumps of all varieties were pushed as close to the fighting line as possible, and in some cases the dumps were brought forward between the lines immediately before the attack. The idea being that the British forces would begin to move forward, and stop at supply dumps between the lines to refill water and petrol. If all went to plan this would give the British vehicles more range once they began their attack, reducing the need for trucks to be used to move forward fuel and water, and the British at this stage of the war never had enough trucks. This basic plan outline was eventually approved by Wavell and it would be given the code name Operation Compass.

One of the primary challenges with this podcast going forward is how interconnected all of the various events of the war are to one another. It is completely unavoidable, in a world wide war, that events in one area where influence the events in another and the Mediterranean theater in late 1940 is no different. Sometimes they just exist in the same theater and then at other times events in one area meaningfully impact the events in another. Representing these on the podcast can be challenging before, in this case I do not want to break up the narrative of the events in North Africa to go on a multi-week adventure in Greece. And Greece would be one of the more important areas of adventure during late 1940. It all started, as so much in the Mediterranean would, with Mussolini. Mussolini wanted action, and after the initial attacks in the desert into Egypt he wanted more, but Graziani and the Italian leaders in the Western Desert were resistant to any kind of further attack. And so Mussolini began to look elsewhere, and first up were the countries directly across the Adriatic. Italian forces had already occupied Albania, and now they set their sights on Greece. The full story of this invasion will be told in the next series of the podcast, but for the purposes of understanding how it impacted events in North Africa it is important to know that the attack went horribly. The Italian forces experienced a tremendous defeat and in fact did not advance but were pushed back by the Greek forces. The beginning of the Italian campaign in Greece and their quick defeat would result in two decisions which would have wide ranging impacts on the overall course of the Second World War. The first was that as soon as Greece was attacked Churchill was quick to promise to help the Greeks as much as possible. The leader of Greek, General Metaxas had a laundry list of things he wanted from the British, and he wanted at least six divisions of troops as quickly as possible. Along with forces for mainland Greece, the British would also take over defense of Crete and use it as a staging area. The orders were sent out and Wavell and his subordinates began trying to scrape together troops to send to Greece. The shift in focus put Wavell in a bind, he was trying to launch his attacks that would hopefully knock back the Italians, and then was already dreaming of future operations to push them out of Africa entirely. And yet before those plans really got rolling he was being ask to detach men and equipment from his forces facing the Italians to then send them north to help Greece. Churchill and the leaders in London were far less attached to operations in North Africa, even though only a few weeks before they had been all that mattered. Indeed one cable from Churchill would contain the lines ‘One may indeed see possibility of centre of gravity in Middle East shifting suddenly from Egypt to the Balkans, and from Cairo to Constantinople.’. Just as they were building up enough forces in Egypt the British leaders were already preparing to spread them back out again, committing themselves to being weak everywhere instead of strong somewhere. Oh, and the second major impact of the Italian defeat in Greece was the eventual entry of Germany into the war in the Mediterranean, but that is a story for another day. While major changes to the Mediterranean theater were pending, join me next week for the first major British attack in North Africa, the somewhat shockingly successful Operation Compass