242: Bardia

Description

After the stunning success at Sidi Barrani, Operation Compass expanded beyond its original raiding scope and the British found themselves chasing a shattered Italian army westward toward Libya. The fortified port of Bardia presented the first serious test of the pursuit, with over 40,000 Italian troops sheltering behind anti-tank ditches, minefields, and hundreds of artillery pieces along a 29-kilometer perimeter.

The 6th Australian Division, in their first major combat action, led the assault with engineers filling the ditches under fire and Matilda tanks grinding through Italian positions. The fall of Bardia opened the road to Tobruk and pushed the prisoner total well past 100,000 for the entire Compass operation, while laying bare the logistical and human costs of advancing hundreds of kilometers in weeks.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 242 - North Africa 1940 Pt. 6 - Bardia. This week a big thank you goes out to Eduard and Keith for the donation on Ko-Fi and Pilgrim 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. Operation Compass, Britain’s first major offensive effort in North Africa in late 1940 had gone extremely well. What had originally been pitched as a raid with a relatively focused set of objectives had been expanded in scope due to the relatively quick and easy capture of the Italian fortified camps new Sidi Barrani, and then Sidi Barrani itself. The Italians, after the collapse of their prepared defensive positions would be forced to retreat all along the front as their units tried to make their way westward toward the border before being cut off by British forces that were, well, trying to cut them off. The next two episodes of the podcast will cover these efforts, the Italians to retreat and the British to prevent that from happening. This episode will discuss the advance up to and the attack on Bardia, an important town along the coast where the Italians had set up some serious defenses that the British forces would have to work through. Then next episode will discuss the continuation of the British advance further west past Tobruk and Benghazi and all the way to Beda Fomm. But we have to start with why an attack that started with modest goals expanded to an operation that would involve the British advancing hundreds of kilometers.

When Operation Compass was originally proposed the plan was relatively simple. The fortified camps around Sidi Barrani would be assaulted, perhaps captured, and the Sidi Barrani would also be attacked. However, it was always envisioned as a raid, not an offensive to take territory and that meant that the plan was to withdraw all British forces back to their starting lines as soon as the Italian positions were neutralized. There were two primary reasons for the plan being so limited in ambition. The first was supplies, everything in the Western Desert revolved around supplies, and Compass was no different. Supplies had been pushed forward for the initial attacks into Field Supply Depots that were as close to the fighting as possible. But by the time the fighting ended at Sidi Barrani those depots had been heavily depleted, and only had a few days of supplies left. Getting more supplies to the depots would be challenging, and if the British continued their advance this would make supporting the attacking units even more difficult. The second reason for Compass’ limited goals was the demands of other theaters. The 4th Indian Division, which had played such a pivotal role in the attacks on the Italian camps was scheduled to be moved to Sudan to take part in an upcoming attack against the Italian position in East Africa. This would drastically reduce the fighting power of the British forces available in the Western Desert. The orders would begin to arrive for the withdrawal of the 4th Indian Division on December 11th, which came as a shock to the commander of the division who had somehow not been informed of his division’s pending transfer . He would write of the order that: “It was a tremendous shock, I had had no previous intimation of it and it came to me as a bolt from the blue.”. This meant that the 7th Armored division would be attacking essentially by itself, although the 6th Australian was moving forward to bolster the British armor .

While there were reasons to stick to the original plan, as just discussed, there were also many reasons to continue the attack. The first was that the Italians had been shattered, and it appeared that there was no real Italian resistance in front of the British troops. In theory, given the limited transportation routes available to the Italians there was a possibility that their units could be cut off and surrounded, and perhaps destroyed. And if that could happen, the risk of overextending the British forces would be more than worth it. This would come with sacrifices from the men at the front though, as there would need to be considerations made for the very limited ability to move supplies to the front, meaning trade offs would have to be made. The British forces could pursue the Italians, and they would, but they would do so only by accepting a bit of hunger and thirst as the transport capacity was shifted to the more pressing needs of petrol and ammunition. One thing that could not be solved by reallocating transport capacity was the issue of mechanical breakdowns among the British tanks and trucks. This would cause far greater damage to the ability of the British units to continue forward than anything that the Italians would be capable of. For example the 7th Armoured Brigade of the 7th Armored Division had mostly avoided the heavy fighting during the opening days of the attack, making it one of the fresher units that was available for the pursuit. But even with that being the case one of its armored units had started with operation with 50 tanks, and was down to just 25 as the push to Bardia began. And this type of mechanical attrition would occur in essentially every type of motor vehicle used although some types like tanks would have greater issues. The good news was that similar issues were being experienced by the Italians, and they did not have the always beneficial feeling that they were winning. As far as the British troops were concerned they were on a triumphant victory march, all they had to do was keep going forward.

Unfortunately things would not go exactly to plan for the British advance and they would be unable to cut off the Italians as they retreated towards Bardia. Bardia had been selected as the objective of the British advance due to the fact that it was the first major Italian port along the coast, after Sidi Barrani and Sollum which had already been captured. It was also the only port in this part of Libya, other than Tobruk which was much further to the west, that could support the large supply ships that the British would need to be able to extend their advances further west. It was important to the Italians for the exact same reasons, also as an area where supplies could be delivered, assuming the Royal Navy was not wandering about. This meant that Italian forces moved into the prepared defenses at Bardia, and bolstered its defenses before the arrival of the British troops. These defenses were far from trivial, with the port being seen by the Italians as a critical area for them to retain control over resulting in work being done over the preceding months. The perimeter was around 29 kilometers, or 18 miles, in length and included a barbed wire fence that ran for the entire length along with a 4 foot deep and 12 foot wide anti-tank ditch . Infantry and artillery positions had then been placed behind these defenses, most of which were contained within concrete lined trenches and shelters. Then behind these there were a series of minefields before yet another line of defenses . There were also around 400 artillery guns arranged to protect the defenses, and the Italian artillery had up until that point been one of the bright points for the Italians when fighting the British. And so their skill and abilities would be crucial to the performance of the defense. The commander of the Italian garrison, Lieutenant General Annibale Bergonzoli, was apparently given the nickname Electric Whiskers due to the fact that he had a bright red beard, which does not impact anything about the events but it’s a pretty fun mental image to have. And with so many men able to find safety, around 45,000, the fight for Bardia had all the makings of a difficult challenge. Many of the Italian troops that made it to Bardia had previously been the garrisons of Solium and Capuzzo, and therefore were already trained and equipped to take part in exactly the kind of defensive action that was going to occur at Bardia. One of the only major issues that Bardia would have, as a defensive bastion, was that only about a month of water was available. Another major issue that they would have was less physical and more mental and psychological. Even though the defenses at Bardia were strong, and even though they had 45,000 troops and hundreds of artillery pieces. There was still the problem of confidence, after the complete disasters that had occurred around Sidi Barrani. Some of the troops that made it to Bardia had participated in that fighting, had seen the advance of the British forces first hand. It would be this issue, that would play a major role in the fighting in the days and weeks that followed the British arrival at Bardia.

During the advance to Bardia the British would actually cross over the border between Egypt and Libya, with Bardia being about 25 kilometers, or about 15 miles on the Libyan side of the border. This meant that along the way they did push all of the enemy forces out of Egypt, at least a long the coast, which was a propaganda victory if not necessarily one that was very important on the ground. Some of the British forces actually powered their push to Bardia with supplies captured from the Italian camps that they had captured over the previous days. The infantry units did particular well in their requisitioning efforts from the Italian supplies. When they arrived at Bardia some initial reconnaissance would occur, just to try and understand the general layout, strengths, and weaknesses of the Italian defenses. As with any series of defenses on the scale of Bardia, they were not uniform, and there were some areas that were stronger or weaker due not to any mistakes made by the Italians but simply due to geography. The Italians were planning based on the idea that the most likely avenue for attack was from the southeast, which would roughly be the direction that the British would approach from. But the British had different ideas. As the plan was developed and refined one of the most important questions that had to be answered was how quickly the British troops could neutralize the effects of the anti-tank ditches. Obviously any ditch can be handled by the simple act of filling it back in, although it was not always quite that easy. In this case some test ditches were dug back away from Bardia so that the Australian infantry that had arrived could test its abilities and speed at filling it in and preparing it for the tanks and other vehicles to cross. This information was critical for the British to understand how quickly the attack could move forward and for how long infantry and engineers would be in the danger zone of the ditch while performing the filling operation, because obviously the Italians would try to prevent it from happening. While these tests were being done and other preparations were being made, the Royal Navy would also get involved in the fighting. The HMS Terror, a monitor with 15 inch guns would shell the port, while gun boats would attack the facilities as well, in one instance with the Aphis just sort of hanging out in Bardia harbor for an hour while shooting up various shore facilities and small vessels.

The British ground forces arrived outside Bardia during the second week of December, although they would not actually launch their attack until after the new year. There were many reasons for this, the simplest being that supplies and forces had to be assembled outside of Bardia for the effort and that just took time. This time allowed more infantry forces to arrive and then the arrival of the Matilda tanks which would play an important role in the final assault. The Matildas, due to speed, reliability, and their rate of consumption of fuel and water, took longer to arrive than some other assets, but they would have time to arrive so that they could take part in the assault. There was no way to bring the British equipment up to full establishment through, as there was simply too much attrition that had been experienced getting to Bardia. This meant that the armored units in particular were well below half strength in the days before the attack, which was due strictly to the lack of endurance on the part of British tanks. Even in the best of conditions, without Italian resistance, many tanks were not able to make the trip from the British bases to the east all the way to Bardia, and this made it difficult to build units back up to strength. The terrain in this area made it even worse, with the rocky nature of the terrain causing all kinds of issues with tracks and suspension systems, which were frequently the reason that a tank would be out of action, the track pins on the British cruiser tanks deserve special mention for being completely inadequate for the task. What was closer to full strength was the Australian 6th Division, and it would be the primary unit used in the attack and the attack would succeed or fail based on the abilities, courage, and actions of the Australians. As the British plan developed the decision was made to not attack from the obvious direction, the southeast, and instead to make the main British effort from the west. A diversionary effort would still be made from the south, just to distract the Italians from the main effort which would come in from the West. In the main attack would be the Matildas of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment along with supporting infantry and engineers. The engineers played perhaps the most critical role in the entire attack because it was on their shoulders to fill in the anti-tank ditches as quickly as possible so that the tanks could roll through at several different points along the front. Getting them across in multiple different areas was critical to ensuring that they could not be countered by artillery, or they would not be stopped and delayed by a single vehicle setting off a mine. After the initial attacks, other forces were positioned to follow in from the West, and then once they had penetrated into the camp a larger set of forces would then also attack from the southeast, with the goal of trying to trap a significant portion of the Italian defenders on the southern side of the camp . In all of their planning the British always had to keep in mind that they were actually quite outnumbered by the Italian defenders, with the ratio being somewhere around 2:1 in favor of the Italians. One minor administrative note here, on January 1, 1941 the collection of units that were present around Bardia, which had previously been given the name Western Desert Force was renamed as the XIII Corps. I bring this up only in case you end up doing some of your own reading about the topic, as the changing of names can cause havoc on maps and sources around this time.

The attack would begin on January 3 with a 25 minute artillery bombardment . As with every attack all of the units involved were already in their starting positions, having been on the move for hours before the official start time of 6:40AM. An hour before the engineers of the 6th Australian Division had moved forward and began cutting and destroying the Italian wire so that the first battalion of troops could rush forward as quickly as possible when the time came. They were to get across the anti-tank ditch and establish a kind of perimeter so that the rest of the engineers could frantically begin filling in the ditch to allow the tanks to move in. This they completed in less than an hour and tanks started moving in, working together with the Australian infantry to neutralize and destroy the Italian defenses. In terms of resistance, it was a mixed bag, some of the Italian units quickly surrendered, basically giving up the fight as soon as the Australian infantry moved into their area. However, in other areas the defenders resisted fiercely. This meant that some Australian units suffered heavy casualties while for others the biggest problem was what to do with all of the Italian prisoners that they suddenly had to deal with. Those Italian strongpoints that did persist in their resistance would still only delay the outcome by a few hours and by the end of the first day of the attack almost two-thirds of the Italian perimeter had been captured. When the offensive began again the next morning the advances would continue, and by the middle of the afternoon the fighting was basically finished. One of the more notable outcomes of the battle was the volume of weapons and supplies that were captured, including 216 pieces of artillery and 213 anti-aircraft guns. There were also around 700 Italian trucks that were captured, which were quickly requisitioned by the British units who had an insatiable appetite for transport vehicles of almost any kind. Almost the entirety of the Italian garrison was captured, around 40,000 in total, and remarkably the casualty totals for the British were very low . Around 130 men were killed and 325 wounded. It was an impressive feat for the Australians, in what was really their first taste of battle, to capture the Italian positions so quickly. And it also allowed for further advances to be ordered, this time with the British leaders looking even further to the west.

The most important target for the next series of advances was Tobruk, an important port that would allow the British to move their base of supply up from Solium and Mersa Matruh. This would save hundreds of kilometers of required ground transport at a time when it was basically impossible to move the volume of supplies required. Solium was closer, but it could only handle a small percentage of the supplies required. The 700 Italian trucks helped, but the attrition among transport vehicles would still cause many problems in the days and weeks that followed. By the end of the year somewhere around 40% of the trucks that the British used before the attacks on Sidi Barrani had been written off as lost due to mechanical issues. The biggest issue was the sand and dust, which required constant cleaning of filters and ended up just getting into every moving part which greatly increased the general wear and tear on all parts. But it was not just the equipment that was wearing out, it was the men as well. For the men at the front of the advance, the exhaustion was really starting to show. This was true for any of the units involved, with some of them having advanced 200 miles in a month of constant front line and combat conditions. Vehicles crews were sometimes even worse off than the infantry in terms of exhaustion because they also had to deal with the maintenance needs of their vehicles. This was particularly a problem for the tank crews, who were largely in a situation where they were moving and fighting every day while also having to try and find some time at night to do maintenance and repairs. But this was always interrupted by refueling, resupply, and random enemy actions, with the result that maintenance was deferred, even though it was an essential part of keeping the vehicles going. They kept moving forward though, and while they would not be able to capture Tobruk without a fight, when they did they would capture an additional 27,000 Italian prisoners. This brought the total captured up above 100,000 for Operation Compass, and caused real issues. Obviously capturing over one hundred thousand enemy soldiers is never a bad thing in and of itself, there were problems with supplying those prisoners. The end goal was always to get them moved back towards Alexandria, and then further afield afterwords, but it was difficult to find the transport to move them up to 250 miles back to the east. Many were forced to travel on foot, but these could only be done in groups that could be controlled, and the British were dealing with a number of prisoners about 3 times greater than their total strength. The end result of these issues was the creation of various camps in some of the towns that had been captured, with the one at Tobruk packing 20,000 Italians into a space that was around 32 football fields in size. The conditions within the camp were absolutely miserable, with men packed in, the weather, and the general lack of supplies it was challenging to keep conditions livable. The only good news is that the numbers would begin to drop over time as more and more were moved east. Unfortunately, it would be a long time before the slow trickle of Italian prisoners stopped arriving in Tobruk, as actions further to the west would result in more and more prisoners who were also on their way to Egypt. It will be those actions that will be the topic for next episode as the British forces move towards what would be their final destination for Operation Compass, Beda Fomm.