Armoured Warfare in the North African Campaign (Images of War)
Anthony Tucker-Jones
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 1848845677
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The North African campaign, the struggle of the Italians and Germans against the Allies in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia between 1940 and 1943, was a war of movement and maneuver, of dramatic changes of fortune, and it was a war in which mechanized forces - tanks in particular - excelled. Compared with the heavily populated landscapes of northwest Europe, the empty open spaces of North Africa appeared to be ideal operating terrain for tanks, yet the harsh desert conditions tested men and machinery to the limit, as Anthony Tucker-Jones demonstrates in this remarkable selection of wartime photographs.
The use of armor during the entire course of the campaign is covered, from the initial Italian offensive, the arrival of Rommel’s Panzergruppe Afrika, the battles fought along the North African shore which culminated in El Alamein, then the Allied advance into Tunisia which led to the final defeat of the German and Italian armies.
The images give a fascinating inside view of combat, but they also reveal the daily routines of tank warfare 65 years ago, and give a vivid impression of what it was like to fight in and live with the tanks of the day – the German Mk IIIs and Mk IVs and the Tiger, the British Matildas and Valentines and the American Grants and Shermans that contributed so much to the Allied victory. Training, maintenance, transportation and supply are shown, as are the daily lives of the tank crews and extreme conditions in which they worked and fought.
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The British tanks would have to wait for them to close to within 1,000–500 yards before they could engage with their solid shot, and in the meantime the artillery would have had to retreat. War correspondent Alexander Clifford, who covered the 1941 North African campaign, soon became aware of these shortcomings, reporting: ‘The Mk IIIs and Mk IVs both had more firepower than anything we had got. We found ourselves up against the Mk III’s 50mm guns firing four-and-a-half-pound.
Or no fighting capability. The remains of the brigade, short of fuel and with just a dozen tanks left, sped north to Derna, only to be ambushed and destroyed on 6 April. Rommel’s 15th Panzer Division was ready for action by the end of May, meaning that the bulk of those armoured forces facing the ‘Tiger Cubs’ would be German rather than Italian. The German 5th Light Division was south of Tobruk and the Italian Ariete.
Cross First Class and a wound badge, and also, intriguingly, what looks like a blockade runner’s badge (Abzeichen für Blockadebrecher). This was instituted on 1 April 1941 and therefore the photo probably dates from April/May 1941; it almost certainly pre-dates July 1941, when the Afrika Korps cuff title was authorised, as neither man is wearing it. (Dr Peter Caddick-Adams) The advance guard of the 5th Light Division (later the 21st Panzer Division) landed on 14 February 1941 and was rushed.
Division escaped with just ten tanks, which were deployed along with the eleven German tanks in Rommel’s mobile reserve for the defence of Sollum. General Messe, who had commanded the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, was sent to take charge of the Italian troops in North Africa. By 1940, with almost half a million men under arms in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Libya, the.
The bulk of Mussolini’s tank forces. It equipped three Italian armoured divisions, the tank battalions of the motorised divisions and the tank squadrons of the Celere or fast divisions. In stark contrast, there were just two battalions with the M11/39. The L3’s combat track record in Ethiopia and Spain was not very good. (Author’s Collection) On the eve of war this was the face of Mussolini’s medium tank force but it was hardly comparable to Hitler’s Panzer.