What went wrong in 8th Army during North African Campaign ?

Hi there. As a Mediterranean Theater interest I would like to ask you a question. What was wrong with 8th Army between 1941-41 in Western Desert ? What took so long and so much effort and resources to take down numerically inferior Afrikakorps and Panzer Army Africa ? What were the main reasons ? Was it because deficiency of material , equipment , armour (British tanks were malfunctioning quite a lot in desert and their earlier 3,7 anti tank guns were not good ) , was it intelligence failure by Rommel's decoding 8th Army wireless codes plus decyphering US Military Atteche wireless reports in Cairo ? Or was it failure of doctrine and command from high ranking British officers in desert ? Neither Alan Cunningam nor Ritchie or Norrie , Gott , Ramsden etc were sucessful army or corps commanders and couldn't work in harmony or with RAF. Auckinleck was busy as a ME Theater Commander not as an army leader until July 1942. British arms like armor , infantry were not cooperating. Was it Churchill and Imperial COS constant interfarence from London ? Or is there any reason I missed ? Thanks.

 

Hello merdiolu a link below you might find of interest
http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/6944-the-importance-of-the-north-africanwestern-desert-campaign/



regards
Clive

 

````Merdiolu

What went wrong with 8th Army in the desert - not an easy one to answer but basically - Wavell sent O'Conner with a small force to throw out the Italians on a five day raid and it became

too easy and developed into a wholesale rout of an Italian army at Beda Fomm - just before that battle concluded Wavell sent the 4th Indian Div down to Abassynia - at about the same time Churchill

stuck his nose in with Eden - NOT the CIGS- and sent too many troops to Greece which ended up at Crete… the present Corps commanders wondered who was setting strategy as Chrichil only

THOUGHT he was a good one - Hitler by this time had sent Rommell with reinforcements for his Afrika Korps - which caught the remainder of 8th Army too far way from their supply base - Wavell

was fired and Cunningham took over but did not do a very good job - then he was replaced with Auckinlek - same again until Montgomery took over under the Srategy of Alanbrooke - the 8th Army

was sorted out with new Corps commanders - and we started to win …..

Would suggest that you borrow the book by Barrie Pitt entitled " CRUCIBLE OF WAR " for the whole story…it's good tea...

Cheers

 

Where do you start?

1) Bad leadership down to brigade level with few exceptions (the exceptions I can think of are Godwin Austen, Freyberg, Tuker, Reid, sure there were others).
2) Failure to apply combined arms practice (tanks worked on their own, brigade structures insufficiently integrated)
3) Interference from London (push to attack too early, push to hold on to Tobruk when this was clearly a stupid idea in 1942)
4) Lack of professionalism in parts of the army (bad security practices, insufficient quality of analysis of enemy intelligence).

Mind you, despite the general perception that they could walk on water, the Germans had their issues too.

All the best

Andreas

 

Good question and one which has stimulated a lot of military history. There are lots of books depending on your preferred approach

- Part of a wider malaise affecting the British army and strategy in the 1st half of WW2, Fraser : And we shall shock them, John Ellis Brute Force. .

- Poor generalship.and doctrine (Corelli Barnettt: The Desert Generals, Barrie Pitt - Crucible of War, Alan Moorhead African Trilogy

- Poor tanks (David Fletcher: The Great Tank scandal, George Forty: North African Campaign)

- Rommel#'s military genius (Rommel desert Fox and David Irving On the Trail of the Fox)

- Only Montgomery: knew how to get the best from the British Army Nigel Hamilton Momntgomery trilogu, Colossal Cracks )

- What the Operational Art of War has to say - war gamed seriously: http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p4013coll2/id/468/filename/469.pdf

 

Steady old boy. Let's not get carried away.

All the best

Andreas

 

I read in several resources that failure of establishing a common doctrine for British arms and their inability to work together , in cooperation and harmony to achieve an objective was fatal deficiency for 8th Army. Armour was all head on charge against well suited enemy anti tank gun screens , not cooperating or covering infantry or artillery. Same was applied by infantry which was often moving too slow etc. Cooperation with RAF Desert Airforce was not impressive (army was not covering landing grounds and RAF aircraft often mistake friendsly units for enemy and attack them ) More over neither Ritchie nor Auckinleck were strong commanders to let their authority felt on dismal field commanders. Corps commanders were wasting time , bellyaching , ignoring the orders when they wished or moved too slow. Why was that ? How serious was it ? Was it after effect of Great War where every suitable officer candidate was wasted in trench warfare as Alan Brooke claimed ? Or was it conservative and old generation staff officer type which was accostomed to small scale colonial warfare unwilling to change or adapt to modern mobile war conditions ? Were they covering each others failures ? (If Neill Ritchie had been a Red Army officer he would be executed after Gazala mess. Instead he went on commanding another corps during NW Europe Campaign in 1944 ! Some would think there was a old school officers club who were acquinted before the war and covering each other) And why lessons of Great War like accurate artillery barrages , large division sized units etc were ignored until Montgomery arrived ?

 

Merdiolu
One of the main failures of the Armour - even under Monty until Medenine - was the leadership of Lumsden an old cavalryman who had won the Grand National and so was the expert

in Tank warfare..he thought..but he fought all his battles like the Light Brigade taking on the Russian guns at Balaclava - he never did learn that Rommel dragged his coat in front of the British armour

- the British Tanks chased them onto the 88mm's - and so another Squadron of Tanks were gone……..Monty at Wadi El Halpha showed how to beat Rommel's plan by ordering the British tanks to

stay put with NO chasing onto his guns…by that time Monty had replaced his main corps commanders but didn't have a replacement for Lumsden until Medenine when Lumsden was fired - Pip

Roberts and McCreery then came into prominence and the British "Blitzkreig " was formed in time for the left hook at El Hamma with Horrocks - repeated at Tunis and again at the great swan to

Antwerp - 8th army never lost a battle after El Halpha…so it could be said that the main problems of 8th Army in the early days was formed in 1922 when the cavalry was merged into the RTC - and

it was a bitter battle - not resolved until early 1943...

Cheers

 

For an excellent answer to this question, see Niall Barr's The Pendulum of War.

"Doctrine" is a handy phrase, but I am not sure that it is a requirement for an effective army. The British Army of 1918 didn't have any 'doctrine' either but it was probably the best in the world at that time and certainly the best at integrating all arms in combat, including aircraft. The early defeats of WWII (including Dunkirk and Singapore as well as the Desert) happened because of twenty years of neglect and "institutional forgetting" by the British Army. Owing partly to budget restrictions and party to the rivalries and provincialism between the different arms, artillery, armor, and infantry seldom trained together between the wars and knew little about what the others could do and could not do. The lessons of inter-arms cooperation which the army knew so well in 1918 were largely lost, and had to be painfully rediscovered between 1940 and 1942.

Such training as took place was not nearly hard or realistic enough, and it was not adapted to variations in terrain or climate (desert, jungle, etc). Most training was unit or sub-unit work, with few brigade or divisional maneuvers. With units constantly rotating between Britain and the colonies, it was hard to build stable brigade and divisional teams. As a result of this, until well into the war British commanders tended to think small tactically, committing single battalions or brigades to tasks that required divisions or even corps. (As late as Mareth, even Montgomery launched a major offensive with only two battalions in the assault wave.) This piecemeal method of fighting was a gift to someone like Rommel.

The British Army was also a colonial, imperial, and Commonwealth army, and this did not always make for easy collaboration between British troops and forces from Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. The Indian Army too was a separate tribe, with its own history and outlook.

Many have blamed poor equipment as a basic cause of British defeat, but that needs to be qualified. The British fell behind in tank armament and the Crusader was poor mechanically, but I think that bad tactics (i.e., poor or no cooperation with other arms) had more to do with the armor's problems in the desert. German optics were better than British and German signal equipment was far better. Unreliable, shorter-range radios made British command and communications slower and more erratic than German, and this contributed directly to many desert defeats.

 

TTH

Two points……Monty sent in two battalions as late as Mareth - BUT he knew it was too strong so make a show to keep the enemy busy while he had .already sent Freyberg off to El Hamma to be followed by Horrocks and the 1st AD - which was the main successful Battle - leaving the enemy to abandon Mareth...

German optics were better - absolutely correct as I still have a Leica lens on my camera - BUT - their signal equipment was no where near the quality of the #19 set in Tanks and Artillery but their Infantry sets were way ahead of our #38 sets carried by our Infantry - they were pretty useless especially in the desert...

Cheers

 

People blame 'poor tactics', however Wavell's campaign against the Italians was quite brilliant and showed all the hallmarks of Germany's best armoured campaigns of 1940-41. He destroyed an army of 10 divisions in two weeks and advanced 1,300km. No matter how poor the Italian army was, Germany faced poor opposition, yet their campaigns are still lauded. The subsequent problems came from Churchill's decision to transfer the nucleus of this army to Greece

 

To be fair, though, it could be argued, and I just might argue!, that what is perceived as "bad leadership" is in fact inexperience by Corps Commanders and the Army Commander of warfare at such a scale. 8th Army was forced to attack before it had the opportunity to conduct formation level training (i.e Divisional or Corps), it's units were a fantastic hodge-potch inculding an over-sized and unbalanced armoured division. It's commanders were all new to the game, they were operating from brand new headquarters with inexperienced staff officers.

For all the criticism of the organisation of 22nd Armoured Brigade, perhaps we should look at the achievements of 4th Armoured Brigade Group - three armoured regiments, a lorried inf bn, a regt of 25 pdrs, some AT and some LAA seems like a pretty sensible organisation. Did it have more of an influence on the battle than 22nd Armoured Brigade?

My other thought is that the previous experience of operating against an enemy with air superiority led to an over-emphasis on dispersion - which might have proved a good thing for evading heavy casualties from air attack, but resulted in dispersion of command nets and units.

Regards

Tom

 

Tom

'bad leadership' wasn't meant as a moral judgement, but a statement of fact. I agree with your reasoning.

I don't think either 4 or 7 Armoured Brigades did much better, although I agree with you that it was a more balanced formation. But that's not saying much, if you compare it to e.g. a German armoured division organisation where a similar number of tanks would have 2-3 times the number of guns, and 2-4 times the number of infantry in support. 7 Armoured Division did of course have that in terms of volume in Support Group, but no effort was made to fight a joint battle.

Brig. Gatehouse in fact seems to have turned down an offer from Gen. Freyberg for artillery support in the early stages of the battle.

On dispersion, there was no excuse. What you refer to is tactical dispersion, which is of course necessary. But what 8 Army practised was operational dispersion, which is a big no-no, since it allowed the Axis to defeat them in detail.

All the best

Andreas

 

Andreas,

"no effort was made to fight a joint battle" - that seems hard to argue with, although at least they got 7th Armoured Brigade and the Support Group in the same geographical area!

Looking at the 3 RTR war diary, they do refer to arty support being given while the German armour is refuelling. I'll try to look at the diary in more detail over the next week or so and provide details, but this was relatively early in the battle.

I've read that Gatehouse turned down an offer from Freyberg at one point, which is easy to criticise in hindsight, but I would want to be sure of the context before heaping more blame on Gatehouse.

In addition, I do agree about the importance of operational dispersion, but wonder whether the tactical dispersion should also be seen as having a large impact. Some of the poor inf-armour-artillery coordination could be put done simply to lack of practice at coordinating action when tactically dispersed - this problem might have been eased if the various units were intermingled rather than dispersed.

Regards

Tom

 

Was it battle group formations in brigade or regiment sized units ? Their commanders were not showing as much initiative as Afrikakorps Kampfgruppe type units after April 1941. It is as if British found a way to defeat numerically superior Italians in Western Desert in 1940 as small battlegroup formations (like 7th Armored Divisions sending two ad-hoc formations to hook up deep in desert to cut retreating Italians in Beda Fomm ) than Germans perfecting it and executing initiative free Kampfgruppe tactics better than British along with advantage of having better vehicles and equipment. Than after struggling two years British returning to big sized division formation and straight tidy WWI style front warfare tactics along with central command control.....

 

No, I think that's completely wrong. Initiative wasn't the issue, there was plenty of that going around in the Empire forces. It was structural - Empire battlegroups were much weaker and less balanced than Axis battlegroups. Also, the Axis very clearly used the division as the main element, or even the Corps. They didn't win at Sidi Rezegh by sending regimental battle groups hither and thither, they took the whole D.A.K. to smash the Empire position there, reinforced by a battle group of Ariete.

All the best

Andreas

 

Merilou

As Andreas states the British Battle groups were not as well structured as the Afrika Korps at that time of Sidi Resigh and it took th whole of the DAK to break through owing mainly to the efforts of one man - Brigadier Jock Campbell V.C.

it was Monty when he took over fought overall with divisions …now we are back to the reinforced Brigade type battle groups with much heavier Tank elements with bigger and better guns - which we had been screaming for all

through the desert campaign - sort of proves the point that Germany started their preparations for war around 1933 whereas the British didn't really wake up until 1938 - in the middle of the ongoing Cavalry - Tank argument - I am still

surprised that we allegedly won the war...

Cheers