Osprey - Elite 162 - World War II Desert Tactics.pdf

(2840 KB) Pobierz
Elite
O
SPREY
PUBLISHING
World War II
Desert Tactics
Paddy Griffith
•
Illustrated by Adam Hook
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Elite • 162
World War II
Desert Tactics
Paddy Griffith
•
Illustrated by Adam Hook
Consultant editor
Mar tin Windrow
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
WORLD WAR II
DESERT TACTICS
A HARSH AND VAST ARENA
W
hen the British Expeditionary Force retreated through
Dunkirk in early June 1940, it abandoned not only all of its
guns and vehicles, but also any idea of conducting major
operations in north-west Europe for the next four years. Later in the
same week, however, the Italians judged it safe to enter the war. New
theatres of operations were suddenly opened in the Balkans, East Africa
and especially North Africa, which would give the British Army plenty
to do until the final capture of Tunis in May 1943. And not just the
British, since contingents from all over the world would quickly become
engaged in the battle as it ebbed and flowed for three years across a vast
swathe of Libya, Egypt, and eventually Tunisia. By the end of these
campaigns the combatants in North Africa would include (apart from
North Africans themselves) forces from America, Australia, Britain,
France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, New Zealand, Poland and South
Africa, not to mention a Jewish brigade, and an AA battery from Hong
Kong and Singapore.
The campaign in North Africa was not only highly international: it was
also the most technologically advanced of World War II, in the sense that
it was the only one to be fought (at least until it reached Tunisia) without
the use of horses or mules. It was pure mechanized warfare, and as such
British sun compass. Much
of the desert terrain was
featureless, but pinpoint
accuracy in navigation was
essential, and not only for
tactical movements:
replenishment echelons had
to find tanks and guns, and
artillery and aircraft had to be
directed on to specific targets.
The sun compass was an
invaluable instrument, because
the magnetic compass was
useless inside a vehicle made
of steel. The sun compass could
be mounted just next to the
vehicle commander, for constant
checking on the march; to use
a magnetic compass he would
have to stop, dismount and
walk some distance away from
the vehicle. (Tank Museum
collection; author’s photo)
3
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Schematic cross section of
the terrain of the North African
coastal desert where operations
took place.
it was the long-awaited test for many of the futuristic theories and
speculations that had been put forward during the 1920s and 1930s. At
first sight the open desert terrain seemed to be ‘good tank country’ or
even ‘a tactician’s dream’, and there was quite a lot of loose talk about
how the tanks would sail around effortlessly like warships in the open sea.
The tank itself had, after all, originally been conceived as a ‘Land
Ironclad’ (after H.G. Wells’ short story of 1903), and it was first
developed by the British Admiralty. The analogy was soon elaborated into
a whole taxonomy of ‘capital tanks’, ‘cruiser tanks’, ‘destroyer tanks’,
‘tank harbours’, ‘tank marines’ and so forth.
1
Alas for all this optimistic idealism, it soon became apparent that
before 1940 very few European soldiers had had the slightest idea of
what this terrain was really like – especially not from the point of view
of large-scale mechanized warfare. It turned out that the vast, bare
landscape fell very far short of a tactician’s dream, and for a wide variety
of reasons. Its very openness made it notoriously difficult for anyone to
find cover, so that entire divisions might sometimes have to form up
facing each other in the open, within artillery range, in a way that had
not been seen since the middle of the 19th century. The infantry often
had to keep its transport miles to the rear to protect it from enemy fire.
It was also extremely difficult to navigate accurately, and many are the
stories of vehicles being lost for hours on end, sometimes wandering
into the enemy’s leaguers without either side realizing it. In the summer
the mirages could cause multiple distortions of the light that made
observation, and range-finding by optical instruments, impossible.
The rockier patches might resist the excavation of foxholes unless
pneumatic drills or explosives were used; while the heat, the flies and
the sandstorms constantly mocked all the normal expectations of
‘civilized’ warfare.
All participants agreed that whatever it might do for tacticians, this
harsh and gigantic arena certainly made for ‘a logistician’s nightmare’.
The main problem with fully mechanized warfare was, of course, that it
depended on the internal combustion engine; each engine had a strictly
limited mileage, and this was radically reduced when the vehicle had to
drive through sandstorms and fields of light grit which permeated the
moving parts. An unprecedented effort had to be put into recovery,
maintenance and repairs. Fuel consumption was also exceptionally
high, which raised particular problems when lines of supply became
stretched over many hundreds of miles – there were no civilian filling
stations at the roadside, such as had helped the Germans forward in
their French campaign. Over most of this theatre of war the railheads
4
1
See the exemplary discussions in Paul Harris,
Men, Ideas and Tanks
(Manchester University Press, 1995)
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
stopped very far short of the front-line fighting. Not even water was
available in anything like the quantities required, which meant that
great efforts had to be put into carting it over enormous distances, with
the normal daily ration per man often falling to as little as half a gallon
for all purposes – including keeping the vehicles’ radiators topped up.
North Africa was such an unforgiving environment – in these and many
other ways – that every mile travelled required a mechanical effort
equivalent to well over two miles travelled in north-west Europe – and of
course, in North Africa there were many more miles to be travelled.
With very few exceptions, formations that entered this theatre
suffered an initially very rude awakening. The first to launch an
offensive – on foot, for lack of sufficient motor transport – were Marshal
Graziani’s under-supplied and second-line Italian troops in September
1940. They did not prosper, even before the December counter-attack
by the British 7th Armoured, 4th Indian and then 6th Australian
Infantry Divisions – all three of which included experienced veterans
who had studied desert conditions before the war. However, these
British Empire formations were soon replaced by much less desert-aware
troops. Equally, when Erwin Rommel made his first bold attack from El
Agheila with the
Deutsches Afrika Korps
(DAK) in March 1941, he found
that 83 out of 155 of his tanks quickly broke down, mainly for want of
‘desertized’ oil filters; Panzer Regiment 5 was left with only 25 ‘runners’
for its vital assault on Tobruk on 11 April, which was duly repulsed.
The Germans, however, would soon learn from their mistakes,
and the DAK would rapidly establish itself as the outstanding fighting
force in North Africa, as well as enjoying the greatest continuity of
personnel. After Rommel’s irruption into the theatre, the over-stretched
British Empire had to keep feeding in formations that were mostly fresh,
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
1 February 1941, near Derna:
Australian infantry carrying up
rations and water over typically
unforgiving stone-desert; water
supply was a constant problem
and limiting factor in this
theatre. The officer leading
them seems to carry a thermos
container, and a couple of the
Diggers have what look like
beer bottles. By this stage in
Gen O’Connor’s campaign this
had become practically a rear
area; nevertheless, Derna was
starved of motor transport,
which had largely been diverted
to the mobile spearheads that
were just about to win the
decisive battle of Beda Fomm
hundreds of miles away near
Benghazi. (IWM E 1845)
5

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin