Chapter Eleven
Montgomery was always able to trade hardware, a luxury that Rommel could ill afford. The Second Battle of Alamein was hard-won, but Monty’s heavy tank losses were not fatal, whereas Rommel’s were. By mid-January 1943 Montgomery could deploy 450 tanks against Rommel’s thirty-six panzers and fifty-seven Italian tanks. The 7th Armoured Division’s attack on the 15th Panzer Division on 15 January cost thirty-three tanks for just two panzers destroyed, and the following day the British lost another twenty tanks. The attack towards Tarhuna resulted in further severe losses for the British, but Rommel had nothing with which to hold on to Tripoli, which was captured on the 23rd.
Britain’s armoured formations also enjoyed increasingly effective air support. By the time of the Second Battle of Alamein the Desert Air Force was able to fly on a daily basis some 2,500 fighter and fighter-bomber sorties and 800 bomber sorties. In contrast the Luftwaffe could only manage a hundred fighter sorties and sixty dive-bomber sorties in support of Rommel’s beleaguered panzers.
Axis forces numbering 120,000 men with around 200 effective tanks were now facing over half a million Allied soldiers equipped with 1,800 tanks. Trying to capitalise on their success at Kasserine on 6 March 1943, a second Axis attack was mounted, this time against the Eighth Army opposite the Mareth Line towards Medenine. Up until late February Montgomery only had a single division at Medenine, but by the time of Rommel’s attack he had quadrupled his strength there, with 400 tanks supported by 500 anti-tank guns and 350 field guns. Montgomery also had air superiority.
Rommel’s three panzer divisions could muster only 160 tanks supported by no more than 10,000 infantry and 200 guns. It was an ill-executed operation and was repulsed with heavy losses, including fifty precious tanks, in the face of overwhelming British firepower. Although the 15th Panzer Division closed on the enemy, it was driven off. The 21st Panzer Division, which should have known better, exposed its tanks crossing a ridge; they took a terrible beating and were never able to close on the British gun lines. Neither the 10th Panzer Division nor the 90th Light Division achieved any better results and all suffered from mines. The British did not lose a single tank and only suffered minimal casualties – how times had changed.
As the Afrika Korps withdrew, it could only muster eighty-five German and twenty-four Italian tanks, a dangerously low number with which to hold on to Tunisia. On 9 March Rommel took his long-deferred sick leave and handed over the command of the army group to von Arnim. Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika now became known as the 1st Italian Army under General Giovanni Messe; against it, Montgomery had a 4:1 superiority in tanks.
On 20 March Montgomery threw 610 tanks at the Mareth Line, which was defended by just 150 tanks. However, his assault was driven off thanks to the weather, which kept the RAF grounded, and the panzers’ determination. The main defences of the Mareth Line ran along the formidable natural barrier of the Wadi Zigzaou, which after bitter fighting was forced by elements of the British 50th Division. A well-timed counter-attack by the 15th Panzer Division with less than thirty tanks and two infantry battalions contained and then almost destroyed the British bridgehead.
This forced Montgomery to redeploy the 1st Armoured Division to the west to support the New Zealand Corps’ left hook towards El Hamma. The New Zealanders barged through Wilder’s Gap in the Matmata Hills and across the waterless Dahar to the Tebaga Gap behind the Afrika Korps’ flank, forcing them to withdraw from the Mareth Line. Nonetheless, the blocking forces of the 21st Panzer Division at El Hamma ensured that the Axis forces were not trapped, though the panzer divisions lost most of their tanks during the battle.
Montgomery then launched a frontal assault on the new Axis position at Wadi Akarit, which spanned the Gabes Gap, forcing a breach. General Messe, with the Americans bearing down on his right flank, withdrew north toward Enfidaville. Slowly but surely the Axis forces were trapped in northern Tunisia around the ports of Bizerte and Tunis by the American and British armies.
With the Eighth Army pushing up from the south, the 1st Army began an offensive from the west. The key armoured formations were the US 1st Armored and the British 1st, 6th and 7th Armoured Divisions. Still the Axis forces clung to their mountain defences, especially on Longstop Hill where the British 78th Division struggled for four days to retake control from the Germans. In late April the panzers of the Afrika Korps made one last attack in an attempt to stave off the inevitable. General von Arnim gathered all the remaining armoured detachments into the 8th Panzer Regiment, which had first fought during Operation Battleaxe, and counterattacked at Djebel Bou Aoukaz west of Longstop. The Afrika Korps had just sixty-nine panzers still fit for battle, save for one very important detail – petrol.
During early May Allied forces began to encroach onto the Tunisian coastal plain. On the 5th the British 1st Infantry Division took Djebel Bou Aoukaz and the next day the 4th Indian Division secured the Medjez el Bab position. The way was now open for the ‘Desert Rats’ of the 7th Armoured Division and on 7 May their tanks rolled triumphantly into Tunis. At the same time the Americans took Bizerte, leaving the remaining Axis forces trapped in the Cape Bon peninsula.
On 12 May 1943 von Arnim himself was captured and a day later Messe formally surrendered 125,000 German and 115,000 Italian troops, all of whom went into captivity. The Axis forces’ remaining 250 immobile tanks fell into the Allies’ hands. On the 13th General Alexander signalled Churchill in London, ‘Sir, it is my duty to report that the campaign in Tunisia is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores.’
New Zealand infantry charge through the smoke to overrun an enemy position during the Wadi Matratin operation to outflank Rommel at El Agheila. Following Rommel’s defeat at El Alamein, the Eighth Army rolled back into Mersa Matruh, Sidi Barrani, Bardia, Tobruk and Benghazi. The New Zealanders’ carriers then left-hooked again to Nofilia, but the lack of tank support meant the German rearguard held. (Author’s Collection)
Axis motor vehicles streamed westward through Tripolitania towards Tunisia: the ‘dotted line’ towards the bottom of the frame is a convoy heading through the wadis near Bendi Ulid. Bumper to bumper, they were vulnerable to air attack. (Author’s Collection)
British forces rolled into the port of Tripoli at 5am on 23 January 1943. This photo clearly shows Eighth Army Valentine tanks and tracked carriers in the central square. In the foreground are Ford 3-ton trucks, with what appears to be the CMP cab No. 12 known as the ‘Alligator’ hood. (Author’s Collection)
A British soldier surveys the view from a Mareth Line outpost just outside Foum Tatanouine, which dominates several approach roads. Although trenches were cut in the rock to connect a number of concrete pillboxes, it is clear from the fact that this man is kneeling that these were little more than temporary defensive positions for light weapons. (Author’s Collection)
In January 1943, following El Alamein, Montgomery could still field 450 tanks; the following month he attacked the Mareth Line with over 600. Against such numbers there was little Rommel could do but continue his fighting retreat, and Monty’s habitual caution ensured that Rommel kept getting away. (Author’s Collection)
Tired-looking men of the Eighth Army negotiate an Axis anti-tank ditch on the Mareth Line. The New Zealanders turned the Matmata Hills by driving west through Wilder’s Gap, opening up a left hook to Bir Soltane and ultimately El Hamma. The loss of the Mareth position cost Rommel 6,000 men captured as well as quantities of panzers, transport vehicles and other equipment lost, but he still managed to get away with the bulk of his forces. (Author’s Collection)
Churning up the sand, a British Crusader II close support tank, armed with a 3-inch howitzer, leads two Crusader IIIs (identifiable by the flat gun mantlet and 6-pounder gun) through the town of El Hamma. While this move unhinged the Mareth Line, the actions of the veteran 21st Panzer Division enabled Rommel to fall back on Gabes and then Wadi Akarit, ensuring that he escaped Montgomery once again. (Author’s Collection)
Kicking up the dust, a British Grant tank pushes through Gabes hot on the heels of the Italian Saharan Group and the German 21st Panzer and 164th Light Divisions, which screened the Axis retreat from Mareth. (Author’s Collection)
A column of Valentine tanks waiting patiently while sappers mark out a mine-free route on the approaches to the Gabes Gap. Just 10 miles north of El Hamma and Gabes, Rommel turned to fight at Wadi Akarit, which spans the gap (a narrow-fronted position between the Mediterranean and the nearby hills). Earlier American attempts to secure this position had failed. This enabled Rommel to fight a successful two-front battle against the British and the Americans. (Author’s Collection)
Valentine tanks, carriers and motor transport vehicles take a break after pushing through the Gabes Gap. Note the prisoners of war moving off to the left. (Author’s Collection)
An Eighth Army welded-hull Sherman M4A2 takes a slight detour while sappers using a bulldozer repair a road blown up by the retreating Axis forces. Note the rather random camouflage scheme. This photo was taken during the push on Wadi Akarit. (Author’s Collection)
British troops check out a knocked-out panzer in Tunisia. Sightseers often had to be careful of booby traps left by fleeing crews. (Author’s Collection)
The Bishop was the first British-designed self-propelled gun of the war, and consisted of a Valentine chassis with a 25-pounder gun in a fixed turret. Supplied in limited numbers to the Eighth Army, it was soon eclipsed by the M7 Priest using the M3 medium tank chassis. The Bishop was crude and unsophisticated by comparison. Dubbed ‘a formidable combination’, these three are firing near Grenadier Hill in Tunisia. (Author’s Collection)
Churchill tanks providing infantry support near Longstop Hill. It was planned to halt production of this tank in 1943, but its first real combat operations with the First Army in the Tunisian hills gained it a reprieve. It was usually armed with a 6-pounder gun, but some of the First Army’s tanks were up-gunned with the M3’s 75mm gun to produce the Churchill IV (NA 75). (Author’s Collection)
A Tiger I knocked out in Tunisia. The British first came up against Hitler’s latest and heaviest tank near Pont du Fahs in February 1943 when 6-pounder anti-tank guns took on nine Panzer IIIs and two Tigers. Both the Tigers were knocked out at 500 yards. (US Signal Corps/NARA)
The British First Army entered Tunis in the late afternoon of 7 May 1943 and the men were greeted as liberators by the locals. Shermans such as this one were brought up to silence any lingering resistance from enemy snipers. (Author’s Collection)
While Luftwaffe personnel in North Africa escaped to Sicily, much of their equipment was not so fortunate. Here a British soldier at Bizerte aerodrome is examining an abandoned Focke Wulf which was damaged in an Allied bombing raid. (Author’s Collection)
A column of German prisoners captured outside Bizerte on 8 May 1943. Many of them look almost relieved that it is all over. (US Signal Corps/NARA)
The Axis forces ended up with some strange bedfellows in Tunisia. The tricolour on the man’s helmet shows that these are members of the French Phalange Africaine, who were attached to the German 334th Infantry Division. When the 5th Panzer Army surrendered, it included five battalions of locally raised Arabs. (Author’s Collection)
Bedraggled-looking German prisoners captured at Medjez el Bab. They appear to have abandoned all their personal equipment except their greatcoats. The men on the right are wearing the long canvas and leather desert boots popular with the Deutsches Afrika Korps. Again they seem relieved the fighting is over and that they are alive. (Author’s Collection)
General Harold Alexander in Tunisia. On 13 May 1943 he signalled Churchill, ‘We are masters of the North African shores.’ (Author’s Collection)
The final resting place of many Panzertruppen in Tunisia. Hitler’s insistence on fighting to the bitter end in North Africa greatly depressed Rommel, who saw little point in such futile gestures. While the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions were reformed in Sicily and Normandy respectively, they had to be fleshed out with new recruits. (US Signal Corps/NARA)
The very last of the panzers disabled by Allied bombers. This Panzer Mk IV was photographed on 10 May 1943, just days before the Axis surrender. The force of the explosion blew the turret hatch and the engine grill clean off. (US Signal Corps/NARA)
American Sherman M4A2s gathered at La Pecherie French naval base in Tunisia in July 1943 ready for the next major military operation in the Mediterranean: the invasion of Sicily. (US Army/NARA)
A veteran of the North African battles comes ashore in Sicily. (US Army/NARA)
Following the German surrender in Tunisia in May 1943, British Shermans were next deployed in the invasion of Sicily – this one is north of Rammacca. Subsequently 1,600 Shermans were delivered to the Eighth Army in Italy. (Author’s Collection)