good morning jeremy

  

 A  N  T  I  C  S       O  V  E  R  N  I  T  E 

 

love

   dad

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Tobruk

  

 Rommel needed Tobruk and the British didn't.

Briton's Middle East commanders had no desire

to support another outpost in a siege well behind

enemy lines.  Even if successful, the venture

wasn't worth it to the military way of thinking.

Tobruk appears safe for the moment.

Rommel is stalled for lack of fuel.

"We have him now," General Ritchie proclaims.

Rommel's forces meanwhile take Sidi Muftah,

enabling them to directly resupply their formations.

British minefields inadvertently add to German defense.

Rommel takes this time to plan his next move.

 

 Four days later Rommel sprung from his lair,

known as 'The Cauldron,' to attack a series of 

British outposts strung between Knightsbridge

and El Adem.  The military situation everywhere

soon turned against the 8th Army.

Britain's generals were never trained to deal with

mobile armor.  Instead, the foot soldier still ruled

the battlefield.  The Matilda, Britain's best tank,

went no faster than troops moving double-time.

There was no need for a tank to go faster 

than a guy with his rifle.  

If your a corps commander you better quickly 

learn to think three times faster than you planned.

Forget your carefully prepared flank defense.

According to Rommel, delivering the first iron

punch is all the defense you need to know.

The 8th Army learned bitter lessons from the man

who first figured things out.

Orders from General Ritchie were ignored by 

commanders on the scene.  They were desperately

trying to get their forces to the Egyptian border

before they became trapped and annihilated

by the approaching panzer forces.

Tobruk fell quickly to Rommel.

 

 For Churchill the fall of Tobruk could not have come

at a worse time.  He was currently in Washington

conferring with his most important ally, Roosevelt.

The Prime Minister said, "Not only were the military

effects grievous, but it had affected the reputation

of the British Armies.  Defeat is one thing, disgrace

is another."

This string of failures had to end.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY

coldValentine

good morning justin

  

P E L I C A N S

coldValentine

Ritchie

  

General Ritchie, commander of the British 8th Army,

was cut off from his men and had no idea what had

happened to them nor did he know the direction of

his attackers.

About 1530 hours that afternoon a British patrol

of armored cars caught sight of an enormous 

formation of German tanks speeding south towards

Bir Hacheim.  The reconnaissance unit radioed HQ

with their report.  They transmitted their warning 

every half hour without a single message received

in response.  No one was listening to the radio.

A monitor had never been assigned.

 

The British troops were enjoying a glorious morning in May.

They sat about and leisurely ate their late breakfast.

The first sign of trouble was the frantic firing of a guard,

quickly followed by the sound of earth rumbling and a dust

cloud made from hundreds of tanks headed their way.

Brigades of British armor were quickly eliminated.

Ritchie had ignored the warning from Cairo to 

concentrate his tanks.  These pockets of armor,

scattered miles apart, were small bites easily  

swallowed.

Despite this catastrophe the British fought on courageously.

Opposing forces became hopelessly intertangled.

Both Ritchie and Rommel were now without the 

ability to command.  The Afrika Korps was battled

to a standstill.

Rommel's tank force was now prostrate - without fuel.

His supplies couldn't keep up and were forced to halt,

unprotected, many miles to the south.

Ritchie did nothing in response.  He couldn't.

He didn't know.  His HQ was too far removed

from events for him to have any accurate idea

as to what was going on.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

 

coldValentine

good morning jacob

  

D A W N     P A T R O L

love

   dad 

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Gazala

  

  The British are once again overmatched 

by Rommel's Afrika Korps despite a

valiant stand by the Commonwealth defense.

 Rommel's objective is Tobruk.

The harbor there will go a long way toward

solving his supply problem.  Right now all his

fuel, food and ammo come from Tripoli - 

800 miles further away than Tobruk from

the Afrika Korps' front line.

The afternoon of 26 May 1942 Rommel orders

a frontal assault on a line of well-placed British

fortifications in Gazala.  Defeating the enemy 

is not the goal.  Rather, this is a diversion.

 It keeps you thinking about what's happening

in front of you.

Meanwhile...

out of the desert, off to the south,

comes a horde of Panzer tanks - 

in far greater numbers than British generals

thought possible.  The Brits are stunned by a right

hook, a flank attack around their best defended

outpost, Bir Hocheim, then wheels into the

Royal backyard.  Their Matilda tanks all

nicely dispersed.

The matter becomes a melee.

Rommel races about the battlefield,

micromanaging as he tries to be everywhere.

The assault stalls.  Casualties, heavy.

Fight, damn you.  

Rommel doesn't quit.

The Free French defending Sidi Muftoh from 

Rommel's onslaught, hold out for three days 

before being swept from further consideration.

British resistance only increases.

The German armored punch is slowing.

Will the Afrika Korps reach Tobruk?

What will be left of it if it does?

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

coldValentine

good morning jack

  

A  C  T  I  O  N      7

love

   dad 

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Mediterranean

  

 The climatic face off between Rommel's Afrika Korps

and Montgomery's 8th Army was at El Alamein, 

1400 miles from Tripoli where Rommel's supplies

arrive from Italy - supplies that must first survive 

air and sea attacks launched from the British

island of Malta.

No one beats Rommel in understanding desert warfare.

He makes brilliant use of his armor.  Victories enable

him to ignore a fundamental rule of logistics:

You can't use what you don't have.

 Everything Rommel needs come from Italy.

Royal Navy subs operate out of Malta.

So do RAF fighters and bombers.

There are months where no more than half 

the supplies made it to Tripoli.  

Desperately needed new tanks, trucks,

weapons, ammunition and fuel, all now 

on the ocean's bottom.

Bombing Malta doesn't solve the problem.

Maybe invading the island with an amphibious 

assault would be worth the high risk.

Rommel and his two German divisions in Libya

are a side show to the Hitler's main event: 

Russia.

No one matched Rommel in battle.

They didn't need to.  His amazing tanks sat idle

everywhere, out of gas.  Trucks worn out.

Troops weak with dysentery.

Maybe we should tell Hitler about our problems.

Maybe not.  The Fuhrer's main event seems to be

going not quite as planned.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

coldValentine

good morning jessicca

  

B E A C O N 

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Rommel

  

 German troops arrive in three weeks.

Tanks of the 15th Panzers, 120 of them,

off load at the end of May.

Two months from now.

 Two months gives the British time to train

their green troops.  It gives them time to 

plot their fields of fire, fortify positions,

string barb wire and lay mines.

 The Tommy's are untested.

Their leadership green and uncertain.

The speed of desert warfare should 

knock them for a loop.

Italians generally perform better when led by Rommel.

But in this frontal assault the Brits are stubbornly

holding their ground.

Then, late in the afternoon, Rommel delivers 

a sharp armored hook into the coastal flank

of the British line.  The English defense collapses.

Mersa el Brega falls to the Nazis.

Two months early.

 How much time do you think armies put into

practicing retreat?  It's not easy to do.  

In this instance the British formations disintegrate.

Military order becomes a mob heading for the exit.

Rommel's forces stay close on their heels,

gobbling up territory all along the way.

* * * * *

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

coldValentine

good morning jeremy

  

N O  !

love

   dad

coldValentine

Cyrenaica

  

 Operation Compass

At the end of 1940 the British route Italian forces

arrayed along the Libyan border with Egypt.

British Desert Generals

Thinking the Italian threat in Libya is extinguished

Churchill guts his army in North Africa by sending

its best troops off to the Balkans in a futile attempt

to save Greece from a Nazi invasion. 

Rommel in North Africa 

The legendary Desert Fox arrives in February 1941.

The British, Italians and Germans, even Hitler,

expect the Afrika Korps will launch their first attack

on British forces sometime in May, giving Rommel

the needed time to acclimate himself to the realities

of desert warfare.

Italian POWs

What's there to acclimate to?  

Rommel begins planning his offensive the day

he arrives, catching a plane to scout the terrain.

His men haven't even begun to show up.  No problem.

He'll use the Italian forces still under Axis control.

They got shellacked by the British but Rommel

is confident they will perform for him.

There are no bad men, just bad leaders.

Charge of Italian M13 tanks 

The tanks don't arrive for weeks.

We don't need German tanks when we've got Italian

ones.  There are no excuses for delaying this attack.  

The British are in disarray.  Their new generals

are inexperienced and uncertain.  

Surprise them with a swift, hard kick.  

In the desert it is all about speed.

Tobruk becomes a famous last stand.

This fortified harbor is manned by a division 

of Aussies.  They're not much for spit-shined 

salutes but they behave with a nasty disposition

good enough to stop the Afrika Korps 

in its tracks.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER  EASY

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