Intro
Prologue - Writers basic background essay and perspective establishment
This thread will be my attempt to create an alternate history to the Battle of Gazala
Historically Gazala, Tobruk(42) and Mersa Matruh are typically lumped together. If one looks at the historical accounting of these 3 actions over the course of late May and most of June 1942, this was a decisive axis victory. Troop losses favored the axis nearly 10 to 1 across these actions, on top of incredible material losses to the allies in tanks, trucks, aircraft, artillery pieces, ammunition, and raw supplies like water and fuel. The axis captured numerous general officers and destroyed nearly the whole command structure of the X and XIII corps various formations assigned to the Gazala line
How did this happen? The British and commonwealth forces outnumbered the Axis in ground forces something like 5:4, although the axis air forces outnumbered the British at the start of the Gazala battle 5:4. The British where lavishly supplied with fuel, ammunition, motorized transport, whilst the axis where chronically short of supplies throughout the campaign, the spring of 1942, did represent the best supply situation they had experienced to date. The X fliegerkorps based in Sicily, along with Italian Regia Aeronautica forces had bombed Malta relentlessly, driving Royal Navy force K away, and loosening the choke hold on Rommel's supply lines to Tripoli. Additionally Goering had negotiated clandestine use of Tunisian ports and transfer of some French military assets to the Panzer Army Africa.
In equipment the German divisions of the Panzer Army Africa, where somewhat better off than their British counter parts. British cruiser tanks guns where underpowered, and had poor anti infantry performance. Their most effective tanks where American lend leased Lee tanks which despite having easily penetrated armor and an awkward turret layout reminiscent of the 20's designed French Char B series tanks, Did feature a hard hitting 75mm gun which could knock out German tanks at much superior ranges to most British tanks and anti tank guns. The transmissions and long roach march ability of British tanks of this era was notoriously poor. The Luftwaffe and Italian air force had a minor edge in the quality of their machines at that moment
So how did the British and their commonwealth allies lose in such a lopsided manner, and allow Rommel to get within 90 miles of Alexandria, having their army destroyed and embarrassed? When the forces where by combined measure, at parity. This scandal was so great that it generated a no confidence motion against Winston Churchill
The vastly oversimplified answer is command competence, namely the gross disparity in the high tactical competence of the Panzer Army Africa staff, radiated right down to its company commanders vs large scale criminal level command incompetence exercised by the British 8th army staff, from Auchinlek/Ritchie's staff right down to their company commanders. One can even add severely unhelpful political interference by Winston Churchill to the ledger of poor command competence on the British side, especially when seeing the debacle that occurred at Tobruk
Sir Alan Brook, the chief of the imperial general staff, and regarded by most postwar and independent reviews, as a smart man, regarded Auchinlek's staff as completely incompetent, and was instrumental in forcing their removal in later 1942 and ultimate replacement with Montgomery.
The running joke in Auchinlek's command was that two regiment's could only be assured of cooperating if their commanders slept with each other's wives, and given the performance at Gazala, it would be hard to rate this as anything other than a truism; the problems where not merely confined to the army, on the day Rommel launched his Gazala offensive, the desert airforce only had a single recon aircraft operating, and it was shot down first thing in the morning, letting everyone along the gazala line get surprised by axis tank columns materializing in their rear.
The existence of the Gazala line represented a wholesale British/Commonwealth rejection of every lesson taught by the 2nd world war up to that date, including their own experiences in France in 1940 and previous battles in the desert in 1940-1942. XIII corps formations where placed into defensive boxes, in theory backed by artillery and minefields but in practice, there were wide gaps, and artillery lacked the range to be mutually supporting between the boxes, and the boxes separated the divisions into penny packet brigades who could be defeated in detail by the combined might of the Africa Corps fighting as a cohesive unit. Ritchie and Auchinlek in effect created the same paper thin sort of line that field Marshal Graziani had created at Capuzzo, and where in turn just as vulnerable to massed armor bursting through and disrupting rear areas. The prized armored reserves operated in small Brigade groups with no coorindation with supporting arms, perhaps understandable as lacking in experience in 1939 or 1940 but criminally negligent by mid 1942. Nor was the command incompetence the sole province of 3 star generals, indeed Brigade, regiment battalion and company commanders along the Gazala line failed to respond the Africa corps movements and exercised (with only a few notable exceptions) no initiative to extricate themselves from the trap their superiors had put them in the position of. For as much as they fought bravely, they died or where taken prisoner at 10x the rate of the axis... British troops at the Somme and Gallipoli might hardly have noticed a difference and still been keen to drop the lions lead by donkeys remark of 1916
We should also note the significant failures of intelligence on the British side; for as much praise as they rightly deserve for project ultra, the 8th army radio network leaked, the desert air force radio network leaked, 8th army and middle east command headquarters leaked, and Rommel didn't depend entirely on Enigma, thus many of his orders went by courier or the more secure Italian military cipher network and the 8th army was left guessing when his offensive would begin
So against that historical backdrop, which my timeline will begin from, I shall introduce a single change that I believe creates the window for a more complete victory, namely a poorer performance by the only Allied unit that was well served in the battle of Gazalla, General Keonig's free French Brigade
It cannot be understated how brilliant a command performance was executed by general Keonig and his 3700 man strong brigade. surrounded in the first hours of the campaign by their exposure at the southern end of the line, they held back the 5 strongest divisions of the Panzer Army Africa and the entire might of their air force for 16 days, their ability to delay Rommel's supplies via the long detour around them created such critical shortages among Rommel's speerheads that he contemplated having to surrender and end the campaign in Africa right then and there. This timeline will see the point of departure, as having Luftwaffe bombers and Italian artillery locate and destroy General Keonig's hq on the first day of the battle, killing him and his staff. That first 48 hours where critical, as Rommel had coincidentally attacked at a time when the French Brigade was desperately low on water. Historically Keonig kicked his men back into line and they fought with a ferocity every bit as impressive as their fathers at Verdun, in my timeline, bereft of their commander and staff the XX italian motorized corps is able to penetrate their position in the confusion and compel their surrender
I look forward to sharing this timeline with you
This thread will be my attempt to create an alternate history to the Battle of Gazala
Historically Gazala, Tobruk(42) and Mersa Matruh are typically lumped together. If one looks at the historical accounting of these 3 actions over the course of late May and most of June 1942, this was a decisive axis victory. Troop losses favored the axis nearly 10 to 1 across these actions, on top of incredible material losses to the allies in tanks, trucks, aircraft, artillery pieces, ammunition, and raw supplies like water and fuel. The axis captured numerous general officers and destroyed nearly the whole command structure of the X and XIII corps various formations assigned to the Gazala line
How did this happen? The British and commonwealth forces outnumbered the Axis in ground forces something like 5:4, although the axis air forces outnumbered the British at the start of the Gazala battle 5:4. The British where lavishly supplied with fuel, ammunition, motorized transport, whilst the axis where chronically short of supplies throughout the campaign, the spring of 1942, did represent the best supply situation they had experienced to date. The X fliegerkorps based in Sicily, along with Italian Regia Aeronautica forces had bombed Malta relentlessly, driving Royal Navy force K away, and loosening the choke hold on Rommel's supply lines to Tripoli. Additionally Goering had negotiated clandestine use of Tunisian ports and transfer of some French military assets to the Panzer Army Africa.
In equipment the German divisions of the Panzer Army Africa, where somewhat better off than their British counter parts. British cruiser tanks guns where underpowered, and had poor anti infantry performance. Their most effective tanks where American lend leased Lee tanks which despite having easily penetrated armor and an awkward turret layout reminiscent of the 20's designed French Char B series tanks, Did feature a hard hitting 75mm gun which could knock out German tanks at much superior ranges to most British tanks and anti tank guns. The transmissions and long roach march ability of British tanks of this era was notoriously poor. The Luftwaffe and Italian air force had a minor edge in the quality of their machines at that moment
So how did the British and their commonwealth allies lose in such a lopsided manner, and allow Rommel to get within 90 miles of Alexandria, having their army destroyed and embarrassed? When the forces where by combined measure, at parity. This scandal was so great that it generated a no confidence motion against Winston Churchill
The vastly oversimplified answer is command competence, namely the gross disparity in the high tactical competence of the Panzer Army Africa staff, radiated right down to its company commanders vs large scale criminal level command incompetence exercised by the British 8th army staff, from Auchinlek/Ritchie's staff right down to their company commanders. One can even add severely unhelpful political interference by Winston Churchill to the ledger of poor command competence on the British side, especially when seeing the debacle that occurred at Tobruk
Sir Alan Brook, the chief of the imperial general staff, and regarded by most postwar and independent reviews, as a smart man, regarded Auchinlek's staff as completely incompetent, and was instrumental in forcing their removal in later 1942 and ultimate replacement with Montgomery.
The running joke in Auchinlek's command was that two regiment's could only be assured of cooperating if their commanders slept with each other's wives, and given the performance at Gazala, it would be hard to rate this as anything other than a truism; the problems where not merely confined to the army, on the day Rommel launched his Gazala offensive, the desert airforce only had a single recon aircraft operating, and it was shot down first thing in the morning, letting everyone along the gazala line get surprised by axis tank columns materializing in their rear.
The existence of the Gazala line represented a wholesale British/Commonwealth rejection of every lesson taught by the 2nd world war up to that date, including their own experiences in France in 1940 and previous battles in the desert in 1940-1942. XIII corps formations where placed into defensive boxes, in theory backed by artillery and minefields but in practice, there were wide gaps, and artillery lacked the range to be mutually supporting between the boxes, and the boxes separated the divisions into penny packet brigades who could be defeated in detail by the combined might of the Africa Corps fighting as a cohesive unit. Ritchie and Auchinlek in effect created the same paper thin sort of line that field Marshal Graziani had created at Capuzzo, and where in turn just as vulnerable to massed armor bursting through and disrupting rear areas. The prized armored reserves operated in small Brigade groups with no coorindation with supporting arms, perhaps understandable as lacking in experience in 1939 or 1940 but criminally negligent by mid 1942. Nor was the command incompetence the sole province of 3 star generals, indeed Brigade, regiment battalion and company commanders along the Gazala line failed to respond the Africa corps movements and exercised (with only a few notable exceptions) no initiative to extricate themselves from the trap their superiors had put them in the position of. For as much as they fought bravely, they died or where taken prisoner at 10x the rate of the axis... British troops at the Somme and Gallipoli might hardly have noticed a difference and still been keen to drop the lions lead by donkeys remark of 1916
We should also note the significant failures of intelligence on the British side; for as much praise as they rightly deserve for project ultra, the 8th army radio network leaked, the desert air force radio network leaked, 8th army and middle east command headquarters leaked, and Rommel didn't depend entirely on Enigma, thus many of his orders went by courier or the more secure Italian military cipher network and the 8th army was left guessing when his offensive would begin
So against that historical backdrop, which my timeline will begin from, I shall introduce a single change that I believe creates the window for a more complete victory, namely a poorer performance by the only Allied unit that was well served in the battle of Gazalla, General Keonig's free French Brigade
It cannot be understated how brilliant a command performance was executed by general Keonig and his 3700 man strong brigade. surrounded in the first hours of the campaign by their exposure at the southern end of the line, they held back the 5 strongest divisions of the Panzer Army Africa and the entire might of their air force for 16 days, their ability to delay Rommel's supplies via the long detour around them created such critical shortages among Rommel's speerheads that he contemplated having to surrender and end the campaign in Africa right then and there. This timeline will see the point of departure, as having Luftwaffe bombers and Italian artillery locate and destroy General Keonig's hq on the first day of the battle, killing him and his staff. That first 48 hours where critical, as Rommel had coincidentally attacked at a time when the French Brigade was desperately low on water. Historically Keonig kicked his men back into line and they fought with a ferocity every bit as impressive as their fathers at Verdun, in my timeline, bereft of their commander and staff the XX italian motorized corps is able to penetrate their position in the confusion and compel their surrender
I look forward to sharing this timeline with you
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