General Gott not shot down and killed in August 1942

Exactly - does he throw out a plan made by those he knew, and adopt a radically different approach; or continue with tactics that had only had sporadic success?

Does that allow Rommel to reach the Alam el Halfa ridge? That would prove a dangerous situation, particularly if the British armour goes in lemming-fashion again in an attempt to dislodge them.

AIUI it was Montgomery's plan to dig the tanks in on the ridge and refuse to come out to play. OTOH, the plan of cutting through in the south and then swinging north is blindingly obvious, so holding the ridge strongly should be obvious.
 
One important point is the shake up in signals intelligence that occured in 1942. That group of events was independant of a Monty/Gott question. Much or all of this was driven by outside personalities and activities. ie:

Discovering the US Armys 'Black Code' leak, aka as the Col Fellers leak. Shutting that down removed a significant source of operational and tactical intelligence that had aided Rommel. That effort originated in London & its is unlikely anyone in 8th Army was involved.

Identification of the signals intel battalion of the Africa Corps. Its destruction in the Alamien battles was not the only solution. If the opportunity to remove it by ground attack had not occured then British forces well above the 8th Army would have been hard at work to nuetralize it.

General improvement of 8th Army & Middle Eastern Command signals security. While Monty was all for it in 8th Army the original driving force came from the highest levels in the UK. As ULTRA became more effective it revealed just how how bad parts of the Commonwealth signals security were.

Improving the use of ULTRA in supporting field operations. By mid 1942 a workable system was roughed out for rapid dissemination of ULTRA intel to the users at Army level. Earlier 8th Army commanders had less material from ULTRA Than Monty. Gott would have had the same advantage had he chosen to use it.

Beyond ULTRA there was a general improvement in British or Commonwealth operational and tactical intelligence. Again Gott could have benefitted from this the same as Monty.
 
Does that allow Rommel to reach the Alam el Halfa ridge? That would prove a dangerous situation, particularly if the British armour goes in lemming-fashion again in an attempt to dislodge them.

AIUI it was Montgomery's plan to dig the tanks in on the ridge and refuse to come out to play. OTOH, the plan of cutting through in the south and then swinging north is blindingly obvious, so holding the ridge strongly should be obvious.

The NZ view:

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Alam-c2.html

The last complete instruction signed by General Auchinleck for the Eighth Army, issued on 31 July, has already been mentioned. It directed that the army, adopting a defensive attitude, was to strengthen its defences, rest, reorganise, and train. It was accompanied by a detailed order, in effect a summary of previous plans, for withdrawal dependent on the ‘scale of attack and warning received’, from the forward positions to a ‘main zone’.

In this main zone, nine defended localities were noted as in preparation, with three new ones not yet started, to cover the western face of the zone. The basic garrison for each of these twelve localities was to be two infantry battalions with artillery and anti-tank support. Mobile battle groups were to operate in the gaps between the localities. This order gave the artillery for each locality as a field battery, that is, eight 25-pounders; in his later report Auchinleck increased this to a regiment of twenty-four guns. It seems evident that the allocation of a battery only was at first intended probably to spread the available artillery to the many tasks expected of it.

The planned localities were scattered over a large stretch of the desert and, at a regiment in each, would have absorbed most of the artillery, and almost all of the infantry, available. This would have left the armour, still far from recovered from the long retreat and the July battles, with little artillery support to form the mobile columns guarding the wide gaps between the twelve boxes.

A test of the combined plans for the armour and infantry of 13 Corps was held at Corps Headquarters on 7 August, attended by Inglis and senior officers of the Division. The principal item in this staff exercise dealt with the withdrawal of the infantry, after an enemy penetration of the forward positions, to the main zone defences of Alam el Halfa under cover of a limited counter-attack by 22 Armoured Brigade. Details of this exercise show that the implication in 13 Corps' plans, of a main zone to be strongly defended and a rear zone for a withdrawal in an emergency, had been subordinated to the original army plan of a forward zone likely to be overrun and a main zone into which the infantry would retreat and reorganise for the principal action of the defence. Inglis was not too happy with the result of the exercise as it showed weaknesses both in the time taken for the armoured counter-attack and in the difficulties of reorganisation in the main zone.

Gott was killed immediately after this CPX.
 
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Does that allow Rommel to reach the Alam el Halfa ridge? That would prove a dangerous situation, particularly if the British armour goes in lemming-fashion again in an attempt to dislodge them. .

Even under Montgomery there were still instances of British rmoured squadrons being shot up charging anti tank guns but nothing on the scale of Gazala

If the British armour gets up to its' old tricks Alam Halfa could become another Gazala unless Rommel runs out of fuel. Gott might well be relieved after that even if Britain does not lose Egypt.
 
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