31 October 1941. Libya.
The RAF’s efforts over the last few weeks had been intensified, so, it was clear to the Italians and Germans that the British were coming. With almost the whole of the Wehrmacht committed to Operation Barbarossa, almost no German reinforcements had arrived. With the position of the Royal Navy and RAF strengthened on Malta, very few ships had arrived to resupply or reinforce the Italians either. Those that had, didn’t carry enough of what was needed. The morale in Tripoli was very low. In Rome, despite the bombast of Mussolini, the loss of both the East African and North African colonies imminently was causing a degree of unrest in the civilian population.
Hitler’s attempts to support his Italian ally had been successful in Greece, but had failed on Crete, and in North Africa. He wasn’t prepared to keep sending troops and tanks to support, to his mind, a lost cause. Once the Soviets were defeated, a thrust down to the Persian Gulf to take the oil off the British would be enough to knock them out of the war.
During the summer months, knowing that the British were strengthening their forces, and stockpiling supplies for their next thrust, the Italian leadership in Tripoli tried to think of ways they could spoil the attack, or at least defend against it effectively. The losses of men and equipment since the ill-fated invasion of Egypt the previous year were irreplaceable. The constant failure to better the British in any fight had left the Italian troops angry and afraid. What remained on the German expeditionary force had retired to the vicinity of Tripoli to attempt to rebuild with what they had left.
The Italian navy’s ‘Decima Flottiglia MAS’, after their successful attack on Suda Bay in March, had attempted to derail the British build-up with an attack on Malta in June which had been a disaster, and Tobruk harbour in September. This mission had been partly successful, two merchant ships had been sunk, but the loss of the adapted submarine Sciré in the aftermath of that attack had made more attacks problematic. The losses to the main fleet at Taranto and Cape Matapan had thrown up the weaknesses of the Italian fleet at night-fighting and cooperation between the Air Force and the Navy.
The idea of running a big convoy to Tripoli, with a strong escort had been tried and failed. Ubiquitous British aerial reconnaissance made the gathering of such a force impossible to hide, and the British Mediterranean Fleet was still considered too dangerous to take on in a fleet engagement. The loss of all the merchant ships, especially two tankers and an ammunition ship, in the most recent convoy on the night of 25/26 October had been a great blow. The Italian navy claimed to have sunk a British cruiser in the battle, but HMS Aurora, although damaged, had managed to return to Malta under her own steam.
The French were being pressed by the Germans to allow greater access to their territory, including ports and airfields in Tunisia. With a large British force sitting on the borders of Syria, and increasing propaganda from the Free French forces there, the Vichy government were caught between a rock and a hard place. If they acquiesced to the German demands, it was possible that the British would see that as an act of war, and the French possessions in the Middle East and North Africa would go the same way as the Italians. If they refused, there was real possibility that the Germans would occupy all of France. Marshall Petain was dithering; Admiral Darlan was pressing for the German demand to be met. The Americans were pressing Vichy to resist the German demands and were backing De Gaulle’s Free French movement.
In the meantime, the Italians had been doing their best to fix their defences for the expected attack. As well as covering the main coast road, the usual British attack included an inland hook. The Italians had been trying to make sure the obvious routes would also be defended. The problem with this was that the Italian forces were now more thinly spread than they would prefer. The German force had agreed to act as the mobile reserve with the surviving units from the Ariete Division.