The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949. Simon Ball
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Название: The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949
Автор: Simon Ball
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007332342
isbn:
The Mediterranean image of early 1941 was columns of marching men. They wore Italian uniform and they were walking towards Egypt in great snakes of humanity. They did not come as victors but as the defeated. Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers trudged towards captivity, their journey immortalized by eager pressmen. Wavell’s ‘raid’ just kept heading west. On 4 January 1941 Wavell’s forces captured Bardia. Eighteen days later they reached Tobruk. Wavell had given his field commander, General O’Connor, two divisions for the campaign. They faced up to ten Italian divisions. The numbers of tanks possessed by each side was more even. Indeed the British and Italian tank forces were roughly equivalent both in terms of numbers and quality. The Italian tanks were grouped together in the elite Brigata Corazzata Speciale commanded by General Babini. At Tobruk O’Connor split his forces, sending the 7th Armoured Division towards Mechili, inland, where he believed that the main body of Italian tanks was deployed. His Australian infantry carried on along the coast towards the town of Derna. On 24 January 1941 the two tank forces ran into each other near Mechili. The battle itself was indecisive. The Italians lost nine tanks, the British seven. Some of the Italian tankers believed that they had done enough damage to start a counter-attack. Graziani, however, would not hear of it. The battle was no more than a delaying action. On 3 February he withdrew from Benghazi. He told Mussolini that they would have to abandon Cyrenaica altogether. His aim was to send his forces to the end of the Balbia. They would hold the Sirtean desert as the forward defence line for Tripoli. There were rumours of much greater (and non-existent) British tank forces on the way.
Accordingly, Babini disengaged his force and retreated to the west. He and O’Connor still had equal numbers of ‘cruiser’ tanks. It was thus with some trepidation that O’Connor put forward a daring plan for the next stage of the advance. Instead of reuniting his forces he would send the armoured division south-west on a short-cut across the desert. They would try to cut the Balbia far to the south of Benghazi, rather than following the coast, taking each town in turn. Wavell and O’Connor met at Tmimi on the road to Derna on 4 February 1941: Wavell approved the plan. Thereafter events moved with great speed.
The reconnaissance elements of the 7th Armoured Division spotted Graziani’s 25,000-strong force retreating along the Balbia on 5 February. By the evening the tank forces themselves had reached the road near the small settlement of Beda Fomm. From a small hill by the roadside, known as ‘the Pimple’, they could survey a fourteen-mile stretch of road. They had reached ‘the Pimple’ before the Italians and thus cut off their line of retreat. It was up to Babini’s tanks to force a way through. The Italian tank force advanced with elan only to run into the dug-in British tanks. The Italians took heavy casualties. Nevertheless, about thirty tanks managed to force their way onto the road south of ‘the Pimple’. The Italian force was thus split. Most of the troops were stuck north of ‘the Pimple’. A powerful independent force of tanks was to the south of the hill, their escape route blocked only by a battalion of the Rifle Brigade supported by a battery of the Royal Horse Artillery. The next day the Italian tanks tried to make their breakthrough. The British gunners held firm, however, continuing to fire until the last of the desperate tanks stopped short of their line. By nine o’clock in the morning of 7 February 1941 it was all over. The Italian main force, deprived of its tanks, and with the Australians coming up behind them on the Balbia, surrendered. ‘Fox killed in the open,’ the triumphant British field commander signalled Wavell. 1
In Rome they could barely believe what was happening to the ‘fourth shore’. The intelligence system that had once proved so adept at extracting juicy morsels from diplomats, failed to keep pace with the battle. The Fascist elite was reduced to listening to BBC radio broadcasts. First, news would arrive of defeat. Then garbled accounts of brave resistance would take its place. Mussolini made the final arrangements for his tryst with Hitler only when he had convinced himself that the defence of Bardia would restore honour to Italian arms. Surely, he would wail to his advisers, the generals would stop the English. The ‘heroic infantryman’ or the ‘king of artillery’ would find a way If not the generals, then the fortifications would delay the advance. If the fortifications failed, then the very land would provide succour. The British could not fight their way through desert and along coast. The task of working up and down the cliffs would prove too much. Finally, the full scale of defeat would become clear and recrimination would follow. At that moment news would arrive of yet another humiliating defeat by the Greeks. 2
To make matters worse, the British could not help crowing over their victories. It was not their fault that they were useless, Churchill told his Italian listeners. The disasters they were now enduring were the responsibility of one man, the Duce. 3 He had ‘ranged the Italian people in deadly struggle against the British empire’. He alone had created defeat; if he were to be removed then the Italians would be absolved both of crime and cowardice. ‘There stands’, they should cry, ‘the criminal who has brought the deed of folly on our land.’ The message was in a sense well judged–there were plenty in Mussolini’s own intimate circle who heard Churchill and agreed with him. 4 The cost of such barbs was nevertheless high. For years afterwards Churchill’s words would provide the constant alibi for Fascists and their friends. Yet at the time there were no Italians with either the will or the power to overthrow Mussolini. The threat itself put Mussolini on his guard. It also resonated with Churchill’s avid listeners in Germany. The idea that Mussolini must be ‘saved’ from the Italians entered the Führer’s table talk. 5
He had, Hitler told his courtiers at Berchtesgaden, reconsidered the situation. The previous month he had ordered the Luftwaffe to teach the Mediterranean Fleet a lesson. 6 At the beginning of January 1941 the first Stukas had touched down in western Sicily. As Hitler addressed his generals they were going into action for the first time. The Mediterranean Fleet played into German hands with a display of the very arrogance that Hitler was determined to humble. The victor of Taranto, Illustrious, was sent through the Sicilian Narrows so that it might cover a convoy bringing crated fighters from Gibraltar to Malta. Many officers had a bad feeling about the operation, but Cunningham waved aside their objections. Illustrious was the talisman of the fleet, everyone felt better when she was around. She proved, however, the perfect target for German bombs. The Italians, too, played their part. 7 Even though they had but a few days to prepare, the two air forces choreographed a complex aerial ruse. Italian torpedo-bombers flew a decoy mission to draw off the Illustrious’s fighters. Once she was denuded of protection the dive-bombers attacked. ‘The dive bombing attacks’, Cunningham ruefully admitted, were most efficiently performed and came as a most unpleasant surprise.’ The carrier was hit six times. The only consolation for the British was that there was no killer blow. The crippled ship was able to get into Malta harbour without being sunk. She brought with her the first concentrated German air raids over the island, as for days afterwards the Stuka crews tried to finish off their prey. As Cunningham said, a ‘potent new factor in Mediterranean war’ had arrived. No one doubted what had happened. Large British ships had been chased from the waters surrounding Sicily and Malta. 8 The passage of even smaller ships had become deeply problematic. СКАЧАТЬ