Battle of Alam el Halfa

Background

After his victory at Gazala in June 1942 Rommel pursued the Eighth Army into Egypt, but his supply lines were stretched: Benghazi and Tobruk were far from the front. On 13 August Bernard Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army, ordered the contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed, and vowed to hold the ground. He expected Rommel to try a flank attack in the south and prepared for it.

British Ultra decrypts revealed Axis intentions, and a few days before the battle they confirmed Montgomery's own reading of what Rommel would do. Rommel intended a night attack to break through the lightly held south, then turn north to threaten the Eighth Army's supply routes. The Italian XXI Corps would make a frontal demonstration in the north, while the main thrust was led by the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions and the 90th Light Division.

Montgomery held the southern front lightly, with a 12-mile mined and wired gap from the New Zealand Box to Qaret el Himeimat, to draw Rommel into attacking there. His armour was dug in on the Alam el Halfa ridge, about 20 miles behind the front, and the tanks were used as anti-tank guns. Rommel asked Rome for 6,000 short tons of fuel and 2,500 of ammunition, but by 29 August over half the supply ships from Italy had been sunk and only 1,500 tons of fuel had reached Tobruk. Kesselring agreed to lend Luftwaffe fuel.

The armies

The Axis force was two German Panzer divisions and the 90th Light Division in the main thrust, with the Italian XX Motorised Corps's Ariete and Littorio Armoured Divisions on the flank. The Panzer divisions fielded about 200 gun-armed tanks, among them 37 Panzer IVs, 27 of them the long-gunned 'special', while the two Italian armoured divisions had 243, most of them worn or obsolete, apart from the Semovente da 75/18. Fuel, not the numbers of tanks, set the limit. Rommel had asked for far more than he got, and what came across the Mediterranean was sunk on the way.

The Eighth Army had about 700 tanks, 160 of them American Grants, with about 500 engaged in the armoured battle. Its dispositions were deliberate. The 7th Armoured Division's brigades covered the minefields in the south and were to withdraw, while the 22nd Armoured Brigade held Alam el Halfa ridge with 92 Grants and 74 light tanks, supported by six-pounder anti-tank guns and divisional artillery. The 8th Armoured Brigade stood ready on the flank, and 100 Valentine tanks filled a gap in the line by 13:00 on 31 August. The Desert Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm worked at night and by day, and British intelligence had a clear picture of the Axis plan. The Grant's gun, mounted in the hull, could not be used from a hull-down position, a limitation that mattered on the ridge.

The battle

The night approach, 30–31 August. The Axis attack began on the night of 30 August under a full moon. The Desert Air Force attacked Axis concentrations, and Fleet Air Arm Albacores dropped flares for Wellington bombers and artillery. The minefields proved much deeper than expected. The 7th Armoured Division's brigades covering them inflicted heavy casualties before withdrawing; General Walther Nehring of the Afrika Korps was wounded in an air raid, and General Georg von Bismarck of the 21st Panzer Division was killed by a mine. CDB90's ALAM HALFA engagement (386) begins at 01:30 on 31 August.

The ridge, 31 August. By midday the Axis troops had passed the minefields and wheeled north, further west than planned, towards Alam el Halfa. At 13:00 the 15th Panzer Division attacked, followed an hour later by the 21st Panzer. The 22nd Armoured Brigade held the ridge. Panzer IV F2 tanks engaged at long range, and the Grants, unable to fire from hull-down positions, suffered. As night fell and fuel ran short, General Gustav von Vaerst ordered a withdrawal. The Germans lost 22 tanks and the British 21. In the centre, the Italian Bologna Division and German Infantry Regiment 433 attacked Ruweisat Ridge and took Point 211, but a counterattack drove them out.

Stalemate, 1–2 September. Night air attacks continued on Axis supply lines, and more than half of 5,000 long tons of petrol promised by Mussolini was sunk. On 1 September the 21st Panzer Division was largely inactive, probably for lack of fuel, and the 15th Panzer's dawn attack towards the 22nd Armoured Brigade's eastern flank was stopped by a flank attack from the 8th Armoured Brigade. On the morning of 2 September Rommel decided to withdraw, citing fuel shortages, Allied air superiority and the loss of surprise. Armoured cars of the 4th/8th Hussars attacked about 300 Axis lorries near Himeimat and destroyed 57. The Desert Air Force flew 167 bomber and 501 fighter sorties that day. CDB90's engagement ends at 19:00 on 2 September.

Operation Beresford, 3–4 September. At 22:30 on 3 September the 5th New Zealand Brigade attacked the Italian positions; the 132nd Brigade was delayed an hour reaching its start line. The Valentines of the 46th Royal Tank Regiment lost their way in the dark and ran into a minefield, where twelve were knocked out. The 90th Light Division inflicted 697 casualties on the 132nd Brigade and 275 on the New Zealanders. Brigadier Robertson was wounded and Brigadier Clifton captured by a patrol from the Folgore Division. Freyberg advised calling off the attack, and Montgomery and Horrocks agreed. On 5 September the Afrika Korps withdrew largely unhindered, though the Desert Air Force flew 957 sorties in 24 hours.

Aftermath

Alam el Halfa was Rommel's last major offensive in North Africa. His panzer divisions were almost back at their starting positions by 5 September, having lost 2,930 men, 49 tanks, 60 guns and about 400 vehicles; the British lost 1,750 men and 68 tanks. For the first time in the campaign, tank losses were not heavily one-sided against the British. Rommel blamed British air superiority and did not know about Ultra.

Montgomery did not pursue. He said that the Eighth Army was still being reformed with new and untrained units, and he kept it intact to build up for the offensive that became the Second Battle of El Alamein in October. Historians have criticised this caution. Michael Carver argues that it let British armour miss the chance to finish off the Afrika Korps while it was strung out between the minefields and the ridge. The Axis side told it differently: Friedrich von Mellenthin described panzer divisions paralysed by fuel shortage, bombed incessantly and waiting for a British onslaught that never came, and Rommel is said to have complained to Kesselring that the British were not attacking.

There is also a small argument about the fighting on Ruweisat Ridge. The New Zealand official history calls the Italo-German infantry action a feint, while Cyril Falls described it as a strong attack that needed a considerable counterattack to beat.

Wargaming it

Alam el Halfa works as a battalion-level game of two or three evenings, with one stand per company or tank troop on a map of about 500 metres to the hex, or as a divisional operational game at kilometre scale. Its charm is that the result was largely set before the first shot. The attacker must cross a mined belt much deeper than he expected, in the dark, under air attack, with a fuel allowance that shrinks every turn. The defender has chosen his ground and need only hold the ridge.

Key terrain is thus simple: the minefields and Himeimat in the south, the open desert between, the Alam el Halfa ridge and Ruweisat Ridge in the north. The decision points are Rommel's choice at the minefields to wheel north earlier than planned, which brought the Axis columns onto the ridge from the west, von Vaerst's order to withdraw on the evening of 31 August, and Montgomery's choice not to counterattack.

The what-ifs are the interesting part: an Axis force with enough petrol to reach the ridge fully fuelled; a British counterattack on 1 September, as Carver implies was possible; or a defender without Ultra, who would have to guess where Rommel would strike. A balanced scenario would give the Axis player a fuel pool that cannot cover both the approach and the attack and let him choose how to spend it.

Maps and pictures