WHAT HAPPENED?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 239, 9 October 1942, Page 2

WHAT HAPPENED?

CAPTURE OF TOBRUK "BLITZ" TACTICS SUCCEEDED What really happened in Tobruk? This «as i"ie of the questions an English war correspondent, Alexander Clifford, of the Daily Mail, found himself asked when home on leave in August, after two years in Egypt. He answered in this way:— Probably very few people know. I certainly can't claim to give the full answer, but I can give a brief explanation that may be the right one. The question falls into two. Could Tobruk have been held at all? And was it defended as well as possible? It is arguable whether Tobruk was, in fact, tenable. Both Tobruk and Bardia have now been assaulted and captured twice each, and in no single case when confronted with a full-scale attack were the defenders able to hold out three days. In each case the defenders had to be spread evenly round the perimeter, while the attackers concentrated their entire strength at one point. With complete air supremacy the attackers were almost bound to make a breach, and once the breach was made and exploited it was all up.

Remember that last summer, when the Australians held Tobruk, it was besieged, but never subjected to a carefully planned, full-scale assault.

To Hold It Temporarily

This time it seemed uncertain whether it would lie defended or not. In fact, it had been decided to hold it temporarily, keeping the main road open to the cast if possible. The navy were not going to be asked to resume their risky, costly job of supplying it. The garrison were given enough stores to enable them to hold out until, it was calculated, our forces were reformed in Kgvpt and able to take the initiative again.

Rut the South Africans, who had been stationed round the perimeter for some weeks, didn't know this. We could not tell them our plans, for their defence preparations might have given the clue to the enemy. So the defenders, not knowing whether they were to be defenders or not, made no very intensive efforts to get into shape for a siege.

The elaborate compartruented system of communications built up by the Australians had fallen to bits. The defence works needed refurbishing all the way round. But there wasn't much time to do it, and no one seemed to know whether there was any necessity. Rommel's Plan Known Eut finally the orders came, and the garrison "stood to" round the perimeter. We knew Rommel's plan for attacking the place—the plan he was on the verge of putting into operation last November.

We knew what he considered the weak spot in the defences. We knew that Rommel, if he was in a hurry, would almost certainly use that same plan, which he had all ready in his pocket. And this being so, it seems strange that a tired Indian brigade, which had never been to the spot before, was suddenly put in to defend this weak sector.

Possibly, in the end, none could have done any better than those Indians did. The attack came with terrific force and speed. Everyone was bombed unmercifully. There was no fighter protection—there could be none, for the airfields were by that time too far away.

No help came from outside—anyway, Rommel had arranged to meet it if it did. The pace was breathtaking. At one moment the Italian Ariete Division got behind, and it was offered the choice of a Stuka raid to help it or an easier passage. It chose the Stuka raid and caught up again.

Once more the British tank force inside the perimeter was put up against the anti-tank guns and annihilated. All along the line the artillery O.P.'s were overwhelmed and the guns were blind. All round the South Africans stood and listened unable to do anything, for all was quiet in their sector apart from the bombing.

No Formal Surrender

Things got beyond the scope of any defence plan. General Klopper, who was commanding, found it impossible to handle the operation as a whole. His headquarters were chased from place to place. He asked permission to fight his way out and it was granted, but it does not seem that he was ever able to transmit orders. There was no quiet, formal surrender of the whole place, but merely an enforced and local surrender of Klopper himself. Some troops, most of them men of the Guards Brigade, fought their way out on their own initiative. Others, including most of the South Africans, seem to have got an order to surrender and obeyed it.

It was an example of extremely concentrated blitz tactics applied to one tiny spot on a long perimeter. But, after all, one tiny pinpoint will wreck a whole balloon.