How Navy Helped Desert Advance

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 50, 1 March 1943, Page 5

How Navy Helped Desert Advance

NEW YORK, Feb. 26. The New York Sun’s correspondent (Mr. Glen Perry) states that Washington military observers are astounded at General Montgomery’s amazing maintenance of the hot pursuit of the Germans through the desert. It is now known that the British Mediterranean Fleet was a major decisive factor. The Afrika Korps necessarily chiefly relied on supplies coming across the desert from Tripoli under great difficulties, but the British Eighth Army, thanks to the magnificent work of the Royal Navy, was fed, watered, and supplied as it advanced. The Navy, working closely with General Montgomery, had the whole logistical problem worked out beforehand. Tugs, minesweepers, landing craft, and supply vessels loaded at Alexandria were all given definite schedules of supplies, ports, and the dates required. Mersa Matruh was a perfect example of how advantageously the British supply system worked. The dust of the retreating Axis had hardly settled before the British ships arrived, bringing ashore water and gasoline for the Eighth Army’s advance. A guard of British tanks then drew up, refuelled, and raced on without delay. This was repeated from port to port. At Tripoli, for example, supplies from the Navy arrived almost simultaneously with the first British tanks clanking through the city streets.