Tobruk 1941

by Chester Wilmot

  Such are the difficulties under which I labour in providing a convincing answer to your inquiries, but now for figures:

  Known Enemy Casualties

  Germans

  1

  Italians (after being claimed by the infantry)

  1

  Known Enemy Casualties

  Rounds fired by Regiment

  38 001

  Less two rounds for above casualties

  2

  Say, 38 000 = 424 tons

  For observed rounds (25% of above tonnage)

  – (estimated one casualty per 20 rds for 9500 rds) casualties

  475

  For unobserved rounds for remaining 318 tons

  – (estimated one casualty per 2 tons or 180 rds, allowing for wide open spaces) casualties

  159

  Total enemy casualties (Perhaps) 636

  Although the garrison could not give G.H.Q. a more precise estimate of casualties, the Axis gunners always had much the worse of the artillery duels. They were never completely silenced, but they became increasingly reluctant to stir up trouble. Enemy infantry and transport took care not to appear in daylight within range of the garrison’s guns. Even Rommel’s by-pass road was not far enough out. The 60-pounders and two captured 88 mm ack-ack guns consistently shelled both it and the El Adem drome, and they certainly hindered the flow of Rommel’s supplies to the frontier.

  For the most part the work of the British gunners was unobtrusive, but it was none the less vital to the defence. As we have seen, in every crisis they had a decisive influence, and contributed substantially to the tactics of defence against tanks. In the Easter Battle they demonstrated the great value of the 25-pounder as an anti-tank gun in a direct fight. In the Battle of the Salient, they showed the effectiveness of heavy shelling combined with minefields in breaking up tank attacks. After this, as we saw in the fighting on May 17th, the German tanks were reluctant to face their fire.

  No one knew better than the Australian infantry how much the garrison owed to the British artillery. They saw German tanks turn back and Axis infantry break and run when the British shells landed amongst them. They saw troublesome enemy guns and mortars promptly strafed as soon as they opened fire on forward posts. They knew that again and again fighting patrols had returned safely from raids largely because of the blanket of fire the British gunners put down behind them.

  In view of all this it was unfortunate that the Australian Press tended to speak of Tobruk as though it were solely an A.I.F. achievement. A rather more directly informed journal, the news-sheet of the 2/48th Battalion one day in May printed a tribute that voiced the opinion of every Australian in the garrison. It published messages that Morshead had received from the British and Australian Prime Ministers and from Wavell after the second big German attack had been stopped. Then it added:

  While these messages are appreciated . . . we must not forget that the greater part of the praise for what has been done here so far is due to the British artillery regiments. They have done a magnificent job. While we are not a Prime Minister nor a C.-in-C., we would like to express our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for what the British gunners have done for this garrison.

  _____________

  1 ‘Counter-battery’ is the term used to describe action to silence enemy guns. Klein, who was Counter-Battery Officer on 1st Australian Corps H.Q., was lent to Brigadier Thompson in that capacity for two months.

  2 All the recordings made by the A.B.C. Field Unit in Tobruk were cut by its engineer, Bill Macfarlane, who operated the recording equipment in front line posts and gun-positions, in dug-outs and open desert, in darkness and duststorm.

  3 The other officers were Captain O. M. Walsoe and Lieutenant J. B. Martin.

  CHAPTER 18

  SMASHING THE STUKA PARADE

  IN the wardroom of H.M.S. Decoy one morning early in August 1941, I picked up a copy of the A.I.F. News. Splurged across the front page was an article about Tobruk by the Australian war correspondent, Reg. Glennie. The first sentence ran, ‘Dust, Dive-bombers, Derelict Ships and Death’. Maybe the officers of Decoy left this around deliberately to cheer their passengers as the destroyer churned through the Mediterranean to Tobruk.

  For four months these game little destroyers of the R.N. and the R.A.N, had been running this gauntlet. Not all had come through unscathed. Already H.M.A.S. Waterhen and H.M.S. Defender had been sunk, and Nazi bombers were to send other warships to the bottom in the next four months before the land route was opened again.

  Meantime the destroyers and a few game little merchant ships, caiques and lighters maintained Tobruk’s life-line, in spite of bomb, shell and submarine. But already the Luftwaffe had made things so hot that the destroyers could only come in when there was little or no moon. In the early months the Germans had not tried dive-bombing at night and the destroyers could afford to brave their high-level attacks. But in July the Germans found that they could pick up the destroyers in the moonlight because of the white foam in their wake, and in the darkness the ships’ gunners could not see the diving planes until it was too late.

  We were on the first run of the month and there would be the waning moon to guide the bombers to us as we got near Tobruk, but the crew hoped it would not be bright enough. Their main worry was the last half-hour before dark, when the escorting fighters had left. In this period the Stukas tried to stop the destroyer-ferry so consistently that the run from Sidi Barrani onwards was known as ‘Bomb Alley’.

  Dive-bombers seemed as yet a long way off as we lay in the sun on the deck. The day seemed brighter, the Med. bluer and the ship’s wash whiter than ever before. We had left Alexandria at 8.30 a.m., slipping out of a harbour packed with merchantmen and warships, which Axis bombers had never been able to hit. On this trip there were three destroyers, Decoy, Havock and Kingston, each laden with fifty tons of freight and nearly a hundred troops.

  Cargo and passengers took up almost every inch of the skimpy deck space. The troops were sprawled out on the cargo and almost in the scuppers, drinking in the sun. Most of them were going up for the first time; some were old-timers, returning for more after being invalided out sick or wounded, and telling newcomers terrible tales of a Tobruk that lay somewhere between purgatory and hell. But there was evidence that it was not so very bad, for amongst us were four Diggers, hitch-hiking back of their own accord. After a few weeks in hospital in Palestine they had scorned convalescent leave, ‘hitched’ their way 400 miles to Alexandria, and ‘jumped’ the destroyer. Strictly they were A.W.L., but they were not going to loiter in a Palestine camp while their cobbers were fighting at Tobruk.

  Most of the cargo was cigarettes, mail and ammunition. On the three destroyers there were four million cigarettes – mostly South African brands, which are faintly Turkish – enough to give every man in the garrison the weekly ration of fifty for the next three weeks. As important as these were the dozens of bags of mail – more than three tons of it on our destroyer alone. And then boxes and boxes of ammunition – long, dark-green iron cases with 3.7-inch A.A. shells in them; shorter, squatter green cases of 25-pounder; green-lettered, rope-handled boxes of .303 rifle and machine-gun ammunition; some made in South Africa, some in the U.S.A. Another American contribution was hundreds of cases of dried fruits marked ‘American Red Cross in Greece’. Too late for the Greeks, they had been switched to Tobruk. The rest of the cargo was utilitarian bully-beef, canned cabbage, tinned carrots, dried fruits, a new barrel for a Bofors A.A. gun, a track for a tank, a motor-car engine, and a pile of stretchers for wounded.

  Sitting incongruously beside one stack of ammunition was a British officer’s brand new kit. He had been in the Base Ordnance Depot in Cairo for five years and this was his first time in the field. He had fitted himself out well with a bright green canvas valise and stretcher, a blue-painted, brass-hinged wardrobe trunk, a smart new suitcase, and a khaki kitbag. With him was a Scotch terrier!

  I tossed him the paper with the glaring lead – �
��Dust, Dive-bombers —’.

  ‘Not much of a place for a dog,’ I said. ‘Do you take him everywhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I brought him out from England five years ago and war or no war I take him with me. He doesn’t mind the desert, but I don’t know how he’ll like the dive-bombing.’

  This dog was not the strangest thing imported to Tobruk. Other British officers arrived during the siege bringing tennis racquets and golf clubs. One canteen ship came in with a large shipment of nurses’ underwear that had been ordered some months before the German counter-attack, when A.I.F. nurses were at Barce. Another time some bright wit in Alexandria shipped to Tobruk twenty-four dozen gin bottles, but he sent them up empty, so that the troops could fill them with ‘Molotov cocktail’. Empty!

  About 3.30 p.m. we pass the white sandhills of Mersa Matruh. Two hours later we are level with Sidi Barrani, keeping well out to sea away from bombers based on Bardia. A.A. gunners move to action stations. Then a warning – shouted through a megaphone – ‘Plus six unidentified twenty miles south.’ Guns swing that way – even the 4.7s rise to the high-angle ack-ack position.

  Eight specks loom out of the blue, but they are distinctly Hurricanes, coming to cover us as we run through Bomb Alley. The leading plane fires a Very light recognition signal and over they come, 5000 feet up, sweeping back and forth above the three destroyers with the afternoon sun glinting on silver wings and fuselage as they bank and turn.

  The destroyers quicken their speed – thirty-two knots now – and spray breaks over the after-deck. On we go, destroyer throbbing under our feet; fighters droning overhead. We are safe while they are with us. An hour later another warning – one flight heads southward to intercept; the other keeps circling above. But soon we see the four Hurricanes returning with eight specks trailing behind them – more Hurricanes – to relieve the others and carry on till half an hour before dark. They must leave then, otherwise they might crack up on landing.

  ‘Looks as though we’ll be all right to-night,’ says a sub-lieutenant standing beside me. ‘We haven’t been in for nearly a week, so Jerry won’t be expecting us and he hasn’t had a ‘recce’ out. Last month he had a crack at us most nights at dusk after the fighters had gone.’

  Finally they wheel away and we continue alone, hoping for the best, but just before dark one lone reconnaissance plane sweeps in from the west, circles once well out of range and goes back to his base with the target for to-night.

  The next four hours drag slowly through as the setting moon silhouettes us on a silver sea, turning our wake into a phosphorescent trail. On the deck we wait – salt spray spattering faces and knees as the destroyer plunges into the night. Waiting – waiting – waiting – ears straining for the drone of the bombers.

  Then above the roar of engines, wind and sea, from the rear gun-platform an officer shouts through a megaphone: ‘Stand by. Action stations.’ We wait again. Then, ‘Stand by. Enemy aircraft.’

  Suddenly we’re snatching at the nearest rail or bulkhead as the destroyer heels over in a wild zigzag and seems to leap forward. On the slippery deck the cargo slides crashing into the scuppers and spray drenches everything.

  Above the turmoil that voice again, ‘Stand by. Blitz barrage.’ Behind us a great white swath of wash is even more tell-tale than before, but they’ll have seen us now and the only way to trick them is to zigzag. I look across at Havock – a great stream of black smoke is pouring from her funnels. Then we hear the bomber’s drone and Havock’s guns stab the darkness with red flashes. She rolls over in a 90-degree turn and a hundred yards or so ahead of her a great white water-spout tells us that the Stuka has missed its mark.

  Out of the darkness ahead we see two pin-points of light, the harbour lights of Tobruk, shielded from the air but visible to us. We slacken speed. There is no wash now, and a welcome cloud cloaks the moon and other bombers cannot see us.

  But they are over Tobruk and are going for the harbour. We can hear the muffled crack of the ack-ack guns and see the flashes of bursting shells high in the sky; only the ‘heavies’ are firing, so apparently the bombers are well up.

  We slip in between the lights, past the black ghosts of wrecks, under the lee of the white sepulchre of a town. The ack-ack is still speeding the raider home, but another is coming in – lower. The Bofors are firing too, so it must be well under 10 000 feet. But we have no time to think of the fireworks display above us. As Decoy stops moving two barges and two launches come alongside. Troops clamber over the side, pitching their kitbags ahead of them. Unloading parties swarm aboard and slide ammunition down wooden chutes into one barge, while the rest of the cargo is dumped anyhow into the other. As soon as the troops are off, the crew start bringing wounded aboard in stretchers.

  They are getting a warm farewell. One stick of bombs screams down on the south shore of the harbour; the next is closer – in the water 500 yards away. The old hands continue working, unworried, but some of the new ones, like us, pause momentarily, shrinking down behind the destroyer’s after-screen. From the man with the megaphone comes a sharp rebuke – ‘What are you stopping for? Those bloody bombs are nothing to do with you.’

  We take no notice of the next two sticks which fall in the town and at last everything is unloaded. The engine throb quickens and the destroyer is lost in the blackness just thirty-two minutes after the barges came alongside. Fifty tons of cargo and nearly a hundred men taken off; fifteen to twenty stretcher-cases embarked, and all in half an hour.

  The guns were going again as we left the jetty and went bumping out of the town in a 3-tonner. For the next hour, they were coming over in ones and twos every ten minutes or so. As the drone of one died away, we could hear the next coming in, the greeting of the guns, the rumble of bursting bombs and then the ack-ack’s spasmodic farewell fire. We thought it was a fairly warm welcome but for Tobruk it was just an ordinary night.

  Month after month the Navy had been bringing its ships into these dangerous waters and, by doing so, had made possible the holding of Tobruk. When the siege began the garrison had food and ammunition for three, and possibly four, months, but it had to hold for eight. In April and May enemy air attacks on shipping both inside and outside the harbour were so severe that the maintenance of supplies was a most hazardous task. During the first month when ships tried to approach Tobruk in daylight, more than 50 per cent of the cargo vessels were turned back by Stukas and several were sunk. Valiant destroyers managed to slip through at night but Cunningham could not spare enough ships at this time – especially after the losses off Greece and later off Crete – to maintain the supply of anything but absolute essentials. In fact Tobruk’s food reserves would have been seriously depleted if naval and merchant vessels had not evacuated more than 12 000 surplus personnel during the first month.

  Even with the garrison reduced to 23 000 the maintenance of adequate supplies was most difficult. Tobruk had no proper unloading facilities, for British bombs had destroyed the main wharf and the other was soon badly damaged by the Luftwaffe and blocked by a wreck. This left only one small oiling jetty which was little more than a pipeline on piles, and so most cargo had to be unloaded into barges or on to half-sunken wrecks. This task was doubly difficult because enemy bombing soon made daylight unloading impracticable.

  As it was similarly difficult for shipping to make the run along the Cyrenaican coast to Tobruk in daylight, the garrison during May and June was forced to rely for supplies and reinforcements almost entirely on destroyers which could come in, unload and get out again under cover of darkness. Even if the destroyers escaped bombing this was a perilous run. Their crews never knew what fresh wreck might be lying in the harbour, or whether mines had drifted into or been laid in the narrow channel, or again whether the enemy had put up dummy harbour lights to mislead them. Added to these was the possibility that an enemy submarine would be lying in wait along the route the destroyers had to take in entering the harbour. H.M.A.S. Stuart attacked submarines near Tobru
k on two occasions at the end of June.

  Undeterred by these hazards, destroyers maintained their ferry service almost nightly, for the Navy knew that without the supplies these brought in, the garrison would eventually have to starve or surrender. None appreciated this more than the troops themselves. Their thanks found expression in the grace I heard a Tobruk padre say one day – ‘For what we are about to eat, thank God and the British Fleet.’ The padre could well have included the anti-aircraft gunners, because without the protection they provided, even the British Navy could hardly have used the Tobruk harbour.

  The A.A. gunners’ victory was not quickly or easily won. Rommel used every possible technique to silence them and close the harbour. His airmen tried dive-bombing, high-level bombing, low-level minelaying, mixed bombing – combined dive and high-level, or high-level and minelaying. He went for the ships inside the harbour and outside; by day and night. When bombing proved ineffective, he tried shelling.

  To counter these attacks the garrison had only seventy guns in action on April 10th, and by the end of the month only eighty-eight – more than half of which had been captured from the Italians. A third of these were ‘heavies’ and of the remaining light ack-ack guns, half had to be kept outside the harbour area to cover the field artillery.

  The guns available were:

  Heavy Guns

  Light Guns

  24 3.7 inch (British)

  17 Bofors – 40 mm – (British)

  4 102 mm (Italian)

  43 Breda (all 20 mm Italian except one twin 37 mm)

  These guns were mostly manned by men from Scotland and England. Out of seven batteries, only one was Australian – the 8th Battery of the 3rd Light A.A. Regiment. Few of the gunners had been in action before and fewer still had faced a dive-bomber attack until they came to Tobruk. Some compensation for their lack of experience was provided by the inspiration and soldierly genius of their commander, Brigadier J. N. Slater, a British regular gunner of magnificent spirit, energy and originality. No anti-aircraft commander had been faced with the problem which he had to tackle – that of defeating the dive-bomber with ack-ack guns alone, and, in particular, of protecting these from direct dive-bomber attack. The tactics Slater and his gunners used had to be developed and tried out while the battle was on.