by Stuart Slade
Eventually, the planners had listened to reason. The aircraft would fly out alone and make their runs individually. One virtue was that the Italian naval base would be kept under a steady rain of bombs for a long period.
“Massawa cornin’ up.”
“I got it.” Alleyne made a few minor course corrections and lined up on the port. Incredibly, there were lights still on down there. Had the Italians never heard of a blackout? “Midships crew, open the side ports and wind out the first set of bombs.”
Noise increased as the side doors to the bomb room were opened; the controls felt slightly different as the bomb racks slid out under the wings. The Sunderland wasn’t built for this kind of operation; it didn’t even have a suitable bomb-aiming position. Alleyne was going to have to release his bombs by dead reckoning. He visualized the picture in his mind, trying to work out where the bombs would land in relation to the nose of his aircraft.
Far below, the lights of Massawa still twinkled. They went out just as Alleyne felt his bombs drop. For one weird moment, he wondered if their descent had caused the blackout. He saw flashes as the four bombs impacted somewhere in Eritrea. He was enough of a realist to accept that he couldn’t expect much more than that.
“Midships crew, get the second set of bombs out.”
He put his Sunderland in a long, gentle curve. The bomb room crew wound in the underwing racks, winched the remaining bombs into place and then got them back out under the wings. All hard, backbreaking work; all the more so when undertaken on a darkened aircraft over hostile territory. The people who had thought of this raid hadn’t allowed for that.
The reloading took longer than he’d expected. Eventually, the aircraft was ready. Alleyne arched around, making another run. By this time, the target as completely blacked out. He made his drop using the shape of the coast as a guide. This left him slightly uncertain as to whether he’d hit Eritrea.
Straining his eyes to make out details on the ground had taken all his attention. When he looked up, his first reaction was that a nearby area of sky was a little more solid than it should have been. His second was that he had a split second to avoid a collision with a Sunderland coming in the opposite attention.
He broke right, heaving the controls over and standing the big flying boat on its wingtip. By a miracle, the other Sunderland broke right as well. The two aircraft missed by inches. Shaking with nervous tension, Alleyne pressed the switch on his intercom. “All you bastards all right back there?”
“All right? All right, yoos ask? I’ve just shaken flamin’ hands with his starboard gunner, that’s how all right I’m. And the bastard had me wristwatch in the process.” Don Clerk’s voice was shaking. Alleyne guessed he knew just how close the two aircraft had come to colliding. Reassurance is in order.
“That settles it boys. This night bombing stuff is for the birds. We’re goin’ home and that’s the end of it for this game. Top brass wants us to do this again, they can fly the flamin’ raids themselves.”
Natal Mounted Rifles, El Yibo, Northern Kenya
“All right, broere; get ready to move.” Sergeant Dirk Klaas passed the word quietly, although there was no real need to do so. What was about to hit the Italian positions opposite made any advance warning from a carelessly spoken word almost superfluous. The Transvaal Horse Artillery were about to wake the defenders up.
Flashes seemed to ripple along the horizon. There were two batteries back there. One had two troops of six 18-pounders; the other a troop of 18-pounders and another of 4.5-inch howitzers. The shells whined overhead, the pitch of the noise clearly defining them as being ‘outbound’. Klass had been in the South African Army a long time; he knew from the noise that only the 18-pounders were firing. The eight 4.5-inch howitzers were holding their fire in order to support the infantry when they made their approach.
Ahead of him, a series of flashes erupted in the Italian positions. Another pattern arrived before the after-images of the first shell bursts had fully faded. The 18-pounder had been criticized by European armies for being ‘too light.’ That relatively light shell made it fast-firing and that was critical when it came to keeping people’s heads down. Klaas had no doubt that the gunners were working like dervishes back on the lines, serving their pieces as fast as possible. He took a quick glance at his wristwatch and noted the time.
“Up, broere. Follow the shells in.”
The South African infantry surged upwards from their trenches, running across the gap that separated them from the bursts of the 18-pounders. Overhead, the sound changed slightly. The pattern of bursts lifted by about a hundred yards, slamming in on the second line of trenches that backed up the first. In their place, the howitzers dropped their shells on the first line trenches, cutting any wire that was in place and keeping the defenders pinned down. The lead elements of the South African infantry went to ground, covering the Italian front with their rifles and Bren guns. The next wave passed between them and closed on the defenders. Then, they too went to ground. The troops they had passed rose up again and assaulted the trenches.
The Italians fought hard. Klaas gave them that. They surged out of their dugouts, those that had not been crushed by the artillery fire, and met the assault with fixed bayonets. Lee Enfield crossed with Carcano. The men carrying them fought desperately; all knew when two men fought with the bayonet, only one would survive. Other men fought with entrenching tools, spades with their blades sharpened to turn them into a vicious battle-axe that cleaved their opponent. Some, a few, turned to run. Their reward was a bayonet thrust in the back or a skull caved in by a swing from an entrenching tool. Klaas never remembered the details of that fight. Only that he had waded in with bayonet and entrenching tool, and that the Italians had died.
At some point, the sun had risen. It was daylight when the South Africans climbed out of the advanced trenches they had taken and moved on the second line. They left behind them a trench filled with bodies; some Italian, some South African. Further behind them, another wave of infantry was crossing no-mans land and moving up to support the lead elements. Ahead of Klaas and his men, the 18-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers were still pounding the main line of resistance.
That was beginning to crumble already. Klaas could sense it. There was a feel to a battle, a sense of its tempo, and he knew that this one was going to succeed. The Italians were already beginning to fall back; their positions abandoned or marked with small white flags. Klaas didn’t blame them. They had probably seen and heard the horror in the advanced trenches and wanted no part of it.
What started as an advance became a pursuit. Klaas’s sense of the battle was right. The Italians were giving up the ground and retreating. By the time the main line of defenses had fallen to the South Africans, the Italian infantry was already streaming to the rear, boarding lorries and heading north, away from the artillery fire and the men with bayonets that followed it. A few rearguards hung on; they bought just enough time for the rest of their units to escape. That didn’t matter too much, for one very simple reason. It was the whole reason why the battle had been fought here, at a small village in northern Kenya whose very existence was of so little consequence that a detailed map was needed to find it.
There was no water between El Yibo and the Ethiopian border.
Tomahawk II Marijke, Over the El Yibo Front, Kenya.
The sixteen Tomahawks were spread out, four flights of four aircraft each; all were hunting for Italian fighters. They would be coming to remedy the situation that had erupted on this front. Hunting for the Italian fighters was a phrase that echoed happily in newly-promoted Flight Lieutenant Pim Bosede’s mind. Gone were the days when the pathetic, obsolete Hawker Furies had run at the first shadow of an Italian fighter. Now, the Tomahawk ruled the skies and it was the Italians who fled at their approach.
“We see them.”
The message was from the Blenheim bombers below. The Natal Mounted Rifles reported the Italian forces that had been holding the front east of Lake Rud
olf were in full retreat, heading north. The Italians themselves were in trucks; their Askaris, local auxiliaries, were on foot. That difference would be very important in the next few minutes. There were no real roads up here to disrupt the yellow-gray ground; only tracks, and few enough of them. The Blenheim crews knew where the Italians would be. The cloud of dust thrown up by the trucks drove the message home.
Here we are, come and get us.
The Blenheims did.
They swept over the column of lorries, dropping their load of 250-pound and 40-pound bombs on the troops beneath. Compared with the blast of the bombs, the patter of fire from the single machine gun arming each aircraft were of little account. The effect of the attack on the convoy was disastrous. Many of the lorries were hit. They started belching black smoke and blocked the track. The others turned off in a desperate attempt to escape. Their tires broke through the thin crust of hardened mud that covered the ground and spun helplessly in the fine sand underneath. The infantry in them knew that their ride northwards had just ended. From now on, their retreat would be on foot.
Watching them, the Askaris noted the development. They dropped their rifles. Being an Italian Askari had been a way of earning a little extra money for doing very little work. The possibility of being shelled, bombed and strafed hadn’t figured in that equation. It was time to leave. Word spreads fast in African villages. Soon, all across the front, the Askaris deserted and, very sensibly, went home.
High over the veldt, Bosede knew nothing of the word rippling through the African villages. What he did know was that the Blenheims had finished their attack and were on their way back to base. That released the Tomahawks to resume their free-chase. The squadron swung south, to where the Natal Mounted Rifles were advancing. Bosede had no doubt that the Italians would be trying to do to them what the Blenheims had just done to the Italian infantry.
“Bandits.” Flight Lieutenant Petrus van Bram, now acting squadron leader, spotted the Italian aircraft. Twin engined aircraft, their yellow and gray paint made them hard to see against the ground below.
“Pim, take them with your flight. The rest of us will stay up here and cover you.”
Bosede made a wingover and dove on the aircraft below. His eyes took in the details. The extensively glazed nose told him all he needed to know. Caproni Ca.311s. Almost an exact Italian equivalent of the Blenheim and as weakly defended: one 7.7mm machine gun in a top turret and one firing from a ventral hatch. Tracers licked out from the top turrets of the Italian aircraft. Light defensive fire that gave him little concern. His gun sight closed on the nose of the Caproni. His thumb squeezed the triggers, firing off a burst from both his nose .50s and the four .30s in his wings.
The effect on the Ca-311 was as disastrous, as it had to be. The aircraft staggered and flew apart under the concentrated blow. Its wings separated from its body as it disintegrated. The fuel tanks erupted into flame. What was left of the aircraft plowed into the dry, dusty veldt. Bosede swept upwards, climbing away from the scattering Italian formation. Three of the eight aircraft were already down;a fourth was trying to escape northwards, leaving a thick trail of black smoke behind it. Bosede watched a Tomahawk close in. A stream of tracers turned the aircraft into a flying torch. One more pass would finish the formation off.
One again, a wingover and a long dive down on to the poorly-protected Capronis. Instead of firing from above, Bosede came in from behind.
His fire raked the rear fuselage and engines. His target went down; three parachutes emerged as the Italian crew bailed out.
“Pirn, you’re trailing white vapor. Head back to Buna. The rest of your flight will escort you.” Petrus van Bram’s voice brooked no argument.
Bosede glanced at his instruments. There was no sign of trouble yet, but the Tomahawks were precious. They had made the offensive that was driving the Italians out of Kenya possible and their numbers were carefully conserved. Bosede set course for Buna.
On the way, he noted that his engine temperature was starting to rise. By the time the runway at Buna appeared under his nose, it had reached serious levels. He wondered if Marijke would make it. By then, what had started as a thin line of white vapor had turned into a thick stream behind the Tomahawk. She didn’t let him down. By the time she came to a halt, he was surrounded by a white mist. It didn’t take the ground crew long to spot why.
“There’s your problem, sir.” The flight sergeant pointed at a single small hole in the nose. “Looks like a bullet from a 7.7 caught your cooling system. Another few minutes and she’ll have seized solid. Don’t sweat it; we’ll have her fixed by morning.”
The telephone rang and a voice came warbled on the other end. The Flight Sergeant grinned broadly. “And that was a Lieutenant van der Haan from intelligence. Confirmed your two Capronis shot down.”
Bosede staggered under the vigorous back-slapping and cheering. It was a long, long way from the days on the Hawker Fury. He threw his cap skywards to celebrate. Then he saw the single tiny hole that had nearly brought him down. A sudden sense of mortality weighed him down to earth.
GHQ, Middle East Command, Cairo, Egypt
“We have word from General Cunningham in Kenya, Archie.” Maitland Wilson had a conceited expression on his face that reminded Wavell of the time one of his dogs had stolen an entire leg of roasted lamb. “Alan seems to be quite happy with the way things are going down there.”
“I’ll need more than that, Jumbo.” Wavell wasn’t in the mood for playful games.
“The South Africans have broken through in both the northern and southern sectors. In the south, they have captured Gorai and el Gumu. Their columns are advancing north towards Kismayu and the Jubu River. In the north, they captured the wells at el Yibu and el Sarbu and sent the Italians packing there. Our aircraft are bombing and strafing the Italians as they retreat, and it looks like that retreat is turning into a rout. Alan doesn’t expect any serious resistance inside Italian Somaliland and thinks the Italians will try and concentrate on holding Ethiopia.”
“Italian aircraft?” To Wavell, this was the crux of the matter.
“The Italians are throwing them in to try and slow down our advance. The Tomahawks are having a field day. They’ve shot down more than forty aircraft, mostly light bombers, but with a handful of CR.32s and 42s thrown in. We’ve had one Tomahawk shot down and three or four are damaged, but the odds are enormously our way. Even better, the Italians have brought the aircraft from northern Ethiopia down to try and regain air superiority. It won’t do them any good; they’ve only a handful of fighters and they’re CR.42s. Alan has ordered all our biplanes grounded; not that they were of much consequence anyway. That leaves the sky free for the Tomahawks down there; they can shoot at anything that isn’t a monoplane.”
Wavell nodded with a measure of relief. The first blow had been launched in Kenya because that was where the Italians were weakest and where the first squadrons of Tomahawks were based. He was gambling that the Italians would see this as a major thrust and would shift their air and ground forces south to match it. That would open the way into northern Ethiopia for the two Indian divisions in the Sudan. They would drive south, taking the Italian formations defending Ethiopia in the rear. Finally, with that battle under way, Maitland Wilson could launch his attack on Graziani and the supplies around Mersa Matruh with some hope of achieving tactical surprise.
The beauty of it was that each of the three operations was genuinely independent. Not one of them actually depended for its success on any of the others working. Each might work or fail on its own merits. In each case, the benefits they would bring by their success would be worth having. But, if all three worked together, then the success achieved would be, literally, world-changing.
4th Battalion, 11th Sikh Regiment, Kassala, Sudan
“Jai Hind!”
The call went up from the ranks moving up the hill. Subedar Shabeg Singh repeated the cry. He relished the sun gleaming off his bayonet and the sight of the waves of inf
antry that were moving against the railway junction at Kassala. The area had been seized by the Italians during the first days of the fighting in Sudan. A previous Indian attempt to recover it had been defeated due to heavy Italian air attacks.
Today, Italian aircraft were absent from the battlefield and the 7th Infantry Brigade was advancing in fine style. Having tanks in support was a help. Six Matilda IIs were moving in a manner that could best be described as stately. Their machine guns were rippling fire across the Italian positions. That was their job; to support the infantry. There were light tanks for the chase that would take place once the Italian positions were broken.
Overhead, the sound of artillery fire slackened slightly. The Indian gunners had been laying a barrage down on the Italian positions from their 4.5-inch howitzers. Those guns were more useful than the 18-pounders in very hilly terrain; one reason why the Indian divisions had a much higher proportion of them in their artillery regiments. The Italians were using reverse slopes to protect themselves from artillery fire, but the howitzers could lob shells over the crest to land on that reverse slope. It was an open question as to what they would hit that way.
The reduced artillery fire allowed Shabeg Singh to hear the sound of approaching aircraft. That had meant disaster a few weeks earlier. The Italian Breda ground attack aircraft had strafed and bombed the regiment, making the positions they had won untenable. They’d had to fall back; the shame of doing so still stung the Sikhs.
Today, though, was different. The aircraft were coming from the north. That meant they were supporting the 11th Sikh Regiment, not harassing it. Assuming that the pilots do not make a mistake, thought the ever-realistic Singh. The flight of Fairey Battles swept overhead. Bombs dropped on the defensive positions. The blasts and towering columns of smoke from over the ridgeline were the signal for the final push up the hill.
