153 The Raid on Rommel's Headquarters, After the Battle, AFTER THE BATTLE
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
//-->battleafter theTHE RAID ONROMMEL’S HQ5 39770306154097No. 153£4.25Number 153NUMBER 153© CopyrightAfter the Battle2011Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite:www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battleis published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for theAfter the Battlerange:Motorbooks, 13/15 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4ANTelephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: info@renniks.com. Website:www.renniks.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd.,622 Welland Avenue, St. Catharines, OntarioTelephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136E-mail: sales@vanwell.comNew Zealand Distribution:Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486,Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New ZealandTelephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817E-mail: milrchiv@mist.co.nzUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106E-mail: info@rzm.com Website:www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 ParmaTelephone: ++390521 29 27 33. Fax: ++390521 29 03 87E-mail: info@tuttostoria.it Website:www.tuttostoria.itDutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,6860 AD OosterbeekTelephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nlCONTENTSRAID ON ROMMEL’S HEADQUARTERS2READERS’ INVESTIGATIONWolfsschanze Revisited21IT HAPPENED HEREPershing versus Tiger at Elsdorf32AUSTRALIAAustralia’s Worst Air Disaster44PRESERVATIONWaldhaus Häcklingen54Front Cover:Generalleutnant ErwinRommel, commander of the Afrika-korps, visiting Generalmajor Johannvon Ravenstein, commander of the 5.leichte Division, in Libya in late May1941. Six months later, Rommel wouldbe the target of a commando raid tokill him, led by Lieutenant-ColonelGeoffrey Keyes.Back Cover:The grave of Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Keyes, VC, MC andCroix de Guerre, in the Benghazi WarCemetery, Plot 7, Row D, Grave 5.Acknowledgements:For their help withthe Keyes Raid story the Editor wouldlike to thank Stephen Hamilton ofWestern Desert Battlefield Tours, VernSimpson, Alan Tomkins and PeterSchenk who very kindly loaned usGünther Halm's photo album. Forassistance with the Elsorf story, hethanks Gerrie Franken, Gerard Thuringand Marcel Zwarts.Photo Credits:ECPAD — Médiathèquede la Défense, Fort d'Ivry; IWM —Imperial War Museum, London; USNA— US National Archives2IWM H11160On June 4, 1940 — one day after the close of the Dunkirk evacuation — British PrimeMinister Winston Churchill sent a memorandum to General Hastings Ismay, his ChiefMilitary Assistant and Staff Officer, in which he stressed the need to strike back atthe enemy quickly: ‘It is of the highest consequence to keep the largest numbers ofGerman forces all along the coasts of the countries they have conquered, and weshould immediately set to work to organise raiding forces on these coasts where thepopulations are friendly. ‘ Two days later he pressed his point: ‘I look to the jointChiefs-of-Staff to propose me measures for a vigorous, enterprising and ceaselessoffensive against the whole German-occupied coastline.’ As a result of this, on June14 the Chiefs-of-Staff appointed Lieutenant-General Alan Bourne to the post of ‘Com-mander of Raiding Operations on coasts in enemy occupation’. However, Churchill,who was not consulted about the appointment, considered that Bourne was tooclose to the Admiralty to resist undue influence from them and in mid-July Admiral ofthe Fleet Sir Roger Keyes was appointed in his place, his position now re-namedDirector of Combined Operations. Here Churchill and Keyes observe the training ofmen of the 29th Infantry Brigade at Loch Fyne, Scotland, on June 27, 1941.After the Germans became heavilyinvolved in Russia with the launch of Opera-tion ‘Barbarossa’ in June 1941, British PrimeMinister Winston Churchill and the BritishChiefs-of-Staff pressed the Middle EastCommand to resume offensive operations inthe Western Desert at the earliest possiblemoment. Nevertheless, General Sir ClaudeAuchinleck (who replaced General Archi-bald Wavell in July) made it clear that heconsidered that they would not have suffi-cient trained forces to recapture Cyrenaicabefore the end of the year. Exchanges oftelegrams failed to resolve the differencesand Auchinleck was summoned to Londonto confer in early August.The offensive in the Western Desert code-named Operation ‘Crusader’ was finallyplanned to begin on November 18. The planof operation was for the Eighth Army toengage Axis armour in a tank battle, destroyit, and then create a corridor through to thebesieged Tobruk garrison.Two commando operations were con-ceived to be launched just before Operation‘Crusader’. The first was an airborne assaulton Axis airfields in the sector of Gazala andTmimi. The second, Operation ‘Flipper’, wasa seaborne mission carried out by 60 menwho would land by submarine on a beach inCyrenaica, play havoc with telephone linesand, if possible, take out Rommel.Earlier that year it had been decided toseize the Greek island of Rhodes to preventthe Italians from using it as a base for strik-ing at the main British naval base at Alexan-dria. To this end, Sir Roger Keyes, in his roleof Director of Combined Operations, pro-posed to assemble a Special Service unit andsend it to the Mediterranean to carry out theoperation.The force comprised Nos. 7, 8 and 11Commandos, with a troop from No. 3 Com-mando and the Folbot Troop (commandosoperating kayak-type canoes) — a total ofaround 100 officers and 1,500 other ranks.They departed from Scotland on January 31,1941 in two infantry landing ships, theGlengyleandGlenroy.Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock wasappointed acting commander of the SpecialService Brigade, but to avoid the Axis com-mand becoming aware that a large force ofcommandos had arrived in the theatre, theWar Office ordered that the designation‘Layforce’ was to be used and that no men-tion of commandos or Royal Navy involve-ment was allowed.Sailing via the Cape, they arrived at Suezon March 7. On its arrival in Egypt, the forcewas strengthened by the addition of No. 50Commando from Crete and No. 52 Com-mando from Sudan. ‘Layforce’ then com-prised four battalions:A Battalion - No. 7 Commando(Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Colvin)B Battalion - No. 8 Commando(Lieutenant-Colonel Dermot Daly)C Battalion - No. 11 Commando(Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pedder)D Battalion - No. 50/52 Commando(Lieutenant-Colonel George Young)After the German invasion of Greece andYugoslavia in April, the Rhodes operationwas called off and the role of Layforce waschanged to planning and undertaking raidsbehind enemy lines along the North Africancoast. On April 15 Brigade Headquartersand A and C Battalions set off in theGlengyleandGlenroyto attack Bardia whilefour troops of B Battalion sailed for Bombain a destroyer. However, the swell was sostrong that re-embarkation of the comman-dos from the beaches would have been diffi-cult if not impossible, and as a result thewhole operation was called off.On the night of November 14/15, 1941, a British raiding party of 30 commandos ledby Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Keyes landed on the shores of Libya, their missionbeing to attack a house in the town of Beda Littoria thought to be the headquartersof Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, the famed commander of the German Afrika-korps, and kill or capture him. The attack failed and Keyes was fatally wounded in theaction, being posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross.RAID ON ROMMEL’S HEADQUARTERSBy Jean Paul PalludNew orders were quickly issued and ABattalion was selected for the raid on Bardia.Escorted by HMSCoventry,an anti-aircraftcruiser, and three Australian destroyers,HMASStuart, VoyagerandWaterhen,theGlengylelanded troops on four beaches onthe night of April 19/20. The objective was todisrupt enemy lines of communication and toinflict as much damage as possible to installa-tions and equipment. Although the landingswere unopposed, little was achieved andlosses amounted to 67 men taken prisonerand one officer killed by friendly fire.At this stage of the war, there were fewreserve forces in the Middle East so elementsof Layforce were now deployed as normalinfantry battalions, a role for which theywere neither equipped nor trained. In JuneC Battalion intervened in Lebanon againstFrench Vichy-held Syria in the battle of theLitani River loosing 130 men, almost of thirdof the 379 who had landed; and at the end ofMay, A and D Battalions were deployed onCrete to help contain the German assault.Fighting as the rearguard, they lost 600 menout of the 800 committed.Keyes was the son of Admiral Keyes and the commander of C Battalion (No. 11Commando) of Layforce. In May 1941, when the battalion was still under Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pedder, Keyes, then still a major, accompanied his CO in escortingGovernor Sir William Battershill during a tour of Kantara Castle in Cyprus. Keyes tookover C Battalion in June, following the death of Pedder during an operation to Lebanon.3IWM E3130IWM E4732IWM H39029Accompanying the party on the raid toRommel’s headquarters was Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Laycock, the commanderof ‘Layforce’ (seen in this photographearly in June 1944 when he was Chief ofCombined Operations and the BritishArmy’s youngest major-general). ColonelLaycock had a strong personal motivefor wanting to join Operation ‘Flipper’.In May 1941, during the battle for Crete,he had commanded A and D Battalionsthat were deployed to cover the hastyevacuation of ‘Creforce’, the combinedBritish, Commonwealth and Greek forcedefeated by the German airborne andseaborne assault of the island. On May30, Lieutenant-General Bernard Frey-berg, the ‘Creforce’ commander, orderedLaycock to stay behind and to keep fend-ing off the German assault until all thefighting units had safely boarded thenaval transports provided for the evacu-ation. If absolutely necessary, he was topresent the British surrender to the Ger-man commander. Late on the 31st, Lay-cock, judging that all Allied units wereready to depart, ordered his force towithdraw to the beach and embark. Hedispatched the surrender document toLieutenant-Colonel George Young, thecommander of D Battalion, while he him-self embarked at Sphakia. However, inactual fact, not all the units had left andmany were still queuing up to boardwhen the flotilla weighed anchor. Of the800 commandos under Laycock’s com-mand, some 600 were killed or capturedon Crete. British historian MichaelAsher, the author of the painstakinglyresearched bookThe British Plot to KillHitler’s Greatest General(first publishedin 2004) judged that Laycock’s conductwas ‘not out of cowardice but out of aninflated sense of their own precious-ness’. Though he had clearly disobeyedorders, Laycock was not court-martialledbut his reputation among his peerssuffered badly. So his motive to go alongon the Rommel raid was a strong per-sonal one: to remove the stain from hisreputation.Greatly reduced in strength by these oper-ations, Layforce was disbanded in July.Many of the men were returned to their pre-vious regiments while others were sent to theFar East or to join alternative special unitslike the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG)and the Special Boat Section (SBS). C Bat-talion in Cyprus managed to dodge the dis-bandment and, when the invasion threat tothat island receded, it returned to Egypt inearly August.During the operation in Lebanon, thecommander of C Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Pedder, had been killed, so when theunit returned Captain Geoffrey Keyes tookover although he was dismayed to see hiscommand broken up so soon after he hadacquired it. Consequently, Lieutenant-Colonel Laycock, armed with a letter fromGeoffrey to his father, went to London toplead with Sir Roger for the reconstitution ofa commando force in the Middle East.In September Captain Keyes heard thatRommel had been spotted by Arab agents ata headquarters in Beda Littoria in Cyrenaica.He probably learnt about this from anacquaintance, Lieutenant-Colonel HenryCator, the second-in-command of G(R), thecode-name for the SOE’s directorate of Spe-cial Operations in Cairo.Beda Littoria lay some 250 miles behindthe front line but only 18 miles from thecoast so Keyes believed that this would makeit possible for a commando unit to be putashore and move inland to attack the head-quarters and abduct or kill Rommel. Hetherefore decided to put his plan directly toLieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham,4the commander of the new Eighth Army justformed in September, at his headquarters atMaaten Baggush near Alexandria.Knowing that Keyes’ father was a personalfriend of Churchill, Cunningham agreed tohear Captain Keyes out and although notranscription of the meeting exists, hisresponse was favourable. Keyes’ adjutant,2nd Lieutenant Thomas Macpherson, latersaid how Keyes returned to camp atAmiriyya joyfully exclaiming: ‘If we get thisjob, Tommy, it’s one people will rememberus by’.HASELDEN’S RECONNAISSANCEOn October 10, one week after Keyes hadmet Cunningham, the submarine HMSTor-bayapproached the beach at Khashm alKalb near Ras Aamer, a cape due north ofBeda L’Horia. On board were Captain JohnHaselden, an agent of G(R), and an ArabNCO from the Libyan Arab Force (a British-officered unit made up of Arab exiles fromLibya). Born and raised in Egypt of a Britishfather and an Egyptian mother, Haseldenspoke fluent Italian and French as well asseveral Arabic dialects.Torbayalso carried a detachment from theSpecial Boat Section — two crews each com-prising an officer and NCO. The usual drillwhen landing personnel was for the SBSteam to go in first to secure the beach but onthis occasion Haselden decided to swim infirst. As the submarine lay 300 yards off thebeach in darkness, Haselden, stark naked,swam to the shore from where he flashed theOK signal. Minutes later a folbot, loadedwith stores sealed in four-gallon petrol tins,arrived with Haselden’s Arab clothes beforereturning to the submarine. The whole oper-ation had taken just 34 minutes.Haselden and his companion moved westalong the coast, bypassing El Hania wherethere was an Italian garrison, before movinginland up the escarpment that ran along theshore. At Slonta, about a day’s march west ofBeda Littoria, they met a local contact, Hus-sain Taher. He confirmed the previous intel-ligence reports that Rommel had been seenusing a building in Beda Littoria and that heslept in a villa not half a mile away.Meanwhile, a patrol of the Long RangeDesert Group under Captain Jake Eason-smith was sent to pick up Haselden. Theywaited for two days at the rendezvous atGaret Tecasis but when Haselden failed toshow up, on October 19 Easonsmith dis-patched two Arab scouts on foot to Marsua,west of Slonta, to look for him there. Whiletwo vehicles remained at Garet Tecasis, hewent with his other three Chevrolet trucks tothe fallback rendezvous 25 miles away. Theycame across an Italian convoy and shot at itbefore withdrawing to Siwa oasis (seeAfterthe BattleNo. 98) with one prisoner.Having missed his rendezvous, Haseldenfinally met the two Arab scouts despatchedto find him and was back at Siwa on October24. Three days later he reached Amiriyya,reporting that he was convinced that Rom-mel was still at Beda Littoria. He alsopointed out three additional targets that thecommandos might want to tackle: the Italianheadquarters at Cyrene, the Italian Intelli-gence centre at Apollonia, and a telephonejunction point at Cyrene crossroads.By November 1941, Rommel’s fame as a commander was fastbecoming that of a legend. Having landed his Afrikakorps inLibya in February-March 1941, his first offensive in April-Mayhad ended in the recapture of all of Cyrenaica. Here he is seeninspecting the town of Bardia in eastern Libya on April 19which had been retaken by his troops just a week before.MACPHERSON’S RECONNAISSANCEOn October 19, Lieutenant Macpherson,Keyes’ adjutant, went to double-check thebeach where the commandos planned toland, and on the night of October 24/25 thesubmarine HMSTalismansurfaced aboutthree miles off Ras Hilal. In company withCaptain James Ratcliffe, Lieutenant TrevorRavenscroft, and Corporal Andrew Evans ofthe Special Boat Section, Macphersonpushed off in two folbots. It was arrangedthat theTalismanwould return to the ren-dezvous on the next three nights.A quick survey of the shingle beachassured Macpherson that it would be entirelysuitable for the landing. They then climbedup the escarpment to check where the com-mandos would be met by Arab agents. Thisdone, they returned to the beach andpaddled off. However when they reachedthe rendezvous point three miles offshore,(As it happened, Layforce’s A Battalion launched a seaborneraid on the same town the very night after Rommel’s visit.)Rommel’s successes led to a quick rise in rank and importance:in July he was promoted to General der Panzertruppen and inmid-August his command was raised to the status of Panzer-gruppe Afrika.bread rolls and cheese in one tent, he madesome noise leaving and suddenly there wereshouts and gunshots. The two men got awaybut when they reached the spot where theyhad left Ratcliffe and Ravenscroft, theyfound them no longer there. On hearing thefiring and assuming the other two had beenkilled or captured, the two SBS officers hadretired deeper into the desert.On the night of November 3/4, as theyapproached Derna along an apparentlydeserted road, Macpherson and Evans weresuddenly surrounded by Italians and captured.Ravenscroft and Ratcliffe were brought in twodays later whereupon all four were taken toBenghazi. When the Italians later found thefolbots, they realised that the patrol had comein by sea. On November 15, Ultra interceptedan Italian report that they had ‘learned fromvarious reliable sources that the British wereplanning a landing near Apollonia’.Talismanwas nowhere to be seen. Theyreturned the following night but still the sub-marine failed to appear. (Due to recurringnavigation errors,Talismanwas waiting inthe wrong bay.)There was now no other choice for thembut to try to reach Tobruk on foot. Theystarted out in an easterly direction but thegoing was slow and exhausting over therough terrain. As Macpherson crawled to aspring to fill up with water, a hound from anItalian patrol ran to him so he was forced tokill it with his knife. As they left, they heard‘a considerable inquest’ going on around thedead dog.They pressed on eastwards but by Novem-ber 1 hunger had become an acute problem.That night they came across the camp of aGerman transport unit and Macphersondecided to go with Evans to try to stealsomething to eat. Although he found someALAN TOMKINSLeft:As it turned out, Rommel was not even in Africa when theBritish raid to eliminate him occurred. He was actually enjoyinga two-week leave in Rome, staying at the Hotel Eden on ViaLudovisi with his wife Lucie.Right:This is his entry in the visi-tor’s book, written on November 16, 1941: ‘E. Rommel, Generalder Panzertruppen, Befehlshaber der Panzertruppen Afrika.’5ALAN TOMKINSECPAD DAK 09/L6
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]