What happened at the Battle of Alam Halfa?
On the night of 30 August 1942 Rommel attacked the southern end of the British line at El Alamein, meaning to break through and swing north to the sea behind the Eighth Army. Deep minefields, artillery and constant bombing slowed him, and on 31 August and 1 September his tanks attacked dug-in British armour near the Alam el Halfa ridge and were driven off. Short of fuel, Rommel began to withdraw on 2 September, and by 7 September the battle was over, Montgomery’s first victory in command of the Eighth Army.5
Montgomery wrote in 1948 that the battle had never received the attention it deserved, because had it been lost, Egypt might have been lost too. Alexander called it the last throw of the German forces in Africa. The fighting before it is told in the Battle of Gazala and the Battle of Mersa Matruh, and the battle that followed in the Battle of El Alamein.6
Stalemate at El Alamein
After the fall of Tobruk the Eighth Army retreated into Egypt, and in July 1942 Auchinleck stopped Rommel at El Alamein. The National Army Museum notes that despite this he was replaced. On 30 July, Auchinleck writes in his despatch, he reluctantly concluded that no further offensive was possible for the moment and that the army must stay on the defensive until a new effort in mid-September.7
Auchinleck spent July giving depth to the Alamein position. He describes three ridges running east and west as the keys to the defensive zone, the coast ridge, Ruweisat in the centre and on the left the Alam el Halfa ridge, with strongpoints on them for two battalions and a regiment of field guns each.8
New commanders
In August Churchill flew to Cairo. He told the Commons on 8 September that the Desert Army had lost over 80,000 men and been driven back about 400 miles, and that he had proposed General Alexander as Commander-in-Chief and General Gott for the Eighth Army. Gott was killed by the enemy before the change was approved, and Montgomery took command instead. The National Army Museum writes that Montgomery exuded confidence and rapidly restored the army’s flagging morale.9
Montgomery wrote that he cancelled all plans for further withdrawal and made it clear that, if Rommel attacked, the army would fight where it stood. He found the Alam el Halfa ridge virtually undefended and asked for the 44th Division, newly arrived from England, to garrison it, and he ordered that divisions be fought as divisions and armour and artillery used in mass.10
Liddell Hart, in his notes to Rommel’s papers, points out that the plan of holding the ridge against an outflanking move had been devised under Auchinleck and was accepted in principle by Montgomery, who strengthened it. Maughan, the Australian official historian, writes that both Auchinleck’s appreciation and Montgomery’s, that an attack in the south could best be met on the Alam el Halfa ridge, proved correct.11
The ridges and the minefields
The 13th Corps under Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks held the southern half of the line. Playfair describes the New Zealand Division forming a stiff shoulder at Alam Nayil, the 44th Division on the ridge behind it, the 7th Armoured Division covering the open south, and the 22nd Armoured Brigade dug in at the western end of the ridge, its tanks and six-pounder guns fitted into the artillery fire plan.12
Montgomery wanted to fight on ground of his own choosing and not to have his armour mauled, since he was already preparing his own offensive. Alexander gives the balance in the south: the 13th Corps with four divisions against six, both sides with about three hundred field and medium and four hundred anti-tank guns, about five hundred Axis tanks against three hundred medium and eighty light British tanks, with a hundred more in the 23rd Armoured Brigade in reserve.13
The totals given elsewhere differ. Liddell Hart counts about 480 British tanks on the whole front and 229 German and 281 Italian. Playfair gives the Afrika Korps 203 tanks besides its light Panzer IIs, about half of them the new long-gunned Specials, and the Italians 243 mediums, many almost worn out. Maughan puts the German formations at about 41,000 men and the Italian at about 33,000.14
Rommel’s plan
Rommel planned what Alexander calls the same plan as at Gazala: a break through the lightly held south, then a wheel north to the sea behind the 30th Corps. The Afrika Korps, the Italian 20th Corps and the 90th Light Division would move by moonlight, and Rommel wrote that he placed particular reliance on the slow reaction of the British command.15
Playfair judges the timing, to say the least, wildly optimistic: the Afrika Korps had seven hours to cover thirty miles at night over unreconnoitred ground known to be mined. Montgomery wrote that Rommel announced on 29 August that in two or three days his troops would be in Alexandria.16
The British also laid a trap. Alexander and the Indian official history describe a false going map, aged with tea stains, left in a scout car blown up on a mine, showing bad going on the route the British did not want the enemy to take. Alexander writes that the captured General von Thoma later confirmed the ruse worked, while Playfair finds no direct evidence that it changed the plan.17
Petrol and a sick commander
Fuel decided the date. Playfair writes that Rommel asked for about 6,000 tons of fuel and 2,500 tons of ammunition to reach Libya between 25 and 30 August, and that by 29 August only about 1,500 tons had reached Tobruk for the army, which was 350 miles by road from the front. Rommel recalled that Kesselring promised to fly in up to 500 tons of petrol a day in an emergency.18
Rommel was also ill. On 22 August, Playfair writes, he told the army high command he was sick and asked for a substitute, and then said he could command under medical supervision. Playfair concludes that the Rommel of Alam el Halfa was not the Rommel of Gazala and Tobruk. On the morning of the attack, by his doctor’s account in the papers, Rommel called the decision the hardest he had ever taken.19
The night of 30 August
The attack began on the night of 30 August with diversions in the north. Montgomery and the Indian official history both write that the Australians easily repulsed a raid near the coast, while on Ruweisat ridge a German parachute battalion took a position from the 5th Indian Division, which won it back at dawn.20
In the south the striking force met minefields far deeper than expected. Rommel wrote of an extremely strong and hitherto unsuspected mine belt, which he estimated at 150,000 mines, cleared under heavy artillery fire at great cost. Alexander writes that it took six hours to clear two gaps for the panzer divisions, and that the Afrika Korps was not concentrated east of the minefield until 9.30 in the morning.21
The commanders fell early. General Georg von Bismarck of the 21st Panzer Division was killed and General Walther Nehring of the Afrika Korps wounded in an air attack, Rommel writes. He thought of breaking off the attack, but after talking with Colonel Bayerlein decided to go on, with an earlier turn to the north than planned.22
The attack on the ridge
In a dust storm that kept the air forces away, the panzer divisions set off in the early afternoon of 31 August. Montgomery had hoped they would make a tight wheel towards Alam el Halfa rather than a wide one towards El Hammam, and that is what they did. At about five o’clock they met the 22nd Armoured Brigade in its prepared position near Point 102, and Alexander writes that by dusk over a quarter of their tanks were believed disabled.23
The brigade held 92 Grants with Stuarts and Crusaders. Playfair describes the Royal Scots Greys and two regiments of horse artillery joining the 3rd/4th County of London Yeomanry in a fierce duel. Rommel wrote that the soft sand ate his petrol, and that at four in the afternoon the attack on Hill 132 was called off.24
On 1 September the 15th Panzer Division tried again round the brigade’s flanks and was held off. By midday, Montgomery writes, he had nearly 400 tanks in the vital area between the ridge and the New Zealanders, and the Indian official history repeats the figure. Rommel himself wrote that on the morning of 1 September he had to give up any attempt at major action, and that the 15th Panzer Division, its petrol almost exhausted, had to call off even its local advance.25
Bombed day and night
The air forces took over after dark. Rommel describes aircraft circling and dropping a continuous succession of flares while others bombed, his vehicles burning, and on 2 September being bombed six times between ten and twelve o’clock, once throwing himself into a slit trench as a splinter pierced a spade beside it.26
Playfair records that on 3 September the Royal Air Force flew a record 957 sorties in twenty-four hours, and that over the battle fewer than 500 aircraft flew 2,500 sorties in support of the Eighth Army, with nearly 180 more by the United States Army Air Force. Montgomery wrote that the battle showed the tremendous power of the air arm in close co-operation with the land battle.27
Churchill told the Commons that the Desert Army had been reorganised in depth and reinforced with every brigade, tank and gun that could be hurried forward, and that it seemed very obliging of Rommel to have come on just where all the preparations had been made for his hearty reception.28
Rommel turns back
On 2 September Rommel ordered a deliberate withdrawal over several days. Playfair writes that he gave the army high command the shortage of petrol, the bad start, the mines and the incessant air attacks as reasons, and Rommel wrote that of 5,000 tons of petrol due by 3 September, 2,600 tons had been sunk and 1,500 were still in Italy.29
Montgomery did not counter-attack in force. Playfair writes that he judged the army unready and resisted the temptation, and Rommel took him for a very cautious man, not prepared to take any sort of risk. The Indian official history adds that Montgomery was determined to move in his own time, when his preparations for the great offensive were complete.30
The fight for the gap
The one set-piece attack was an attempt to close the minefield gaps behind the enemy. On the night of 3 September the New Zealand Division with the 132nd Brigade attacked southwards. Alexander writes that the 5th New Zealand Brigade reached its objective, the 28th Maori Battalion fighting a particularly gallant action, while the 132nd Brigade failed with heavy losses.31
Playfair counts 275 New Zealand and 697 casualties in the 132nd Brigade, in its first battle, and Brigadier George Clifton of the 6th New Zealand Brigade was captured. Rommel describes talking with Clifton and how the brigadier later escaped through a lavatory window. The infantry were withdrawn from their exposed positions the next night, and the attempt to close the gap, Playfair admits, had failed.32
In the north the Australians raided towards Tell el Eisa on 1 September in Operation Bulimba. The Australian War Memorial writes that the 2/15th Battalion suffered 190 killed, wounded or missing, while the Australian official history gives 39 killed, 109 wounded and 25 missing, and Playfair 135 Australian casualties. About 140 German prisoners were taken.33
Counting the losses
The battle ended on 7 September. Alexander and Montgomery both date its end to seven in the morning, when Montgomery called it off and left Rommel the western edge of the British minefields and the hill of Himeimat, while the Australian War Memorial dates the end to 5 September.34
Playfair gives German losses of 1,859 killed, wounded and missing and Italian of 1,051, with 38 German and 11 Italian tanks destroyed, and British losses of 1,750 and 67 tanks. Maughan gives the same totals. Alexander estimated about 2,500 German and 2,000 Italian killed and wounded and 300 prisoners, 42 German and 11 Italian tanks abandoned, and British losses of 1,640 and 68 tanks.35
What the battle decided
Alexander called it the nearest the Germans ever got to the Delta, and the National Army Museum and the Australian War Memorial London both describe Rommel’s attack as his last attempt to break through. The Neue Deutsche Biographie notes that in July and September 1942 the British stopped his poorly supplied forces at El Alamein.36
Playfair measures the British success less by material results than by morale: to the Axis the battle seemed to end their hopes of reaching the Delta, and the Eighth Army’s confidence in itself, its commander and the Royal Air Force rose to new heights. The Indian official history calls it a model defensive engagement in which everything moved like the parts of a well-oiled machine.37
Montgomery’s own offensive followed seven weeks later, told in the Battle of El Alamein. The two commanders are compared in Montgomery vs Rommel, and the whole desert war in our guide to the North African campaign.38
