The Relief of Tobruk

At the time when I arrived in the Western Desert plans were in train for an operation which, it was hoped, would result in the relief of Tobruk. The strategic side of this operation can be studied in Sir Winston Churchill’s great history. It will be remembered that he had gone to great lengths and had caused great risks to be taken to send to the Middle East a reinforcement of tanks which he hoped would swing the balance of armoured strength in our favour. The code name was ‘Tiger’ and the Navy was instructed to run all risks to deliver the goods. He speaks with almost paternal affection of the tanks brought by this operation as ‘The Tiger Cubs’ and it is with great disappointment that he animadverts on the time taken to prepare them for battle and on the result of the battle when fought. These censures come home with much less force to those on the spot who remember that the tanks on which such hopes were placed, for which the Navy ran such deadly risks, and which Sir Winston clearly feels were misused, were nothing but those Crusader tanks which were the cause of so much bitterness. It was not so much, at that time, their lack of hitting power that was criticized since the Germans then had no tank gun bigger than 50 mm. (There were a few Mark IVs armed with 75 mm. guns but these were howitzers for close support not armour-piercing weapons). The thinness of the armour was a more legitimate complaint. But what infuriated the users beyond measure was their mechanical unreliability. In this battle it showed at its worst since, although a number of modifications had been made to fit them for use in the desert, there was still a number of defects vulnerable to the hard going and the ubiquitous drifting sand. In a powerful passage Sir Winston Churchill complains that the commanders in the Middle East seemed to want a 50 per cent margin of superiority in tanks over the enemy. His comment that ‘Generals only enjoy such comforts in Heaven. And those who demand them do not always get there’, may well seem majestically convincing. But if in order to arrive with 100 tanks at the end of a march of 20 miles it is necessary to start off with 150 to allow for mechanical casualties, the demand for such a margin may not seem unreasonable.