Winnie and Joe See Arthur as a Fighter: Cairo and the Western Desert, February to October 1942

By the end of January 1942, Tedder had been laid low in Cairo by ‘mild lobar pneumonia’.1 This was a consequence of stubbornly ignoring a heavy cold during several long days of freezing rain, which he spent flitting about in light aircraft, cars and trucks from one airfield to another in western Cyrenaica, trying to understand why British forces were once again retreating in wild disorder from Rommel’s unexpected advance. Fortunately, Drummond returned from England on the 31st, and was able to take over the conduct of most affairs, while Tedder reflected on the latest humiliation from a hospital bed. ‘We need a cold-blooded determination’, he wrote to Coningham on 4 February, ‘free from wishful thinking or excessive head-counting to remove this gambler from Cyrenaica as soon as possible, and then get on with the main job.’ That ‘main job’, in his view, was to knock Italy out of the war and then to exploit the opportunities that would naturally follow: either to operate heavy bombers from Italian bases against targets in southern Germany, or to mount an army-air expedition through lands north-east of Egypt to assist the Soviet Union in the Caucasus.