He spoke softly and often encouraged his men with biblical passages. In fact, he’d worked as a Lutheran pastor between the wars. Yet his command style was far from that of the stereotypical gruff Prussian martinet. Bach was rarely without a cigar in his mouth, even if unlit. He was wounded during the 1940 invasion of France and a year later, he still walked with a limp (he was the one officer in the Afrika Korps allowed to use a walking stick). The decorated 49-year-old commander was a combat veteran having previously served in the First World War. It also didn’t help the British that the combined German/Italian force holding Halfaya was led by a remarkable combat solder: Captain Wilhelm Bach. Of the 18 Allied tanks put out of action on the first day of the offensive, 15 fell victim to Flak 18s. Unfortunately for British tank crews, the Afrika Korps was now using the Flak 18 88 mm anti-aircraft gun in an anti-tank role.Īs Operation Battleaxe kicked off on June 15, 1941, Matildas advancing towards the Halfaya Pass were cut down with surgical precision by just five German 88s. Ominously, an operation earlier in the year ( codenamed Brevity) saw four Matildas shot up by German guns at long range. Operation Battleaxe relied on Matildas advancing west through the Halfaya Pass as supporting armoured units moved along the coast. At the insistence of London, Archibald Wavell, commander of British forces in the Middle East, devised a plan to break the German siege of the port of Tobruk. Even Germany’s 37 mm and 50 mm anti-tank weapons couldn’t penetrate the exterior of the new 25-ton British fighting vehicle.īy the spring of 1941, the Allies were confident that the Matilda could still drive through Axis defenses. Operation Compass was a brilliantly executed Blitzkrieg-style campaign spearheaded by the new British Matilda II tank.Īlthough not a particularly fast machine (its top speed was under 10 km/h), the Matilda’s 78 mm (3.1 inch) frontal armour was impervious to Italian anti-tank guns. IN DECEMBER 1940, the Allies chased the Italian army out of Egypt and back into Libya. ![]() “As Operation Battleaxe kicked off on June 15, 1941, Matildas advancing towards the Halfaya Pass were cut down with surgical precision by just five German 88s.” Image courtesy the German Federal Archive. The famous flak gun became one of the most feared anti-tank weapons of the Second World War, serving everywhere from the sands of North Africa to the snowy wastelands of the Russian front. A German artillery crew relaxes next to their 88 mm gun.
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