The organisation of the supply system showed many defects and the whole edifice was predicated on the assumption that war in the desert would be a static campaign, although no effort had been made to erect proper and permanent defences. The Italians had been in Libya for nearly thirty years and had settled down into a comfortable routine of life which only an occasional campaign against tribesmen had disrupted. Against the poorly armed locals the Italians and their old-fashioned equipment had been adequate, but against the British they had not prevailed. When Wavell's forces swept over them and forced them out of the fertile strip to fight a mobile war in the desert, the Italian forces were completely unready. They had never had to fight against the desert; they had ignored it and had lived in the fertile area. Wavell coming up out of the blue of the sand sea had confounded them and it was this total inability to cope with two enemies - the desert and the British -that had led an Army ten times the size of its military opponent to be defeated so quickly.
Even with a supply system based on the expectation of a static war the Italians had built up no stocks. There was no pool of vehicles to create a mobile Army and this in a region where mobility equalled life and to be immobile was to be overtaken and destroyed. No properly equipped supply depots had been filled, no fuel reserve built up, no dumps of ammunition created and filled; there was nothing, in fact, which a modern Army serving overseas needed to sustain it. And then, too, the arms themselves were inferior. The field artillery's weapons were mostly pieces from the First World War, the anti-tank guns were incapable of dealing with British armour, and the Italian armoured fighting vehicles were so weak both in thickness of armour and in their main weapon that they were, to all intents and purposes, defenceless targets when set up against the British tank Corps.
Tactically the Italian Army of March 1941 was made up of two Corps. The first of these, X Corps had two infantry divisions Bologna and Pavia, as well as a mixed unit of all arms. In support of X Corps was the remnant of Ariete armoured division with at least 60 tanks. The XXI Corps was made up of Savona and Brescia infantry divisions as well as a mixed group formed from the remaining elements of other divisions which had been badly hit during the fighting in the desert.
British Army
The armies which fought in the North African desert campaigns were initially made up solely of men from the United Kingdom, the Empire, and the Commonwealth. Many of those soldiers who had driven back the Italians during 1940 were professionals who had garrisoned the Middle East in peace-time and who had mapped the desert, plotted routes, explored the sand seas, and produced the splendidly accurate maps on which every important piece of information was marked.
Then in support of these veterans came the territorial and yeomanry units and then a greater number of men who had been conscripted to serve their country. But whatever the reason which had brought them to the desert for many of the years during which they served, their skill and bravery were wasted in offensives — ordered by politicians in London — using equipment that was at best unsuitable and at worst totally useless.
In artillery the British had one particular type of gun, the 25-pounder, which was a first-class weapon but the rest of the military ordnance was made up of pieces dating from the First World War.
In anti-tank weapons the 2-pounder gun which formed the bulk of this type of artillery for the first two years of the war had been proved to be useless against German armour as sarly as 1940, but was still lauded as an effective panzer killer as late as 1942 although mainly by civilians who did not have to use it. Not until the 6-pounder came into service did the British Army have an anti-tank gun that could kill enemy tanks at a respectable distance, but this weapon did not arrive in the Middle East until early 1942 and ammunition which was able to penetrate the steel plates of the un-armoured panzers was not available until after the battle of Alam Haifa in September 1942. True the workshops of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps had tried to overcome the disability of unsuitable ammunition by converting 7.5cm shells into armour piercing shot, in time for the Gazala battles, but little of this ammunition seems to have been used.
The British armoured righting vehicles were generally ineffective. The Crusader, whose weaknesses had been the subject of a parliamentary enquiry, was found to be not only mechanically unsound but also poorly armoured. Its highest cross-country speed was 12mph, but even this was twice as fast as the Matilda, which had been designed purely as an infantry support tank. The Valentine, like the two vehicles already mentioned, was armed with the ineffective 2-pounder tank gun which fired only solid shot and was, therefore, unable to engage and destroy the German anti-tank gun lines except by a direct hit. Not until the battle of Gazala and the introduction of the American Grant tank did the British Army in North Africa have a tank which combined the advantages of fire power, armoured thickness, and speed. The Grant was able to fire both high explosive and solid shot. Its 7.5cm main armament was a standard artillery piece and the turret-mounted 3.7cm high velocity gun fired armour piercing shells. Even this machine had a defect; the main armament was set low down in the hull and thus the whole machine had 10 be exposed to enemy fire whenever the main armament was used.
Although for much of the time the 8th Army had superiority in numbers the poor designs, weak armouring and armament of the armoured fighting vehicles reduced the advantage. Then, too, tank units were used incorrectly. There was no real understanding of the use of mass forces and regiments were allowed to carry out isolated and, generally, unsupported 'cavalry' charges against gun lines and not until Alam Haifa, when Montgomery had taken over command of 8th Army, were tank commanders restrained and forbidden to act as if the panzers were a sort of quarry, like a fox in some sort of mechanised hunt.
At the end of February 1942 there were certain changes made in the armoured units and an attempt was made to 'tighten up' the formations. The armoured brigade group became the standard battle formation and replaced the armoured brigade which had formed part of the armoured division. Within the brigade group establishment there were artillery and engineer units taken from the former support group which, with the new regrouping, had been scrapped. The anti-tank gun regiments which had been with 8th Army, were broken up and distributed among the field artillery regiments. Thus, each artillery regiment controlled not only three batteries of 25-pounder howitzer guns but also 16 anti-tank guns. To provide anti-aircraft protection the light anti-aircraft gun batteries were disbanded and the batteries allotted to each brigade group. It was hoped that these new all-round units would provide the cohesion and the dynamism which characterised the German battle groups but they failed, because they were never large enough to be effective against German armour moving in mass, nor was the British command structure sound.
The direct and immediate control of the battle, essential in armoured warfare, was lacking in 8th Army. The structure was too loose, was too far removed from the scene of the battle, and was too slow for decisions arrived at were usually the result of long discussions. At intermediate command level there was great freedom of action and at divisional level the group was quite firm. At brigade and in lower echelons there was a great deal of professionalism, determination to succeed, and tenacity. This was particularly true of the infantry formations which comprised the bulk of the Army.