The Battle of Beda Fomm took place following the rapid British advance during Operation Compass (9 December 1940 – 9 February 1941). The Italian 10th Army () was forced to evacuate Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya. In late January, the British learned that the Italians were retreating along the () from Benghazi. The 7th Armoured Division (Major-General Sir Michael O'Moore Creagh) was dispatched to intercept the remnants of the 10th Army by moving through the desert, south of the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain) via Msus and Antelat as the 6th Australian Division pursued the Italians along the coast road, north of the Jebel. The terrain was hard going for the British tanks and Combeforce (Lieutenant-Colonel John Combe), a flying column of wheeled vehicles, was sent ahead across the chord of the Jebel.
Late on 5 February, Combeforce arrived at the south of Benghazi and set up roadblocks near Sidi Saleh, about south-west of Antelat and north of Agedabia. The leading elements of the 10th Army arrived thirty minutes after the British who had set an ambush. Next day the Italians attacked to break through and continued their attacks into 7 February. With British reinforcements arriving and the Australians pressing down the road from Benghazi, the 10th Army surrendered later that day. Between Benghazi and Agedabia the British took captured and out of the totals for Operation Compass of and
On 9 February, Churchill ordered the advance to stop and troops to be dispatched to Greece to take part in the Greco-Italian War; , a German attack through Macedonia was thought imminent. The British in Libya were unable to continue beyond El Agheila anyway, because of vehicle breakdowns, exhaustion and the effect of the much longer distance from the supplies in Egypt. A few thousand men of the 10th Army escaped the disaster in Cyrenaica but the 5th Army in Tripolitania had four divisions. The Sirte, Tmed Hassan and Buerat strongholds were reinforced from Italy, which brought the 10th and 5th armies up to about German reinforcements were sent to Libya to form a blocking detachment () under Directive 22 (11 January), these being the first units of the ( Erwin Rommel).
Background Libya
In 1936, General Alberto Pariani had been appointed Chief of Staff of the army and begun a reorganisation of divisions to fight wars of rapid decision, according to thinking that speed, mobility and new technology could revolutionise military operations. In 1937, three-regiment (triangular) divisions began to change to two-regiment binary divisions, as part of a ten-year plan to reorganise the standing army into twelve mountain, three motorised and three armoured divisions. The effect of the change was to increase the administrative overhead of the army, with no corresponding increase in effectiveness as the new technology, tanks motor vehicles and wireless communications were slow to arrive and were inferior to those of potential enemies. The dilution of the officer class by the need for extra unit staffs, was made worse by the politicisation of the army and the addition of (Blackshirt Militia). The reforms also promoted frontal assaults to the exclusion of other theories, dropping the previous emphasis on fast mobile warfare backed by artillery.
Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya, had been an Italian colony since the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912). With Tunisia, a part of French North Africa to the west and Egypt to the east, the Italians prepared to defend both frontiers through a North Africa Supreme Headquarters, under the command of the Governor-General of Italian Libya, Marshal of the Air Force Italo Balbo. The Supreme Headquarters in Libya had the 5th Army (General Italo Gariboldi) and the 10th Army (General Mario Berti), which in mid-1940 had nine metropolitan divisions of about each, three Blackshirt and two Libyan Colonial divisions with each.
Morale was considered to be high and the army had gained recent experience of military operations. The Italian navy had prospered under the Fascist regime, which had paid for fast, well-built and well-armed ships and a large submarine fleet but the navy lacked experience and training. The air force had been ready for war in 1936 but had stagnated by 1939 and was not considered by the British to be capable of maintaining a fast tempo of operations. The 5th Army, with eight divisions, was based in Tripolitania, the western half of Libya opposite Tunisia and the 10th Army, with six infantry divisions, held Cyrenaica in the east. When war was declared, the 10th Army moved the 1st Libyan Division to the frontier from Giarabub to Sidi Omar and XXI Corps from Sidi Omar to the coast, Bardia and Tobruk. XXII Corps moved south-west of Tobruk to act as a counter-attack force.
Egypt The British had based forces in Egypt since 1882 but these were greatly reduced by the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The small British and Commonwealth force garrisoned the Suez Canal and the Red Sea route, which was vital to British communications with its Far Eastern and Indian Ocean territories. In mid-1939, Lieutenant-General Archibald Wavell was appointed General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the new Middle East Command, over the Mediterranean and Middle East theatres. Until the Franco–Axis Armistice of 22 June 1940, the French divisions in Tunisia faced the Italian 5th Army on the western Libyan border. In Libya, the (Royal Army) had about and in Egypt, the British had about with another training in Palestine.
British forces included the Mobile Division (Egypt) (Major-General Percy Hobart), one of only two British armoured training formations which in mid-1939 was renamed the Armoured Division (Egypt). On 16 February 1940, it became the 7th Armoured Division. The Egypt–Libya border was defended by the Egyptian Frontier Force. In June 1940, the headquarters of the 6th Infantry Division (Major-General Richard O'Connor) took over command in the Western Desert, with instructions to drive back the Italians from their frontier posts and dominate the hinterland if war began. The 7th Armoured Division, less the 7th Armoured Brigade, assembled at Mersa Matruh and sent the 7th Support Group forward towards the frontier as a covering force. The RAF moved most of its bombers and Malta was reinforced.
The HQ of the 6th Infantry Division, which lacked complete and trained units, was renamed the Western Desert Force on 17 June. In Tunisia, the French had eight divisions, capable only of limited operations and about in three poorly armed and trained divisions in Syria along with border guards. Most of the French forces in Tunisia served as an army of occupation against the civilian population. Italian land and air forces in Libya greatly outnumbered the British in Egypt but were handicapped by some inferior equipment and poor serviceability. In Italian East Africa were another and African troops, with tanks and when Italy declared war on 11 June 1940.
Terrain
The Western Desert is about wide, from Mersa Matruh in Egypt to Gazala on the Libyan coast, along the (), the only paved road in 1940. The Great Sand Sea inland marks the southern limit of the desert at its widest at Giarabub and Siwa; in British parlance, 'Western Desert' came to include eastern Cyrenaica in Libya. From the coast, extending inland lies a raised, flat plain of stony desert about above sea level, that runs south until the Great Sand Sea. Scorpions, vipers and flies populate the region, that was inhabited by a small number of Bedouin nomads.
Bedouin tracks linked wells and the easier traversed ground; navigation was by sun, star, compass and "desert sense", good perception of the environment gained by experience. (During the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940, the Maletti Group got lost after leaving Sidi Omar and reconnaissance aircraft had to find it.) In spring and summer, days are miserably hot and the nights are bitter cold. The Sirocco (/), a hot desert wind, blows clouds of fine sand, which reduces visibility to a few yards and coats eyes, lungs, machinery, food and equipment. Motor vehicles and aircraft need special oil filters and the barren ground means that supplies for military operations, have to be transported from outside.
Operation Compass
Following the invasion of Egypt and advance to Sidi Barrani by the 10th Army, Wavell ordered the commander of British Troops Egypt, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, to plan a limited operation to push the Italians back. Operation Compass, for administrative reasons, was originally planned as a five-day raid but consideration was given to continuing the operation if it succeeded. On 28 November, Wavell wrote to Wilson that,
On 8 December, the British had begun the operation against the fortified Italian camps, a defensive line outside Sidi Barrani. (Berti was on sick leave and Gariboldi had temporarily taken his place.) The raid succeeded and the few units of the 10th Army in Egypt that were not destroyed had to withdraw. By 11 December, the British converted the raid a counter-offensive and the rest of the 10th Army in Egypt was swiftly defeated. The British prolonged the operation to pursue the remnants of the 10th Army to Sollum, Bardia, Tobruk, Derna and Mechili, then advanced through and around the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain), to cut off the Italian retreat to Beda Fomm and El Agheila on the Gulf of Sirte.
Prelude Derna, Mechili
The area east of the Jebel Akhdar mountains was garrisoned by the XX Motorised Corps (Lieutenant-General Annibale Bergonzoli) with the 60th Infantry Division "Sabratha" and the Babini Group (General Valentino Babini), which had already lost some of its tanks in the British capture of Tobruk. The Babini Group had an establishment of but these included had landed recently at Benghazi. The new tanks needed ten days to be made battleworthy and a three-day journey to reach Mechili but in the crisis, tanks had been rushed forward, reducing the serviceability of the vehicles. A defensive position was established by the 60th Infantry Division "Sabratha" on a line from Derna along Wadi Derna, with the Babini Group concentrating inland and slightly south-west of Derna at Mechili Fort, where several desert tracks converged, Giovanni Berta and Chaulan, to guard the flank and rear of the infantry. On 22 January, the British advanced towards Derna with the 19th Australian Brigade (Brigadier Horace Robertson) and sent another Australian brigade to reinforce the 4th Armoured Brigade (Brigadier John Caunter) of the 7th Armoured Division (Major-General Michael O'Moore Creagh) south of the Jebel Akhdar, for an advance on Mechili.