The Italian invasion of Egypt () was an offensive in the Second World War from Italian Libya, against British, Commonwealth and Free French in the neutral Kingdom of Egypt. The invasion by the Italian 10th Army () ended border skirmishing on the frontier and began the Western Desert Campaign (1940–1943) proper. The Italian strategy was to advance from Libya along the Egyptian coast to seize the Suez Canal. After numerous delays, the scope of the offensive was reduced to an advance as far as Sidi Barrani and the defeat of any British forces in the area.
The 10th Army advanced about into Egypt against British screening forces of the 7th Support Group (7th Armoured Division) the main force remaining in the vicinity of Mersa Matruh, the principal British base in the Western Desert. On 16 September 1940, the 10th Army halted and took up defensive positions around the port of Sidi Barrani. British casualties were 40 men killed and the Italians suffered 120. The army was to wait in fortified camps, until engineers had built the Via della Vittoria (Victory Road) along the coast, an extension of the Libyan Via Balbia. The Italians began to accumulate supplies for an advance against the 7th Armoured Division and the 4th Indian Division at Mersa Matruh, about further on.
On 8 December, before the 10th Army was ready to resume its advance on Mersa Matruh, the Western Desert Force (WDF) began Operation Compass, a five-day raid against the fortified Italian camps outside Sidi Barrani. The raid succeeded and the few units of the 10th Army in Egypt that were not destroyed were forced into a hurried retreat. The WDF pursued the remnants of the 10th Army along the coast to Sollum and across the border to Bardia, Tobruk, Derna, Mechili, Beda Fomm and El Agheila on the Gulf of Sirte. The WDF suffered casualties of killed and wounded during Compass and took and Libyan prisoners, over and many aircraft.
Background
Libya
Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya, had been an Italian colony since the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912), although resistance continued until 1932. With Tunisia, a part of French North Africa to the west and Egypt to the east, the Italians had to defend both frontiers and established a North Africa Supreme Headquarters, under the command of the Governor-General of Italian Libya, Marshal of the Air Force Italo Balbo. Supreme Headquarters had the 5th Army (General Italo Gariboldi) in the west and the 10th Army (Lieutenant-General Mario Berti) in the east, which in mid-1940 had nine metropolitan divisions with an establishment of about each, three (Blackshirt) divisions and two Libyan colonial divisions, with an establishment of each. Reservists had been recalled in 1939, along with the usual call-up of new conscripts.
Egypt
The British had based military 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. Egypt was neutral during the war. 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 Armistice of 22 June 1940, French divisions in Tunisia faced the Italians on the western Libyan border forcing the garrison to divide and face both ways.
In Libya, the Royal Italian 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 two British armoured training formations, which in mid-1939 was renamed the Armoured Division (Egypt) and on 16 February 1940, the 7th Armoured Division. The Egyptian–Libyan border was defended by the Egyptian Frontier Force and 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 also moved most of its bombers closer to the frontier and Malta was reinforced to threaten the Italian supply route to Libya. The HQ of the 6th Infantry Division, still lacking complete and fully trained units, was renamed the Western Desert Force (WDF) on 17 June. In Tunisia, the French had eight divisions, capable only of limited operations and in Syria had three poorly armed and trained divisions, with about and border guards, on occupation duties against the civilian population. Italian land and air forces in Libya greatly outnumbered the British in Egypt but suffered from poor morale and were handicapped by some inferior equipment. In Italian East Africa were another and East African troops with tanks and On 10 June 1940 Italy declared war on France and Britain from 11 June. Canada declared war on Italy on 10 June and on 11 June, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa followed suit.
Terrain
The Western Desert is about long, from Mersa Matruh in Egypt, west to Gazala on the Libyan coast, along the Via Balbia, the only paved road. The 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 into the hinterland lies a raised, flat plain of stony desert about above sea level, that runs in depth until the Sand Sea. The region is inhabited by a small number of Bedouin nomads and local wildlife consists of scorpions, vipers and flies.
Bedouin tracks link wells () and the easier traversed ground; desert navigation is by sun, star, compass and "desert sense", good perception of the environment gained by experience. (When the Italian invasion of Egypt began in September 1940, the Maletti Group, [, Major-General Pietro Maletti], lacking experience of desert conditions, got lost leaving Sidi Omar, disappeared and had to be found by reconnaissance aircraft.) In spring and summer, days are miserably hot and nights very cold. The ( or ), a hot desert wind, blows clouds of fine sand, reducing visibility to a few yards and coating eyes, lungs, machinery, food and equipment. Motor vehicles and aircraft need special oil and air filters and the barren ground means that water and food as well as military stores, have to be transported from outside.
Italian Army In 1936, General Alberto Pariani had been appointed Chief of Staff of the Italian Army. Pariani began a reorganisation of the army to fight wars of rapid decision, according to thinking that speed, mobility and new technology could revolutionise military operations. In 1937, traditional three-regiment tertiary 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; new technology such as tanks, motor vehicles and wireless communications were slow to arrive and were inferior to those of potential enemies. The dilution of the officer class to find extra unit staffs was made worse by the politicisation of the army and the addition of Blackshirt Militia. The reforms also promoted the tactics of frontal assault to the exclusion of other theories of war, dropping the emphasis on fast, mobile warfare backed by artillery. By September 1939, sixteen divisions of the 67 in the Italian Army (excluding the garrison of Ethiopia) had been converted to binary divisions and had received their establishment of arms and equipment. The remaining divisions had obsolete equipment, no stock of replacements and lacked artillery, tanks, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns and transport.
Morale was considered to be high and the army had 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 and was not considered by the British to be capable of maintaining a high rate of operations. The 5th Army () in Tripolitania, the western half of Libya opposite Tunisia, had eight divisions; the 10th Army with six infantry divisions garrisoned the province Cyrenaica in the east. At the end of June, after the Fall of France, four divisions were transferred from the 5th Army to the 10th Army. When Italy declared war on 10 June, the 10th Army comprised the 1st Libyan Division on the frontier from Giarabub to Sidi Omar and (XXI Corps, Lieutenant-General Lorenzo Dalmazzo) from Sidi Omar to the coast, Bardia and Tobruk. (XX Corps, Lieutenant-General () was moved south-west of Tobruk, as a counter-attack force.
Before the war, Balbo expressed his doubts to Mussolini
and demanding more equipment including tankers, more medium tanks and anti-tank guns, which the Italian economy could not produce or the army transfer from elsewhere. In Rome, Badoglio, the chief-of-staff, fobbed him off with promises, "When you have the seventy medium tanks you will dominate the situation", as Balbo prepared to invade Egypt on 15 July. After Balbo was killed in an accident, Benito Mussolini replaced him with Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, with orders to attack Egypt by 8 August. Graziani replied that the 10th Army was not properly equipped and that an attack could not possibly succeed; Mussolini ordered him to attack anyway.
Prelude 10th Army The ten divisions of the 10th Army (Lieutenant-General Mario Berti) comprised the (XX Corps), (XXI Corps), (XXII Corps, Lieutenant-General) Enrico Mannella), (XXIII Corps, Lieutenant-General Annibale Bergonzoli). The army comprised metropolitan infantry divisions, Blackshirt ( [CC.NN.]) infantry divisions and Libyan colonial divisions. XXIII Corps, with the metropolitan divisions "Cirene" and "Marmarica", the Blackshirt Division "23rd Marzo", the 1st and 2nd Libyan divisions (Lieutenant-General Sebastiano Gallina) and the Maletti Group was to conduct the invasion. Bergonzoli had about first to move the "Cirene" and "Marmarica" divisions, followed by the "23rd Marzo". The Libyan divisions had enough to move equipment, weapons and supplies but the infantry would have to walk; the Maletti Group had enough to move its troops. The Maletti Group comprised three battalions of Libyan infantry, additional artillery, much of the Italian armoured vehicle element in Libya and almost all of the M11/39 medium tanks. XXI Corps, with the Sirte and "28th Ottobre" divisions formed a reserve and XXII Corps with the "Catanzaro" and "3rd Gennaio" divisions were left at Tobruk because of the transport shortage.
5
Operational commands of the (Royal Italian Air Force) were called , or the of an area. The 10th Army was supported by 5, with 5 had four bomber wings, a fighter wing, three fighter groups, two reconnaissance groups and two squadrons of colonial reconnaissance aircraft, comprising 110 Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers, fifty Breda Ba.65 ground attack aircraft, 170 Fiat CR.42 fighters and six IMAM Ro.37, Caproni Ca.309 and Caproni Ca.310bis long-range reconnaissance aircraft. On 9 September, another sixty-four bombers, seventy-five ground-attack aircraft and fifteen reconnaissance aircraft arrived from Italy. 5 was organised to follow and support the army in the field as a self-contained unit.
Berti could expect little support from the Royal Italian Navy () because ten submarines had been lost since Italy declared war, the fleet was too important to risk and was short of fuel.