How a British special operations assault aimed at killing or capturing Erwin Rommel was wrong
How a British special operations assault aimed at killing or capturing Erwin Rommel was wrong
One night, in mid-October 1941, an intelligence officer of the British army disguised as an Arab senussi was parachuted behind the German lines in the Italian colony of Libya.
It was Captain John E. "Jock" Haselden of the famous Long-Range Desert Group (LRDG), a British specialized force led by Lieutenant-Colonel David Stirling, who conducted reconnaissance patrols and raids to hit and run against enemy facilities in the north . Africa. Bearded and weather beaten, Haselden wore shattered Arab clothes and carried a cane while venturing alone on his intelligence raids. Born and raised in Egypt and a former cotton runner from Cairo, he spoke Arabic fluently.
His mission on this particular night was dangerous: to locate the headquarters of the commander of the German forces in North Africa, the legendary General Erwin Rommel. Haselden was to lay the groundwork for a bold attempt, tied to a major offensive by the British Eighth Army, either to capture or kill Rommel and his Italian field commander, General Ettore Bastico. For several months, Rommel had proved to be a skilled and formidable enemy in tricking and overtaking the British during the desert campaigns of the Western Desert.
Based on the radio interceptions of the German message traffic, "Sigint" at the headquarters of the British Middle East Command in Cairo came to the conclusion that a remote village called Beda Littoria in the hump of Libya North was the likely site of Rommel's headquarters.
After burying his parachute in the sand, Captain Haselden went to the outskirts of the dusty village a dozen miles south of the Mediterranean coast, west of Derna and not far from the site of the ancient city of Cyrene, the Hannibal's birthplace, to verify Sigint's information. With stealth, he placed his field glasses in stuccoed Italian colonial buildings grouped in olive groves, cypresses and groups of German troops.
On one side, Haselden could see a villa and an official building that the Italians called Prefettura. Parked around it, there were about 20 Afrika Korps communications trucks, while a steady flow of vehicles threw the officers and retrieved the passengers. The British officer gasped when he saw General Rommel leaving the Prefettura and driving in a commando car. Haselden had won the jackpot; Apparently, Beda Littoria was, in fact, the headquarters of "Desert Fox".
Haselden scurried hastily into the desert and joined an LRDG patrol two days later. He was taken back to Cairo with his information, and plans and preparations were made. By organizing a raid at Rommel's headquarters, the British hoped to create chaos in the command system of the Afrika Corps and their Italian allies. The operation would prove to be one of the most daring special forces missions of the Second World War.
The British commandos assigned to carry out the mission had arrived at the theater of the Mediterranean as part of the contingent "Force" led by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Laycock "Fortunate", Commander of Commando operations and the elite special section of ships . One of its units was the 11th Commando (Scottish), which had practiced night landings from submarines with rubber boats and light canvas canoes called folbots.
The idea of the assault on Rommel's headquarters, 250 miles behind the enemy lines, had been formulated in the fall of 1941 by Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Charles Tasker Keyes of the 11th Command, the 24-year-old son of the Fleet Admiral. Sir Roger. Keyes. A decorated hero of the Boxer's Rebellion and the naval actions of Zeebrugge and Dover in World War I, Sir Roger had been chosen by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to direct all Command operations from the headquarters of Lord Louis Combine Operations Mountbatten.
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Keyes, a brave and competent officer and the youngest lieutenant colonel of the British army, Keyes led the planning of the next raid, codenamed Operation Flipper, and insisted on leading him personally. The LRDG and the Special Air Service will carry out simultaneous actions to support the British Offensive Crusade Operation from November 16-17. The initial objectives of the Laycock-Keyes force were to attack the headquarters of the Italian forces in Cyrene and destroy the telephone and telegraph services; hit the Italian intelligence center in Appollonia; cut the lines of communication around El Faida and assault the headquarters of Afrika Korps in Beda Littoria and the village of Rommel west of the village.
Colonel Laycock, a veteran special operations gallant in Libya, Rhodes and Crete who would later win the Distinguished Service Order and led Commands and Rangers of the United States in the invasion of Salerno, expressed reservations about the planned mission. A former London-born understudy at the Royal Horse Guards reported: "I said that I thought the chances of being evacuated after the operation were very slim, and that the attack on General Rommel's house in particular seemed desperate at the extreme. The attack, although initially successful, meant an almost certain death for those who participated in it, and I made these comments in the presence of Colonel Keyes, who begged me not to repeat them so that the operation would not be canceled. "
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SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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