Battle of El Agheila

The Battle of El Agheila was a brief engagement of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. It took place in December 1942 between Allied forces of the Eighth Army (General Bernard Montgomery) and the Axis forces of the German-Italian Panzer Army (Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel), during the long Axis withdrawal from El Alamein to Tunis. The Eighth Army planned to outflank and trap the Axis forces as they withdrew to Tunis.

The Eighth Army plan was thwarted when a frontal attack by the British 7th Armoured Division was repulsed by an Italian rearguard action and the outflanking New Zealand units became dispersed in the desert. The engagement ended with the German-Italian Panzer Army withdrawing into Tripolitana towards Tunisia, where the Tunisia Campaign had begun with the Operation Torch the Allied invasion of French North Africa (8–16 November 1942).

Aftermath[edit]

Analysis[edit]

Due to shortages of fuel, ammunition and equipment, Rommel had decided to withdraw rather than to make a determined stand at El Agheila and started withdrawing troops days before the battle.^[29] Montgomery intended to trap the Axis force by pinning them down with a frontal attack near the coast, while the New Zealand Division circled around Rommel's inland flank to cut the Via Balbia to the west of El Agheila. ^[30] The New Zealand Division became dispersed during their encirclement attempt and when the Eighth Army started its frontal attack, Rommel commenced his final withdrawal. The last units of the Axis force escaped through the gaps between the scattered New Zealand units, and the planned entrapment failed.^[31]

The New Zealand official historian, W. G. Stevens, wrote that

List of British military equipment of World War II

List of German military equipment of World War II

List of Italian Army equipment in World War II

Bauer, E. (1983). Young, Peter (ed.). The History of World War II (partwork ed.). London: Orbis. 153898230.

OCLC

Boog, H.; Rahn, W.; Stumpf, R.; Wegner, B. (2001). The Global War: Widening of the Conflict into a World War and the Shift of the Initiative 1941–1943. Germany in the Second World War. Vol. VI. Translated by Osers, E.; Brownjohn, J.; Crampton, P.; Willmot, L. (Eng. Trans. Oxford University Press, London ed.). Potsdam: Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History). 978-0-19-873830-5.