Junkers on the Desert

The German threat to Egypt and Suez last week became immediate and serious.

With apparent ease, the large and evergrowing German force on the Libyan border pushed the British out of Salum and about five miles into Egypt's land. Then it paused. The British admitted that the pause was none of their doing: they had withdrawn, and had merely maintained light mechanized patrols touching the Axis advance, to keep tabs.

Tobruch, lying on the flank of Axis communications across the Libyan desert, had been held by a small British garrison ever since the initial German drive. Before the Axis attack on Egypt went any farther, it would be wise to try to knock it out.

With all the full-dress apparatus of storming--dive-bombers, tanks, massed infantry--the Italians and Germans quickly broke through the first line of Tobruch's defenses, seized "a great number" of artillery emplacements and some prisoners. The British withdrew to a second line of defense, stiffened, and claimed to have stopped the assault.

Encirclement via Ether. An R.A.F. reconnaissance plane flying as far as Bengasi saw an interesting but sobering sight on Benina airfield, eleven miles from Bengasi: drawn up, wing to wing and nose to tail, were at least 100 Junkers transport planes. Each plane was big enough to carry 25 men. In Greece transports like these had been used to land field artillery and armored cars behind the British lines.

This was the second answer to the pause. The Nazis seemed to be contemplating a major outflanking by air.

Wavell's Plan. All week long, exhausted Australians, New Zealanders and Britons who had fought in Greece disembarked at Egyptian ports. These men were in no shape to undertake another heroic defense. They and all the British forces in Egypt were woefully thin on heavy equipment. Of all the armored strength available before the Greek campaign, reportedly just one brigade remained in service in Egypt. However, Cairo reported the arrival there of U.S. materials last week, and Vichy sources said that no less than 26 U.S. merchant ships, "stacked to the funnels" with 75-mm. field guns and other materiel, and "convoyed" by U.S. naval vessels, had reached Suez. U.S. diplomats denied that materials reaching Egypt had been carried in U.S. ships. In any case, replacements could not have been sufficient to give anything like immediate parity.

General Sir Archibald Wavell doubtless hoped for a repetition of the Italian mistake. He was apparently organizing his defenses well inside Egypt, at Matruh, hoping to be able to break the Axis advance from behind them. But there is a difference between the Italians and the Germans. The Italians attacked along the sea, in range of the Royal Navy. The bulk of the Axis divisions (more than three, perhaps as many as eight) are expected to advance on a wide front, perhaps deep in the desert. The Italians are sensible men who have read military history and feel that classical logistics and lines of communications are very important; the Germans are heretics of war --who break all rules and most defenses.

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