Henri Winkelman wrote: ↑12 Sep 2018, 21:27
The Italians outnumbered the English with 10 to 1 and had countless opportunities to at least limit the disaster, but didn't.
Hi there!
The ratio of 10 to 1 is complete bullsh**!
In my research i've come to the totals of 78,000 italian and 36,000 commonwealth in the initial combat area.
10th Army had lots of garrison and rear area units that didn't come into combat much later. If one wishes to include them, then we must consider all the Delta area garrisons and service units.
In many books they talk about 250,000 italians but that is that more they had in all North Africa! Unfortunately they don't usually include the commonwealth units in Palestine, Sudan, Cyprus, etc...
I do concur with you that the italian command had several opportunities to limit the disaster but they were handicapped by their political masters.
In this campaign it seems everything that could wrong for the italians did go very badly, and the UK had good luck, good commanders and good units.
They pulled off a very efficient campaign operating on a shoestring.
Taking everything into consideration, it is difficult to imagine the UK losing, and very difficult to imagine Italy winning.
Bardia seems impossible to hold, but maybe with more (and better) involvement of the Regia Marina and Regia Aeronautica they could stop the UK around Gazala/Tobruk?
regards,
-Nuno
