Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for November 04, 2012

He got his just desserts

Yes, we all rolled our eyes. (Doesn’t “to role one’s eyes” deserve a word of its own? I nominate “splork”.)

Funny how it was the English that fought the Germans, with a British General ? Did the Welsh, Scots and Irish not fight in North Africa ? The battle was won by the allies ie Australians, British, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, French and Poles.

The number of 400 tanks (i.e. 4 complete division, the Afrika-Korps had only 2 tank divisions assigned) is utter nonsens. At the beginning of the battle Rommel had about 30 operable tanks left, thanks to efficient allied cutting off his supplies via the Mediterranean.

cf. Boog/Rahn et al. “Die Welt im Krieg 1941-1943” vol. 2 pp. 688ff

Ooooh! All that setup.

Adam could also be known as a Sundae Warrior.

@Omnius is right. In Roy Jenkins “Churchill” there’s a good account of the battle.

It’s easy to tell that Rommel was a superb warrior and an excellent commander – his enemies respected him.

Rommel couldn’t get gas for his tanks because it was over $4.00 a gallon

Rommel, you magnificent b@5+@rd! I read your book!

Masters of bad puns were around long before Pastis; he is still learning from them, I’m sure.

Frank and Earnest have been doing bad puns far before Stephen Pastis ever picked up a pen

@ Omnius

Don´t try to “correct” posts while only being able to “quote” the title of a book.Boog et al. wrote as members of the “Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt” and had all the german files at hand.

You confuse the battle of El Alamein with the overall German campaign (“operation Theseus”) which started with the fights around Gazala from 26 May until 17 June and continued with the taking of Tobruk. in late June 1942.After this clashes came the advance which was halted at El Alamein, the battle proper starting on July 1st.

On June 22th the 21th Panzerdivision filed a report stating they were down to 40 tanks (Boog p. 728), and even before the battle of El Alamein started (1st July) they were down to 23 (Boog p.729), on the 27th the “Kriegstagebuch des Afrikakorps” i.e. the official war-diary stated, that the Africa-Korps was down to 41 operable tanks (Boog p. 730).

Their number could not be considerably augmented during the first phase of the battle i.e. in July but during Augus fresh tanks in considerable numbers arrived bringing the overall number of German tanks up to slightly over 200.

During the second phase of the battle, the battle of Alam Halfar (August 30 until September 8) the Germans lost 38 tanks (Boog p. 784)Before the third and final phase in OCtober the number of tanks could be brought up to 273 (Boog p. 788), i.e. both panzer-divisions were at full strength. Losses then mounted to about 200 tanks, ca. 80 of which had to be relinquished due to lack of fuel.

Taken all together at most 200 German tanks were “destroyed” during the battle.

So please do your homework before posting.

Boog/Rahn was discredited years ago.

@ironhand

pathetic

My dad was in Africa and he was SCOTTISH. Sick and tired of always hearing “England” as if the rest of Great Britain doesn’t exist. Is it any wonder we Scots dislike the English!