The Naval Review The copyright of this article rests with the author, or the author's estate.

Supplying Tobruk.

IN the spring of 1942, when the Eighth Army was in retreat, a sentence appeared in a newspaper story: "The Army is back in Tobruk, it is now the Navy's job to supply them." I wondered if the writer had realized just how much that job meant.

Now the campaign in Libya and Tripolitania is over it seems a good time to tell the tale of the Tobruk Ferry, Tobruk's only link with the outside during the greater part of the siege.

When Tobruk was first invested during the retreat from Benghazi there were something like thirty thousand troops there. Australians formed the majority of the garrison, but there were many United Kingdom troops and an Indian unit there too. At first the store situation was not too bad; there were some shortages, naturally; but Tobruk had, been the supply port for the whole army in Cyrenaica: so there was some accumulated surplus. Even so, the situation became, from the first, a very tricky one, and it remained so to the end. Very soon after the siege began, Tobruk lost all air cover. It was physically impossible to operate aircraft from its two small landing grounds which were, from the outset, at the mercy of the large enemy airfield only a few minutes' flying away (at El Adem). Quite soon, too, the harbour, town, and landing grounds came under fire from the enemy's heavy guns..

So there was Tobruk, cut off by land and air, its harbour covered by the enemy's guns under continual straffing from the Luftwaffe and with its sea supply route fringed for a hundred miles or so by a coast in enemy hands. Tobruk was certainly a problem.

Perhaps the problem would not have come to a head so soon if it had not been for the wounded. A few stores and a few tanks, which much surprised the Germans in their May attack, were filtering through in small, unobtrusive convoys, in tank-landing craft, in captured Italian schooners. They were filtering through, successfully on the whole, though there were sad losses. But the wounded were still a problem, and there were many of them-for Tobruk had been a main base. The obvious solution was a hospital ship. But the enemy is not very reliable in his behaviour to hospital ships, and though one brought back her wounded in safety, the second was bombed. So another solution had to be found, and the answer was, as it so often is, destroyers.

The Commander-in-chief was hard pressed for destroyers himself, the evacuations of Greece and Crete were in progress, and all he could spare were two veterans of the last war, sadly in need of refit. But their Australian crews got the last ounce out of them and they did the job, running singly at first and then, as the dangers of the run were realized, together for mutual support. Three hundred and twenty miles separated Tobruk from Alexandria, with Mersa Matruh as a half-way house between. West of Matruh they were in comfortable range of the Luftwaffe, and there was very, very little fighter cover available. Their protection was their speed and the darkness, for their guns were not made for anti-aircraft work. So they sailed at dawn from Alexandria with a few special reinforcements and a few special stores. They steamed fast, but with care for their complaining rheumatic engines, until they passed Sidi Barrani. There they left the coast and turned north-westwards, out to sea to clear Ras Azzaz (the north-east corner of Cyrenaica) before turning west again for Tobruk. This was the worst bit, from Sidi Barrani until dark. Without fighter cover, they were passing the Luftwaffe's front door. They went faster here. Darkness relieved the tension a while; they supped, and some slept a little. Then they were off Tobruk. It was anxious work entering the harbour. The enemy had scattered mines broadcast, and, though there was a channel, the port was never easy to make exactly; the currents are unreliable and even the dim and shaded leading light was sometimes counterfeited by the enemy. But they found their way in, and, through the maze of wrecks, they berthed.

All was bustle and activity now. Lighters came alongside for the troops and stores, others brought off wounded and passengers, boats brought officers with despatches and orders. Soon they were loaded, the stretchers slung from the beams of the messdecks and lashed on the lockers, the walking wounded and passengers curled up in corners wherever they could. Then they were off again, slowly and cautiously at first, through the treacherous minefield and then full speed. Around dawn they were anxious again, for they were once more on the Luftwaffe's doorstep, but soon they were off Sidi Barrani and every minute was safer. Afternoon saw them back in Alexandria.It was a nerve-racking job, even when the enemy was quiet, and often he was not.

They brought the wounded out; but by then the store situation at Tobruk was less happy and reinforcements were needed. The little unobtrusive convoys had attracted the enemy's attention and were not getting through so easily. Their losses were becoming very heavy. With the battle of Greece and Crete over, the Commander-in-Chief could spare more destroyers, too. The ferry became a regular routine. They took up reliefs, ammunition, fruit, and foods, cigarettes and tobacco, meat for the hospitals, money, mails, medicines, motor tyres, tank tracks, gun barrels, mess stores-anything they could manhandle, it was all one to them. They brought back troops no longer needed, sick and wounded, prisoners, and salved Italian gear. Whole divisions were relieved.

As the forces in Egypt were re-equipped, fighter protection became better and the serious danger period was reduced to those intolerable half hours between sunset and dark and between dawn and sunrise. It was in this dawn period that two destroyers were lost. Then the enemy changed his tactics. He started bombing by flare light in the dark. It was horrid, but his success was fortunately confined to one ship. The ferry went on.

But the destroyers were by no means alone; indeed they were not even the chief carriers on the job. The tank-landing craft, the schooners, the trawlers, whalers, sloops, minesweepers, the gunboats and the incomparably gallant petrol tankers all played their parts. They sent in few reports, not holding overmuch with paper work, and it was not easy to extract their stories.

The schooners, perhaps, lent the most fantastic touch to the whole grim business. Old ships, some captured from the Italians, some bought or hired, with weird old diesel engines and curious assorted sails, they chugged their way up the three hundred miles of coast, alone, without wireless, carrying a hundred or so tons of stores. They were armed, of course, but not always quite as the authorities had ordered. Their idea was that every man on board should have a weapon, how it was obtained was another matter, and they could use their guns, too. Before they had done they had more than one enemy aircraft to their credit, and one schooner, which arrived at Bomba by mistake one morning, fought a successful withdrawing action against the coast defences. It was the same schooner, too, that was given fighter cover by a Messerschmitt.The work of the gunboats was mentioned at the time; the army was grateful for their help, the enemy found them dangerous. They had their fair share of excitement, perhaps rather more than their share, for all were damaged at one time or another and one was sunk by bombing at Tobruk. One of the others had a lucky escape one day; she was being bombed, and all the bombs fell close on one side, bounced and went clear over the top.

The sloops suffered the worst. With their comparatively heavy armament. and slow speed it fell to them to escort the vital petrol convoys. The convoys were slow; they had to spend whole days off the enemy coast, without fighter cover, and they suffered heavily. It was from one of these convoys that a South African armed whaler found herself the only survivor; the rest had been hit by heavy bombs. They were sinking round her and the raids continued. The whaler, herself shaken, picked up the survivors and searched till dark for more, before setting course for home.

The strange, box-like; tank-landing craft played no small share in the supply scheme. Ungainly to look at, they can carry a lot of stores, and, like the schooners, they used evasion as their chief protection. They had their losses; but they had their triumphs, too; as when three of them met a U-boat on the surface and chased it into Bardia with their pompoms. .

The whole story of supplying and maintaining Tobruk is a story of little ships. The dashes of the destroyer ferry were, perhaps, more spectacular than the slow crawls of convoys, schooners, and landing craft. But the destroyers were only carrying quite small cargoes and they were only in danger for a brief night. The others (who carried bigger cargoes) spent days in the danger area and further days hiding in creeks and under camouflage nets in the harbour at Tobruk. The greater credit should be theirs.

R.E.T.