Mediterranean and North Africa · British Commonwealth vs Germany and Italy
First Battle of El Alamein
1 July 1942 – 27 July 1942
Auchinleck took personal command of Eighth Army and stopped Rommel's exhausted army at the Alamein line, sixty miles from Alexandria. A month of attacks and counterattacks left both sides spent, but the Axis advance on the Nile was over.
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Day by day
— The last bound
The Panzerarmee has come 600 kilometres from Gazala in a month and has perhaps 55 tanks left. Rommel means to go round the Alamein box in the north and be at Alexandria in three days; instead the 90th Light is pinned by artillery in the open and the Afrika Korps spends the day taking Deir el Shein and the 18th Indian Brigade holding it. The forty kilometres from the sea to the Qattara Depression cannot be turned.
— Rommel calls it off
The New Zealanders catch the Ariete Division in the open south of Ruweisat and take 44 guns and 350 prisoners. With 26 tanks running in the whole Afrika Korps and no reserves, Rommel stops the attack on the evening of the 3rd and digs in where he stands. Auchinleck now attacks instead, and does it where the Italian divisions are.
— Tel el Eisa
The 9th Australian Division attacks at 03:30 on the coastal sector and takes the Tel el Eisa ridge and the ground at Tel el Makh Khad. Among the prisoners is Captain Seebohm's 621st Radio Intercept Company, which had been reading British signals traffic for a year and is destroyed with its records. Rommel spends the next fortnight pulling German units north to hold the shoulder.
— Ruweisat
The New Zealand and 5th Indian divisions attack the ridge at 23:00 on the 14th and are on it by dawn, having broken the Brescia and Pavia divisions. The supporting armour does not arrive; German tanks counter-attack across open ground and take some 1,400 New Zealanders prisoner, most of the 4th Brigade among them. The ridge is held, at a price the division does not forget.
— Second Ruweisat
Operation Splendour sends the New Zealanders into El Mreir and the 23rd Armoured Brigade up the ridge in daylight. The brigade drives into an unmapped minefield and the anti-tank screen behind it and loses 87 of its 104 tanks in a morning; the New Zealand 6th Brigade in El Mreir is overrun for want of the same armour. Losses for the month pass 13,000.
— Stalemate
A last attempt on the Miteirya ridge by the Australians and the 69th Brigade fails on the night of 26 July, and Auchinleck stops offensive operations the next day. Both armies dig, mine and wait; the line from the sea to the Qattara Depression cannot be outflanked by either of them. Rommel is 100 kilometres from Alexandria and will get no nearer.
