Qualla: Second Battle of El Alamein

Second Battle of El Alamein: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. At 21:40 on October 23, 1942, under a full moon and a calm Egyptian sky, 882 guns opened fire simultaneously along the El Alamein front. The barrage lasted five and a half hours. By the time it ended, each gun had fired roughly 600 rounds, more than half a million shells in total. It was the opening of Operation Lightfoot, the first phase of what would become the decisive battle of the North African campaign. Over the next thirteen days, the British Eighth Army under Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery would grind through some of the most heavily mined and fortified terrain of the war, at a cost that Montgomery had predicted almost to the day.

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Second Battle of El Alamein: Half a Million Mines

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Rommel had turned the El Alamein position into a fortress. Knowing he lacked the fuel for mobile warfare, he built his defense in depth: two belts of minefields separated by open ground, connected at intervals to create enclosed boxes the Germans called Devil's Gardens. Roughly h...

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Second Battle of El Alamein: The Deception That Bought Days

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Before a single shot was fired, the Eighth Army fought the battle with plywood and garbage. Operation Bertram, the deception plan, was elegant in its simplicity. In the northern sector, waste materials were dumped under camouflage nets, looking like ammunition stores. The Axis no...

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Second Battle of El Alamein: Crumbling Through the Line

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY 4.0. Montgomery envisioned the battle in three stages: break-in, dogfight, and breakout. The break-in proved agonizing. Four infantry divisions of XXX Corps advanced on the first night while engineers cleared lanes through the minefields, each lane barely wide enough for a tank in sin...

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Second Battle of El Alamein: The Sacrifice at Tel el Aqqaqir

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Noclador, CC BY-SA 3.0. On November 2, Operation Supercharge launched the final phase. The 9th Armoured Brigade was ordered to break the Axis gun line on the Rahman Track, the spine of Rommel's defense. Brigadier John Currie warned that his brigade would suffer fifty percent casualties attacking on too ...

Image: Noclador | CC BY-SA 3.0

Second Battle of El Alamein: The Tide Turns

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Noclador, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 9th Armoured Brigade had not achieved the clean breakthrough Montgomery wanted, but it had broken the back of Rommel's defense. The Axis counter-attack on November 2 cost roughly 100 tanks they could not replace; by that evening, General von Thoma reported only 35 tanks avail...

Image: Noclador | CC BY-SA 3.0