Gary Sauer-Thompson comments on the recently aired docudrama on John Curtin. In popular history Curtin and Menzies are often rated as Australia's two greatest Prime Ministers; Curtin because of his stand in WWII and Menzies for his longevity. In my opinion, they were two of Australia's worst.

Both Menzies and Curtin were Prime Ministers in WWII and faced the early onslaughts on allied military effectiveness by the Germans and Japanese. Menzies, followed the policy of the "Great and Powerful Friends" [GAPF] which had been in place since 1919 with Billy Hughes at Versailles.

This policy has been bipartisan since that time, and other than a small period where it was challenged by the international liberalism of Doc Evatt, and later the Engagement Doctrine of Gareth Evans, it has dominated Australian foreign policy making.

Menzies actually removed Australia's most effective commander, Richard Williams, just prior to WWII when a not so flattering review of the Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] was done and became a political liability for Menzies. Williams faced the chopping block and was replaced with a retired Royal Air Force [RAF] hack from England.

Australian air force policy became British policy and totally lost its indigenous and independent strain that it had under Williams. I consider this Menzies biggest mistake in his first period as Prime Minister. Because of this Australia got the Empire Air Training Scheme which handed over sovereignty of Australian airmen to the RAAF. This is something that the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] did not allow in WWI under the Prime Ministership of Billy Hughes.

Menzies also faced Winston Churchill who saw Australians as inferior to British leadership and consequently a subservient dominion - not a sovereign force. Churchill, however, was aware that Menzies and Blamey were aware of domestic national politics, and consequently, Churchill and his High Staff lied to Menzies and Blamey over the Greece campaign.

The fall out from this was the future Australian civil and military leaders did not trust Churchill's word. Part of Curtin digging his heels in with Churchill over the Australian Divisions coming back to Australia were because of Churchill's duplicity during the Greek campaign. Even so the Divisions stayed in Sri Lanka for a time until the Burmese front settled down, so it wasn't a complete victory for Curtin.

Despite Menzies losing the confidence of parliament and the government changing to one led by Curtin - the foreign and military policies are exactly the same with Menzies and Curtin. The speech that Curtin made in December 1941 is seen as some watershed in Australian policy - but it isn't. His words:

Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

The policy toward America is exactly the same as it was to the UK previously. Prior to that point the protectorship of Australia came through Royal Navy [RN] dominance, Curtin is just replacing the RN with the United States Navy [USN]. It is the same policy and speaks of the lack of imagination in Australian foreign policy which continues to this day. In addition, where Menzies had a dominion-style relationship with Churchill, Curtin swapped that for exactly the same with MacArthur - two of the worst people in history to be submissive too.

Menzies and Curtin were both out of their depth and it showed in Australian WWII military leadership. It was nothing like it was in WWI. No Monash rose from WWII, and the one most able to be the next Monash, Richard Williams, was removed for political reasons just prior to the war.

Vincent P. O'Hara; "The reality was that Great Britain sacrificed vital interests, such as the home front and Singapore, and paid an exorbitant cost in shipping to maintain for three years a small army in a peripheral campaign [North Africa] far from the German jugular. Britain fought in the Mediterranean because from 1940 to 1943 there was no other place where it could fight without the prospect of total defeat."

I am barely into it and already O'Hara has lined up four myths of the military campaigns around the Mediterranean that he will attempt to bust during the course of the book. This is lining up to be a corker of a historical read. I love this form of dispassionate history, especially when military history can be so loaded with politics and nationalism to the point of delusion.

Vincent P. O'Hara's book, the Struggle for the Middle Sea was an interesting study of the naval campaigns of the British, Italian, German, American, French and other nations in the Mediterranean.

Several things jumped out that I was ignorant of. The Italians were responsible for nearly all the logistics between Europe and Tunisia in support of the North African land war. O'Hara praises the Italian Navy for this effort as they shouldered it largely on their own and were exceptionally effective in getting men, munitions and supplies to the Afrika Korps and the Italian Armies in Africa. The losses in this logistical campaign of freighters and merchants were light.

The Italian Navy had multiple battleships and heavy cruisers which caused the British Navy anguish and concern in the middle Mediterranean. The British held superiority on the eastern side, but the possibility of the Italian Navy sailing out - as they did numerous times - to challenge the convoys to Malta and Alexandria meant that the British shipped their supplies to North Africa via the Cape and the Suez Canal. Essentially the Italian Navy caused the British to go around Africa rather than across Sicily.

The Italians were not a match in night fighting or intelligence for the British. When there was a show down during a night action the British were all over the Italians. During the day it was more of an even match even though the Italian Admirals were hamstrung by orders which were did not allow much in the way of aggressive action.

Another problem for the Italian Navy was that the Italian Air Force was ineffective. It gave poor intelligence, reconn and when it was asked to attack shipping it did a poor job. When the German Air Force became heavily involved in the Mediterranean a lot of allied shipping ended up on the bottom of the ocean. By the end of the war in the Mediterranean more shipping was sunk by air superiority than by ship borne action.

Another area that surprised me was that the Italian Navy was constantly short of oil, to the point where actions were canceled for lack of fuel. German was precious about the fuel supply and did not let Italy have any. Italy had to procure its own fuel and as a consequence the big ships never had enough.

The British did not have the ships or the power to drive the Italian Navy from the Mediterranean even though the British slowly established ascendancy in the air and enough of a problem in numerous actions for the Italians that they were losing ships at an unsustainable rate.

Once Italy surrendered several ships came over to the allies, though many were taken by the Germans and pressed into the German Navy. The big difference is the United States. It started sending large convoys of sixty merchant ships at a time through the Straits of Gibraltar to support the actions in Africa and Italy.

Compare that number to the British who's convoys to Malta in 1940 were averaging three merchant ships. Even if Italy had remained an axis Navy during 1943 it would have been obliterated by the increasing Naval and Air power of the British and United States.

The latter being the naval and air power in the Mediterranean after the war, and to this day.

Note The photo at the top is of an Italian Cruiser, the Bartolomeo Colleoni, that was sunk in an action by HMAS Sydney and British destroyers during an engagement off Cape Scada in the Mediterranean.

One of Australia's claims is that in WWI/WWII it punched above its weight in terms of contribution and hitting power. A coupe of things are in favor of that, for one Australia contributed troops, aircraft and ships when the major powers had either hit catastrophe or were in dire straits. Having a strong record helps when you are in a target rich environment. Compare that to Australian troops doing mop up operations in New Guinea in 1944 when the Pacific War was in Okinawa.

Another reason is that Australia used to rely on Britain for its command and logistical structure. As a consequence, Australia supplied teeth, not tail. It is not the same today. Despite Australia slotting into the US military machine, it is still dependent on American logistics, however, doctrine is different. In 1940 it was doctrine to get a retired British person and then make them Australian Chief of Staff or head of the Air Force.

Vincent P. O'Hara records the number of ship borne surface engagements in the Mediteranean during World War II;

50 Great Britain
36 Italy
11 Germany
9 Australia
8 France
3 United States
2 Greece
2 New Zealand
2 Netherlands

HMAS Sydney was in the thick of things in the Mediterranean and surface combat seemed to follow her about.

Niall Barr's Pendulum of War is on the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa in World War II. In modern British history this is the battle that swung the momentum of World War II to the allies. Along with Stalingrad and Guadalcanal it is seen as a turning point.

In British political terms it was probably necessary as the industrial and military might of the United States was starting to turn its attention to North Africa and Churchill needed some victory to lay a claim to British military competency.

Barr divides the battle into three phases. Rommel's initial advance against the British, Auchinleck's counter attack offensive and finally Montgomery's successful offensive which is what the battle is known for in British military history.

Rommel's initial success on the advance to Cairo was due to the high quality of his armoured and mechanized troops. Their tanks were superior to the British tanks and the anti-tank guns the British, Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian forces had.

The anti-tank guns that they British had were only good at very short range and usually required the British to setup traps so that German tanks would literally go past the guns before they fired into the weakly armoured sides and rear of the tanks. With better guns and tanks starting to arrive during the second and third battles it gave the British better chances against the German armour.

One of Rommels tactics was to ruthlessly counter-attack after any Allied advance against his position. One of the problems the British had was that they would advance at night with infantry after clearing a path through the minefields. The infantry would get established, but the tanks and anti-tank guns would not get into place before morning.

When Rommel's tanks and mechanized infantry inevitably counter-attacked the next morning the British infantry would be isolated without armour and anti-tank gun support and either be annihilated or be forced to surrender. The infantry did not like this and often blamed the British tanks for being to slow and not coming forward to support them.

Under Montgomery this was overcome by increased training for the next offensive and by centralized artillery support. Both of these started under Auchinleck but Montgomery did manage to hold off Churchill's impatience until the forces were fully trained as integrated units. When the advances were made in the third battle of El Alamein the infantry was well supported by tank and anti-tank guns as well as a powerful centralized artillery that rained shells down on any counter attack attempts.

Rommel had his own difficulties. He was highly aggressive and advanced multiple times when he should not have but by the Battle of El Alamein he was running out of tanks, German infantry and worse petrol and ammunition.

After the advance from Tobruk he managed to replenish from the British ammunition and supply dumps that he captured along the way which provided him with shells and petrol. After the defeat at the first battle of El Alamein this essentially ran out. During the third battle he was unable to counter attack due to lack of fuel. There was not even enough for his German and Italian armies to retreat as a mechanized force.

One of the problem the British tanks faced when fighting the Afrika Korps was their out dated and obsolete anti tank guns that were mounted on the Crusaders and were handed out to the army regiments.

The British two pounder gun was short ranged and could not fire explosive rounds which made it useless against German anti-tank screens that included the Pak38 and the 88mm anti tank gun. NIall Barr writes:

... by 1941, British tank crews could only effectively engage German tanks at 500 yards range while the German tank crews in Mk IIIs could engage at ranges up to 1,000 yards.

Indeed the two pounder had never really been suitable as a tank mounted weapon because it was not a dual purpose gun. The small bore gun didn't allow the use of an effective high explosive shell.

British tank designers, having absorbed the importance of mobility and firing on the move, mounted the gun so that it was perfectly adapted for firing on the move, but when the tank stopped to fire, the mount remained less steady than a fixed mount designed to be fired at rest.

As a consequence the British used to charge the German tanks in the hopes of getting close where their little gun could be effective and the German tanks would then retreat behind an anti-tank gun screen which would knock the British tanks out.

The British tanks could not engage the anti-tank screen with high explosive shell and would have to continue to charge in the hope of wiping out the gun crews with machine gun fire.

The German anti-tank guns were too well camouflaged and placed for that. As a consequence the British tank crews took heavy and unnecessary losses as their equipment was not up to challenging the German tanks.

As America entered the war it started supplying the British Eighth Army with tanks. One of those was the Grant tank. This was on the same tank base as the Sherman but more importantly it had a large 75mm gun mounted in a sponson on the side of the hull.

There were flaws with the Grant; it was a tall tank that could not go hull down with the 75 mm gun, and the sponson had a limited range of freedom, however it was a large advance over the Crusader as British tank crews could shell German anti-tank positions with high explosive rounds and could duke it out at long range with the German tanks.

There were some other interesting aspects to the Grant. American industry was starting to churn out these M3 based tanks and consequently there were no spare parts. Just complete tanks. The British had issues repairing tanks because of this.

Another problem was that the American armour piercing shell was not hard enough to pierce German armour. The British ended up using captured German 75mm rounds and capping the American shells with the German rounds to make an effective armour piercing round.

Niall Barr writes; "More importantly, a German report on the initial lessons gained in Libya confirmed that 'the principles laid down for tank warfare have been entirely justified and should be applied unchanged. The desert is ideal tank country with unlimited space for manouvre'

The Germans may not have possessed deep knowledge of desert conditions but they did possess a clear and well defined doctrine for armoured warfare that had been developed and refined during the Polish and French campaigns. ...

It was also significant that the Wermacht only committed three divisions to Libya during 1941. The 15th Panzer Division, 21st Panzer Division and the 90th Light Division we fully mechanized formations and part of the elite Panzerwaffe.

While the majority of the German army throughout World War II remained marching infantry with horse drawn supply columns such formations were not sent to Africa in 1941."

In the early part of the North African campaign the Germans had it all over the British for strategy, tactics, equipment, and communications.