Italian invasion of British Somaliland
The Italian invasion of British Somaliland lasted just sixteen days, from the 3rd to the 19th of August 1940, yet it produced one of the war's sharpest arguments about what a defeat should cost. When it was over, the Royal Navy had taken 7,140 people off the beach at Berbera, including 5,690 front-line troops. The British had lost a territory the size, Mussolini boasted, of England. Winston Churchill was furious. General Archibald Wavell, his theatre commander, was not. Their quarrel over those sixteen days would end Wavell's career. But was the loss of British Somaliland a disgrace, or something closer to a controlled disaster salvaged by discipline and luck? To answer that question, it helps to understand what exactly the British were defending, why they could barely defend it at all, and what the Italians were prepared to throw at them.
British Somaliland covered an area of about 68,000 square miles. Most of its roughly 320,000 inhabitants made a living from livestock herding because the land offered little scope for agriculture. Berbera, the colony's biggest town and port, sat ringed by desert and scrubland. In the cold season its population reached around 30,000; in summer, heat and the Kharif wind drove that number down to about 15,000. The port was a first-class anchorage but had no proper installations. Ships had to be unloaded by lighter, a method that took ten days to empty a vessel of 3,000 gross register tons. From July to August, the Kharif blew so strongly that loading and unloading stopped entirely.
The colony's border stretched for 750 miles. After Italy absorbed Ethiopia in 1936, all but a 45-mile frontier with French Somaliland pressed against Italian territory. The British had fought a Somaliland Campaign from 1900 to 1920 against Diiriye Guure and his Dervish state simply to hold the place. The lesson was not encouraging. In 1910, the garrison had been pushed back to the coast; full control came only after four campaigns and aerial bombardment by the Royal Air Force.
As far back as the Hornby Report of 1936, the War Office had concluded that resisting an invasion was not worth the effort. Governor Arthur Lawrence pushed back in 1938, arguing that the colony could either be demilitarised or defended. Brigadier Arthur Chater, the military commander, calculated that a small reinforcement would let the garrison hold for twelve days, long enough for relief to arrive from India. His proposal was rejected. The eventual plan, such as it was, depended on close coordination with the French in neighbouring Djibouti.
Brigadier-General Paul Legentilhomme held command over both British and French forces in the region from the outbreak of war, and he used that position to obstruct the Armistice of Villa Incisa for as long as he could. When London discovered on the 27th of July that the armistice terms required French Somaliland to be demilitarised and grant Italy free access to its port and the Addis Ababa railway, Legentilhomme threatened force against his own governor rather than comply.
He played for time by feigning ignorance of the armistice terms and denying entry to the incoming Vichy governor, General Gaetan Germain, from the 25th of July to the 7th of August. The British dispatched the 2nd Battalion, the Black Watch, to Aden by cruiser, ready to reinforce the French. But on the 19th of July, Legentilhomme was opposed in the Governor's Council by his own navy and air force commanders, and rather than provoke bloodshed he decided that those opposed to Vichy should leave. He departed for Aden on the 5th of August.
The collapse of French resistance mattered enormously for the British defence scheme. All planning had assumed French cooperation to block the Jirreh and Dobo passes along the border. Those passes were never fortified. When Germain took control and severed relations with the British, Chater received orders to plan for evacuation if the colony became untenable. The strategic foundation had given way before a single Italian soldier crossed the frontier.
On the 18th of June, the Duke of Aosta, the Italian commander in East Africa, submitted his invasion plan to Mussolini and received permission in August to proceed. Aosta and his deputy, General Guglielmo Nasi, completed a detailed appreciation in advance. On the 14th of July they predicted the main battle would be fought in the Karim and Jerato passes; if the defenders held their ground, Italian troops would be able to envelop their flanks.
The force assembled for the invasion included five colonial brigades, three Blackshirt battalions, five Bande, half a company of M11/39 medium tanks, a squadron of L3/35 tankettes, several armoured cars, 21 howitzer batteries, pack artillery and air support. Lieutenant-General Carlo de Simone commanded the main element, the Harrar Division, with eleven African infantry battalions in three brigades. The plan divided the advance into three columns. The western column under Lieutenant-General Sisto Bertoldi would seal the border with French Somaliland and push east along the coast road. The eastern column under Brigadier-General Arturo Bertello would move on Odweina and Burao to cover the central column's flank. De Simone himself led the central column, the main weight of the attack, through the Mirgo Pass toward Berbera.
The Italian General Staff had based its strategic calculations on an assumption that war would not come until 1942. The Regio Esercito was not prepared for a sustained campaign or for occupying large stretches of Africa. Aosta wanted to move fast, partly out of military logic and partly because he feared the British might use French Somaliland as a bridgehead if he hesitated.
On the 3rd of August 1940, British air reconnaissance spotted roughly 400 Italians crossing the frontier at Biyad. The Somaliland Camel Corps skirmished with the central column as it advanced toward Hargeisa, trying to impose delays. The Italians occupied Hargeisa on the 5th of August, paused two days to reorganise, then pushed through the Karim Pass toward the Tug Argan in the Assa Hills.
The British position at Tug Argan was a string of fortified hilltops named Black, Knobbly, Mill and Observation hills, with Castle Hill about two miles further east. The hills stood roughly 2,000 to 2,500 yards apart, far enough apart that an attacker could pass between them. The positions had machine-gun posts and a modest amount of barbed wire but very little artillery. When Major-General Reade Godwin-Austen arrived to take command on the 11th of July, the promised reinforcements were already being diverted to Sudan.
The Italians opened their assault on the 11th of August, bombarding then attacking Punjab Ridge with a brigade of infantry. They pushed back a company of the 3rd Battalion, 15th Punjab Regiment, then repelled a counter-attack. Attacks on Mill and Knobbly hills failed on the first day. On the 12th of August, all British positions were hit simultaneously and by evening Mill Hill had fallen after determined resistance by troops of the Northern Rhodesian Regiment. Two East African Light Battery howitzers were lost. On the 13th of August, the Italians infiltrated down Mirgo Pass and ambushed a convoy carrying water and ammunition, though the convoy fought through to Castle Hill.
On the 14th of August, Mussolini sent a direct signal to Aosta: "Pour all available reserves into Somaliland to stimulate the operation. Order the entire Imperial air force to co-operate." A counter-attack that day by two companies of the 2nd Battalion, King's African Rifles, toward Mirgo Pass achieved some initial success before being forced back. Godwin-Austen judged that further resistance would likely result in the loss of the entire force. On the 15th of August he signalled his conclusions to Henry Wilson in Egypt, who ordered the withdrawal from the colony.
Godwin-Austen planned a slow retirement from Tug Argan to Barkasan, about 33 miles from Berbera, then to Nasiyeh, 17 miles from the port. Over three nights, civilians first and then troops would be embarked. The monsoon usually made it difficult to reach ships by boat at night and before noon, so timing was tight.
The Black Watch, two companies of the 2nd KAR and elements of the 1/2nd Punjab Regiment formed a rearguard at Barkasan on the 17th of August. They made several counter-attacks and repulsed Italian advances, but eventually withdrew after dark. The evacuation at Berbera went more smoothly than expected. The second blocking position at Nasiyeh was never needed. On the 17th of August, the Italian western column at Bulhar, about 40 miles west of Berbera, was engaged and halted by the light cruiser Ceres. Loading was complete by the early hours of the 18th of August.
Before sailing for Aden on the 19th of August, the Australian cruiser Hobart, with force headquarters aboard, stayed behind to collect stragglers and oversee the destruction of buildings, vehicles, fuel and stores. The only British vessel lost in the operation was the tug Queen, scuttled by her crew on the 18th of August. The Italians refloated her and renamed her Stella d'Italia, the only Italian naval ship south of Bab El Mandeb.
There was little Italian interference with the evacuation itself, perhaps because on the 15th of August Aosta had ordered Nasi to allow the British to leave without too much fighting, hoping for a peace agreement mediated through the Vatican. When Italian forces entered Berbera that evening, much of the town was on fire and the wrecks of four British aircraft lay on the airfield. Mussolini annexed the colony to the Africa Orientale Italiana as part of the Italian Empire.
Winston Churchill criticised Wavell sharply for the loss of the colony. Because British casualties were relatively light, Churchill concluded that the position had not been vigorously defended and proposed a board of inquiry. Wavell refused to cooperate. He argued that Godwin-Austen and Wilson had conducted a textbook withdrawal in the face of superior numbers and sent Churchill a telegram with the passage: "...a big butcher's bill was not necessarily evidence of good tactics."
General John Dill, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, said Churchill was moved to "greater anger than he had ever seen him in before." The incident marked the beginning of a deterioration in the relationship between Churchill, Wavell and his subordinates that ended with Wavell being superseded by Claude Auchinleck in July 1941.
Later assessments were more measured. In 2016, Andrew Stewart wrote that given the exiguous nature of the British force in the colony, the defenders had done well to resist as long as they had. Adolf Hitler himself called the evacuation a "hard blow" but added that all the British had lost was "the privilege of maintaining an expensive garrison in their least valuable colony." The capture of the colony was the greatest Italian success of the entire East African campaign. Yet the Italians were unable to exploit the opportunities they had created. Delays caused by the terrain, the rainy weather and the cancellation of a planned coup de main by 300 Italian infantry on the port itself had enabled the British to get most of their force away.
The British had to abandon 350 vehicles and most of their stores because everything had to be ferried out to ships sitting offshore. From the 5th to the 19th of August, the RAF at Aden flew 184 sorties and dropped 60 long tons of bombs, with seven aircraft shot down and ten badly damaged over fourteen days of fighting. On the 16th of March 1941, British and Somali forces landed on either side of Berbera in Operation Appearance; the invasion by the two Sikh battalions of the Indian Army was the first successful Allied amphibious landing on an occupied beach of the entire war.
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Common questions
What was the Italian invasion of British Somaliland?
The Italian invasion of British Somaliland was a military campaign fought from the 3rd to the 19th of August 1940, in which Italian, Eritrean and Somali forces invaded and occupied the British Somaliland Protectorate. It was part of the broader East African campaign of 1940-1941 and resulted in a British evacuation by sea from the port of Berbera.
Who commanded the British forces during the Italian invasion of British Somaliland?
Major-General Reade Godwin-Austen commanded the British and Commonwealth garrison during the invasion. Brigadier Arthur Chater had been the earlier military commander responsible for defence preparations, and General Archibald Wavell served as the overall theatre commander based in Egypt.
What happened at the Battle of Tug Argan in August 1940?
The Battle of Tug Argan was fought from the 11th to the 15th of August 1940 at a string of fortified hilltops in the Assa Hills. Italian forces with superior artillery gradually captured the British positions, including Mill Hill on the 12th of August; an attempted British counter-attack toward Mirgo Pass on the 14th of August failed, leading Godwin-Austen to order a general withdrawal.
How many people were evacuated from Berbera during the Italian invasion of British Somaliland?
The Royal Navy evacuated 7,140 people from Berbera, of whom 5,690 were front-line troops, 1,266 were civilians, and 184 were sick. The evacuation was completed by the early hours of the 18th of August 1940, with minimal losses during the embarkation itself.
Why did Winston Churchill criticise General Wavell over the loss of British Somaliland?
Churchill believed that because British casualties were relatively low, the colony had not been vigorously defended, and he proposed a board of inquiry. Wavell refused to cooperate, arguing that Godwin-Austen had conducted a textbook withdrawal in the face of superior numbers; he sent Churchill a telegram stating that a large butcher's bill was not necessarily evidence of good tactics. The dispute contributed to Wavell being superseded by Claude Auchinleck in July 1941.
When did Britain retake British Somaliland from the Italians?
Britain retook British Somaliland in March 1941. On the 16th of March 1941, Operation Appearance saw two Sikh battalions of the Indian Army and a Somali commando detachment land on either side of Berbera from Aden; this was the first successful Allied amphibious landing on an occupied beach of the Second World War. Brigadier Chater was appointed Military Governor on the 8th of April 1941.
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- 1webRed Sea Naval War2016-07-05