June 1940: Long Range Desert Group–Part 1
Bibliography with Notes plus Bonus Content
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Part One—Chapter 1 Ralph Bagnold
“…His inventive brain produced the answers to the many problems that arose. He designed a simple sun-compass to make navigation easier; he perfected the condenser…to conserve the water in car radiators which would otherwise be lost through overheating; he thought up the ideas of sand mats and iron channels, which could be laid under the wheels to extricate a car stuck on soft sand; and he appreciated the necessity for properly balanced rations…”
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Part One—Chapter One Ralph Bagnold
“…whereby the Libyan wastes became a liability to the enemy, and the few score of men on the Long Range Desert Group in their trucks caused Marshal Graziani to reinforce remote standing garrisons, consume transport, provide escorts for his inland supply columns, and to be unable to discern whether his own reports of Wavell’s shortage in men and material were accurate or a trap.”
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Part One—Chapter One Ralph Bagnold
“…and it still strikes me, nearly forty years later, as being a trifle bizarre that Bagnold had to go around to the Chevrolet company in Alexandria , where he obtained 14 of the trucks he wanted…managed to talk the Egyptian Army into providing the remaining nineteen.”
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Part One—Chapter One Ralph Bagnold
“On June 19 he presented his proposals once again, and it is a reflection of how much the strategic picture had altered—together with the realism that had thus been injected into the Headquarters Staff in Cairo—that on 23 June Bagnold was summoned to see Wavell again.”
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Part One—Chapter 6 Supporting the November 1941 Offensive
“These were the first of many raids to come, launched from the inner desert against the Axis lines of communication.”
Owen, Major-General David Lloyd. The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945 Providence Their Guide, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008. Kindle.
Foreword by General Sir John Hackett
“In the early days, after their one and only parachute raid (which was a disaster) and before they acquired their own mobility, the SAS were carried in and out by the LRDG…the SAS were raiders. The LRDG were specialists in deep reconnaissance.”
Bonus Illustrations
The exploits of Britain’s Long Range Desert Group are well known.
Less is written about Italy’s Auto Saharan Companies. Formed years before the LRDG, (initially on camels!) these small patrols used AB 41 armored cars (pictured here) as well as Fiat and Lancia light trucks to patrol the vast desert areas between Italian forts. Their vehicles possessed considerable fire power.
A major difference from the LRDG, the Italian patrols were assigned Caproni CA 309 twin-engine aircraft to work in close cooperation.
After an LRDG raid, the Caproni crews would locate the raiders, drop a few bombs, and alert the ground patrols to the location of the raiders–sometimes resulting in the loss of LRDG trucks and men. Tell-tale tire tracks were difficult to avoid on the desert sands.
Later in the war, the effectiveness of these Italian patrols was limited by lack of fuel. But clearly these units were forward-thinking and may have provided inspiration to Ralph Bagnold who formed the LRDG. It is thought Bagnold would have encountered some of these patrols while he was navigating across the desert between the wars.
This AB 41 is a 1:35 scale model photographed in a scratch-built diorama. Photo then run through editing software.
Source: Molinari, Andrea. Desert Raiders: Axis and Allied Special Forces 1940-43. Osprey Publishing, Oxford. 2007.
Source: Public domain edited with software. A Caproni 309 light aircraft sits on an airfield guarded by Italian soldiers. Somewhere in the Mediterranean theater.
The Auto Saharan Companies were sophisticated units with radios and dedicated aircraft assigned to their mission. Hunting from air and land, these patrols did real damage to the LRDG.
WWII in North Africa 