Libyan Lull

For the first time in months there was no mention of Libyan action in the daily communiques from Cairo. Conquered Cyrenaica was settling smoothly into British rule, with Lieut. General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson as the new military governor. Shops were reopening. Looting and sabotage had been stamped out by a 6:30-p.m. curfew, the watchfulness of British patrols. Civilian-clad Italian officers on parole amicably elbowed British and Anzac soldiers on the streets of Bengasi. In the strange calm General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell was obviously collecting his forces for a new drive, but in complete secrecy. Best guesses:1) that they might press on to Tripoli or 2) cut over to Greece as the Balkans threatened to explode (see p. 28).

Against this ground lull, air action grew to new vigor on both sides. The British pounded Italian bases in Rhodes seven nights in a row, firing hangars and crumpling grounded planes. The Germans attacked British motorized transport in Libya, hit at Malta over & over, dropped huge parachute bombs onto Bengasi. The R. A. F. came back with an attack on the Nazi Stuka bases in Sicily. For five hours they shuttled past overhead, wheeling and diving on gasoline stores and bomb dumps. German reconnaissance pilots returned from a flight over Suez with photographs showing two vessels sunk in the channel, congested knots of shipping tied up at both ends of the Canal.

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