As we pass the 1,000-day mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has observed its 1,369th air raid alert. They have lasted a collective 1,535 hours and defied 900 ballistic and cruise missiles and 1,600 drones. If it wasn’t for the air and missile defences provided by Western democracies and skilfully operated by Ukrainians, the ancient and vibrant city of Kyiv would have been reduced to ruins on the scale of Mariupol or Stalingrad. Other cities have been hit, as far west as Lviv, where I recently spent an interesting evening in a cellar listening to the drone of rocket motors passing overhead. 

Although the largest raid on the capital has involved 80 missiles and drones, this has yet to compare with the 12,000 tons of munitions dropped on London in 85 major raids at the height of the blitz in 1940-41. The difference between the Luftwaffe’s efforts and those of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces is, of course, precision. The German bomber attacks in 1940-41 and by V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets in 1944-45 were indiscriminate. While those of Russia since February 2022 have allegedly been surgical strikes, they too have been indiscriminate — terror raids to put pressure on Ukraine’s government to cave in to Russia’s demands. 

Moscow is desperate for a conclusion on their terms due their high losses, which according to Kyiv, amount to 724,050 dead and wounded and could see the 750,000-mark reached within the next month. The Kremlin claim 900,000 Ukrainian losses, certainly a propaganda total, but whatever the number (both are unsubstantiated), it is catastrophic for Ukraine. Then there are the defenceless civilian casualties, with the lowest estimate put at 12,000 killed. If the Kremlin had really wanted to confine its aerial attacks to military targets, it could easily have done so. Instead, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and shops have all been targeted in the main urban areas, along with cultural centres such as universities, churches, libraries, theatres and monasteries. To their credit, the dwellers of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv and Odessa have demonstrated they can “take it”, just as the inhabitants of Britain’s cities did nearly 85 years ago. In fact, all Russia has achieved is to empty its arsenal of these weapons, hence embarrassing deals with China, Iran and North Korea to replenish its stocks.  

I have written before in The Critic of drones and their potential, but in the hands of President Zelensky’s brave defenders their utility has come on in leaps and bounds. Most of us have witnessed streaming footage of Russian ground forces — vehicles and personnel — destroyed or damaged by Kyiv’s unmanned flying armada, but Ukraine has consistently demonstrated innovation in their manufacture and use. Small remotely-piloted machines armed with cameras have been used to interdict larger Russian reconnaissance drones, throwing them off course and rendering them ineffective. While unmanned aircraft are now taking off and landing on US carriers under way at sea, other unmanned flying “aircraft carriers” have managed to deploy smaller drones from the skies, without a human present. More have been filmed carrying and using flamethrowers and machine-guns against Russian positions, while successful exercises have demonstrated that remotely-piloted flying machines can convey important logistics such as food, ammunition and medical supplies to beleaguered infantry outposts, and even ships at sea. 

For our own Royal Air Force, this suggests a vast explosion in the types of large and medium-sized unmanned aircraft, where in the near future, the number of remotely-piloted squadrons will vastly outnumber those carrying aircrew. Already human RAF operators of drones graduate from their courses with a different set of traditional “wings”. The implications of change management for the air force will be huge, with fewer traditional pilots needed, and the art of flying combat machines no longer restricted to commissioned officers. My RAF colleagues suggest in the near future every aircraft, regardless of type, will routinely carry an underwing drone for reconnaissance or defensive use. Other unmanned devices have successfully conducted air-to-air refuelling, extending the global reach of such aerial machinery. There will always be a manned element in the system, but at a safe distance, which is music to the ears of politicians, ever alert to the impact of military casualties. 

Make no mistake, drones are here to stay. In civilian life, emergency transfers between hospitals of blood plasma and human organs by motorbike are already being superseded by drone flights, whilst major fire and rescue incidents are routinely directed by unmanned flying cameras. Anti-smuggling and contra-migrant patrols, too, are being transferred to remote eyes in the sky. Soon, human casualties will be evacuated from combat zones by such robotic wizardry, as tests in the USA, Israel and Ukraine indicate. If in the air, then so at sea, where every maritime nation on the planet is currently experimenting with armed, unmanned boats and submarines, whilst their navies routinely carry defensive drones. On land, Elon Musk’s Tesla empire and others promise to impact the deployment of road trains of driverless military trucks and unmanned tanks, which will shrink in size, weight and cost, needing far less armour protection due to the absence of a human crew. It is indicative of the future that President-elect Trump’s Mar a Lago estate is in part being protected by a robotic K9 dog. The world of Terminator has arrived. 

Soon, all service personnel, of whatever rank or arm, from bombardier to brigadier, combat medic to cook, will be taught to operate a remotely piloted device. Upgraded “Space Invaders” (remember that 1980s online game?) will arrive for all at Sandhurst, Dartmouth and Cranwell officer schools. When the Princess of Wales recently visited a regiment of which she had become Colonel-in-Chief, the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, she was not only pictured driving their all-terrain 4×4 Jackal-2 patrol vehicle, but flying a drone.

All of these developments would have made a huge impact at the Second battle of El Alamein, General Bernard Montgomery’s desert victory achieved 82 years ago this month. Business leaders and managers today still marvel at the way the newly-appointed “Monty” changed his Eighth Army from a force exhibiting poor morale and haunted by defeat, into a formation that took on and beat its much-vaunted foe in just two months. Just before his arrival in Egypt, Britain’s low point in the region was reached on 2 July 1942, known as Ash Wednesday, when officials everywhere burnt sensitive documents in the expectation of Rommel’s imminent arrival. One of Montgomery’s first instructions was that any directions for further withdrawal or retreat should themselves be burnt. At Alamein, they would fight — or die. His methodology amplified the maxim that leadership mattered.

Although we now know that political pressure, logistics and signals intercepts decrypted at the forerunner of GCHQ at Bletchley Park, were partly behind his triumph at Alamein, Monty’s force of character, stage management and sheer professionalism altered the balance in North Africa overnight. Critic columnist and author Robert Hutton in The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler has recounted how Colonel Dudley Clarke led a circle of combat magicians to alter Rommel’s perceptions of the forces ranges against him. Operation Cascade witnessed many fictional units added to Eighth Army’s order of battle, supplemented by false radio traffic, and henceforth German intelligence would consistently overestimate their opponents’ strength by 40 percent. 

Clarke’s magicians also made Monty’s northern concentrations of armour “disappear”, where 1,000 tanks and field guns were disguised as trucks with man-portable canvas screens on frames draped over them. Further south, an entire corps of 2,000 armoured vehicles “appeared”. From the air, they were convincing counterfeits, of painted plywood and hessian, supported by equally illusory artillery pieces, piles of supplies, a water pipeline built of tin cans, and personnel made of rushes and straw. All were moved around at night and deceived Rommel into thinking the British main effort would come from the south.

Other arms were obliged to innovate, too. Eighth Army intelligence officers discovered that along the entire length of his position, Rommel had directed the laying of 500,000 mines, grenades, booby traps and aerial bombs, festooned with miles of barbed wire and collectively known as “the Devil’s Garden,” to protect his forces against infiltration. Opposite, Montgomery’s Chief Engineer, Brigadier Frederick Kisch, demonstrated a bottom-up learning culture to exploit the experience of the Eighth Army in defeating this challenge. Realising the Devil’s Garden outclassed his men’s combat knowledge, Kisch asked all subordinates to submit their obstacle clearing practices. Noting different divisions used widely varying techniques and equipment, with no standard measurement of success or effectiveness, Kisch established a school of mine-clearing. From these grass roots the best techniques were adopted across the Eighth Army.

While the RAF’s Desert Air Force had begun to outnumber their opponents, on land, air traffic controllers, mechanics and a full range of ground crew and RAF Regiment personnel were trained how to occupy and de-mine former Axis airstrips, transporting with them the necessary fuel, ammunition, spare parts, tented accommodation and anti-aircraft defence, to be operational within hours. Their leader, Air Marshal Coningham, co-located his command trailer with Eighth Army headquarters, so the two could plot air requirements for the next 24-48 hours. Response times to requests for aerial photography, air interdiction onto Axis supply columns and close air support against frontline positions, previously measured in days, were quickened to a few hours.

In a campaign governed by merchant ships and ports, the Eighth Army was closer to its many supply bases in Egypt, with a rail network running parallel to the coast to Alamein, offering a huge logistical advantage. Another Allied advantage was the employment of over 25,000 local labourers unloading ships and assembling vehicles which had been shipped in kit form, more efficiently using cargo space. By contrast, the Germans received only completed soft-skinned and armoured vehicles, which took up more room. Trucks were even more vital to the desert campaign than in other theatres, where the movement of fuel and water was pivotal. The long distances soaked up petrol, particularly for Rommel, while water was rationed to Monty’s men at two pints per man per day for all needs, including drinking, hygiene and washing. His soldiers even shaved in their tea. Yet for the first time, reported crime and courts martial within Eighth Army dropped markedly while morale rose, principally as a result of its new logistical stability.

Seven weeks would pass before Monty launched his desert offensive. And it was very much his, unleashed to his own timetable, despite Churchill’s demands for a decisive victory over Rommel in advance of Operation Torch, the planned Allied landings in French North Africa, scheduled for 8 November 1942. Montgomery determined to wait for as long as possible, until he was sure of success, also wanting his assault to begin with a night attack, with adequate moonlight bathing the desert for the complicated business of clearing German minefields. He scheduled it for 23 October 1942, the night before full moon.

Aided by these battlefield deceptions, innovations and adaptations, Montgomery’s plan envisioned a diversionary lunge to the south, while his main attack clobbered Rommel’s northern flank, close to the coast. Here, his infantry was to break into the Axis forward line and wear down (“crumbling” was Montgomery’s apt description) their opponent’s offensive capability. The first stage of Monty’s attack, Operation Lightfoot, was so named because his lightly-shod infantry was unlikely to trip Rommel’s anti-tank mines, triggered by heavier wheels and tracks. As his men advanced, Kisch’s engineers cleared and marked two narrow lanes through the Devil’s Garden obstacles, one tank-width wide, for armoured units to follow. An added bonus was the discovery that Rommel had been evacuated sick on 23 September and was being treated for a recurring stomach complaint and exhaustion. The lack of initial Axis decisiveness from a commander of his calibre would contribute heavily to Montgomery’s eventual success.

Reflecting his logistics superiority, a thousand-gun bombardment was devised by Sidney Kirkman, Montgomery’s artillery advisor, who commanded the cannon at Alamein. Logistics superiority meant he was able to stockpile 600 rounds per gun for immediate use, plus a further 200 in reserve, allowing artillery doctrine to be exploited to its fullest extent since 1918. Everyone present remembered the terrific cannonade, the largest since the First World War. Intelligence officer George Greenfield recalled the tremendous sound being “like gigantic drumbeats merging into one great blast of noise”. 

The sands trembled. Mine-clearing tanks rumbled forward. Nineteen-year-old Duncan McIntyre led the 51st Highland Division’s advance, his bagpipes skirling “The Road to the Isles.” He was hit twice, but kept playing. A third wound killed him. Joe Leveson from Middlesex was there that first night, riding a tank of the 4th Armoured Brigade. “You can’t imagine the sound,” he said later. “That’s why so many of us today are hard of hearing.” The value of well-rehearsed infantrymen, capable of attacking by night with the bayonet against any form of defence, was fully proven though many frontline battalions suffered over 50 per cent casualties.

However, the British armour failed to break through, and suffered murderous losses. Not untypical was the experience of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, who advanced onto the forward slope of a formerly German-held ridge, but in two days lost 27 out of their original 43 tanks, along with many officers. It was their CO, James Eadie, who led the remnants back, formed into a composite squadron of just sixteen vehicles. Tiredness was such that when Lieutenant Tiptaft of the same regiment was rounding up a group of prisoners, as he motioned for “hands up to surrender” with his tommy gun, its magazine flew out and landed at his captives’ feet. Instead of disaster, his error was met with laughter, the German detainees handed back the offending piece of ordnance and carried on surrendering. At this point, Montgomery deduced that his initial thrust had failed, and pulled his tanks back to fight another day.

Alamein was a far cry from Monty’s subsequent claims that all went “according to plan”

In London, Churchill felt his own political position was at stake with sceptical Commonwealth premiers, whose troops were extensively committed to the battle. With casualties already suffered by New Zealander, Australian, South African, and Indian forces, if Monty failed, any further losses threatened to cost Churchill his job. Thereafter, Montgomery changed his approach, and adopted a tactic he would retain for the rest of the war, of using artillery to protect his gains, not tanks. His change of heart amounted to a loss of confidence in his mobile arm, would take months to repair, involve the sacking of commanders and adoption of fresh infantry-armour doctrine. Alamein was a far cry from Monty’s subsequent claims that all went “according to plan”.

For Rommel the battle was already catastrophic. On 28 October he reported “the situation is grave in the extreme”. However, he was unaware that Bletchley Park was decrypting his signals as fast as he was sending them, and that Eighth Army’s intelligence chief, Edgar “Bill” Williams, a brilliant pre-war Oxford don, was keeping a tally of Axis tanks and guns destroyed and prisoners taken, which were cross-referenced with Enigma reports sent to Berlin. This brought awareness to Montgomery of the true pressure he was bringing to bear on his opponents. Hourly expecting Monty’s armour to advance, on the morning of the 29 October Rommel issued preparatory orders to withdraw westwards. 

In the air the balance had already shifted with the arrival of more Allied fighter squadrons, large numbers of Axis aircraft destroyed on the ground, the use of drop tanks to extend range (soon copied by their opponents), and better escorting of daylight bombers. Meanwhile, Allied morale was maintained by thousands of medical staff supporting a robust evacuation system, including Arthur Howe of Connecticut, with the American Field Service, an all-volunteer ambulance corps attached to Commonwealth forces. “This was the pre-Penicillin era and the cost was unbelievable, with hopes and aspirations buried in cemeteries stretching continuously across the desert,” he mused. He was among the little-known Yank contingent present, which included volunteer platoon commanders in infantry battalions, brave medics, and aircrew flying with American bomber and fighter squadrons.

With the Afrika Korps and their Italian allies at their last gasp, a final armoured attack, Operation Supercharge, was ordered. In their orders, the 3rd Hussars noted the possible destructive effect on their regiment of charging the wall of Axis anti-tank and artillery positions ahead, but when their CO protested, he was met with Monty’s grim response, “It’s got to be done, and if necessary, I am prepared to accept 100 percent casualties in both personnel and tanks.” Their War Diary records them going into battle with 51 tanks, destroying nineteen guns, five panzers and taking 300 prisoners, but returning with only four of their own vehicles, having lost 21 officers and 91 other ranks killed. 

The codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park allowed Allied planners to identify the movements of specific vessels, with seven out of 30 Axis merchantmen lost in August and by September up to 50 percent of shipping despatched to North Africa had been sunk, afflicting Rommel with dire shortages of ammunition and fuel. It is difficult to understate the impact of Allied airpower on Rommel’s overall supply situation at Alamein, whether in the nightly bombing of Benghazi, Tripoli or Tobruk harbours, the harrying of his vehicle convoys on the only coastal road, or in the persistent battlefield attacks on his forward units. Rommel’s logisticians later noted that between 27 October-3 November, of 4,244 tons of fuel despatched, only 893 tons ever arrived.

During Supercharge, Montgomery was aware that Rommel was down to a fraction of his logistical needs, while the German core of his defence, 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, had been whittled down by combat to little more than 2,000 men and 35 tanks fit for action. On the night of 2 November, Rommel decided to fall back. His redeployment was well under way when on the 3rd, an overriding order came from Hitler, insisting that Alamein must be held at all costs. In the Führer’s mind, Germany was a continental power whose principal strategy was the ongoing contest with Russia at Stalingrad. He failed to understand the importance of North Africa, with its potential access to the Suez Canal and Middle Eastern oilfields. Berlin’s withdrawal of support doomed any chance that Rommel might have had of preserving his force, which became an exercise in futility. 

The 51st Highland and 4th Indian divisions finally succeeded in opening a gap for Monty’s tanks and soon after dawn on 4 November, three armored divisions began plunging in like a torrent through a broken dam. Nila Kantan, an Indian truck driver, recalled the moment: “I have never seen so many tanks passing in one go, thundering. And their dust clouds — we breathed dust, we ate dust, we drank dust. The Sikhs, they suffered the most, with no washing, and all the dust and perspiration caked in their beards.”

The initial 4-7 November pursuit of Rommel was not sufficiently vigorous to catch the bulk of his forces, and was also stymied by fuel shortages and heavy rain. Due to lack of transport, most of the Italian infantry formations were abandoned to their fate and it was predominantly German formations which slipped from their pursuers. Among the captives were three Italian generals and the Afrika Korps commander, General Wilhelm von Thoma, the first German general to fall into British hands. Upon hearing that Montgomery had given him dinner, Churchill mock-lamented, “Poor von Thoma – I, too, have dined with Montgomery!”

Rommel’s retreat was driven not just by Axis shortages of men and materiel, but also by the changed strategic situation after the Anglo-American invasion of Morocco and Algeria on 8 November. At the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London’s Mansion House on 10 November, Churchill announced, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning,” a theme he expanded in his memoirs: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”. A turning point had been reached when the initiative passed from German into Allied Hands. Alexander, Monty’s theatre commander, observed, “Alamein was fought to gain a decisive victory over the Axis forces in the Western Desert, hearten the Russians, uplift our allies, depress our enemies, raise morale at home and abroad, and influence those sitting on the fence. It was not a question of gaining a victory in isolation.”

Montgomery’s victory caused church bells to be rung through the United Kingdom, the first time since the invasion scares of 1940, but cost him 4,800 dead and 9,000 wounded. According to his brother, ever-haunted by the battle, Monty’s last words before death were, “now I’ve got to go to meet God and explain all those men I killed at Alamein”. Historian Guy Walters observed “it may not have been an elegant victory, and Montgomery may have been a ponderous general who was happy to steal much of the credit from the RAF, but it was a battle that gave the British what it most badly needed, confidence with which to go on and win the war”. He won, as he would in Normandy and beyond, by innovative deception, rehearsal and preparation of his infantry and engineers, superiority of artillery, fantastic logistics, the timely arrival of Sherman tanks from America, growing professionalism of the Desert Air Force, successes at sea, and above all, through grim determination. 

a willingness to take casualties and grim determination … remains, as at Alamein, the key to eventual victory

It is the same unrealistic orders from Moscow, Ukrainian innovation in mine-clearing devices against Putin’s “Devil’s Garden” defences, superiority of ground-launched missiles, now including the longer range US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which President Biden has just permitted to be launched at distant logistic targets in Russia, excellent intelligence and materiel resources supplied by the West, brave volunteer medics, plus mastery by drones and aircraft of Ukrainian airspace and over the Black Sea, which enables Kyiv’s forces to resist today. President Zelensky is under the same pressure Churchill felt during Alamein. During the current attritional slog in Ukraine, a willingness to take casualties and grim determination — the will to win — remains, as at Alamein, the key to eventual victory.