"Immediately after the battle of Agordat on 1 February 1941, Gazelle Force was instructed to pursue the Italians towards Keren. The British were held up at the Barak river, where the Ponte Mussolini bridge had been partially destroyed. The main girders had been severely damaged and it was impossible to get motor transport over it. At this point the Barak was around 150 yards wide and consisted of a strip of very soft, deep sand that, without a temporary track, vehicles had no hope of crossing.
The Italians were not about to make even this difficult task easy for the British, as they had laid a large number of mines around the approaches to the bridge and were covering the minefield with machine-gun posts and an artillery piece. This small rearguard was quickly overwhelmed by field artillery, which allowed the British to lay their track, and by the evening of 2 February Gazelle Force, along with six light tanks and the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, was just five miles from Keren.
In the skies on 1 February, 1 SAAF Squadron's fighters had broken up an attack by five S.79s near Agordat. By this stage the Italian Air Force was in a parlous state. Since the middle of January it had lost seventeen aircraft due to enemy action, three more had been destroyed in accidents and twenty-four more were out of commission until at least March, due to the severity of the damage. This now meant that the Italian Air Force in East Africa could muster just thirty-seven Ca 133s, fifteen CR.42s, fourteen CR.32s, seven S.79s, six S.81s, two Ro.37bis and one S.82. The Italians by this stage also knew that it was suicidal to launch Ca 133s against any Allied target unless they were protected by fighters. It was the view of the Italian command that if air activities continued at its present level of intensity for another fortnight the Italian Air Force would virtually cease to exist…"
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Amicalement
Armand
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
