Operation Flipper
Operation Flipper was a daring British Commando raid carried out on the night of November 17-18, 1941. Had it succeeded in its objective of killing or capturing its target, it would have nipped the career of Afrika Korps commander Erwin Rommel in the bud, and reduced him to a bit of historic trivia and footnote before he had fully established himself as a warfare legend.
The raid was a prelude intended to disrupt the Axis command on the eve of Operation Crusader, an ambitious British offensive intended to lift the siege of Tobruk and relieve a mostly-Australian garrison that had been cut off and surrounded there during a British retreat, and eliminate the Axis threat to Egypt and the Suez Canal once and for all. It was thought that eliminating the brilliant German general who had chased the British out of Libya and led the Axis to Egypt’s border would be a good start.
To that end, Commandos were directed to kill or capture Rommel at his residence in a headquarters villa in the Libyan town of Bayda; destroy a nearby intelligence center and wireless station; attack the nearby headquarters of an Italian division, and otherwise attack and destroy targets of opportunity in the vicinity.
On November 10, 1941, two submarines set out from Alexandria, Egypt, carrying a force of 59 Commandos between them. They reached their landing site on the night of November 14th, where an advance team that had been parachuted in earlier awaited them. One submarine landed its contingent, but the other was struck by a squall and ran aground, with the result that only 7 of its Commandos reached the shore, while the remainder were stranded. With the available attack force thus drastically diminished, the mission was redacted and reduced to only attacking Rommel’s headquarters and that of the Italian division.
The Commandos set off to their targets on the 15th, and despite heavy rains, reached their attack positions on the night of November 17. At midnight, they struck in a meticulously executed attack – and discovered they had been acting on poor intelligence: Rommel was not at the HQ, but was in Italy, where he had been since November 1.
He would not return to the field until November 18 – the day after the raid. Only 3 German supply officers and an enlisted soldier were killed, and a fuel depot was destroyed. In exchange, the raiders were wiped out, with only two members managing to evade pursuit and reach British lines 37 days later. All the rest were either killed or captured.
