13. The British Attempt to Do In Rommel
Ever since his arrival in North Africa in February of 1941, Erwin Rommel had been bad news for the British, giving them nothing but grief and headaches. So they decided to assassinate him. The result was Operation Flipper, a daring Commando raid carried out on the night of November 17-18, 1941, against Rommel’s HQ. Had it succeeded in killing or capturing its target, it would have cut short the career of the celebrated Afrika Korps commander, before he had gotten around to doing the worse he would end up doing to the British. Unfortunately, the raid failed to reduce the Desert Fox to a bit of historic trivia and footnote before he had fully established himself as a warfare legend.
The raid also sought to disrupt the Axis command on the eve of Operation Crusader, an offensive intended to lift the siege of Tobruk and relieve a garrison that had been cut off and surrounded there, 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. So 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 destroy other targets of opportunity in the vicinity.
