This covers the battle of El Alamein and its prelude in some detail but is generally disappointing, especially when purchased as part of the Mediterranean boxed set. There's an air of carelessness and inexactitude about the writing and the assembling of the documentary footage.
The weaknesses aren't enough to make this an unreasonable watch but they are distracting. They're most minor flaws. Tim Pigott-Smith did not narrate the episode, for one thing. For another, the images sometimes do not match the narrative. While the narrative tells us all about how valuable the Hurricane was as an attack airplane, we see several minutes of Spitfires. Maps and titles, as usual, are superimposed on still photographs -- one photograph has someone looking through a submarine periscope.
Some weaknesses are more distracting than others. When Monty's sappers cleared a path through the minefields, the paths were narrow and needed to be clearly marked and bounded on both sides by coils of barbed wire. Here we see only blocks with somewhat confusing labels moving across a map. The detail that tells the frightening story is lacking.
No mention is made of Rommel's turning his retreat from El Alamein into an attack on American forces to the west but that's okay. This is, after all, "El Alamein," not "North Africa." But then why tell us repeatedly about the shortages in men and material suffered by Rommel without telling us why those shortages existed? Rommel ran out of tanks because he ran out of fuel. Every gallon had to be transported from Italy through Rommel's port in Tripoli to his forces in the field. That's a journey of more than a thousand miles. The first part was over water and the British had cracked the Italian naval code so they knew roughly when and where the supply ships would be. They could be attacked by air or submarine. (In one horrifying instance, British air had to attack a ship filled with Allied prisoners of war because, had they turned away at the last minute, the Axis would have been alerted to the fact that their code had been compromised.) The last part of the logistical system was over a single desert road, vulnerable to air.
In other words, there are dozens of reasons why the British and Commonwealth troops won. One of the most important is that the Axis forces ran out of everything, and it's barely mentioned.
Here's one of the more curious reasons the UK came out victorious. Montgomery's line faced the Axis line directly across the desert at El Alamein. Rommel expected a strike but didn't know where the Schwerpunkt would be. (I love that word.) Monty planned to attack from his right, along the Mediterranean coast, but he successfully tricked Rommel into believing that it would come from his left by building a fake army depot there, complete with inflatable tanks, lots of dusty roads, and phony radio traffic. It all looked convincingly like the big build-up, which was actually taking place surreptitiously in the north. Evidently the same trick worked before the Normandy invasion, when Patton was put in charge of the non-existent FUSAG across from Calais.
Not to put this episode down, or the series that generated it. Some episodes are better than others, and this is one of lesser quality.
The weaknesses aren't enough to make this an unreasonable watch but they are distracting. They're most minor flaws. Tim Pigott-Smith did not narrate the episode, for one thing. For another, the images sometimes do not match the narrative. While the narrative tells us all about how valuable the Hurricane was as an attack airplane, we see several minutes of Spitfires. Maps and titles, as usual, are superimposed on still photographs -- one photograph has someone looking through a submarine periscope.
Some weaknesses are more distracting than others. When Monty's sappers cleared a path through the minefields, the paths were narrow and needed to be clearly marked and bounded on both sides by coils of barbed wire. Here we see only blocks with somewhat confusing labels moving across a map. The detail that tells the frightening story is lacking.
No mention is made of Rommel's turning his retreat from El Alamein into an attack on American forces to the west but that's okay. This is, after all, "El Alamein," not "North Africa." But then why tell us repeatedly about the shortages in men and material suffered by Rommel without telling us why those shortages existed? Rommel ran out of tanks because he ran out of fuel. Every gallon had to be transported from Italy through Rommel's port in Tripoli to his forces in the field. That's a journey of more than a thousand miles. The first part was over water and the British had cracked the Italian naval code so they knew roughly when and where the supply ships would be. They could be attacked by air or submarine. (In one horrifying instance, British air had to attack a ship filled with Allied prisoners of war because, had they turned away at the last minute, the Axis would have been alerted to the fact that their code had been compromised.) The last part of the logistical system was over a single desert road, vulnerable to air.
In other words, there are dozens of reasons why the British and Commonwealth troops won. One of the most important is that the Axis forces ran out of everything, and it's barely mentioned.
Here's one of the more curious reasons the UK came out victorious. Montgomery's line faced the Axis line directly across the desert at El Alamein. Rommel expected a strike but didn't know where the Schwerpunkt would be. (I love that word.) Monty planned to attack from his right, along the Mediterranean coast, but he successfully tricked Rommel into believing that it would come from his left by building a fake army depot there, complete with inflatable tanks, lots of dusty roads, and phony radio traffic. It all looked convincingly like the big build-up, which was actually taking place surreptitiously in the north. Evidently the same trick worked before the Normandy invasion, when Patton was put in charge of the non-existent FUSAG across from Calais.
Not to put this episode down, or the series that generated it. Some episodes are better than others, and this is one of lesser quality.
