Shipbucket

British Bombing Offensive

After the temporary halt to operations with the losses to Iraqi interception, the arrival of sufficient Blenheim IVf fighters allowed the bombing of military infrastructure around Baghdad to recommence on the 6th. The first raid again was pounced upon on the outskirts of Baghdad by the LVT-1’s, their Iraqi pilots full of confidence from their prior engagement. But the presence of the Blenheims completely changed the battle this time. Being outnumbered by at least 2:1, the Iraqi pilots were unable to use their diving tactics to any advantage as the RAF pilots flying high cover themselves, engaged the Iraqis before they could even get to the Wellingtons. Although the LVT-1’s were outnumbered and without the element of surprise, their higher speed advantage was enough to ensure their survival even as their attack was blunted.



The targeting of RIrAF facilities forced a significant change to Iraqi operations. The remaining aircraft and equipment were now dispersed to makeshift airstrips around the city, leaving Al-Rasheed air base an empty broken shell. To aid in their forced anonymity the aircraft lost their bright silvery colours, hurriedly having their upper surfaces overpainted by a rough coat of sand-coloured paint for camouflage.
At Habbaniya the gunners of the Iraqi artillery had finally managed to chew up the main runway to the extent that it was now unusable. British aircraft losses had been mounting, but intermittent arrival of Blenheims had served to boost the numbers of the dwindling trainers. But only the small trainers had been able to use the temporary airstrip within the base, while the larger, more modern aircraft had had to brave the Iraqi gunfire on the exposed runway before and after their sorties. Now the Blenheims and a single Valentia transport were trapped within the base and effectively grounded, further reducing the power of British defence.
But as a part of the symmetry of attrition warfare, the Iraqi aerial presence over Habbaniya had also dwindled. The battle for the airfield had devolved into a medieval siege, with both sides lobbing artillery into the other’s position, with the air attacks now being little more than annoyances to the troops dug in on both sides of the base's perimeter fence.

Kingcol Advance Into Iraq

Kingcol was a massive force, advancing along the only access route into Iraq, through a bleak desert. Its mission and route of advance were scarcely able to be kept secret, and the column in motion created a dust cloud visible for miles.
The column’s departure from Rutbah was relayed through to Baghdad, and passed onwards to the remaining RIrAF bomber units. First aircraft to make contact were three Blenheims of 8 Squadron, dispatched from their hiding place near Fallujah. Seen, and incorrectly recognised as British, the Blenheims were able to attack the column before attracting return fire, and leaving the battle without damage. Hitting the head of the column several of the leading Legion trucks were destroyed giving the Transjordanians their first casualties in the conflict. Again the British had underestimated the RIrAF and left themselves dangerously exposed to air attack. The closest British air field was at H3, but this was only a tented strip with no facilities. Already a flight of Falcon Mk.I’s from 80 Squadron had positioned there to provide a degree of air cover, but fuel and ammunition resupply vehicles had not caught up with the aircraft’s advance deployment, and so effective defensive air support was just not available.
After clearing the wrecked vehicles Kingcol recommenced its advance into Iraq, but now shaken out of the casual complacency of a leisurely drive though the desert, and on alert for attacks from both Iraqi irregulars and aircraft. They did not have to wait long before aircraft were again spotted in the east. This time a flight of roughly camouflaged Breda Ba.65bis bombers homed in on the column, and now the defensive guns of Kingcol were not silent at their approach. But dedicated anti-aircraft guns were not a part of the column’s armoury and so the fire of the heaviest Vickers guns were ineffective at anything other than the closest range as the Breda’s dropped their warloads over the trucks.



Leaving behind burning trucks and dead British troops, the Iraqi aircraft again returned to their dispersed fields without losses but these machines requiring a patching from bullet holes.

Advance on Kilo 25

With travel in the dark unfeasible, Kingcol bivouacking through the night and continued advancing at sunup. This time Falcon Mk.I’s from H3 were in attendance above. In an attempt to provide cover to the slowly moving column a staggered CAP was flown, with 2 fighters maintaining a high overwatch on the soldiers below, until low fuel required them to return, their position then being taken by a fresh pair of fighters.



By midmorning the Falcons had their first customers. The returning Bredas attempted to repeat their attack of the previous day, but were instead “bounced” before they started their bomb runs. While the air battles in the Iraqi southeast had involved exclusively British designed aircraft on both sides, in this first air battle in the west Italian aircraft were now pitted against each other. Jettisoning their bomb loads to gain performance, the Iraqis attempted to outfight the British fighters. But the lessons taught to the RAF Battle pilots over Belgium were repeated again, and all four Iraq aircraft were shot down without any British losses. Iraqi ardour for the fight in the air was blunted, and no further air attacks were mounted that day.
The first major settlement on the road was Ramadi, guarding the western flank of RAF Habbaniya. Intelligence had already reported the town was occupied by a brigade of Iraqi troops, and so to get to Habbaniya the decision was made to leave the relatively easy going of the road to attempt a push though empty desert country, bypassing the Iraqi position to arrive at Habbaniya from the open desert to its south. Reaching the village of Al Wafaa, a point referred to as Kilo 25 as it was 25 kilometres before Ramadi, the column which had now stretched to 30km long itself, turned off south into the desert.
The lead elements rapidly found themselves in trouble, bogging down in soft sand. Immobile and exposed in the blazing sun, while the inexperienced British troops dug their vehicles out of their mire, the Arab Legion scouted ahead and were able to plan an alternate route. Although there was no element of surprise now to the British force bypassing the prepared defences of Ramadi, the RIrAF were not keen to strike at the British even at their most exposed, instead husbanding their limited forces for the coming battle at Habbaniya.

Relief Of Habbaniya

The RAF had adjusted their bombing strategy, and spent the 16th August sending the Wellingtons from RAF Shaibah to focus on pounding the Iraqi positions overlooking Habbaniya. Guarded by the Blenheim fighters, the Wellingtons attacked with impunity, the Iraqis not sending any of their dwindling fighter resources to defend their dug in troops. The Iraqis soldiers, weary from the continuing siege, started to leave their positions and fall back to Fallujah.
Skirting Habbaniya Lake the armoured cars of the RAF’s No.2 Armoured Car Company reached RAF Habbaniya at noon, having struck out in advance of the rest of Kingcol. The base they found was in a tenuous state, nearing the end of its ability to resist. Food, fuel and ammunition stocks were seriously depleted, but morale was buoyed with the news of the advancing relief column.
As more British troops arrived in the afternoon it became obvious that the tide had turned for the embattled base. In a combined action Kingcol and the Iraqi Levies sallied forth to assault the Iraqi positions on the plateau. Themselves also hot, tired and thirsty, and still reeling form the day’s aerial bombardment, the Iraqi force were not able, or maybe willing, to mount a significant defence, and with the coming of darkness the remaining Iraqi troops abandoned the plateau and pulled back to Fallujah. RAF Habbaniya was relieved.

Iraq

For all its new equipment and training, the Iraqi air force was now severely depleted and had not been able to hold back the RAF. The Iraqi army had also suffered demoralising reversals losing both Basra and Habbaniya, but in contrast it was still largely intact, with 20,000 troops around Baghdad and 15,000 in northern Iraq. Rashid Ali’s government still ruled from Baghdad and the British forces in Basra were bogged down by geography and making very slow progress in trying to advance deeper into the country.
While the British planers could not envision the military campaign ending with anything but an eventual Imperial victory, the political campaign held much greater fears. British political objectives were the overthrow of the Golden Square’s regime and the return of Prince Abd al-Ilah as Regent. Even with the relief of Habbaniya, General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, confided in Wavell that ‘If we cannot quickly scotch the trouble that has started with Rashid Ali it is difficult to see where it will all end’. The threat of Iraq’s war spreading and consuming the whole region was very daunting, the secondary rebellion in Kuwait had been quickly put down, but other larger nations would not be so easily able to remain calm.
Iraq’s appeals to Italy for further aid had yielded positive, but not concrete, responses. The Iraqi embassy in Ankara become the focal point of Iraqi diplomatic engagement, with the legation tasked with putting pressure on the Italians for further support. The Iraqi War Minister, Naji Shawkat, even travelled to Ankara to lobby for urgent military assistance. But the Iraqi government was also putting out feelers for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Shawkat had also met with members of the Turkish government, trying to obtain their assistance in obtaining an ‘acceptable basis of understanding with the British’. The Turks were in no ways supportive of the Iraqi position however, and made plain their belief that Iraq had violated the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. Further, under the terms of the Saadabad Pact, Turkey and Iraq had pledged to prevent the actions of groups wishing to destabilise each other, the unspoken understanding being this was a defence against trans-border Kurdish nationalism. However the potential of Iraq’s conflict spilling across into Turkey was as much a concern for Ankara as to the French in neighbouring Syria, and additional Turkish troops and aircraft were deployed along their southern border.



Elsewhere in the country British and other alien nationals had been rounded up by the Iraqi army and police. In Kirkuk, the British petroleum workers had received orders to evacuate all women and children before losing communications, and then all remaining staff were rounded up by Iraqi police and interned at the Iraq Petroleum Company Club. Meanwhile hundreds of British civilians were sheltering in the American and British diplomatic compounds in Baghdad, also without knowledge of the unfolding campaign as the Iraqis had severed communications. But the 350 refugee men, women and children and the consular staff in Baghdad did have the ability to watch the air war unfolding, and took cognisance of the presence of British bombers in the skies.

Reinforcing RAF Habbaniya

The British needed to get to Baghdad and oust Rashid Ali’s government and the Grand Mufti. With the ground forces in Basra still unable to advance with the flooding of the Euphrates, Kingcol and Habbaniya’s troops would be forced to conduct the operation with only the support that could be airlifted into Habbaniya. The new united force was renamed Habbaniya Brigade, with its first task being the clearing of remaining Iraqi forces at Sin El Dhibban in an attempt to capture a crossing point for the Euphrates. While the Brigade mounted an assault on the Iraqis dug in at Sin El Dhibban, work parties feverishly worked to make repairs to the runway, and by the late afternoon of the 17th August the airfield was in a good enough condition to receive transport aircraft. The highest priority arrival were combat engineers, and a section of No. 10 Field Company Madras Sappers and Miners were the first to arrive on Douglas DC-2’s from RAF Shaibah.
The rest of the KORR were also flown, but not as successfully. A flight of six Valentias of No. 31 Squadron had left RAF Shaibah with the Regiment, but only two of these aircraft arrived at Habbaniya. The others having gotten lost and flown too far northwest, had been forced to land as they ran low on fuel. Of these, one landed at the K3 pumping station near the town of Haqlaniyah and was burnt by the crew to prevent its capture by Iraqi troops. The other three landed at the small village of Hit and established a defensive perimeter, a precaution eventually unneeded in the isolated town uninvolved in the ongoing crisis. After establishing radio communications with Habbaniya another Valentia was dispatched with 300 gallons of petrol, escorted by a Blenheim Fighter. After refuelling the aircraft at Hit, they continued onwards to K3 to rescue those stranded troops, with all of the KORR being transferred to RAF Habbaniya before nightfall.

Advance From Habbaniya

With the airbase secured and its runway rehabilitated, the British trainers increased their offensive operations with zeal, attacking the Iraqi fallback positions around Fallujah. Their most significant result though was intercepting an Iraqi column advancing out from the town to relieve their comrades at Sin El Dhibban who were under infantry attack. The motorised column was hit hard and annihilated, leaving the road a sea of flames and shattered vehicles.
The British drive was eastwards towards Baghdad, requiring an advance through the rail and road nexus of Fallujah. The Iraqi forces in Ramadi to the west had isolated their town by breaching the Euphrates and flooding the ground between Habbaniya and themselves. In their strategic isolation they were left to be bypassed, with only reconnaissance and occasional bombing flights from Habbaniya to ensure they did not threaten the British advance.
The initial British advance plan was to build a river crossing at Sin El Dhibban and advance eastwards on Fallujah. The newly arrived engineers created a ferry, but further advance from that direction could only be undertaken by foot, as there were no roads there and the Iraqis had strategically flooded the low ground between the Euphrates and Fallujah. Instead the mechanised advance would have to be made along the main road and across the 55m steel girder bridge at Fallujah, even though that roadway had also been flooded, necessitating deploying the engineers to build another ferry there for the British vehicles. The British assault force was divided into 5 columns to position to surround Fallujah, with three infantry troops columns crossing the Euphrates at Sin El Dhibban to advance from the north and northwest, and mobile troops and armoured cars attacking west through the bridge. The most audacious element was an airborne troop to be landed east of Fallujah on the main Baghdad road to isolate the town.
During the night of the 18th the British force moved into position, with four Bristol Bombays of 216 Squadron and two Valentias of 31 Squadron landing on the Baghdad road at dawn. The airborne troops immediately cut all telephone lines and blocked the road, cutting Fallujah off from both communications and reinforcement.



As the British transports landed, the ragtag aerial fleet from RAF Habbaniya commenced a sharp bombing of the Iraqi positions in the town. After an hour a pamphlet dropping raid was carried out, urging the Iraqi troops to surrender. With no response, the RAF again attacked the town, and in a fluke of war a RAF Blenheim fighter strafed the Iraqi truck carrying the explosives to destroy the bridge, destroying the demolitions squad in a massive fireball.
The British now assaulted the bridge, and in fierce fighting the armoured cars pushed back the defenders and advanced into the town. The British columns that had been stop-groups to the north and east now moved in, while the column advancing through the floods to the northeast had made very slow going and only reached Fallujah after 5pm. By that time the Assyrian Levies had secured the town and taken 200 Iraqi prisoners.

Iraqi Counterattack

With Fallujah secured, the captured Iraqi troops were put to work to rehabilitate the flooded roadways leading into the town. To reduce the threat of Ramadi in their rear, British troops were pulled back to Habbaniya to now attack Ramadi. Further, Kingcol now split into two, with a force crossing the Euphrates at Sin El Dhibban to advance to the north of Baghdad to capture the railway to isolate Baghdad from Mosul. As the British lost focus on the defence of Fallujah and depleted their numbers in the town, the Iraqi army regrouped, and launched a counter-attack before dawn on the 22nd. Striking at 3am, the Iraqi 6th Brigade supported by CV-35 tankettes assaulted the already battered town.



Movement to the east of the town was spotted, and a patrol of the KORR was sent to investigate. Massively overwhelmed, the sound of the patrol’s firefight at least brought the rest of the British forces to alert, but the Iraqis were attacking in force, and by weight of numbers overwhelmed the initial defence. By dawn the Iraqis were in control of the eastern half of Fallujah, leapfrogging through the town, positioning machine gun posts on captured buildings.
After their initial reversal the occupying troops of the KORR managed to form a defensive line and halted the advance, with Fallujah divided between an Iraqi-held east, and a British-held west. The air war now resumed in earnest, as the remaining RAF and RIrAF light bombers were thrown into battle, each side attempting to reduce the others defendable positions. Fallujah was shattered, its buildings taking a pounding from both sides and all directions, with British senior officers later recounting that the scene looked like the battered towns of Flanders from 25 years before.



The Assyrian Levies were rushed into Fallujah from their rear duties, and threw themselves into battle. Although outnumbered, the Assyrians were of a more ferocious character than their erstwhile countrymen, and in savage house-to-house street fighting pushed the Iraqis back. With the debris-filled streets the Iraqi tankettes now found themselves at a disadvantage, and many of the light-skinned vehicles were caught and disabled. As the urban warfare degenerated into hand-to-hand combat, the morale of the 6th Brigade finally broke, and by evening its surviving men were either prisoners or had fled back east.

Destabilisation In Iran

Wavell’s fear of an Iraqi conflict spreading became real on Friday 22nd, as anti-British unrest broke out in south-western Iran – timed by Italian agitators to coincide with the Iraqi push to retake Fallujah. Demonstrators took to the streets after Friday prayers in the city of Ahwaz, and fighting broke out between groups of ethnic Arabs and Persians. Resentment from the indigenous Arabs over the increasing numbers of peoples from other regions of Iran who had moved to the area to work with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had been fostered by the agitators, although the hopes of creating a movement to unite with a greater Iraq had made little ground. Instead they had created a push for an independent Arabistan, attempting to recapture the remembered glory of the Emirate of Muhammara.
Iran had already been moving troops and tanks towards the Iraqi border, nervous that Iraqi insurgents would cross into Iran. Expecting action from the border, the Iranian units were not prepared for rioting in their rear areas, and so their responses were slow and timid.
By Sunday the civil unrest had spread through the whole of Khuzestan Province, and attacks had spread to Iranian government buildings and British and Oil Company assets.
The massive oil refinery at Abadan was protected by Iranian troops, being on the Iraqi border and an obvious target for Iraqis seeking to spread their conflict. Chanting mobs from Muhammara were stared down and held back by the Imperial soldiers, but numbers swelled before the crowd dispersed with sunset. Oil production continued, but the obvious threat to the incoming oil pipe-lines was of great concern. But, short of this one action, Imperial control was rapidly being lost in southwestern Iran.
By Monday 25th, Iranian troops had surrounded and “secured” the oil field and refinery at Naft-e Šah along the Iraqi border near Baghdad, under the assertion that the facilities had to be guarded against rebellion. But regardless of the Iranian reasoning, the oilfield was effectively shutdown and the British staff taken into protective custody.

Advance from Basra

The British forces in Basra were finally able to begin their advance northwards to Baghdad using watercraft on the Two Rivers, with a departure date scheduled for the 24th. The plan was to split into two, with a “Euphrates Brigade” advancing under a plan titled Operation Regatta, while the “Tigris Brigade” would be a similar Operation Regulta. Basra had became a bottleneck as additional Indian units had continued to arrive by sea at a rate greater than the British transport planes could ferry men and materiel to RAF Habbaniya. The Euphrates Brigade departed as planned, but as the situation in neighbouring Iran deteriorated, Operation Regulta was postponed, and instead the force was held back while a potential foray into Iran was considered.
In Tehran Reza Shah had been caught on the backfoot. The Shah’s intelligence services were as sycophantic as every other part of the Imperial bureaucracy and had been concentrating solely on the Shah’s Iraqi threat, and so had disregarded the growing successionist movement. Iranian forces had been deployed along the Iraqi border to protect against Iraqi incursion, in particular Iranian tanks had been positioned near Talaieh, seen as the obvious point for a massed Iraqi advance. Stretched along the border, rather than positioned in the neighbouring towns, the Iranian military was in no position to counter the civil disturbances within Khuzestan. With the exception of the defence of Abadan, local security forces were swept aside in the rioting and Imperial control faltered through the province. As the violence spread deeper into Khuzestan the local military garrison at Masjed-e Soleyman was over-run, and its armoury looted, followed shortly after by the main oil pipeline to Abadan being sabotaged.
From the outset of the action in Iraq British planners had been absolutely insistent on protecting the neutrality of Iran, and not allowing her vital oilfields to be placed at risk. Southern Iraq was now completely secured up to the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab, but British soldiers could only watch the rioting in Muhammara and the escalating violence at the refinery at Abadan.
With the new threat to Britons and Imperial interests in Iran, plans were now made for a British advance to restore order in the event that the Shah’s forces were not able to put down what was developing into a full blown insurrection. Meanwhile to the north, the Soviets were also watching and making plans.