page_title: East African campaign (World War II)
section_title: Massawa
hierarchical_section_title: East African campaign (World War II) / Northern front, 1941 / Massawa
caption_attribution_description: English: Italians repairing an amoured vehicle in East Africa
context_page_description: The East African campaign was fought in East Africa during the Second World War by Allies of World War II, mainly from the British Empire, against Italy and its colony of Italian East Africa, between June 1940 and November 1941. The British Middle East Command with troops from the United Kingdom, South Africa, British India, Uganda Protectorate, Kenya, Somaliland, West Africa, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Sudan and Nyasaland participated in the campaign. These were joined by the Allied Force Publique of Belgian Congo, Imperial Ethiopian Arbegnoch and a small unit of Free French.
  Italian East Africa was defended by the Comando Forze Armate dell'Africa Orientale Italiana, with units from the Regio Esercito, Regia Aeronautica and Regia Marina. The Italian forces included about 250,000 soldiers of the Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali, led by Italian officers and NCOs. With Britain in control of the Suez Canal, the Italian forces were cut off from supplies and reinforcement once hostilities began.
context_section_description: Admiral Mario Bonetti, the commander of the Italian Red Sea Flotilla and the garrison at Massawa, had 10,000 troops and about 100 tanks to defend the port. During the evening of 31 March, three of the last six destroyers at Massawa put to sea to raid the Gulf of Suez and then scuttle themselves. Leone ran aground and sank the next morning; the sortie was postponed and on 2 April the last five destroyers left to attack Port Sudan and then sink themselves. Heath telephoned Bonetti with an ultimatum to surrender and not block the harbour by scuttling ships. If this was refused, the British would leave Italian citizens in Eritrea and Ethiopia to fend for themselves. The 7th Indian Infantry Brigade Group sent small forces towards Adowa and Adigrat and the rest advanced down the Massawa road, which declined by 7,000 ft (2,100 m) in 50 mi (80 km). The Indians rendezvoused at Massawa with Briggs Force by 5 April, after it had cut across country.
  Bonetti was once again called upon to surrender but refused and on 8 April, an attack by the 7th Indian Infantry Brigade Group was repulsed by the Massawa garrison. A simultaneous attack on the west side by the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade and the tanks of B Squadron 4th RTR broke through. The Free French overran the defences in the south-west as the RAF bombed Italian artillery positions. In the afternoon, Bonetti surrendered and the Allied force took 9,590 prisoners and 127 guns. The harbour was found to have been blocked by the scuttling of two large floating dry docks, 16 large ships and a floating crane in the mouths of the north Naval Harbour, the central Commercial Harbour and the main South Harbour. The Italians had also dumped as much of their equipment as possible in the water. The British re-opened the Massawa–Asmara railway on 27 April and by 1 May, the port had come into use to supply the 5th Indian Infantry Division. The Italian surrender ended organised resistance in Eritrea and fulfilled the strategic objective of ending the threat to shipping in the Red Sea. On 11 April, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescinded the status, under the Neutrality Acts, of the Red Sea as a combat zone, freeing US ships to use the route to carry supplies to the Middle East.
caption: Italians in East Africa repairing an armoured car
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2018:02:20 23:27:48", "Image ExifOffset": "2294", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4592", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "13734", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:02:20 13:08:46", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:02:20 13:08:46", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2128", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1535", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}