'Supercharge' (ii) was the British 'dogfight' stage of the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein (2/4 November 1942).

The plan evolved from the development of the 'Lightfoot' offensive between 24 and 28 October, when Lieutenant General B. L. Montgomery’s 8^th Army had failed to secure the rapid breakthrough it had anticipated against Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel’s Deutsch-Italienische Panzerarmee in order to release Major General R. Briggs’s 1^st Armoured Division and Major General A. H. Gatehouse’s 10^th Armoured Division of Lieutenant General H. Lumsden’s X Corps into the rear areas of the combined German and Italian forces under Rommel’s command.

In its original form on 29 November, 'Supercharge' (ii) envisaged a final breakthrough in the northern part of the front, but when he appreciated that Rommel had moved Generalleutnant Theodor Graf von Sponeck’s 90^th Afrikadivision forward into the coastal road sector nearly reached by Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead’s Australian 9^th Division, Montgomery rapidly switched his point of attack farther to the south, into the sector covered by General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma’s Deutsches Afrikakorps and the left wing of Generale di Corpo d’Armata Giuseppe de Stefanis’s XX Corpo d’Armata.

The British plan was thus for Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese’s XXX Corps to continue to exert infantry pressure on the Axis front, forcing Rommel to commit his last reserves (Generale di Divisione Francesco Arena’s 132a Divisione corazzata 'Ariete' and Generale di Brigata Francesco La Ferla’s 101a Divisione motorizzata 'Trieste'), while the equivalent of one brigade was withdrawn from each of three divisions (Major General I. T. P. Hughes’s 44^th Division and Major General J. S. Nichols’s 50^th Division of Lieutenant General B. G. Horrocks’s XIII Corps, and Major General D. N. Wimberley’s 51^st Division of the XXX Corps) with which to reinforce Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg’s New Zealand 2^nd Division, which was to make the decisive effort around Kidney Ridge against the Italian infantry holding the forward positions in front of Generalleutnant Gustav von Vaerst’s 15^th Panzerdivision and Generalmajor Heinz von Randow’s 21^st Panzerdivision. Though depleted in numbers of men and tanks, and also desperately short of fuel, these formations were still formidable adversaries, and were flanked in the north by the 90^th Afrikadivision and in the south by Generalmajor Kurt Freiherr von Liebenstein’s 164^th leichte Afrikadivision.

Once Freyberg’s division (with support on its left flank from the 51^st Division) had made the initial breakthrough on a 4,000-yard (3660-m) front using Brigadier J. E. S. Percy’s 151^st Brigade and Brigadier G. Murray’s 152^nd Brigade, each aided by one regiment of Valentine infantry tanks and Brigadier J. C. Currie’s three-regiment 9^th Armoured Brigade in close support with its 40 Grant, 39 Sherman and 53 Crusader tanks), the 1^st Armoured Division would debouch through the gap with its two armoured brigades (39 Grant, 113 Sherman and 119 Crusader tanks) to engage the 15^th Panzerdivision and 21^st Panzerdivision in the area to the west of the Rahman Track.

At this time the 15^th Panzerdivision had just 51 tanks, and the 21^st Panzerdivision mustered a mere 44 tanks, with seven more available from the Deutsches Afrikakorps' headquarters, and between 15 and 25 from the 90^th Afrikadivision.

Montgomery planned to unleash 'Supercharge' (ii) behind a concentrated but comparatively short barrage on the night of 31 October/1 November, but was persuaded by Freyberg to postpone the start until the night of 1/2 November to give the troops an opportunity to rest and to allow the completion of the New Zealand 2^nd Division’s reinforcement.

The artillery bombardment began at 01.05 on 2 November with the two infantry brigades following it closely and reaching all their objectives by 06.15 to permit the 9^th Armoured Brigade to begin the exploitation proper followed, to Freyberg’s concern, somewhat slowly by the 1^st Armoured Division.

Having undertaken a diversion in the south, Major General A. F. Harding’s 7^th Armoured Division was now pulled out of the XIII Corps with its 54 Grant and 26 Crusader tanks (Brigadier A. F. Fisher’s 22^nd Armoured Brigade) and allocated to the X Corps for the exploitation.

Despite the attentions of Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham’s Western Desert Air Force, Rommel was able by the fall of night on 2 November to organise a new defence position in front of the British armour. The Axis commander was then informed by von Thoma that the activities of British attack aircraft, the German tanks' shortage of fuel and the total absence of Axis reserves meant that the continued maintenance of this position was at best problematical, and Rommel therefore made the only decision available to him, namely a withdrawal to positions previously reconnoitred at Fuka. Moreover, by this time Axis tank strength had fallen to 187 tanks, including 155 Italian vehicles wholly incapable of halting the Sherman tanks used by the British. First to move were two infantry-based formations, Generale di Corpo d’Armata Benvenuto Gioda’s X Corpo d’Armata and Generale di Corpo d’Armata Enea Navarini’s XXI Corpo d’Armata, leaving Rommel’s mobile formations (de Stefanis’s XX Corpo d’Armata, Deutsches Afrikakorps, 90^th Afrikadivision and Generalleutnant Heinrich Burchard’s 19^th Flakdivision) to conduct a fighting withdrawal in the face of the British advance.

The Axis withdrawal started at 13.30 on 3 November, but was then halted at the express order of Adolf Hitler. The German leader later reversed his instructions, giving Rommel the freedom of action he so desperately needed, but by then it was too late for an orderly withdrawal, and on 4 November the 8^th Army ripped a 15-mile (24-km) gap in the German and Italian front near Tell el Aqqaqir, allowing the armour of the X Corps to smash through the 132a Divisione corazzata and capture von Thoma. Only fragments of the four German divisions escaped, as did most of the 101a Divisione motorizzata and 132a Divisione corazzata, but the Italian infantry (Generale di Divisione Alessandro Gloria’s 25a Divisione autotrasportabile 'Bologna', Generale di Brigata Giorgio Masina’s 102a Divisione motorizzata 'Trento', Generale di Divisione Brunetto Brunetti’s 27a Divisione autotrasportabile 'Brescia' and Generale di Brigata Nazzareno Scattaglia’s 17a Divisione autotrasportabile 'Pavia') plus Generale di Divisione Enrico Frattini’s 185a Divisione paracadutista 'Folgore', were lost, together with the headquarters of the X Corps.

'Supercharge' (ii) had thus succeeded in its primary objective, and of the 108,000 Axis troops involved in the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein, some 25,000 had been killed or wounded, and another 30,000 (including 10,725 Germans) had been taken prisoner; the British also captured 1,000 pieces of artillery and 320 tanks. The 8^th Army’s losses were 13,560 men, including 4,610 killed or missing, and some 150 tanks.

The operational impact of 'Supercharge' (ii) was enormous as, in combination with Hitler’s halt order, it destroyed the Deutsch-Italienische Panzerarmee as an effective offensive force.

The 8^th Army moved off to the west in its 'Guillotine' (ii) pursuit of the Deutsch-Italienische Panzerarmee, its X Corps and XXX Corps reaching Mersah Matruh on 7 November, Tobruk on 12 November, Benghazi on 19 November and El Agheila on 17 December. Here the XXX Corps took over lines of communication duties from Tobruk, leaving the X Corps to continue the advance with its 7^th Armoured Division, 51^st Division and New Zealand 2^nd Division. The 8^th Army reached Tripoli, the capital of Italian Libya, on 23 January 1943, and here the Free French Force 'L' commanded by Général de Division Philippe François Marie Jacques Leclerc de Hauteclocque arrived from Chad to join the advance to the Mareth Line, which the 8^th Army approached on 16 February.

Montgomery had always envisaged the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein as an attritional battle in which the Allied forces' greater manpower and industrial strength would prevail, but nonetheless had also expected it to be shorter and less costly than in fact it was. The British and commonwealth artillery was superbly handled, but their armoured tactics displayed the cavalry mentality that repeatedly cost British forces dear as they attacked in open country in mass formation with insufficient infantry and air support. British and commonwealth air support was therefore of limited use, but contrasted with that of the Luftwaffe, which offered little or no support to the German and Italian ground forces, preferring to engage in air-to-air combat.

In the end the British and commonwealth victory was all but total, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill summed up the battle on 10 November with the words 'now this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.'

From this point onward, Rommel was driven directly all the way to the Tunisian highlands, where his forces were finally supplied with more men and matériel after Hitler had learned of the 'Torch' landings on Algeria and Morocco, and the subsequent defection of the Vichy French administration of North-West Africa to the Allies. The German reinforcement of men and supplies would have been of more use had they been delivered before the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein. Nonetheless, Rommel now faced a two-front war with the British and commonwealth forces pressing him from east and a combined army of British, Free French and US forces from the west. A quick and short campaign against the Axis forces was thwarted by the mistakes of the inexperienced US forces, and this ensured that the Tunisian campaign which ended the war in North Africa would be long, hard and costly.