commander by the XIII Corps commander, Lieutenant-General William Gott and as C-in-C Middle East Command by General Sir Harold Alexander. Gott was killed when his aircraft was shot down and Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was appointed as his replacement. In 2017, James Holland wrote, Casualties The Eighth Army lost wounded or captured, including taken at Tobruk The Germans suffered , about 15 per cent of their force. Italian casualties were 3,000 men, 125 tanks, 44 armoured cars, 450 motor vehicles, 39 guns and seventy-four anti-tank guns. On 30 June, the Afrika Korps reported that Axis tank losses were that only tanks were operational, the Italian XX Corps was down to fifteen tanks and the 90th Light Division had only left. The Eighth Army lost thousands of tons of supplies, nearly of artillery ammunition, nearly rounds of small-arms ammunition and a huge number of tanks. Hundreds of damaged tanks had been left behind when armoured regiments retreated and it was estimated that there were casualties in 17 days. On 22 June, the Desert Air Force had aircraft, them in the Middle East, the Germans the Italians another reserve and the Mediterranean excluding Italy. The Royal Army Ordnance Corps recovered up to 19 June, repaired sent to Egypt US-made tanks). The Eighth Army was reduced to about tanks by the end of the battle and shuffling operational tanks and crews between units disrupted unit organisation. Seven field artillery regiments, and two tank repair workshops (which had been moved into Tobruk) were lost. By 1 July, the Eighth Army was back at El Alamein, with tanks, from workshops and waiting to be repaired. Subsequent operations began an advance upon Egypt, while the Eighth Army fell back to El Alamein. Auchinleck decided not to hold Mersa Matruh, choosing to fight a delaying action with X and XIII Corps. The was delayed at the Battle of Mersa Matruh but signal failures led to disorganisation and the X Corps line of retreat along the coast road being cut off. The corps broke out at night to the south and worked its way around the German positions, collided with Axis forces several times and lost more than forty tanks and a large quantity of supplies. Auchinleck had ordered the bulk of the Eighth Army to retire another to El Alamein, from Alexandria. The retirements brought the Eighth Army closer to its base and the Qattara Depression to the