The British situation on 25 October 1942 at El Alamein

25 October 1942 was a day for tank battles. The enemy was reduced to making "probing attacks" across the front line at El Alamein. The Australian historian says that this was what Montgomery wanted to see. The British were taking losses, but were also causing enemy losses. The 1st Armoured Division took losses of 24 tanks, but claimed to have knocked out more than twice that many enemy tanks. We would presume them to be mainly German tank losses. The British armor was doing well enough to have an increasing superiority over the enemy. If the figures for the Germans are accurate, then the British were doing quite well. The numbers are from 23 October to midday on 25 October. The German 15th Armored Division went from 112 tanks on 23 October down to 37 tanks by 25 October. The other enemy armored units did not do as badly. The 21st Armored Division went from 127 tanks to 122 tanks. The Italian armored formations must not have been so heavily committed, as they had numbers similar to 21st Armored Division. All of the Italian divisions except for the Trieste, which had started with only 34 tanks and took no losses, went from 244 tanks down to 233 tanks, not so bad.

The British units had the problem that they were unable to deal with the German anti-tank defense. The British only took with them small numbers of infantry, intended only to take prisoners. They were not able to attack the anti-tank gun positions. The Australian historian notes that the 10th Armoured Division had shown that British armor could fight to an objective, but they were not able to hold the ground during daylight due to the enemy anti-tank gun positions.

The 9th Australian Division found itself being attacked by the enemy against the "bridgehead" area. Using "artillery and mortar fire", they were able to defend against the enemy infantry attacks. The 20th Brigade (Australian) were attacked by tanks "from the west". A combination of artillery fire and tank gunfire was enough to handle what they saw. Infantry anti-tank gun fire was successful in knocking out and stopping an attack. The tactics were to hold the fire until the tanks were very close and then fire on them. They stopped 17 tanks that way. the defending infantry took losses, though. In a meeting, the commanders decided not to use the New Zealand Division to make "crumbling attacks" and instead to rely on the 9th Australian Division. This is based on the account in Vol.III of the Australian Official History.