 Far from the Eighth Army capturing airfields to the west in the Cyrenaican bulge, it had been defeated at Gazala while Operation Julius was on and lost the landing grounds to the east.The disaster at Gazala had led to the military forces on Malta trying to save Egypt rather than vice versa.MW11 had been a "disappointing operation" and turned back because the British and US air attacks on the Italian battlefleet had failed to inflict the damage hoped.