Operation Crusader

Queen of the Desert: The Infantry ‘Matilda’ Tank

By Jon Diamond

The origins of the Matilda Tank or “I” Tank date back to 1934, when Maj. Gen. Percy C.S. Read more

Operation Crusader

Operation Crusader at Sidi Rezegh—Siege of Tobruk

By Thomas Haymes

By the end of the second day visibility was reduced to almost zero. Burning hulks of everything from ME-109s to M3 “Honey” tanks, Panzer IIIHs, and trucks of all descriptions littered the battleground that was once an airfield. Read more

Operation Crusader

The Siege of Tobruk: WWII’s Debacle in the Desert

by Michael D. Hull

Sidi Barrani, Bardia, Sollum, Sidi Rezegh, Mersa Matruh, Bir Hacheim, El Agheila, Beda Fomm, Sidi Omar, Benghazi … The names of many remote villages in North Africa were written into history in 1941-1942 as British and Axis armies battled back and forth across the scrubby desert wastelands of northern Egypt and Libya. Read more

Operation Crusader

Duel in the Desert: Operation Crusader’s Battle of Bardia

By Allyn Vannoy

The desert sky lit up like a summer lightning storm on the night of December 31, 1941. The distant thunder of hundreds of guns rolled across the sandy, stony ground. Read more

Operation Crusader

Operation Crusader: Erwin Rommel Learns His Lesson

By Robert Haymes

By the time of the Crusader battles in late 1941, the German panzer forces in North Africa had developed a sophisticated combined-arms doctrine. Read more

Operation Crusader

North African Campaign: WWII’s Ultimate War of Logistics

By Allyn Vannoy

Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more

Operation Crusader

Rommel’s Failed Gamble: The “Six Days’ Race”

By Arnold Blumberg

An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more

Operation Crusader

A 3.7-Inch AT Gun? A Wartime What-If…

By Jon Diamond

The often see-saw action across the North African littoral from 1940-1942 was fostered in part by both the British and Axis forces racing to innovate and implement novel tactics and upgraded weaponry. Read more

Operation Crusader

Frank Messervy: Britain’s Frontline General

By Jon Diamond

The style of leadership practiced in Britain’s Eighth Army during the early years of the Desert War left much to be desired. Read more

Operation Crusader

Sir Claude Auchinleck: The Overshadowed Equal to Erwin Rommel

By Joseph M. Horodyski

British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery has gone down in history as the victor of El Alamein and the relentless nemesis of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Nazi Germany’s famed “Desert Fox.” Read more

Operation Crusader

Magic in the Desert

By Jon Diamond

In July 1939, Archibald Wavell was named General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of Middle East Command with the rank of full general in the British Army. Read more

Operation Crusader

Erwin Rommel Frustrated By French Foreign Legion At Bir Hacheim

by Edward L. Bimberg

When Brig. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Koenig, commander of the 1st Free French Brigade, surveyed the area he had just been ordered to defend, he must have been mightily discouraged. Read more