Tobruk

Erwin Rommel’s Determined Assault on Tobruk

During the early morning hours of May 27, 1942, the men of the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade braced themselves for another mundane assignment in the broiling heat of the Libyan Desert. Read more

Tobruk

Beyond All Praise: British Defense of Crete

Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith, serving as a liaison to Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor during Operation Compass, the Western Desert campaign, traveled to General Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command headquarters in Cairo on February 12, 1941, to seek permission to advance British XIII Corps farther west to Tripoli after the total victory over the Italian Xth Army at Beda Fomm, which gave Britain and her Commonwealth Allies control of the Cyrenaican half of Libya. Read more

Tobruk

Philippe Leclerc: The French Desert Fox

On November 28, 1947, a converted North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crashed in the Algerian desert, killing all aboard. Read more

Tobruk

North African Campaign: WWII’s Ultimate War of Logistics

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

Tobruk

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

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

Tobruk

Ordeal at Outpost Snipe: Defiant Stand at El Alamein

The war in North Africa flung vast armies across the arid deserts of Libya and Egypt for two long years, beginning with the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940. Read more

Tobruk

Easter Victory at Tobruk

In April 1941, things were going quite well for the German armed forces. In a series of earlier campaigns, they had conquered Poland, the Low Countries, Norway, and France. Read more

Tobruk

Raid on Rommel

By early April 1941, Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel’s German Afrika Korps, combined with Italian units, had cleared the British from Libya except for the seaport of Tobruk. Read more

Tobruk

Operation Compass: Masterstroke in the Desert

Established in the summer of 1939, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command encompassed nine countries and parts of two continents, an area of 1,700 miles by 2,000 miles. Read more

Tobruk

Sir Claude Auchinleck: The Overshadowed Equal to Erwin Rommel

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

Tobruk

Battle at Bir el Gubi

February 1941 saw the fortunes of war favor the British in the North African wasteland of Cyrenaica (modern Libya). Read more

Tobruk

The Afrika Korps at El Alamein: Beginning of the End

Tobruk, the vital Libyan seaport on the coast of Cyrenaica, fell to General Erwin Rommel and his victorious Afrika Korps in less than 24 hours after an unexpected and devastating air, armor, and infantry attack on June 21, 1942. Read more

Tobruk

Operation Flipper: British Commandos Take on General Erwin Rommel

On the night of November 13, 1941, the British submarine Torbay, accompanied by the Talisman, broke the surface of the Mediterranean off the Cyrenaican coast of Libya and rolled violently in the running seas. Read more

Tobruk

Rommel’s Relentless Attack on the Gazala Line

By Joshua Shepherd

During the early morning hours of May 27, 1942, the men of the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade braced themselves for another mundane assignment in the broiling heat of the Libyan Desert. Read more

Tobruk

Australia’s Heroic Son

By Christopher Miskimon

John Hurst Edmondson, known to his friends as Jack, died April 14, 1941, lying on the concrete floor of a sand-swept fighting outpost in the perimeter around Tobruk, Libya. Read more