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Aerial photograph of the port of Tobruk during the 1941 siege. The small port of Tobruk in Italian Cyrenaica had been fortified by the Italians from 1935. Behind two old outlying forts, they constructed a novel fortification, consisting of a double line of concrete-lined trenches 54 km (34 mi) long, connecting 128 weapons pits protected by concealed anti-tank ditches but the fortifications ...
Operation Agreement was a ground and amphibious operation carried out by British, Rhodesian and New Zealand forces on Axis-held Tobruk from 13 to 14 September 1942, during the Second World War. A Special Interrogation Group party, fluent in German, took part in missions behind enemy lines.
Operation Battleaxe (15–17 June 1941) was a British Army offensive during the Second World War to raise the Siege of Tobruk and re-capture eastern Cyrenaica from German and Italian forces. [ h ] It was the first time during the war that a significant German force fought on the defensive.
By late May, the Axis forces comprised 90,000 men, 560 tanks and 542 aircraft. [13] [14] On 26 May, Comando Supremo ordered Bastico and Rommel to launch the offensive, defeat the British armoured forces and capture Tobruk. [21] [page needed]
Meanwhile the rest of the battalion had defended Elvet el Tamar but were withdrawn before it was overrun. 9th Rifle Brigade moved into Tobruk as a mobile reserve in the centre of the defences, but was ordered out to the east before the Axis capture of Tobruk on 21 June. The battalion then operated in columns in the Sidi Rezegh area before ...
The British left a garrison in Tobruk, which was expected to be strong enough to hold the port while the Eighth Army regrouped and replaced its losses. [2] The British command had not prepared Tobruk for a lengthy siege and planned to return to relieve the Tobruk garrison within two months. [3] The Axis capture of Tobruk in a day came as a ...
Axis forces failed to capture Tobruk in the first rush and Rommel then had to divide the Axis forces between Tobruk and the frontier. Sonnenblume succeeded because the ability of the Germans to mount an offensive was underestimated by General Archibald Wavell, the Commander in Chief Middle East, the War Office and Winston Churchill.
The 9th Division was the fourth AIF division raised, being formed in the United Kingdom in late 1940. Initially it consisted of only two infantry brigades which had been formed in Australia and dispatched to Britain in order to defend against a possible invasion following the Fall of France—the 18th and 25th Brigades—under the command of Major General Henry Wynter.