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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 ...
The siege of Tobruk (/ t ə ˈ b r ʊ k, t oʊ-/) took place between 10 April and 27 November 1941, during the Western Desert campaign (1940–1943) of the Second World War.An Allied force, consisting mostly of the 9th Australian Division, commanded by Lieutenant-General Leslie Morshead, was besieged in the North African port of Tobruk by German and Italian forces.
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.
21 June: Axis capture of Tobruk; 28 June: Mersa Matruh, Egypt, falls to the Axis; 29 June: U.S. reports from Egypt of British military operations stop using the compromised "Black Code" which the Axis were reading; 30 June: Axis forces reach El Alamein and attack the Allied defences, the First Battle of El Alamein begins
Between Gazala and Timimi, just west of Tobruk, the Eighth Army was able to concentrate its forces sufficiently to turn and fight. By 4 February, the Axis advance had been halted and the front line stabilised from Gazala on the coast 30 mi (48 km) west of Tobruk, to an old Ottoman fortress at Bir Hakeim 50 mi (80 km) inland to the south.
Tobruk was the site of an ancient Greek colony and, later, of a Roman fortress guarding the frontier of Cyrenaica. [4] Over the centuries, Tobruk also served as a waystation along the coastal caravan route. [4] By 1911, Tobruk had become an Italian military post.
The British held the fortified port of Tobruk, which was besieged by the Axis. Having been informed by General Wavell that the Western Desert Force was vastly inferior to the Axis forces now in Africa, Churchill ordered that a convoy of tanks and Hawker Hurricanes , Operation Tiger (Convoy WS 58), be sailed through the Mediterranean instead of ...
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.