Third Battle of Tobruk, (20–21 June 1942)

German Ju-87 Stuka bombers flying over Tobruk, 21 June 1942.

The port of Tobruk in eastern Libya held great military significance but had also become a symbol of Allied defiance after it had withstood an eight-month Axis siege. During the 1941–1942 winter, the British commander in the Middle East, General Claude Auchinleck, had decided not to defend Tobruk in the event of another Axis advance. At the last moment, British Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill reversed this decision, and in March 1942, the 2nd South African Division took over the defense of Tobruk. The Tobruk garrison consisted of two brigades of the 2nd South African Division, the 11th Indian Brigade, the 201st Guards Brigade, and the British army’s 32nd Tank Brigade with 61 operational Valentine tanks and a few Matildas. South African Major General H. B. Klopper exercised command, but he and his men had little time to prepare for an approaching Axis assault. The defenses had deteriorated over time, and many of the mines had been removed and placed on the Gazala Line. As Major General Ettore Baldassarre’s Italian XX Motorized Corps and Major General Walther Nehring’s Afrika Korps (Africa Corps) approached, the overall Axis commander, Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel, feinted toward the Egyptian border as if in pursuit of Major General Neil N. Ritchie’s retreating British Eighth Army; then he wheeled north to the eastern end of the Tobruk defenses, which he reached on 18 June. In 1941, Rommel had attacked the western end and failed in a series of bloody assaults. This time, however, he had both momentum and surprise on his side, and he was determined not to leave an enemy’s fortified position to his rear as he advanced eastward.

The Axis attack began at dawn on 20 June 1941, led by assault engineers and supported by air attacks. The Afrika Korps had the most success, and the Italian XX Corps followed through a break in the defenses created by the Afrika Korps. A series of rapid movements within the fortress itself paralyzed the Allied response, and by the evening of 21 June, the last of the garrison had surrendered, destroying as many supplies and as much of the port facilities as possible beforehand.

The Allies had 32,220 troops captured, including virtually all of the 2nd South African Division. Axis forces also secured invaluable supplies, including nearly 2,000 tons of fuel, 5,000 tons of food, 2,000 vehicles, and large amounts of ammunition (including both German and Italian stores). This booty was of immense help to Rommel in resuming his eastward drive, although there was considerable squabbling over its distribution.

The fall of Tobruk provided a supply port for the Axis forces close to the front. Moreover, it was a tremendous psychological blow to the Allies. With this and the Axis victory at Gazala earlier in the campaign, Rommel and the Italian commander in chief in Libya, General Ettore Bastico, were promoted to field marshals. Conversely, the Allied defeat led Britain’s Middle Eastern commander, Auchinleck, to remove Ritchie from command of Eighth Army on 25 June and assume that position himself. The fall of Tobruk also led Adolf Hitler to delay an assault against Malta in favor of allowing Rommel to continue his advance eastward toward the Nile, setting the stage for the great First Battle of El Alamein.

References Greene, Jack, and Alessandro Massignani. Rommel’s North Africa Campaign. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1994. Montanari, Mario. Le operazioni in Africa Settentrionale. Vol. 3, El Alamein. Rome: Ufficio Storico, 1989.

Second Battle for Tobruk, (April 1941–January 1942)

Important land battle between the Afrika Korps (Africa Corps) and British Commonwealth forces in Tripoli, Libya, North Africa. Spearheaded by German Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel’s 5th Light Division (later reconstituted as the 21st Panzer Division), Axis forces had driven Commonwealth units back through Cyrenaica to the Egyptian border in March and April 1941. Allied losses had been heavy, but the commander in chief for the Middle East, Lieutenant General Archibald Wavell, had made the crucial decision to defend the port of Tobruk.

Initially garrisoned by the Australian 9th Division, Tobruk repulsed several Axis attacks during mid-April. Throughout the following siege, Allied naval units and aircraft provided critical supplies and reinforcements to the garrison. During the summer and fall, Germany sent in the non-motorized Afrika Infantry Division, the remainder of the 15th Panzer Division, and some miscellaneous German units. Italy supplied both regular infantry and Bersaglieri, artillery, and better armor elements, upgrading its previously poor-performing units. All this was in preparation for an Axis seizure of Tobruk, followed by an advance on Egypt.

Axis forces also established a line of interlocking fortified posts at Bardia and along the Egyptian border, built around the Savona Division. Between Tobruk and the border, Rommel, nominally under the command of the Italian governor of Libya, General Ettore Bastico, established armor units centered on the Afrika Korps. The Italian Maneuver Corps was in support; it consisted of the Ariete Armored Division and elements of the Trieste Motorized Division.

In May and June, General Wavell conducted Operations BREVITY and BATTLEAXE, respectively, in an attempt to break through the frontier line and to relieve Tobruk. Both failed, and Wavell was relieved and replaced by Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck. Under him, Lieutenant General Alan Cunningham commanded Eighth Army. Auchinleck began gathering his growing strength for Operation CRUSADER, scheduled for November, while Rommel brought in siege artillery for a final assault of the now largely British-garrisoned Tobruk.

The Allies struck the first blow, their well-camouflaged preparations being complete by 17 November. The two-pronged Allied operation consisted of a slow but steady advance along the coast road by infantry and heavy tanks, while inland, Cunningham moved with his armor units. A portion of the Ariete Division repulsed the British 22nd Armour Brigade at Bir el Gobi on 18 November, but it was not until two days later that Rommel began to react to the Allied attack.

As Rommel shifted armored forces to attack and hammer some of the Allied mobile units, the British 70th Division in Tobruk assaulted the largely Italian infantry units holding the siege lines. Rommel wanted to force the Allies back so he might make his “dash to the wire” (the barbed wire along the Egyptian border erected by the Italians in the 1930s), but his advance failed to disrupt the Allies or to capture Allied supply dumps. Believing Cunningham was moving too slowly, Auchinleck replaced him with Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie. Meanwhile, the elite 2nd New Zealand Division continued its advance to link up with the 70th Division at Tobruk.

Throughout this period, the Allied naval stranglehold in the Mediterranean kept supplies from arriving in North Africa. The dramatic destruction of the Duisburg convoy on the night of 8–9 November resulted in the temporary halt of all Axis convoys to Libya at the same time that Rommel’s battles exhausted his ammunition and tanks. He had no choice but to retreat.

As Axis forces began to pull back near Gazala, just west of Tobruk, and the Allies linked up with Tobruk, the Second Battle of Bir el Gobi occurred on 4 December. The Giovani Fascisti (Young Fascists), a two-battalion volunteer unit, held off the advance of a brigade of the 4th Indian Division. However, with this battle and one other small action, Bastico and Rommel were in agreement by the middle of the month that Axis forces had to fall back through Cyrenaica in mid-December. The retreat went well, although all of Cyrenaica was lost. Isolated Axis units along the border were forced to surrender. The first German general of the war to be captured, Major General Arthur Schmitt, and 13,800 men marched off to prisoner-of-war camps.

This action was the first major victory by the British against an army with a substantial German element. Axis forces had sustained 38,300 casualties, with almost 30,000 of them prisoners. Allied losses were only 17,700 (7,500 prisoners).

The Axis supply situation from Italy soon improved, enabling the shipment of important reinforcements to North Africa. In January 1942, an Axis counterattack went as far as Gazala, where both armies would face each other over the next several months.

References Carver, Michael. Tobruk. London: B. T. Batesford, 1964. Greene, Jack, and Alessandro Massignani. Rommel’s North Africa Campaign. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1994. Harrison, Frank. Tobruk: The Great Siege Reassessed. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1996. Montanari, Mario. Le operazioni in Africa Settentrionale. Vol. 2, Tobruk. Rome: Ufficio Storico, 1985.

First Battle for Tobruk, (6–22 January 1941)

British soldiers patrolling in tanks at Tobruk, Libya.

North African battle between Italian and British forces. The Mediterranean port of Tobruk, located in northeast Libya some 70 miles from the Egyptian border, was an important focal point in the North Africa fighting between 1941 and 1942. On 9 December, 1940, Major General Richard O’Connor’s Western Desert Force launched Operation COMPASS to drive invading Italian forces from Egypt. On 11 December at Sidi Barrani in Egypt, O’Connor’s unit soundly defeated the Italians but was unable to capitalize on this victory immediately, as one of its two divisions, the Indian 4th Division, was withdrawn for service in the Sudan several weeks before the arrival of the replacement Australian 6th Division.

Following this necessary pause, O’Connor’s forces crossed into Libya, and on 5 January 1941, they took Bardia on the coast, just across the border and east of Tobruk. On 6 January, the British 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats) and the Australian 6th Division assaulted Tobruk, completely besieging the fortress there three days later.

Italian Lieutenant General Pitassi Mannela defended Tobruk with 32,000 men, 220 guns, and 70 tanks along a defensive perimeter of some 30 miles. Following preparations, the Australian 6th Division launched an attack on the morning of 21 January. It began with the largest artillery barrage in the western desert to that point, on a front about 2,500 yards wide along the southeast portion of the Italian perimeter, and it was supported both by British naval gun fire against the town itself and by Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers. Bangalore torpedoes blasted holes in the Italian wire, and the infantry moved forward, supported by Matilda tanks. That portion of the Italian defensive line was secured, and General Mannela was taken prisoner. The remainder of the Italian garrison surrendered the next day but not before destroying some of the port facilities.

At Tobruk, for a cost of some 500 casualties, the British took 25,000 prisoners. They also captured 208 guns, 23 medium tanks, and 200 trucks. In the campaign thus far, O’Connor’s forces had taken 100,000 Italian prisoners. The British were soon able to get the port of Tobruk back into working order. Most of the city, including two water-distillation plants, was undamaged. O’Connor then continued his drive west.

References Barnett, Correlli. The Desert Generals. New York: Viking, 1961. Carver, Michael. Tobruk. London: B. T. Batesford, 1964. Heckstall-Smith, Anthony. Tobruk: The Story of a Siege. London: Anthony Blond, 1959. Long, Gavin. To Benghazi. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952. Pitt, Barrie. Crucible of War: Western Desert, 1941. New York: Paragon, 1989.

Revealed in a letter home to mum: The daring five-man SAS raid into Rommel's territory that convinced top brass that special forces could help win the war.

Military elite: SAS soldiers celebrate the end of the war with a beer.

By Emma Reynolds

One of the first recruits writes of how they blew up 40 enemy planes
He tells his mother he 'must have been born under a lucky star'

In the pitch-black Libyan desert 70 years ago this week, a former hotelier and four comrades crept through a German camp and blew up 37 enemy aircraft, cementing the status of the SAS.

Sergeant Jeff Du Vivier wrote of how 'plane after plane went up in flames' in a letter to his mother printed for the first time in historian Gavin Mortimer's new book.

The brave soldiers watched the airfield light up 'like daylight' during their daring raid, according to Sgt Du Vivier's vivid account published in The SAS in World War II: An Illustrated History.

On their way back to base, a delighted Brigadier Denys Reid apparently slapped his men on the back and declared: 'There's nothing to stop us now.'

The heroism of the five early SAS recruits helped convince the world that David Stirling's elite fighting force was an 'effective concept', Mr Mortimer claimed, according to The Times.

Sgt Du Vivier's letter, one of several new sources used by Mr Mortimer, ends: 'I don't know what star I was born under but it sure was a lucky one.'

The former soldier, who died last year leaving only one surviving original SAS member, became one of the first members of the special forces in the summer of 1941.

He was a Londoner who had joined the army after leaving his catering job in Felixstowe, Suffolk, at the outbreak of World War II.

His first desert raid that November was a disaster, with 33 out of 55 men either killed or captured. But in early December, the courageous man joined an attack on another aerodrome and helped blow up 14 planes and disable another ten.

It was soon afterwards that Sgt Du Vivier took part in the raid in Ajdabiya in Libya that he describes to his adored mother. His success marked a vital turning point, and was much celebrated by British media as it followed worrying German progress in North Africa.

He admitted to his mother, who he addressed as 'Dear Old Ma' that civilians might find it hard to believe the 'job' was done by just one officer, two sergeants and two privates.

The group were taken to within 10 miles of the airfield in the dead of night. They travelled on foot, carrying two days' worth of iron rations and water and eight time bombs apiece (known as Lewes Bombs).

The sergeant wrote that the rain and cold was a good thing for the British fivesome because 'Jerry doesn’t like fighting in bad weather'.

They snatched some rest bunched together for warmth, sipping from flasks of rum they had each brought to 'induce a little sleep'.

As day broke, they realised they were in full view of a German camp and crawled back on their stomachs to take cover behind rocks, 'which were only about a foot high but provided ample cover if we kept flat'.

During a day of observation an 'arab shepherd' passed with his sheep, but the sergeant wrote, 'luckily, probably because he didn’t recognise our uniforms and know who we were, he did not give us away'.
Under the cover of darkness, they stole 'damn quickly' through the camp to the aerodrome, where they planted 40 bombs on Italian and German fighter planes.

On finding a sentry asleep under the wing of a Savoya bomber, Sgt Du Vivier covered him with a tommy gun and a bomb was placed on a wing above his head. In a line of great pathos, the soldier tells his mother: 'He did not wake again.'

After hiding a bomb in a building filled with enemy weapons, the soldiers fled. As the planes exploded 'with a blood curdling deafening roar ... we felt the concussion press on our lungs.'
The RAF arrived in the camp illuminated by the fires, as planned, and 'heavy bombs rained down on hangars and town.'

The sergeant adds: 'The whole area was in a turmoil and alive with shouting and excited men.
'Our bombs were still going off and the burning aircraft full of ammunition sounded like a thousand machine guns going off all at the same time. Petrol tanks exploded and the flames soared hundreds of feet into the air.

'What chaos! The poor old Jerries were far too bewildered with the goings on to worry about 5 very ordinary looking men hurrying through their camp away from the scene of devastation.'
The proud young man jokes that Crystal Palace 'would look small fry compared with our exhibition'.
He was awarded a military medal for his part in the raid and served until 1945, when he was sent home after being shot.

He lived out his days working as a restaurant manager in Glasgow and was married to wife Rea for 63 years, after they met in 1940 while he was on an army training exercise. Sgt Du Vivier died last year, but his heroism now lives on in the words of author Mr Mortimer, who was a friend of the brave SAS man.

The SAS in World War II: An Illustrated History