12/26/2023 0 Comments Ww2 tank battles north africaThis caught Rommel off guard as he had concentrated his forces for his own offensive in the south. Both now took time over the next few days to reorganise and lick their wounds.īefore dawn on 10 July the 9th Division launched an attack on the northern flank and succeeded in taking the important high ground around Tel el Eisa. Both sides by now critically weakened and disorganised, missed opportunities for decisive victories. In these first days of July, the fate of the whole campaign hung in the balance. The Allies however had regrouped sufficiently to repulse the attack and make some counterattacks of their own. Rommel, wanting to maintain the pressure made another thrust on 1 July, hoping to dislodge Eighth Army from the Alamein position and open the way to Cairo and Suez. Here, the battlefield narrowed between the coast and the impassable Qattara Depression. The Allies pinned all their hopes on their new defensive position near the tiny railway stop of El Alamein. By the end of June, Rommel had forced the Allies back deep into Egypt, and the capture of Cairo and the Suez Canal seemed a very real possibility. This army was mostly comprised of British, Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Indian troops. Opposing him was the British Eighth Army commanded by General Claude Auchinleck. The Axis forces comprised German and Italian troops and were known as Panzerarmee Afrika, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, “The Desert Fox”. The struggle for North Africa saw the pendulum swing sharply in favour of the Axis from January 1942. The Australian 9th Division, led by Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, played a key role in two of these battles, enhancing its reputation earned defending Tobruk during 1941. Three major battles occurred around El Alamein between July and November 1942, and were the turning point of the war in North Africa.
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