Siege of Tobruk - End of The Siege

End of The Siege

On 15 June, Wavell had launched Operation Battleaxe, a land offensive intended to relieve Tobruk. This opened with an attack on the Axis frontier postions. After capturing the frontier, the brigades of the 7th Armoured Division were intended to reform and continue on north to relieve Tobruk. Once joined by the Tobruk garrison, the combined forces would then press the offensive westwards, driving the Germans as far back as they could be pushed. However stubborn resistance, and an Axis counter-attack, thwarted these intentions, and the Tobruk garrison had no chance to sortie out.

The failure of Battleaxe led to the replacement of Wavell as C-in-C Middle East Command by General Claude Auchinleck. The Western Desert Force was reinforced and reorganised to form a two-corps army designated 8th Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Alan Cunningham.

Auchinleck launched a major offensive, Operation Crusader, on 18 November 1941. This opened with a outflanking movement that brought Eighth Army to within 30 miles of the Tobruk perimeter. It was planned that 70th Division would break out from Tobruk on 21 December and cut the German lines of communication to the troops on the border to the southeast. At the same time 7th Armoured would advance from Sidi Rezegh to link with them and roll up the Axis positions around Tobruk. Meanwhile, XIII Corps' New Zealand Division would take advantage of the receding threat from 21st and 15th Panzer and advance to the Sidi Azeiz area, overlooking the Axis defences at Bardia.

The strength of 70th Division's attack surprised their opponents, Rommel having underestimated the garrison's size and particularly its armoured strength. Fighting was intense as the three pronged attack, consisting of the 2nd King's Own on the right flank, the 2nd Battalion, Black Watch as the central force and the 2nd Queen's Own on the left flank, advanced to capture a series of prepared strongpoints leading to Ed Duda. By mid afternoon they had advanced some 3.5 miles (5.6 km) towards Ed Duda on the main supply road when they paused as it became clear that 7th Armoured would not link up. The central attack by the Black Watch involved a murderous charge under heavy machine gun fire, attacking and taking various strongpoints, until they reached the strongpoint code named Tiger. The Black Watch lost an estimated 200 men and their commanding officer. On 22 November General Scobie ordered the position to be consolidated and the corridor widened in the hope that Eighth Army would link up. The 2nd York and Lancaster Regiment, with tank support, took strongpoint Tiger leaving a 7000 yard gap between the corridor and Ed Duda. On 26 November Scobie ordered a successful attack on the Ed Duda ridge and in the early morning hours of 27 November the Tobruk garrison had linked up with a small force of New Zealanders.

A German account of the action of the 70th Division is given by Generalmajor Alfred Toppe of the German Wehrmacht:

A strong attack supported by fifty infantry tanks, was made from the southeast section of the fortress of Tobruk. The enemy broke through the encirclement front, penetrated across the main highway and destroyed a good part of the Bologna Division. A counterattack by elements of 21st Panzer Division succeeded in restoring the situation.

In summing up the experience of the 2nd Battalion the Black Watch in the attack, the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War wrote that "The superlative élan of the Black Watch in the attack had been equalled by the remarkable persistence of the defence in the face of formidable tank-and-infantry pressure."

7th Armoured had planned its attack northward to Tobruk to start at 08.30 on 21 November. However, at 07.45 patrols reported the arrival from the southeast of a mass of enemy armour, some 200 tanks in all. 7th Armoured Brigade, together with a battery of field artillery turned to meet this threat, and wthout armoured support the northward attack by the Support Group failed and by the end of the day, 7th Armoured Brigade lost all but 28 of its 160 tanks.

Meanwhile, on 22 November the Italian forces had succeeded in repulsing a strong thrust from Tobruk aimed at penetrating into the area of Sidi Rezegh, as a German narrative recorded:

After a sudden artillery concentration the garrison of Fortress Tobruk, supported by sixty tanks, made an attack on the direction of Bel Hamid at noon, intending at long last unite with the main offence group. The Italian siege front around the fortress tried to offer a defence in the confusion but was forced to relinquish numerous strong points in the encirclement front about Bir Bu Assaten to superior enemy forces. The Italian "Pavia" Division was committed for a counterattack and managed to seal off the enemy breakthrough.

On 23 November Rommel and the Afrika Korps mounted an attack towards the Egyptian order, the so-called “Dash to the Wire”. The intent was to scatter and destroy XXX Corps, but this was not achieved, while the action gave Eighth Army a chance to regroup and re-arm. It become increasingly pressing for Afrika Korps to return to the Tobruk front where the 70th and New Zealand Divisions had gained the initiative but Rommel was still determined to resolve the fighting on the border, and by 27 November they had done so.

At midday on 27 November 15th Panzer reached Bir el Chleta and came into head-on contact with the reorganised 22nd Armoured Brigade (now a composite regiment of under 50 tanks). who were joined later by 4th Armoured Brigade. However as night fell the British tanks disengaged, and once again the New Zealand Division, engaged in heavy fighting on the southeast end of the tenuous corridor into Tobruk, was under direct threat from the Afrika Korps.

On 4 December Rommel launched a renewed attack on Ed Duda which was repulsed by 70th Division's 14th Infantry Brigade. When it was clear that the attack would fail Rommel resolved to withdraw from the eastern perimeter of Tobruk to allow him to concentrate his strength against the growing threat from XXX Corps to the south.

On 7 December 4 Armoured Brigade engaged 15th Panzer disabling 11 more of its dwindling tank supply. Rommel had been told on 5 December by the Italian Comando Supremo that supply could not improve until the end of the month when the airborne supply from Sicily would start. Realising that success was now unlikely at Bir el Gubi he decided to narrow his front and shorten his lines of communication by abandoning the Tobruk front and withdrawing to the positions at Gazala. This led to the complete relief of Tobruk and the occupation of the whole of Cyrenaica by the end of the year.