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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.
By 7 January the bulk of the British forces had arrived and cut off Tobruk. [4] The 19th Australian Brigade group placed itself opposite the eastern defences of Tobruk and the 16th Australian Brigade group took over on the western side. The 4th Armoured Brigade moved to the west of the city, the 7th Support Group blocked the western exits and ...
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.
The Rats of Tobruk were soldiers of the Australian-led Allied garrison, as well as the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade that held the Libyan port of Tobruk against the Afrika Corps, during the Siege of Tobruk in World War II. The siege started on 11 April 1941 and was relieved on 10 December. [1]
At dawn on 21 January, Australian infantry broke into Tobruk and made a path for 18 British I tanks. The Australians pressed on and captured half of the Tobruk defences by nightfall. The Australians took 25,000 prisoners, 208 guns and 87 tanks, for a loss of 355 Australian and 45 British troops. [ 34 ]
The 2/13th Battalion was an infantry battalion of the Australian Army, which served during World War II.Formed in April 1940 from volunteers drawn primarily from New South Wales, as part of the 20th Brigade of the 7th Division, the battalion served in North Africa in 1941–1942, after being reassigned to the 9th Division.
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 replica memorial is based on the 1941 memorial in the Tobruk War Cemetery, built by Australian soldiers [3] during the siege, which has since been destroyed. . Incorporated into the memorial is the original inscription stone, the only surviving relic of that memorial, and at one time a front step of the Tobruk