Mediterranean and North Africa · Germany and Italy vs British Commonwealth
Battle of Gazala
26 May 1942 – 21 June 1942
Rommel swept round the southern end of the Gazala line, was nearly trapped in the Cauldron, then destroyed the British armour piecemeal. Tobruk fell in a day with 33,000 prisoners, and Eighth Army retreated into Egypt.
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Day by day
— Venezia
The Gazala line is a chain of brigade boxes behind sixty kilometres of minefield, from the sea to Bir Hakeim in the open desert. At 14:00 the Italian infantry attacks it frontally to hold Eighth Army's attention; after dark Rommel takes the Afrika Korps, Ariete and Trieste south round the far end of it.
— The Cauldron
The sweep took the British armour piecemeal but left Rommel east of the minefields with his supply route round Bir Hakeim cut. Rather than retreat he turns west and clears lanes through the minefields behind him. The 150th Brigade box at Got el Ualeb, which sat astride them, is destroyed on 1 June after three days: 3,000 prisoners, and the Cauldron is open at both ends.
— Aberdeen
Ritchie attacks the Cauldron from the north and east after a barrage that falls on empty desert. The infantry go in without their armour, the 22nd Armoured Brigade is stopped by anti-tank guns on the Aslagh ridge, and a counter-attack that afternoon takes four regiments of field artillery and two brigade headquarters. Four brigades are effectively lost in a day.
— Bir Hakeim
Koenig's 3,700 Free French and Jewish Palestinian troops have held the southern box since 27 May against the 90th Light, Trieste and repeated Stuka attacks. On the night of 10 June, ordered out at last, 2,600 of them walk through the wire and the minefields to the transport waiting to the east. Rommel's flank is free and he turns north on the Knightsbridge boxes.
— Black Saturday
The two panzer divisions close on the Knightsbridge box from east and west while the British armoured brigades feed themselves into the gap between them. By evening Eighth Army has about seventy runners left out of some three hundred tanks. Knightsbridge is given up that night and the Gazala line with it.
— Tobruk
Eighth Army pulled back to the Egyptian frontier and left the 2nd South African Division to hold Tobruk, whose defences had been stripped and whose minefields had been lifted. Rommel attacked the south-eastern perimeter at 05:20 on the 20th, was inside by mid-morning and in the town by evening. Klopper surrendered at dawn on the 21st with 33,000 men and the fuel and lorries that carried the Panzerarmee into Egypt.
