Memoir '44: Mediterranean Theater

Operation Crusader, the third and ultimately successful British attempt to try and break Rommel's stranglehold on Tobruk, began in a horrendous rainstorm on November 18, 1941. While one British corps was taking up position near Halfaya Pass, the…

2 miles inland, on the Egyptian-Libyan border, Halfaya Pass carves a natural route through the 600 foot high escarpment that extends southeast toward Sollum. In World War II, whoever controlled the pass held the main westward access into Libya and …

Building up their forces through the now opened supply lines, Rommel's Afrikakorps eventually broke out of the cauldron, seizing Bir Hakeim but only capturing about 500 wounded Frenchmen . On June 13 "Black Sunday", 21st Panzer shreds the 22nd…

Despite their success against the British 7th Armoured, the Panzer divisions had lost their momentum. Rommel's Afrikakorps was now trapped in a region known as "the Cauldron;" with Bir Hakeim to the south and Tobruk to the north still firmly …

By late morning, his left flank overrun by the coordinated mass of German Panzers, General Neil Ritchie, commander of the Eighth Army, ordered two armored brigades of Norrie's 1st Armoured Division south to the rescue. Moving in column, the 22nd …

The same day as the battle at Bir Hakeim, further on the right, 15th Panzer engaged the rest of the 7th Armoured Division. After sweeping over the 7th Motorized Brigade, the Panzers ran into heavy Resistance from the Grants of …

Following on the success of Operation Crusader, the British Eighth Army had driven Rommel's forces out of Cyrenaica before over-stretching its own supply lines again. Eighth Army had then settled along the "Gazala line" in the desert, west of Tobruk,…

Having extricated himself from a very precarious position at Sidi Rezegh airfield, Rommel looked for ways to press his advantage. He sent his Afrikakorps toward Sidi Omar, in the hope of re-establishing himself on the border and turning his victory …