Tag Archives: O’Connor

This week in the War, 31 March–6 April 1941: The Afrika Korps is on the move

Posted on April 3, 2013 by secondbysecond

On 31 March 1941, Erwin Rommel’s Italian and German forces attacked the British at Mersa El Brega. The Afrika Korps was on the move. In his book Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, David Fraser tells the … Continue reading →

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This week in the War, 17–23 February 1941: British monitor HMS Terror is fatally damaged off the coast of Libya

Posted on February 20, 2013 by secondbysecond

Monitors were the Royal Navy’s ugly ducklings. Slow, ungainly, and strange to behold. The calibre of their armament matched that of a battleship—i.e. 15 inch guns—but they possessed only two such guns, mounted in a single turret. A casual observer … Continue reading →

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This week in the War, 10–16 February 1941: Erwin Rommel arrives in North Africa

Posted on February 11, 2013 by secondbysecond

This week in the war, 11 February 1941, the British War Cabinet made its fateful decision to send an expeditionary force to Greece, where a German invasion was expected by March. Thus O’Connor lost the resources and the window of … Continue reading →

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This week in the War, 20–26 January 1941: Tobruk

Posted on January 25, 2013 by secondbysecond

Forces under British general Richard O’Connor—and the Australian 6th Division, in particular—were racing westward along the coast of Libya. This week in the war, on 22 January 1941, they captured Tobruk—one of the most heavily fortified towns in Italy’s colonial … Continue reading →

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This week in the War, 9–15 December 1940: “I purred like six cats.”

Posted on December 12, 2012 by secondbysecond

“I purred like six cats,” Churchill writes in his autobiographical The Second World War. He was describing his reaction to General Wavell’s plans for a North African offensive. Archibald Wavell was C-in-C for the Middle East and then some—from Iraq … Continue reading →

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