Word: bengasi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1941-1941
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Naples, Brindisi and other southern Italian ports of embarkation for Africa had been mercilessly bombed. The Mediterranean Fleet had stopped about half of the supply ships headed for Tripoli and Bengasi. The R.A.F. had pasted docks and stocks in assembly ports behind the Axis lines in Libya...
...sixth and seventh days came the first bad news. The main tank battle between Sâlum and Tobruk was gradually moving west. Evidently the Germans were making a supreme effort to break out toward Bengasi through a narrow bottleneck south of Tobruk-and evidently they were having at least partial success. If they escaped, the hardest British task would still be ahead. British losses were mounting hourly; the Germans claimed a ridiculously specific 662 British tanks. The Luftwaffe was appearing in greater strength. Things were getting tough. London spokesmen began to say ominously and vaguely that the fighting...
...early Spring, General Wavell's drive across Libya had taken the British advance units just beyond: 1. Derna. 2. Tripoli. 3. Tobruch. 4. Bengasi...
...Germans were very visibly moving a force to the Egyptian border. The R.A.F. caught a huge convoy of trucks, mostly large "tankers," as it crept up from the Axis base at Bengasi, and claimed to have destroyed 30. Three days later Army patrols attacked a land convoy between Tobruch and Salûm, and destroyed twelve more. British reconnaissance noted ex tensive digging on the escarpment around Halfâya Pass, only convenient gate from Libya to Egypt; extensive aerial preparations at the airports of Dérna and Gambut...
When the British swept the Italians out of Egypt and Bengasi last winter, they achieved immediate and complete air superiority. This would be the prerequisite to a repeated success. In the first hours of fighting the rivals' claims suggested that the British had achieved the narrow edge which attackers would naturally have-but as yet nothing like decisive superiority. The British claimed one Italian and five German fighters shot down, eleven destroyed on the ground. The Axis claimed eleven British planes shot down...