Word: tripoli
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...head east!" "East" meant Tunisia first, and after that a juncture with the British Eighth Army for the final mop-up somewhere in Libya of General Rommel's bedraggled Afrika Korps. Five or six fresh Italian divisions apparently are also intact and ready for battle somewhere in the Tripoli-Bengazi area. As long as the Axis was in Tunis, the way to Rommel's forces was barred...
Sweeping westward on a wide front, British tanks and infantry yesterday pushed to within 70 miles of Benghazi, main Axis north African supply port east of Tripoli, a communiquo announced. The British were believed advancing on Peughazi from the east and northeast, one column following the coastal road around the Libyan hump and the other striking directly across the desert...
...whole Axis foothold in Africa is likely to collapse. Allied troops can attack Triopoli by the easy route from Tunis. In that event Rommel, running before the British, cannot use the 600 miles of virtually waterless desert between Bengasi and Tripoli as a refuge in which to recover his strength-as he did last year...
...Temptingly before the British was the long African coast in Rommel's rear: Spanish Morocco, France's North Africa and Tunis, all of which would raise major diplomatic problems. Italy's Tripoli and Rommel's own Cyrenaica (Bengasi) could be the target of a sudden blow to cut the rear communications of the Afrika Korps...
...R.A.F. and their U.S. and Empire allies looked strongest in the air. One day they knocked off 16 Stukas, eleven Messerschmitts and a lone Italian Macchi. Another day they wrecked 50 Axis supply trucks. Every night, on Tobruk, Bengasi, even Tripoli, British and U.S. bombers staged the most massive raids the desert battleground has ever known. One flyer compared the destruction in Bengasi to that in Cologne...