1942 — The Fall of Tobruk

On November 13, 1942, the British Eighth Army's 7th Armoured Division — the Desert Rats — rolled into the Libyan port of Tobruk without firing a single shot. Days earlier, the Allies had broken Rommel's Panzer Army at the Second Battle of El Alamein, and now they reclaimed the besieged port that had fallen to the Axis that June. A place that had cost so much to hold, and then to lose, changed hands this time in silence.

Within days, supply ships were unloading the fuel and ammunition that would power the chase across Libya. Tobruk's quiet return thus became fuel, in every sense, for an advance still gathering speed.