Battle of Tobruk (1941)
| Operation Compass | |||||||||
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| Part of the Western Desert Campaign of World War II | |||||||||
 British Vickers light tanks on desert patrol 2 August 1940 |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Australia Free France
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 Italy
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Archibald Wavell Henry Maitland Wilson Richard O'Connor Iven Mackay |
Rodolfo Graziani Giuseppe Tellera † Pietro Maletti † Annibale Bergonzoli (POW) |
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 36,000 soldiers 120 guns 275 tanks 142 aircraft |
150,000 soldiers 1,600 guns 600 tankettes and tanks 331 aircraft |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 500 killed 1,373 wounded 55 missing 26 aircraft |
5,500+ killed 10,000 wounded 133,298 captured 420 tanks 845 guns 564 aircraft (incl. reinforcements) |
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Operation Compass was the first large Allied military operation of the Western Desert Campaign (1940–1943) during World War II. British and other Commonwealth forces attacked Italian forces in western Egypt and Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya, from December 1940 to February 1941, with great success. The Western Desert Force (Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor) with about 30,000 men, advanced from Mersa Matruh in Egypt on a five-day raid against the Italian positions of the 10th Army (Marshal Rodolfo Graziani), which had about 150,000 men in fortified posts around Sidi Barrani and in Cyrenaica.
The 10th Army was swiftly defeated and the British prolonged the operation, to pursue the remnants of the 10th Army to Beda Fomm and El Agheila on the Gulf of Sirte. The British took 138,000 Italian and Libyan prisoners, hundreds of tanks and over 1,000 guns and aircraft for a loss of 1,900 men killed and wounded, about 10 percent of their infantry. The British were unable to continue beyond El Agheila, due to broken down and worn out vehicles and the diversion, beginning in March 1941, of the best-equipped units to the Greek Campaign in Operation Lustre.
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