artillery and tanks of the 1st Armored Division then entered the battle, destroying some enemy tanks and forcing the remainder into what appeared to be a headlong retreat. The 21st Panzer Division met French troops at Faïd, and, despite excellent use of the French 75 mm (2.95 in) guns, which caused heavy casualties among the German infantry, the defenders were easily forced back. a line of antiquated French blockhouses, which in no way measured up to the standards required by modern warfare.Įlements of the 5th Panzer Army, headed by General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, reached the Allied positions on the eastern foot of the Atlas Mountains on January 30. The Mareth Line, which the French had built to protect against an Italian attack from Libya, was Rommel had anticipated this, switching his line of supply to Tunis with the goal of blocking the southern approach to Tunisia from Tripoli at Gabès.
On January 23, 1943, the Allied Eighth Army took Tripoli, Erwin Rommel's main supply base. The Allies reduced the flow of Axis troops and equipment into Tunis and Bizerta, but a sizable Axis force was already ashore. The Allied build-up continued, more aircraft became available and new airfields in eastern Algeria and Tunisia were built. Because of the poor road and rail communications, only a small, division-sized Allied force could be supplied, and, due to the excellent defensive terrain, small numbers of German and Italian troops were sufficient to defeat the attempt. The Run for Tunis in November and December 1942 is the term for an attempt to reach Tunis before German and Italian reinforcements could arrive.
Sketch map of Tunisia during the 1942–43 campaign This short passage made it very difficult for Allied naval vessels to intercept Axis transports, and air interdiction proved equally difficult, because the nearest Allied airbase to Tunisia, at Malta, was over 200 mi (320 km) distant. In response, German and Italian troops were ferried in from Sicily to occupy Tunisia, one of the few easily defended areas of North Africa and only one night's sail from bases in Sicily. This came only days after the breakthrough of the British Eighth Army ( Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery) following the Second Battle of El Alamein. and British forces landed at several points along the coast of French Morocco and Algeria on November 8, 1942, during Operation Torch. Army instituted sweeping changes of unit organization and replaced commanders and some types of equipment. II Corps, with British reinforcements, rallied and held the exits through mountain passes in western Tunisia, defeating the Axis offensive. troops time to get up to speed with the realities of war against the experienced and well-equipped Germans.Īfter the early defeat, elements of the U.S. This result confirmed a prediction of Winston Churchill, who had strongly advocated that the invasion of France as laid out in the proposed 1942 plan Operation Roundup be delayed until the Allies could support such an ambitious undertaking, which would give the U.S. Numerically superior but inexperienced and poorly led American troops suffered many casualties and were quickly pushed back over 50 miles (80 km) from their positions west of Faïd Pass. The battle was the first major engagement between U.S. II Corps ( Major General Lloyd Fredendall), the British 6th Armoured Division ( Major-General Charles Keightley) and other parts of the First Army ( Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson). The Axis forces, led by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, were primarily from the Afrika Korps Assault Group, the Italian Centauro Armored Division and two Panzer divisions detached from the 5th Panzer Army, while the Allied forces consisted of the U.S.
#INDX OF RENEE PASSNOW KEY SERIES#
The Battle of Kasserine Pass was a series of battles of the Tunisia Campaign of World War II that took place in February 1943 at Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide (3.2 km) gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains in west central Tunisia.
0 kommentar(er)
