In case of interest: https://crusaderproject.wordpress.com/2022/04/12/the-tobruk-run-loss-of-hms-auckland-24-june-1941/ All the best Andreas
Great article. Always though a newer stand alone book on the Inshore Squadron and the Tobruk Run would be excellent to see.
Thanks mate. I agree that would be good, with all the material available now it should be an interesting update. All the best Andreas
Hi Andreas, that's a superb article you've written, on par with the rest of your good work on The CRUSADER Project. Holding up my hand and admitting I know very little detail of the North African Campaign, (which is why I like your site so much), I was surprised by one line "in January 1942, the decision was made to not defend Tobruk again should a siege situation develop, and instead withdraw further east." How, then, one asks, did they manage to lose the 2nd South African Division, captured trying to defend Tobruk. I read Churchill had made the point to Roosevelt, that they would hold it again, was it on his whim that Auchinleck, who was party to the agreement in Jan 1942, not to hold the port, if it came to it, changed the plan. Do we lay the loss of the 2nd South African Div, not the port of Tobruk, at Auchinleck's door?
The loss of Tobruk is one of those things that will be debated forever I think. The decision and planning in early 1942 was quite clear. Not again. But somehow this either didn't penetrate skulls in London, or it was thought that this was such a remote issue that it didn't really matter what the plan was. In the end, in the general chaos after the cluster of fcuks that was Gazala, it came down to comms failures up and down the CoC. So it was a mix of Churchill, the Auk, Ritchie, and the South Africans who all have some measure of blame at different levels. The whole mess is well set out here: View of The greatest military reversal of South African arms: The fall of Tobruk 1942, an avoidable blunder or an inevitable disaster? At its most basic, Karma was being its usual self, and got back to the Auk for his treatment of Godwin Austen in February 1942, letting him go and keeping Ritchie in place as 8 Army GOC. That's my Buddhist take anyway. All the best Andreas
This just showed up due in August. Carlton's earlier books have been good. Hope this isn't the final cover as the aircraft look decidedly WW1. At least they got the ID number on the destroyer right. The Scrap Iron Flotilla by Mike Carlton
