Operation Compass: Britain Destroys Italian Tenth Army
Operation Compass (December 1940 - February 1941) was the first British offensive of the Second World War and one of its most decisive early engagements. General Wavell's Western Desert Force - just 36,000 men under Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor - attacked an Italian army of 150,000 and annihilated it. In ten weeks the British advanced 800 km across Libya, capturing Tobruk in January 1941 and finally cutting off the retreating Italians at Beda Fomm, taking 130,000 prisoners, 400 tanks and 1,290 guns for the loss of 500 killed and 1,373 wounded. The operation proved that Italian forces in North Africa were no match for well-led British Commonwealth troops. Churchill, fearing Mussolini's collapse, halted Compass to divert forces to Greece - a fateful decision that allowed Hitler to dispatch Rommel's Afrika Korps, transforming a nearly completed conquest into two more years of desert warfare.
- Year: 1940 CE
- Category: Military
