![]() ![]() ![]() The battle was the largest tank offensive conducted by Allied forces in either World War I or World War II until the second Battle of El Alamein in late October 1942. Operation Crusader was the first step in a set of three operations expected to lead to the clearing of the North African coast from Axis forces and subsequently allow an invasion of Sicily in 1942. Operation Crusader was the first army-level offensive undertaken by the Allied forces in World War II, lasting from 17 November 1941 to 15 January 1942.355 The aim of Operation Crusader was to trigger a large-scale tank battle with Axis tank forces outside the besieged desert port of Tobruk in Libya, to destroy the Axis armoured forces, and to pave the way to lift the siege of Tobruk, which had been conducted by the Axis forces since April 1941. The operation ended with an almost complete defeat of the Axis troops, the lifting of the seven-month siege of Tobruk and the retreat of the surviving Axis forces to a position on the border of the colonial provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, in central Libya. Seen through this lens, Operation Crusader was simply the Army and the Royal Air Force component of a multi-service theatre-level offensive conducted by Allied forces. Operation Crusader took place in the wide context of an integrated, multi-service theatre-level offensive operation in the Western Desert and the Mediterranean from October 1941 through to January 1942.
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