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April 11th, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM: Coventry has again been the target for the Luftwaffe. 230 aircraft dropped 330 tons of bombs, but the fires started by the incendiaries did not get out of control, thanks to prompt action by fire-watchers and the Auxiliary Fire Service. A hospital was hit repeatedly by HE over several hours. The staff struggling to save 160 patients by moving them to the basement as ward after ward was hit. At one point oxygen cylinders were used to provide air in the packed conditions. Several doctors and nurses were killed. Bath is also bombed.
RAF Bomber Command: 2 Group: 105 Squadron makes a nuisance raid on Brest.
FRANCE: VICHY FRANCE: Under American pressure Darlan agrees not to move the battleship ‘Dunkerque’ from Oran to dry dock in Toulon lest it should fall into German hands.
GERMANY: Colditz: A French officer, Lieutenant Alain le Ray, is the first PoW to escape from the castle now serving as a prison camp.
BALKANS: General Ambrosio and the Italian 2nd Army advances from Trieste toward Ljubljana. Other Italian units advance south down the Dalmatian coast.
It is announced that the Germans have captured Monastir and its Pass.
GREECE: Florina gap: The Germans attack near Vevi and Kelli in front of Amynteion, with tanks supported by infantry. It is beaten off with considerable enemy casualties.
LIBYA: The Germans cut the Tobruk-Bardia road putting Tobruk in a state of siege.
Australian Infantry and British Artillery prove too strong.
The Australian 9th Division withdraw into Tobruk.
The American United Press News Agency reported (on the 17th):
The Germans launched their first infantry attack on the outer defensive perimeter at Tobruk this afternoon under cover of a sandstorm; but the attack was repulsed by the British with heavy losses to the Germans. The storm had reached such a pitch of violence that it was hard to see farther than one yard. But at 5:00 P.M. the storm suddenly abated and approximately 800 German infantrymen sprang into view, dismounting from about 30 trucks and heading in tight formation toward the outer defensive perimeter. The British then attacked the trucks that had brought the infantry and the accompanying tanks.
U.S.A.: With the destruction of all Italian war vessels in the Red Sea, Roosevelt declares the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are no longer “combat zones” and therefore open to American shipping.
The President also cables Churchill to tell him that he proposes to extend the US Security Zone to 26 degrees west. He asks for details of British convoys to be relayed to the US Navy so that patrol units may meet them. In return the Americans will pass on intelligence of U-boats operating within the Security Zone.
US President Roosevelt issues an executive order creating the Office of Price Administration. Leon Henderson is appointed Director with the charge of controlling prices and profits while balancing civilian and defence needs. Later in the war, Director Henderson will ride a bicycle to his office as a way of promoting petrol rationing.
Most Americans complied with the OPA but the agency could not quell the spread of black markets for certain items, including meat, petrol and cigarettes.
The BuAer issues a requirement for a bomber capable of carrying a 5-ton bomb-load for 5,000 miles and return. This leads to the Northrop B-35 and the Convair B-36. (Marc James Small)
ATLANTIC: Destroyer USS Niblack (DD-424), while rescuing survivors of a Dutch freighter torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-52 the day before after the dispersal of convoy OB 306, depth charges what is believed to be a German U-boat off Iceland. The German Navy investigates and concludes that none of their submarines are in the vicinity at the time of Niblack’s attack. The U.S. Navy’s conclusion is that Niblack has depth-charged a false contact. (Jack McKillop)
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Day 589 April 11, 1941 (Good Friday)
Libya. Rommel’s forces arrive at Tobruk in greater strength and cut the coast road East to Bardia at 1 PM, isolating the Allied garrison. All day, German tanks & armoured cars probe the perimeter in several places hoping to exploit gaps but British & Australians have been strengthening the defenses since occupying the town in January. All the German thrust are repelled. British (1st Royal Tank Regiment) and German tanks exchange fire at long range. Luftwaffe bombs Tobruk harbour damaging British steamer Draco.
Balkans. German troops continue moving South from the Monastir Gap into Northern Greece, capturing the town of Vevi. In the evening, British and ANZAC forces have their first engagement with German troops in Greece, when a combined force of 2 Australian battalions and British 1st Armoured Brigade stops Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment at Klidi Pass, just South of Vevi.
At 9 PM, U-124 sinks Greek SS Aegeon carrying 7151 tons of grain from Argentina to Britain (4 dead and 27 survivors) 200 miles Southwest of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Overnight, ‘Good Friday Raid’ on Bristol. 153 German bombers drop high explosives and incendiary canisters, damaging the docks and causing large fires in the city centre and some suburbs. St Philip’s Bridge, carrying power for the tram network, is destroyed. Trams will never run in Bristol again.
For Rommel, Tobruk proved an objective too far. Morshead had around 25,000 troops under command, half of them Australian. 1RTR, with 27 assorted cruiser and light tanks, had arrived from Egypt just before Tobruk was besieged, and various other tanks were found and repaired to make up another squadron. After a week a squadron of 7 RTR arrived by sea making up a unit of 14 Matilda tanks when those already at Tobruk were included. There were also the surviving KDG armored cars. Artillery was better provided for with four field regiments with 72 25pdrs in all, and further batteries had I8 pdr and 60 pdr guns.
The town and seaport of Tobruk lay at the foot of a low natural escarpment emanating from the eastern foothills of the Gebel Akhbar. The Italians had built an anti-tank ditch all round the landward perimeter up on the escarpment, reinforced with barbed wire and minefields. Concrete emplacements had been built in a double row inside the perimeter with others sited at the heads of the many wadis worn into the escarpment. Priority had been given to repairing the perimeter defenses so that by April 11 the perimeter was reasonably complete and fully covered by infantry.
The perimeter was a considerable 45km (30 miles) in length and the garrison troops were fully stretched guarding it. As there was only a limited number of anti-tank guns available-all 2pdrs of limited value-there was a great dependency on the 25 pdrs to hold off enemy tanks. The plan was to hold them well back, so that if any German armor broke through It could be engaged over open sights.
Rommel sent Ponath’s 8th Machine Gun Battalion on along the coast road from Derna towards Tobruk, but for two days (9 and 10 April) they were forced to fight for every inch of the way against a determined Australian rearguard backed up by KDG’s armored cars. Rommel had the idea of shelling the Tobruk port area from the west if he could find a high enough gun position. He asked Generalmajor Kirchheim, who had been shepherding along the units from the Italian Brescia Division, to go forward to find a suitable position. While doing so, his car was strafed by an RAF fighter coming in over the coast and Kirchheim was wounded.
As it happened the newly arrived commander of 15th Panzer Division Generalmajor Heinrich von Prittwitz und Gaffron, had arrived on the scene to see the battlefront while he awaited the arrival of his division. Rommel asked him to take Kirchheim’s place. Von Prittwitz did so, but his car was completely destroyed when he was ambushed, Just 6km (less than four miles) from Tobruk by the Australian rearguard who was using a captured Italian 47mm anti-tank gun. Von Prittwitz died in this attack and 15th Panzer Division had lost its commander even before the main units had arrived in North Africa.
The next day, 11 April, the German attack began. The 3rd Recce Battalion was detached and sent down the coast road east to the border to seize the remainder of Cyrenaica. With them went reinforcements in the shape of three motorcycle companies from 15th Panzer Division’s real’ battalion, This had been the first 15th Panzer unit to arrive and had been sent immediately on the long haul from Tripoli up to the front.
21st Panzer Division-Rommel's Afrika Korps Spearhead -Chris Ellis