HEROIC DEFENCE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 139, 14 May 1941, Page 8

HEROIC DEFENCE

FIRM GRIP AT TOBRUK. TANK-HUNTING TACTICS. (United Press Association—-Copyright) (Rec. 12.55 p.m.) LONDON. May. 13. A month after the Germans’ first big attack on Tobruk they aro still outside the defences, which are now vastly superior to those which at first confronted the Germans, says an Australian war correspondent in the fortress. The German tactics of a tank advance being followed by the infantry failed at Tobruk. Always within the defences he met devastating artillery fire and tank resistance; always on the barbed-wire defence system his following infantry were slaughtered before they could consolidate gaps made by llie tanks. Tobruk can no longer be described as a thorn in the enemy’s side—it is a solid obstacle that stands between him and the Suez Canal.

A British United Press correspondent at Tobruk, telling of the deeds of the Australian defenders of the fortress, says that the Queenslanders have devised their own method of dealing with light Italian tanks. They creep up behind them, climb on top, open the turret lid, drop in a Mills bomb and then sit on the lid for five seconds to prevent the occupants escaping. The Queenslanders have destroyed three tanks in this way and three more with “.Molotov cocktails.”

German planes directly hit a hospital ship at Tobruk, but GOO wounded men were transferred to an Australian destroyer.