Battle of Sidi Barrani
1940 CE.
Shown on the map at 31.611°, 25.926°.
The Battle of Sidi Barrani (10–11 December 1940) was the opening battle of Operation Compass, the first big British attack of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. Sidi Barrani, on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, had been occupied by the Italian 10th Army, during the Italian invasion of Egypt (9–16 September 1940) and was attacked by British, Commonwealth and imperial troops, who re-captured the port. While retreating from Sidi Barrani and Buq Buq, the 10th Army divisions crowded on the coast road and were easy targets for HMS Terror and two gunboats, that bombarded the Sollum area all day and for most of the night of 11 December. By late on 12 December, the only Italian positions left in Egypt were at the approaches to Sollum and the vicinity of Sidi Omar. The British took 38,300 prisoners for a loss of 624 men and continued the five-day raid on Italian positions in Egypt, eventually capturing Cyrenaica and most of the 10th Army between Sollum and at the Battle of Beda Fomm, south of the port of Benghazi.
Text from the Wikipedia article Battle of Sidi Barrani, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.