The Desert War
Three years of advance and retreat across two thousand kilometres of Libya and Egypt — a war of machines, fought in a landscape with nowhere to hide.
The desert was the purest armoured battlefield of the war: no rivers, few towns, and supply lines that decided battles before they began. From Operation Compass in December 1940 to the Axis surrender in Tunisia in May 1943, the campaign swung back and forth along the North African coast — Tobruk, Gazala, El Alamein.
It was also a proving ground. British infantry tanks met German anti-tank screens; American armour reached the front through Lend-Lease months before American soldiers did; and above it all, four air forces fought for the sky and for the convoys that fed the armies. The machines of that war, from both sides, are collected below.
