RATS OF TOBRUK

Posts Tagged ‘ratsoftobruk’

This website was created to tell you the facts and true events that we learnt from our Grandfather about the Rats of Tobruk. These people risked their lives in the dry heat of the sandy desert, tunneling for protection from enemy bombardment. Some who came back were disturbed by their experiences. Many couldn’t talk about it and had nightmares. There were many things my Grandfather could never talk about.

This website is for the memory of our loving grandfather, which we started shortly after he left us when we were 12 and 13.

The Australians used rifles, machine guns and sub-machine guns as well as mortars, grenades and artillery in the Battle for Tobruk. They also used weapons captured from the German forces, here are some of the weapons used in the battle.

The .303 Lee Enfield rifle, introduced in 1895, was the main military service rifle of the British Empire and her Commonwealth countries for over 60 years, over this period of time it went through various upgrades and modifications. The most notable alteration being the adoption of a single size of rifle in 1903 for both the cavalry and infantry use. This model had a ten round magazine, usually filled via five or ten round charging clips. It was a single shot bolt action weapon. This rifle, known as the Short Magazine Lee Enfield, or SMLE MkIII*,was still Britain’s service rifle in 1939 and was not declared obsolete and officially replaced until 1941 with another Lee Enfield, the No 4 rifle shown in the photograph above. Both models stayed in use until the end of WWII although it was the SMLE MkIII* that was used by Australian troops at Tobruk.

The American designed and manufactured Thompson .45  (11 mm) calibre sub-machine gun, made famous by the Chicago gangsters like Al ‘Scarface’ Capone and others. It went to war in WW2 and did good work. The troops called it the Tommy Gun. It was heavy, expensive and complicated to manufacture and the 50 round drum magazine took a long time to reload.

Below are three submachine guns used by Australian forces during WW2. From top to bottom: A 9mm Owen Mark 1, a .45 Thompson and a 9mm Austen Mark 1 submachine gun.

The Germans put up propaganda trying to show that Australians are rats and theives, they also called them rats because of the way the Australians dug tunnels as bomb shelters.

The German troops of the Afrika Korps thought of the Australian soldiers as ‘rats’ because of how they fought in battle ‘like cornered rats’ and because they tunneled to provide shelter from bombardment.

Surviving examples of the propaganda used specifically in Tobruk was hard to get and is probably very rare. These are the only examples I could fine