page_title: Action at Bir el Gubi (November 1941)
section_title: Casualties and losses
hierarchical_section_title: Action at Bir el Gubi (November 1941) / Aftermath / Casualties and losses
caption_attribution_description: English: A British Crusader tank abandoned at Bir el Gubi in the winter of 1941.
context_page_description: The First Battle of Bir el Gubi took place on 19 November 1941 near Bir el Gubi, Libya. It was one of the opening engagements of Operation Crusader and the first tank battle in North Africa where Italian armoured forces achieved a success, after their previous poor performance during Operation Compass.
context_section_description: On the Italian side, 132nd Tank Regiment lost 34 tanks (29 M13/40s and five light tanks) and 132 men (5 officers and 11 men were killed, 5 officers and 45 men were wounded, and one officer and 65 men were missing), while the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment suffered 9 killed, 18 wounded and 17 missing and the 132nd Artillery Regiment had six wounded and lost one gun and three vehicles.
  British tank losses are somewhat debated; 2nd Royal Gloucestershire Hussars lost 30 tanks and 50 men (11 killed, 19 wounded and 20 missing), 4rd County of London Yeomanry lost eight tanks and 26 men (4 killed and 22 missing) and 3rd County of London Yeomanry reported the loss of four tanks, six men killed and an unspecified number of wounded. Nearly all of the British missing were taken prisoner. Some sources, however, claim that whereas British war diaries revealed accurate losses for 2nd Royal Gloucestershire Hussars and 4rd County of London Yeomanry, the losses reportedly suffered by 3rd County of London Yeomanry were incomplete, as they were all related to one single squadron, while the war diaries contain no information about the other squadrons for several days. Correlli Barnett, in his book The Desert Generals, stated that British tank losses at Bir el Gubi amounted to 52 tanks.
caption: A British Crusader tank abandoned at Bir el Gubi in the winter of 1941.
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2016:10:01 20:01:15", "Image ExifOffset": "2294", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4592", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9266", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:10:01 19:58:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:10:01 19:58:00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "97", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "97", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2128", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1535", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}