Tobruk is a 1967 American drama war film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Rock Hudson and George Peppard. The film was written by Leo Gordon (who also acted in the film) and released through Universal Pictures.
Set in North Africa during the North African Campaign of World War II. It is a fictionalized story of members of the British Army's Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the Special Identification Group (SIG) that endeavour to destroy the fuel bunkers of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's Panzer Army Africa in Tobruk. The film is loosely based on the British attacks on Italian and German forces at Tobruk codenamed "Operation Agreement". The film depicts the operation as being successful, although actually Operation Agreement was a disastrous failure.
Plot
In September 1942, Rommel's Africa Korps is only 90 miles (144 km) from the Suez Canal, but running dangerously low on fuel. The British approve a plan to destroy German fuel bunkers at Tobruk in an attempt to cripple Rommel's attack.
The author of the plan, Canadian-born Major Donald Craig (Rock Hudson) of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) had been captured by Vichy French forces and is held prisoner, along with captured Italian Army soldiers, on a ship in the port of the French city of Algiers. As his expertise is considered essential to the success of the raid, Craig is rescued by Captain Kurt Bergman (George Peppard) of the Special Identification Group (SIG) and some of his men, German Jews serving with the British. They then join up with commandos of the Long Range Desert Group, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Harker (Nigel Green), at Kufra in southeastern Libya.
Colonel Harker explains they have eight days to get to Tobruk and destroy the fuel depot and German fortress artillery pieces protecting the harbour, before a scheduled amphibious landing and a bombing raid on the city by the Royal Air Force (RAF). They are to drive there through enemy territory posing as prisoners of war escorted by the SIG pretending to be guards. Once they reach Tobruk they would then link up with a full British naval and RAF assault on the city and their primary objective, Rommel's underground fuel bunkers.
Craig is highly skeptical of the operation, claiming that "Staff has a genius for sitting on its brains and coming up with perfect hindsight", stating that "When I submitted the plan we could have blown up the fuel bunkers with a handful of men. How in hell are we supposed to get through their defenses now?" While warning Craig not to let personal differences of opinion interfere with the operation, Colonel Harker also reveals that he was the genius with perfect hindsight who convinced Staff to approve Craig's original plan which would now be "maximum effort, land, sea and air".
On the way, they encounter a patrol of Italian tanks, which stops a short distance from where they are resting in a gully. Later that night, Sergeant Major Jack Tyne (Jack Watson) spots a tank column approaching from the opposite direction. After Bergman and three of his men kill the Italian sentries, Colonel Harker, surmising that the approaching column "must be German -- the Italians are too fond of comfort to travel this late", tricks the two units into attacking each other by firing mortars, first at the Germans and then the Italians, enabling the raiders to sneak away.
To avoid detection the next day, Craig safely guides them through a German mine field, before they are attacked by a British Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter. They manage to shoot it down, but eight men are killed and one troop transport truck, their auxiliary fuel supply, and both of their radios are destroyed. The fighting attracts Tuareg tribesmen, who are friendly with the Germans. Craig, who speaks their language, exchanges some guns and ammunition for two prisoners.
The prisoners turn out to be British traitors Henry Portman (Liam Redmond), who has an Irish accent, and his daughter Cheryl (Heidy Hunt), who were shot down while flying from Benghazi to Cairo. They have papers signed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Mohammad Amin al-Husayni) and German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring: an agreement for "a group of important" Egyptian army officers to rise up against the British in a "holy war." The belief of the Germans is with Egypt conquered other Muslim, former Ottoman Empire states such as Turkey will then side with the Axis; Cheryl Portman states that the "Turks, alone, could put four million men into the war against the Soviet Union."