Tanks in the Australian Army forces during the World War II. Meanwhile, the Australian Tank Corps was superseded following the formation of the Australian Armoured Corps in July 1941. In October 1941 two independent light tank squadrons had been formed for service in Malaya; however, neither was deployed due to a lack of vehicles to equip them. In North Africa in 1941, Australian troops were part of the force which captured Tobruk on 22 January as part of Operation Compass, yielding over 25,000 prisoners along with 236 field and medium guns, 23 medium tanks and more than 200 other vehicles. During the capture of the
Italians in the United Kingdom transported to camps across the country. In one of these transportations a tragedy occurred: the sinking of the ocean liner on 2 July 1940 resulted in the loss of over 700 lives, including 446 British-Italians being deported as undesirable. Italians comprised almost half of the ship's 1564 passengers; the rest were British soldiers, German POWs and Jewish refugees. Sailing for Canada from Liverpool, the unescorted "Arandora Star" was torpedoed by the and sank within 30 minutes. One historian describes it as the "most tragic event in the history of the [British] Italian community... no other Italian community in the world