Facing counterattacks and airstrikes, they withdrew from the Kasserine Pass by 24 February. The Axis force was overextended and pinned down by the Allied artillery. After the initial defeat, Allied reinforcements with strong artillery support stopped the Axis advance, and recaptured the mountain passes in western Tunisia, defeating the Axis offensive. British units were also driven back, losing all their tanks in the process. The initial handful of American battalions were inexperienced and poorly led they suffered many casualties and were successively pushed back over 50 miles (80 km) from their original positions west of Faïd Pass, until they met an advancing brigade of the US 1st Armoured Division.

The battle was the first major engagement between U.S. II Corps ( Major General Lloyd Fredendall), the British 6th Armoured Division ( Major-General Charles Keightley) and other parts of the First Army ( Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson). The Axis forces, led by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, were primarily from the Afrika Korps Assault Group, the Italian Centauro Armored Division and two Panzer divisions detached from the 5th Panzer Army, while the Allied forces were from the U.S. It was a part of the Tunisian campaign of World War II. The Battle of Kasserine Pass took place from 18-24 February 1943 at Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide (3.2 km) gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains in west central Tunisia.

Wwii - tank battles