was postponed; the capture of of supplies and of fuel at Tobruk enabled the to advance another by 4 July, when lack of supplies, exhaustion and the rally of the Eighth Army ended the advance. Tobruk could only take of supplies a month, was within DAF bomber range and the railway could carry only per day. Small deliveries could be made to Tobruk, Bardia and Mersa Matruh or be landed at Tripoli and Benghazi, away. Ship losses in August rose by 400 per cent and deliveries fell by half, to . Supplies were diverted back to Tripoli and the Battle of Alam Halfa consumed of fuel. A retreat from El Alamein was forbidden by Hitler and deliveries fell as far fewer ships were sent from Italy. Shipbuilding, repairs and German replacement ships, had limited the net Italian loss of merchant ships to 23 per cent since 1940. On the eve of the Second Battle of El Alamein, the railway from Tobruk flooded and of supplies were stranded, leaving the with only ten per cent of the fuel it needed. 1943 Buerat Rommel planned to defend the Gabes Gap in Tunisia east of the French pre-war Mareth line by holding the port of Buerat, while Army Group Africa ( [Colonel-General] Hans-Jürgen von Arnim), already in Tunisia, confronted the British First Army, which contained the II US Corps and French troops. The front was from Tobruk and with such supply difficulties, the Eighth Army was unable to use all its strength. Buerat was not strongly defended and despite intelligence on the state of the Axis forces, Montgomery paused until 16 January 1943, when the Eighth Army had a 4:1 superiority in infantry and a 7.5:1 superiority in tanks. Bombing began on 12 January and XXX Corps attacked on 15 January, picking its way along the coast road through minefields, demolitions and booby-traps. The 2nd New Zealand Division and the 7th Armoured Division swung inland via Tarhuna, supplied by the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) and the New Zealand Army Service Corps. The Eighth Army needed to capture the port quickly to avoid a supply shortage. Rommel withdrew from Buerat on 15 January, retreated from Tripoli on the night of 22/23 January, after destroying the port and then conducted a delaying action into Tunisia. The 7th Armoured Division entered Tripoli on 23 January; the last elements of reached the Mareth line, another west,