Middle East, 1900–present All events

Category: War, from Wikidata’s class “military operation”

Operation Skorpion

27 May 1941 · Egypt

Part of: Western Desert campaign

Wikidata classes on our event-class list: military operation (all its classes: Wikidata item)

Read on Wikipedia

Operation Skorpion (Unternehmen Skorpion) from 26 to 27 May 1941, was a military operation during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The operation was conducted by Axis forces under the command of Colonel Maximilian von Herff and resisted by British forces under Lieutenant-General William "Strafer" Gott. A counter-attack was made on British positions at Halfaya Pass in north-western Egypt, which had been captured during Operation Brevity (15–16 May). Unternehmen Skorpion was the second offensive operation commanded by Rommel in Africa (apart from the Siege of Tobruk).

Skorpion pushed the British out of Halfaya Pass and forced them to retire to the area from Buq Buq to Sofafi. The Germans and Italians fortified the pass and built other strong points back towards Sidi Azeiz as tank killing zones, ready to meet another British attack. The British continued with preparations for Operation Battleaxe (15–17 June) but it was another costly British failure that led to the sacking of General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East and other senior officers.

Text retrieved 2026-09-26 from Wikipedia.

Cite this

The link is the Wikipedia revision of August 22, 2026 (revision 1370699589), whose lead is exactly the text shown here.

APA 7

Operation Skorpion. (2026, August 22). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operation_Skorpion&oldid=1370699589

MLA 9

“Operation Skorpion.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Aug. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operation_Skorpion&oldid=1370699589.

Chicago (note)

Wikipedia, “Operation Skorpion,” last modified August 22, 2026, 16:20 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operation_Skorpion&oldid=1370699589.

Chicago (shortened note)

Wikipedia, “Operation Skorpion.”

Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.

This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/operation-skorpion

If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/

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Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article Operation Skorpion. Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0). “Part of” is Wikidata’s statement, in its labels (CC0).