Operation Brevity

At dawn on 15 May 1941 the British columns of Brigadier William Gott went into the attack on the border between Egypt and Libya. Operation Brevity was meant to be a quick, short blow against the weak Axis forces at Sollum and Fort Capuzzo, which since April had been covering the siege of Tobruk from the east. On the first day the British retook Halfaya Pass and captured Fort Capuzzo, but that same afternoon a German counter-attack threw them out of the fort. On the night of 15–16 May Gott, fearing a blow from approaching tanks, pulled his infantry back to the pass, and on the evening of 16 May the fighting died down. The operation’s only gain was Halfaya Pass – and the Germans took that back from the British eleven days later.

Dates and details

War chronologies record these events under two dates. Under 16 May they state that Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel “repulses the ‘Brevity’ counter-attack at Halfaya Pass”, and that the two sides take Fort Capuzzo and the pass in turn. The latter part is accurate; the former is not. Brevity was not a counter-attack against an advancing Rommel but a British offensive planned in advance by a side that, having beaten off the German assaults on Tobruk, wanted to exploit the enemy’s temporary weakness. It lasted two days, 15 and 16 May. Nor did it end in defeat at Halfaya Pass itself: the pass was the one place the British held on to. What was repulsed was their thrust further west, towards Fort Capuzzo and Sidi Azeiz.

Under 28 May the chronologies record that “by this day it had become clear” that the operation had failed. In reality its failure was obvious as early as 16 May, when Gott withdrew his troops. By the end of the month something else was at stake: on 26 and 27 May the German battle group of Colonel Maximilian von Herff, in an attack called Skorpion, retook Halfaya Pass, depriving the British of the last gain of Brevity. On 28 May the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Archibald Wavell, issued orders for the next, much larger offensive – Operation Battleaxe. That day may therefore be regarded as the symbolic close of the whole episode. Some studies combine Brevity with the German counter-offensive and date it 15–27 May; the British official history and most authors confine the operation itself to 15–16 May.

Background: the front at Sollum

At the end of April the Afrika Korps took Halfaya Pass, thereby concluding its first offensive. Rommel’s main forces, however, stood not on the frontier but more than 120 kilometres further west, before Tobruk, whose Australian and British garrison had been beating off one assault after another since 10 April. The last of them, against the western sector of the perimeter at the hill of Ras el Medauar, broke down at the beginning of May. Generalleutnant Friedrich Paulus, sent from Berlin, then forbade Rommel to make further attacks on the fortress and instructed him above all to hold Cyrenaica. The front at Sollum was at this time a chain of outposts: according to Rommel, even by mid-May work on fortifying neither the pass nor the passage at Sollum had properly begun.

Wavell judged that the enemy was exhausted by the fighting at Tobruk and short of supplies, which had to make a detour round the fortress through the desert. He wanted to take advantage of this before the Germans recovered. A larger operation was on the horizon: in April Winston Churchill had forced through the dispatch across the Mediterranean of the Tiger convoy, carrying tanks and fighters for the army in Egypt, and on 1 May Wavell issued preliminary directives for an offensive to relieve Tobruk. Without waiting for the convoy, however, he decided to strike a quick blow in the Sollum area with the forces he had to hand. The headquarters of the Western Desert Force under Lieutenant General Noel Beresford-Peirse handed all the available armour to Gott, who had been commanding the frontier covering force since April. His orders were to drive the enemy out of Sollum and Capuzzo, inflict the heaviest possible losses on him and, if successful, push on towards Tobruk – but only as far as supplies allowed and without risking his own force.

The British had little. According to the British official history, prepared by a team under Major General Ian Playfair, Gott had 29 cruiser tanks of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, only two squadrons strong, and 24 heavily armoured Matilda infantry tanks from two squadrons of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment. The main infantry force was the 22nd Guards Brigade, which, as the official history notes, had to borrow lorries from the 4th Indian Division to be able to move at all. Intelligence estimated that the Germans had between 30 and 50 tanks on the frontier; apart from Sollum, Halfaya and Capuzzo, however, it was not known exactly where the enemy stood. The air force, commanded in the desert by Air Commodore Raymond Collishaw, was not so much to support the tanks on the battlefield as to attack supply columns in the enemy’s rear.

On the Axis side the frontier was held by Colonel von Herff’s battle group, made up of German units of the 15th Panzer Division and Italian ones. It had a tank battalion of the 5th Panzer Regiment, an Italian battalion of the Trento motorised division and support units. Halfaya Pass was defended by two companies of Bersaglieri of the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment with anti-tank guns. The Germans expected an attack: according to the Afrika Korps war diary, a British weather report was intercepted on 9 May, and such reports had always preceded major British attacks. Rommel strengthened the eastern part of the ring round Tobruk in case the garrison tried to break out to meet a relief force.

The first day: Halfaya and Capuzzo (15 May)

Gott attacked in three parallel columns. On the left flank, in the open desert, the so-called 7th Armoured Brigade Group – the cruiser tanks of the 2nd Royal Tanks, three small mobile columns of the 7th Armoured Division’s Support Group and the armoured cars of the 11th Hussars – was to cover some 50 kilometres from Bir el Khireigat to Sidi Azeiz and destroy any enemy forces it met. In the centre, on the plateau above the escarpment, the 22nd Guards Brigade Group with the Matildas was to clear the top of Halfaya Pass, take Fort Capuzzo and press on northwards. On the coast, a coastal column consisting mainly of the 2nd Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, and the 8th Field Regiment was to pin down the Sollum garrison and then take the bottom of the pass, the barracks and the village.

The attack began at about 6 a.m. on 15 May, covered from the air by a patrol of Hurricane fighters of No. 274 Squadron RAF. At the top of Halfaya Pass the guardsmen of the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards, and a squadron of Matildas ran into fierce resistance from the Bersaglieri of Colonel Ugo Montemurro. The Italian 47 mm anti-tank guns could not penetrate the Matildas’ armour, so the gunners fired at close range at the tracks and running gear of the tanks as they tilted over low stone walls and boulders. In this way they immobilised seven of them before the position fell. Rommel, who had so far thought little of his Italian allies, afterwards recommended Montemurro for the Iron Cross First Class, and the platoon commander killed in this fight, Lieutenant Giacinto Cova, was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, Italy’s highest gallantry award.

The guardsmen pressed on. At about 8 a.m. a large German-Italian camp surrendered to them, and by 10.15 a.m. they had taken Bir Wair and Musaid. The 1st Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry, with the second squadron of Matildas, headed for Fort Capuzzo. At the fort several dozen German tanks lay in wait, concealed behind a ridge, together with anti-tank guns. Contact between tanks and infantry broke down and the leading company advanced on the fort without armoured support, but at around noon, after sharp fighting, Capuzzo was in British hands. It cost more Matildas, though: according to the official history, nine infantry tanks had by then been immobilised or damaged, and any further advance northwards was out of the question. In the afternoon a company of Scots Guards approached the barracks at Sollum, where a few Universal Carriers under Sergeant F. Riley twice charged German and Italian machine-gun and anti-tank positions and took their crews prisoner.

On the coast the coastal column, which had no tanks and was supported only by eight Blenheim bombers of No. 14 Squadron, was unable all day to drive the Italians from the bottom of the pass. It succeeded only in the evening, when a company of the Rifle Brigade, supported by Australian anti-tank gunners fighting as infantry, took the Italian positions and some 120–130 prisoners. On the desert flank the 7th Armoured Brigade pushed back light German covering forces, fought several skirmishes with German tanks and reached the area of Sidi Azeiz.

The German counter-attack and Gott’s withdrawal (15–16 May)

The attack, though expected, surprised the Axis command by its strength – or rather by its imagined strength. Soon after noon German reports began to speak of more than a hundred British tanks, and Rommel’s staff called on the German and Italian air forces for help. It was believed that a major operation to relieve Tobruk was beginning. Rommel sent to the frontier a battalion of the 8th Panzer Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Hans Cramer and a battery of 88 mm anti-aircraft guns, followed the next day by further reinforcements.

Herff, who was already preparing to give up the frontier, first struck with what he had. At about 1.30 p.m. a battalion of the 5th Panzer Regiment overran a company of the Durham Light Infantry holding the landing ground north of the fort, and the remaining companies, with no weapons capable of stopping tanks, had to fall back towards Musaid with heavy losses. Before 3 p.m. the Germans reported that they had retaken Capuzzo and captured about 70 prisoners. The fort had thus changed hands twice within a few hours. In the evening Herff grew anxious again: the Germans took a patrol of British cruiser tanks near Sidi Azeiz for Matildas and for the herald of a thrust northwards that could cut off their forces at Bardia and Sollum. Herff believed he faced two divisions and decided to fight a delaying action the next day. Rommel, however, judged the British strength more accurately and ordered him to counter-attack as early as possible, promising him a tank battalion by dawn.

On the British side the anxiety was just as great. Gott realised that the guardsmen on the open plateau would be defenceless if German tanks fell on them. At 9 p.m. he reported to Western Desert Force headquarters that in that event he recommended a withdrawal to Halfaya Pass. The message was long in transit, and Beresford-Peirse replied only at 2.45 a.m., advising him to hold on until the first air reports came in. Gott did not wait: shortly before 2 a.m. he ordered the 22nd Guards Brigade to withdraw and the 7th Armoured Brigade to remain as a covering force in the Sidi Azeiz area. By the morning of 16 May the guardsmen were back on the pass.

The German reinforcements reached Sidi Azeiz at about 3 a.m., but promptly ran out of fuel and could not move off until the afternoon. Herff set out from Capuzzo in the early afternoon. The British cruiser tanks, plagued by numerous breakdowns, delayed his advance until dusk and then withdrew to Bir el Khireigat, from which they had set out two days earlier. The Germans halted on the line Sidi Omar–Sidi Suleiman–Sollum and were ordered to go over to the defensive. That was the end of Brevity.

Losses and assessment

According to the British official history, Operation Brevity ended in failure, its only gain being Halfaya Pass. The heaviest price was paid by the 1st Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry: the official history gives more than 160 killed, wounded and missing, later compilations 196. Five Matildas were destroyed and thirteen damaged. The desert air force lost six aircraft in the fighting. According to German documents cited by the official history, the Germans lost 12 killed, 61 wounded and 185 missing, together with three tanks. The losses of the Italians, who bore the brunt of the fighting on the pass, are estimated by the historians Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani at 395 men, of whom, according to Allied sources, 347 were taken prisoner.

Churchill, who had been waiting impatiently for news from the desert, received the first reports with enthusiasm. In a telegram to Wavell he wrote that the army had taken the offensive without waiting for the tanks of the Tiger convoy, had advanced 30 miles, taken Halfaya and Sollum and captured 500 German prisoners, and that such a result was well worth the losses. This picture was greatly exaggerated, and the telegram ended with a question that showed what the Prime Minister was really interested in: when would the “Tiger cubs” – the new tanks – go into action? The Tiger convoy had reached Alexandria on 12 May, bringing, according to the official history, 82 cruiser tanks, 135 infantry tanks and 21 light tanks, with which the 7th Armoured Division could be rebuilt. Wavell knew, however, that no larger offensive was possible until the division was ready.

The causes of the failure were apparent even then. Gott had too few tanks and too little infantry to hold the ground he had taken in the open desert. The Matildas, impervious to the Italian 47 mm guns, proved slow and prone to damage, and co-operation between tanks and infantry was poor. British reports took hours to get through, whereas the Germans, using radio intercepts and captured documents, quickly grasped the situation and moved reinforcements up from Tobruk. The Tobruk garrison played no significant part in the operation. The American armour historian Thomas Jentz believes that had even a feint attack been made from the fortress, the Germans might have been unable to move reinforcements to the frontier, and that the determined action of the British cruiser tanks on the evening of 15 May had already convinced the German commanders that the battle was lost. After the battle, indeed, several officers of the 5th Panzer Regiment, including its commander, were relieved for failing to engage.

Operation Skorpion (26–27 May)

After Brevity Gott was ordered to hold Halfaya Pass and to operate as far west as possible, so that the coming offensive could start from favourable positions and make use of the coast road. The pass was held by the 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, under Lieutenant Colonel John Moubray, with a few Matildas and field, anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery, while the columns of the 7th Armoured Division’s Support Group operated on the southern flank. The Germans, meanwhile, now had three tank battalions on the frontier, about 160 machines, but for lack of fuel could not use them over any great distance.

Rommel understood how valuable the pass was: whoever held it had a relatively secure supply route during any offensive in the area. On 26 May Herff launched the undertaking called Skorpion. According to the British official history, it was originally intended merely to induce the British to abandon the plateau by a show of strength, but it developed into a serious attack by greatly superior forces. On the evening of 26 May the battle groups assembled on the coast below the pass, while a tank battalion manoeuvred west of Capuzzo to simulate an outflanking move from the desert. At dawn on 27 May the infantry attacked the top and bottom of the pass, and German tanks appeared on the edge of the escarpment and fired on the coastal plain. The guardsmen defended themselves well, but they were in danger of being surrounded. In the morning Gott authorised a withdrawal, and Moubray managed to extricate the battalion, although some of the men at the bottom of the pass were taken prisoner. The British lost 173 men, four field guns, eight anti-tank guns and five Matildas, and Halfaya Pass returned to Axis hands. Gott’s columns fell back to the line Buq Buq–Sofafi.

Place in the war

Brevity was the first British attempt to push Rommel back from the Egyptian frontier and break through to besieged Tobruk – and the first in a series of lessons that the Afrika Korps taught the British in mobile warfare in the desert. Its most lasting consequence turned out to be Skorpion: having regained the pass, the Germans fortified it thoroughly, digging in 88 mm anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank guns, mining the floor of the pass and building several strongpoints on the frontier prepared for all-round defence. On 28 May Wavell issued orders for Operation Battleaxe, in which the new tanks of the Tiger convoy were to defeat the enemy on the frontier and then relieve Tobruk.

Battleaxe began on 15 June, and it was at Halfaya Pass that it suffered its first reverse: according to the official history, of the twelve tanks attacking the top of the pass the Germans destroyed eleven. From then on British soldiers called it “Hellfire Pass”. After three days the operation ended in defeat, and Churchill replaced Wavell with General Claude Auchinleck. Tobruk had to wait for relief until November and Operation Crusader, and the German-Italian garrison of Halfaya, cut off after Rommel’s retreat, capitulated only in January 1942. Gott, who in May 1941 had commanded the first offensive against the Afrika Korps, later rose rapidly and in August 1942 was to take command of the Eighth Army, but he was killed when the Germans shot down his aircraft. Command then passed to General Bernard Montgomery.