Australian Army Museum of Western Australia > Records

World War 2, Middle East Libya Halfaya Pass, 1941

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1941

Overview

Group of soldiers riding on tank in Halfaya Pass

Historical information

Halfaya Pass (known colloquially as Hellfire Pass) is located in Egypt, near the border with Libya. A 180 metre high escarpment extends south eastwards from the Egyptian-Libyan border at the coast with the scarp slope facing into Egypt. Halfaya Pass is about 3.2 km inland from the Mediterranean and provides a natural route through.
The escarpment is known as Akabah el-Kebir or"great ascent" and also as "graded ascent", whence the modern name of the gulf and the town of Salum. In antiquity it was known as Catabathmus Magnus. It was considered as marking the boundary between Africa and Asia in Hellenistic geography
In World War Two, the engineered route up the escarpment had been destroyed and the pass had great strategic importance. The only ways westwards into Libya were to assault the pass or to out-flank it to the south.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skorpion

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-P1987.142.1p

Item type

Photographs

Themes

War and Conflict
War and Conflict > World War 2

Year

1941

Geotag

31.503134009569, 25.184309323241

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