Alamein '42 Designer Notes

39 Pages·2010·0.89 MB·English

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Alamein 42 Designer Notes
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Table of Contents
I. Designer Comments
Why El Alamein
The Map Challenge
The Order-of-Battle
Tanks by Type
OOB Organization & Command
Air, AAA and AT Guns
Explicit Supply
Interesting Units Components
Minefields
II. The History
Events leading up to Alamein ‘42
Events covered in Alamein ‘42
III. The Scenarios
Scenario Introduction
Scenario List
Scenario Overviews
IV. Bibliography
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I. Designer Comments
Why El Alamein?
Some 35 years ago, I discovered wargames and my very first board game was the old
Avalon Hill boardgame called Africa Korps! So the Desert War has always held a special place
in my heart. A long time passed before my partner, Dave "Blackie" Blackburn and I, teamed
up with John Tiller to help make computer wargames, and it was Blackie who first suggested
that we look at the desert for a Panzer Campaign. After all, he and I had previously
researched a game idea for another company in this theatre, one that never came to be, but
we had much of this material at hand, including a set of 1:100,000 scale maps which provided
fairly detailed topographical data.
We learned shortly after, however, that Wig Graves was already well on the way with a
Tobruk '41 Panzer Campaign and, as there were only a few games in the series at that time,
we thought the one desert title was perhaps enough. So the idea for the Panzer Campaign El
Alamein game went on to the back burner.
During this "back burner" period a number of new games were created and, with that, a
number of interesting enhancements were made in the game engine, including Explicit Supply
and Strategy|Operations. Also during this time, we designers learned new ways to take set
piece battles, battles such as Kursk '43 and Rzhev '42, where huge amounts of men, tanks,
and guns were amassed along heavily fortified lines, and make a very interesting gaming
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situation.
And so it is in Alamein '42, we felt we could offer a whole host of interesting options for
battles which included fluid, running gun fights like those near Gazala in May '42, the pursuit
across the desert leading to the early struggle for Alamein in July, as well as the traditional
Second Alamein battle where Monty broke the Africa Korps' back. Furthermore, we had some
neat ideas to involve Malta in an interesting standalone scenario and as a hypothetical "What
If" in the main campaign.
During this time a number of new books covering Alamein were published and these really
began to rekindle our awareness of this game idea. One book, by Jon Latimer, contained a
detailed framework of the Order-of-battle (OOB) of both the sides involved. Stephen
Bungray's "Alamein" was also published at this time, as well as the story of some of the
fighting men told in the book "End of the Beginning" by Tim Clayton and Phil Craig. And there
was Bireman and Smiths' new book, which is in my opinion, misnamed "The Battle of
Alamein". I say this book is misnamed because it chronicles much of the fighting in the period
covered by our game, not just the critical Alamein portion. The arrival of Montgomery is in
Part 4, and Second Alamein in Part 5, so it really encompasses a summary of the desert
war.
All these new books got us thinking again, surely we could make a fascinating Panzer
Campaign from this critical turning point in the desert, where the Western Allies turned the tide
with Germany at an obscure RR stop named El Alamein.
The Map Challenge!
As with any game, before any scenarios can be built you first need two critical pieces - the
Map and the OOB. Both of these presented their own special challenge.
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To properly cover the fighting in the Western Desert in 1942 we created a map that now
stands as the largest of any Panzer Campaign. It is huge! Fortunately, for the Gazala battles,
we were able to use some of Tobruk '41 game map created by Wig Grave's, with many
thanks to Wig. But we still had a huge area to cover. As previously mentioned, we had quite a
lot of coverage from photocopied 100,000 maps, from a previous project, which helped
tremendously. It is desert terrain, which is more simplistic to make than other maps in the
series, but we used all sources that we could to try to accurately portray the area. Now some
of the references did not always agree, trails are often difficult to find on any two sources that
matched. We also went on an exhausting search to find just where the railroad ran, as it had
been extended by 1942 and almost reached Tobruk. Where sources didn't match, we applied
our best "guesstimates" based on a consensus from all the sources. But of these instances,
few were critical to game play. Suffice it to say, we did not have a map that showed every
patch of broken, or rough ground, so some latitude was used here.
When we first started it was suggested that we make it all the way back to El Agheila, but this
really was impractical because of the distances involved, however, there is still lots of map for
players to use for their own scenarios. Another important point is the use of an "inset" map
for the Malta Operation. We quickly discounted putting in Malta as a separate file, because we
wanted it for a Strategy | Operation in the game, and it wasn't practical to place it correctly on
the map as it is some 960 km ENE of Tobruk and that is a lot of flat blue sea to cover.
We would also like to thank Jason Petho for dusting off some of his unfinished work on Malta.
Jason has been working on "A Battle Atlas: Operazione C3", which is as yet unpublished, but
should be available in 2004-05 as his time allows for working on it. As you will see in the
scenarios, we included Malta as a rather interesting twist on the main campaign as well as an
interesting "What If" standalone scenario.
In the end we were pleased with the results of our map. We elected to make areas on the
south of the map as "impassable", to show the Qattara Depression and areas which were not
useful for the game. The look and feel of the map is a good representation of the area where
the battle took place.
The Order-of-Battle
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The second challenge that we had to overcome was the designing an Order of Battle that
covered the time period we wanted to cover in the game. It seemed simple enough at the
outset. As previously indicated, we started with Latimer's OOB for 2nd Alamein and it provided
detail down to the regiment, and battalion, which included attachments at the Corps and Army
level. This was very good information to work from.
However, we quickly discovered that there were more units involved in the earlier fighting that
were not included in the detail. What was more confusing was that divisions in the early
fighting were made of different brigades, depending on the time period. The 5th Indian
Division was a very good example of this. Also, at times, some brigades were detached and
functioned as parts of different divisions. A prime example of this is the British 44th Infantry
Division, a unit that made a poor showing as a division at Alam Halfa in August and was split
up, with each brigade serving as the infantry component for an armored division in Second
Alamein.
In the end, we settled on one single Order-of-Battle file, with a section covering the early
battles, (including Gazala up to First Alamein), and a second complete repeat of the OOB for
the Second Alamein battle. In this second part there are some different divisions, different
organizational structure for some units as well as newer tanks are available to both sides.
There is a third component to the OOB and this is the part for the "Invade Malta" option. For
the British this is a completely separate organization so that the Allied aircraft from the Desert
Air Force, based in Egypt cannot fly air support missions in Malta as it is obviously way too far
away. However, Axis aircraft can reach Malta easily by redeploying to air bases in Sicily and
Tunisia.
But it was not just the unit organization that was scrambled from time period to time period.
This period in the desert saw a great transition in the tanks. For example, "the Queens Bay,
2nd Dragoons Guards", were equipped with 2 squadrons of Crusaders and one of Grants, in
the Early Battles, but by second Alamein, this unit was made up of one squadron of
Crusaders, and two of Shermans. So you see, not only the tank type changed, but also the
number of light vs. battle tanks squadrons, that made up the Armored Division organization,
had changed as well. These issues will be discussed in a later section entitled "Tanks by
Type."
The Italians were another story altogether. You can easily find out which divisions were
present and how the Corps were structured. With a little digging you could even find out which
regiments made up which division. But how were these regiments structured? How many
tanks and armored cars were present at each critical phase of the battle? Finding detailed
information in English books for the Italians is spotty at best. So for this we turned to Franco
Agostini, an Italian gentleman who we owe our thanks. Franco came through on the numbers
and provided valuable research and input on the Italian part of the OOB. I met Franco on a
forum when he was taking me to task for issues he felt needed reviewing in the Sicily '43
game. He struck me as a man who knew what he was talking about.
Below are some sample excerpts of information Franco provided. On Armored Cars he wrote:
I rewrite all situations
20/5/42 39 efficient 1 at repair
30/5/42 23 efficient 15 at repair
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5/8/42 12 efficient 4 at repair (in 5 days)
27/09/42 25 efficient and 22 at repair (but it is all AB at repair not only from III Nizza, there
are 1 other cavalry unit and 1 bersaglieri unit on AB)
Of the Ariete he said:
20/5/42
132° fanteria carrista (Ariete) 107 M13/40, 63 M14/41 efficient; 16 and 7 at repair
132° artiglieria(ariete) 17 75/18 (semoventi) efficient, 3 at repair
So you can see how valuable his contribution was to the project. Franco was always
concerned that his English was difficult to understand, and at times it was tricky to follow, but
there are two things I can say for sure on this point. One, is that his English is far better than
my Italian, and secondly, the Italian portion of the OOB is far better that we could have done
without his insight. For this Franco we thank you.
Tanks by Type
Of all the Panzer Campaign Order-of-Battles I've had a hand helping to make, never before
has the type, and number of tanks by type, been so important. This fact is likely not one that
will be missed by many people. Also there are so many books available, even the dozen or
more I relied on as primary reference, were enough to overwhelm you with details.
Unfortunately some of this detail just didn't always add up.
For example, for the opening battle at Gazala, Delaney says in his book, "Fighting the Desert
Fox", that there were 843 British tanks, a quarter of which were Grants. On the other hand,
Mitcham in his book, "Rommel's Greatest Victory", provides a table showing British 850 tanks,
which is close enough for an operational games purposes and so, given mechanical
breakdowns, is essentially a match with Delaney's 843. But Mitcham puts the total number of
Grants at 167, which is slightly less than a fifth. This is a pretty significant difference, as an
additional 45 Grants is more than twice the total number of German Pz-IIIj's that both
sources say the other side had. With only 19 Pz-IIIj's, and less than 40 Pz IV in service at
this time, according to both Delaney and Mitcham, you can see where 45 more of the best
British tanks will be a factor!
So which source do you believe? And when you decide what information to use and which
pieces to disregard, how do you determine which unit gets what type of tanks? This too varies
depending upon the date.
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At this point you have to dig a little deeper. We used whatever we could find on the overall
organization and cross-reference information in the various books, by looking up the reference
to each regiment listed in the index, and then reading each in turn for clues, or mention, of
the type of tanks being used. In researching the battles, Latimer and Perrett indicated, that
by the time of Alamein, the British tank brigades were built around two battle tank regiments
and one light tank regiment. A regiment is made up of three squadrons, each of which
consists of roughly 17 tanks, so there are between 50 and 60 tanks in a regiment. In the
earlier battles, such as those depicted in the scenarios around the Gazala Line, the
organization was the other way around, with two light and one medium regiment. Meanwhile,
the Army tank brigades were made up of infantry tanks that were mainly Matilda and
Valentine tanks.
At this point, the similarities begin to break down. Mitcham says regiments of the 4th Armored
Brigade were made up of one Grant and two Crusader squadrons, while he says the units of
the 2nd and 22nd Armored Brigades were made up of two Grant and one Stuart squadrons.
But it can't be this way for a couple reasons. First of all if there were two Grant squadrons in
the 2nd and 22nd, with one squadron of the 4th Brigade also being Grants, that would be 15
squadrons of Grants, or roughly 255 Grant tanks. But remember, from the information
above, that there were likely 67 Grants available. At 14 Grant tanks per 15 squadrons, there
would still be too many Grants and not enough other squadrons available to make up the
totals of the other tank types to arrive at the grand total of 850 total tanks, given a fixed
number of regiments and squadrons.
Mitcham, in his chart on tanks by type, shows 277 infantry tanks and quotes another source
that says these were made up with 110 Matildas and 167 Valentines. These 277 Infantry
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tanks equipped the five regiments of the Army tank brigades. But in the text Mitcham says
that three of these regiments are Matilda's and the other two are Valentine's. However, using
three squadrons of 17 tanks per regiment, clearly it must be two regiments of Matilda's and
three of Valentine's for the math to work out.
The net result of all this is was an unending task of shuffling tanks by type around to various
squadrons, all the while keeping the tanks type totals constant. Thus, during the early days of
making the game, while I was in bed reading Clayton and Craig's (2002), "End of the
Beginning", and came across a reference such as " …22nd Brigade had driven right onto one
of the best executed tank traps of the desert war. As Grants and Crusaders burst into flames
…" I would stop reading, get out of bed, return to my computer to make the appropriate
change in the Order of Battle in the interest of keeping the game as historically correct as
possible.
However, while it is important, in Strawson (1967), that we can read that, "A Sqdn of the 8th
Hussar's was made up of Honey's, while B and C Sqdn were Grants", in the big picture, the
game will yield the most historical results as long as the accurate tanks total by type as
documented by authors, such as Delaney (1998) and Mitcham (2001), is respected in the
Game Order of Battle.
I'd be remiss at this point if I didn't single out the early assistance of Rick Bancroft in this
"tank tally" period. I plugged numbers and tank types from various sources into the game
OOB file, Rick knocked together a great working spreadsheet and populated it with the OOB
data, so we could see how the detailed changes we made as a result of our research
reflected the total number of tanks by type.
OOB Organization & Command
One guiding principle in the OOB, that was essential for this game, was to include enough
detail to give the right feel for the game, without having too many units, which would slow
down the fluid action. Panzer Campaigns original design was at battalion level, but the
requirement for company units was demanded by the tanks. As discussed above, British
armored regiments were made up of 3 squadrons of tanks of very different speeds, defense,
and firepower. So company sized or squadron units of around 17 tanks seemed to be the
best solution.
Armored cars on both sides posed their own problem. Previously, in Tobruk '41, these
formations, as well as the tanks, were made up of units as small as two and three vehicles,
as they did often operate in these small units. But this provides so many units that a game
player, with his "God like" point-of-view in a turn based game, can exploit. Yet company sized
units representing the full squadrons didn't have the correct feel either.
What we used here was a lesson learned from the development of the Sicily '43 game with
the deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division. What we desired was a widely scattered drop
of penny-packet troops, which slowly combined to form more effective fighting units. The
solution in Sicily was the "double sized platoon" or "half company" units. This gave the game
the widely spread drop, but didn't dominate the play with double the units like platoons would
have done.
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Thus for Alamein '42 we went with units of around 9 vehicles per armored car unit for both
sides. A spin-off advantage this provided was the combing units' rule, where when three units
of the same type were combined into a single units, it functions at its best for Battle Fatigue.
With upwards of six units of nine armored cars each, there was an opportunity for players to
have more than one very effective "battalion sized" unit, from a single armored car battalion
in the game.
We did the same thing for the German Panzers, that is used the "half sized company", but
for more than just the reason outlined above for the armored cars. For a start, the Germans
at this time, were simply the masters of the desert when it game to flexible deployments of
their tanks. Like the British, the Germans had a number of different types of Panzers, but
unlike the British, they mixed their tank types within even the smallest platoon formations.
The wide difference in firepower of these tank types can be seen by the values we have
assigned to them in the game.
As the Germans were infamous for creating "adhoc" formations on the fly during a battle, we
did away with the "Battalion" level in the formal OOB Organization. That is, instead of a
Panzer regiment made up of a couple Battalions, each with a few companies of platoons of a
mixed variety of tanks, even at the smallest level possible, we simply made the Panzer
regiment to be made up of a large group, over 20, half sized company units (or double
platoons) of roughly eight tanks.
These panzer building blocks allowed the flexibility to accurately have the correct number of
Panzers by type within the regiment, while allowing for "adhoc" combined units where, for
example, Pz-IIIh's of different companies and battalions fought together most effectively.
But we weren't done completely with tilting the playing field when it came to tanks and the
flexibility one side held over the other. The last thing that we saw that the Germans were
regarded as "Out Generalling" the British Command in was control, so we removed the
Brigade HQ units from the German OOB and left only a single Division HQ, with a very large
command radius, to establish that last missing effect of, "drive the tanks anywhere and
appear as effective fighting units where they are least expected." The Germans can thus
create KG units, and while there are no KG HQs in the game, the Axis player doesn't need to
concern himself with this extra detail. However he will still have to deal with Regimental HQs for
the Italians.
One the flip side, not only do the British lines of command have to run from the fighting units,
to Brigade and up to Division, but the Brigade HQ quality rating is less and the command
radius is lower than Brigade HQ's in other games of the Series. This we felt was fair, because
the British struggled in the desert to find out how to make the best use of their equipment
and men together in an effective fighting force.
The effects of these tank organization and command issues we believe does justice to the
operational feel of this battle and provides similar strengths and weaknesses for both sides.
Air, AAA and AT Guns
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As was a practice in some games, starting back with Normandy '44, there are a number of
units intentionally left out of the Order-of-Battle. For example, much if not all of the fighter
aircraft have been removed from the Air component. At the start of the Gazala, according to
Bungay, there were 500 Axis Aircraft which included ~200 Bf 109's. These Aircraft
concentrated their effort on the Allied "Desert Air Force" fighters and thus had little direct
impact on the ground war as ground attack aircraft. This has been built into the Interception
rate as defined in the Parameter Data. Many of the remaining aircraft in the Axis air arsenal
were Italian. Because of their lower serviceability, I've reduced the number of aircraft slightly
to compensate. This way the total Air Unit Availability (parameter) for the Axis could remain
stable, and not have a German aircraft unavailable due to Italian aircraft serviceability.
The Order-of-Battle includes only some of the Allied fighters, as these were more prone to be
used in ground attacks, but were kept busy by the German fighters. This fact has always
been a something we had to keep in mind when we considered aircraft in this, a largely
ground based operational game. Allied Air strength in the Middle East combined included more
aircraft that could be called on during the time period covered in the game. However, these
squadrons often had other equally vital duties in the Middle East to fulfill, such as maritime
interdiction of supplies. Thus they were not all available for every mission to support the
ground troops in the desert.
It should also be noted that the Allies prior to the Second Battle of Alamein flew so many
photo air recon mission over the German lines that, according to Latimer, they claimed they
knew virtually every gun position. Yet when the fighting started, despite the heaviest
concentration of artillery up to that point in the war, the Allied were still unable to neutralize all
of the known AT gun and artillery positions. Also, the accuracy of pin point targeting by
aircraft performing level bombing for ground support missions was not up to the standard of
dive bombing support missions like those later in the war, so Allied level bombers such as
Boston’s and Baltimore’s have been designated as heavy bombers in game terms so that
they use the "Carpet Bombing" rules when they attack – thus the scatter my hit another hex
than planned, possibly even a friendly hex.
The Germans too had some additional Recon Air units on the books. Historically, however,
these German air recon units had little influence at this later stage of the battle and their
inclusion was unwarranted. German command at the start of the Second Battle of Alamein
was paralyzed by the ferocity when the barrage opened up, and many communication lines to
the forward units were knocked out. In some other cases, available German air missions were
reduced to account for air strikes being driven off by Allied Anti-Aircraft units, which
themselves are often omitted intentionally from the OOB, particularly the light AAA Guns.
Historically these units spent most of their time in their true AA role, and thus are not needed
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