Battles of North Africa 1941 - Fighting the Wrong Engagements and Using the Enemy's Doctrine

John Tiller Software - Wargame Design Studio - Battles of North Africa 1941
Status: beta
Release date: unknown, but soon

I already mentioned in that I'm fighting the Mersa el Brega scenario in the beta of Battles of North Africa.

Figure 1

Battle is all good and dandy and then all of the sudden I realize that I'm commanding the Germans and fighting like a British!



In the screenshot above, my forces (blue icons) are about to take the hill at Kuwaymal al Mill and it took me a good hour to gather and deploy my forces for the assault. Not exactly the German way of war, with their penchant for expediency in the offensive. More like a British set-piece attack.

One could argue that the hill was a though objective, but that is no excuse for my initial thought of softening ENY prepared positions with the tanks and then assaulting with the infantry.

Although it may look like I was about to go on the offensive with a combined arms team of tanks and infantry (see my deployment south of Kuwaymal al Mill in figure 1), I was pretty much using my armor like a flagship shoveling shells onto an enemy ship. Yeah, that's British doctrine for the use of armored formations in the late 1930s.

Figure 2

After 1.5 hours of sustained combat on top of the Kuwaymal hills (figure 2), losses in time, men and materiel, I learnt my lesson. But I was left in a precarious position to resume my combat operations. The ENY is up to something at Qarar al Arrash and in all likelihood I will need to muster all I have for the next engagement (figure 3).

Figure 3

But wait, these were not all my sins today. On the charges of not bypassing irrelevant ENY positions: guilty as charged. Take a look at the action in the south, where the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion has encountered one of those ubiquitous OPs dwelt by a handful of ENY armored cars (Figure 4).

Figure 4

These ENY positions are no match for the armored cars of the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, but the toll is paid as time lost, unfortunately.

Figure 5

The extraordinary mobility of the entire formation comes in handy to recover some of the time lost. In figure 5 the Battalion is shown a few kilometers west of the last engagement, but this time the intention is not to stop for those outposts where the brown icons are located.


Cheers,