In this article I am going to present excerpts from the the Tobruk '41 Designer Notes written by Wig Graves. Wig is the principle designer behind this title in the series, and more information about him and his other games can be found on the Designer Page.

I. INTRODUCTION

The North African Campaign has always held broad interest in the wargaming community based on a number of factors. The first is the very large geographic area that contained few natural features to disrupt movement. Next is the fact that the forces involved in the campaign remained relatively small and could not hope to cover the vast desert areas. And finally, of course, there are the personalities involved, Rommel and Montgomery among MANY others. All this adds up to sweeping maneuver executed by small, elite forces… Maneuver warfare at it’s purest.

My interest in North Africa games goes way back to my early board-gaming days. But where there were plenty of tactical and strategic level games, the operational or grand tactical scale was not well represented. Several attempts were made but all fell short for various reasons. So, as soon as I saw the Panzer Campaign series, I knew that this was the forum that could do the North African Campaign justice.

The Crusader battles were chosen because of all the desert operations, it offered the most movement and the most operational opportunities. The later battles of Gazala and particularly el Alamein were both more heavily influenced by fixed forces. In addition to the Crusader battles, I also wanted to add the fighting for Tobruk and the actions that lead up to it, something that has (to my knowledge) never been addressed before.

Research is the part of game development that I enjoy the most and there is no shortage of available material on the Africa campaign. The complete Bibliography is at the end of this file and it even includes a list of books that I identified as relevant but were unable to locate. I would like to highlight two sources that are the best overall histories of the campaign: The Relief of Tobruk by Murphy and The Sidi Rezeg Battles 1941 by Agar-Hamilton. The first is the Official New Zealand History and the second is from South Africa but both offer excellent narratives of the entire Crusader operation. Another source of note for the early fighting at Tobruk is the Australian Official History Tobruk and El Alamein by Maughan.

Before leaving the overview, I’d like to make a few statements about warfare in the desert in 1941. Much of this will be expounded upon in the various sections below but the equipment and resulting tactics may be a big surprise for many players. The main misconception to clear up is that tanks do not kill tanks, guns do. The British did not understand this and they expected their superiority in armor to easily defeat the German panzers. The results were that the Germans, using combat groups that included significant numbers of good anti-tank guns, 50mm or larger, were able to defeat the piecemeal British attacks. It was only when the panzers came up against the British infantry formations, with their excellent 25-pdr support, that their numbers started to dwindle.

The maps are based on German and British wartime maps that were drawn from earlier Italian sources. I’ve no doubt that at a 1-km scale there are mistakes but I have tried to reconcile everything with the written narratives. Much of the area is composed of hard packed soil and not the soft sand of the movies. Areas of loose rock and other impediments to cross country movement were rated as rough. Embankments and escarpments were used to denote areas where steep changes in elevations were noted even if there is no corresponding change in elevation level (i.e. the steep area might represent a 20m shelf, clearly an obstacle to movement but well within a 50m difference in elevation level). Another map feature that requires some explanation are the marsh hexes. These are present only on the Winter map and represent the areas that were flooded by the rains that accompanied the opening of the British offensive. There are a number of cases were vehicles got stuck and had to be pulled out.

III. ORDER OF BATTLE

Research

The order of battle research for T41 was one of the most enjoyable that I have worked on. There are PLENTY of references and though they tend to conflict, at least I didn’t feel there were units out there that were not identified. There were just about enough “eureka!” moments to keep it interesting and I had great support.

The Germans were probably the easiest because the captured records are quite complete. The only real task was figuring out when units actually arrived at the front (as German oob charts tend to include units as soon as they were assigned to Africa even though they might be sitting in Italy awaiting transport for months) and in what shape they were in after the various battles.

The Italians started out to be the problem children and I relied heavily on the German records (yes, they kept tabs on everyone) but these left a lot of gaps. I was finally able to find copies of the Italian official histories for the campaign (actually two separate series) and these filled in most of the gaps.

With the British there was definitely a situation of information overload but with the help of Jim Broshot and David Hughes, I was able to sort through it. I made the mistake of asking Jim/David an innocent question about the British artillery and they proceeded to track down the designation of every British battery and section… These guys are great!

Unit Types

Armor (or Armour)

The British tanks fall into the following categories:

Cruiser Tanks - Early war British tank design was based, so they thought, on armor vs armor combat. The Crusader series was built for speed, at the cost of armor protection, and included a gun for which they never even produced High Explosive ammunition. The real problem was that by 1941, the 2-pdr gun was completely inadequate and the 37mm in the American produced Honey (Stuart) was no better (but at least it had HE). This represents the mainstay of the British armored forces and the game play clearly highlights their shortcomings.

Infantry Tanks - Built for protection, at the expense of speed, these tanks should be looked on as a complement to the Cruisers not, as the British did, as second class citizens. Their high protection makes them very hard to kill and they are best used in their historic role of supporting the Infantry. Again, they are armed by the 2-pdr gun and thus cannot do much damage to the enemy; at least you will not be losing them in droves.

Light Tanks (and Armored Cars) - But if you think the Cruisers are bad, the Mk-VI light tank is worse. With weak armor and only a machine gun as armament, they should clearly be used only as scouts.

Others - Notably here are the CS or Close Support tanks. These were armed with 3-inch mortars but were, according to the regulations, only loaded out with TWO rounds of HE… the rest of their load being smoke. Being the skeptic, I have rated them with a soft attack consistent with significantly more HE ammunition so they are at least useful against infantry and guns.

The Axis tanks also come in four varieties (um, plus a tanket):

Pz-III and M13/40 - The Pz-III is the mainstay of the German panzers as is the M13/40 for the Italian. Both suffer from the same armament problems as the British Cruisers (37mm guns) but at least they have HE and are thus more useful against infantry/gun targets. In the case of the Pz-III, it has fairly good armor and can stand up fairly well to the British tanks.

Pz-IV - The Pz-IV, in it’s 1941 version, was envisioned as an support tank. Its low velocity 75mm gun is best used against soft targets but it does offer some anti-armor capability. It is also well armored and can stand up to punishment.

Light Tanks (and Armored Cars) - German light forces were also used in a primarily scouting role with the main difference being that they are much better armed and armored than their British counterparts.

Other - German attempts to make their AT guns more mobile resulted in the creation of an entirely new class of vehicles, the tank destroyer. In time, this class would grow into powerful units but in 1941, it consisted only of the PzJag-I. It sports a good gun (47mm) but has only minimal armor protection making it an equal match for all the British Cruisers (both have the ability to kill each other). Unfortunately there are not many of these available.

L3 Tankets - Hardly worth including in the game much less in a section that describes armored forces. These are only useful in a situation where the opponent has no hard attack capable units. Note that there is also a flame-thrower version that has no attack capabilities but can assault.

Guns

As stated earlier, guns were the real tank killers in the desert and in this area the Germans (and Italians) had a clear advantage. Everyone knows about the 88mm but the German 50mm and Italian 47mm guns accounted for most of the British losses. There are numerous stories of Axis forces using feints to draw the British into range of these weapons. For their part, British anti-tank forces were inadequate. Their mainstay was the 2-pdr which had all the same drawbacks as the version mounted in their tanks. Just prior to Crusader, the British did try to augment the 2-pdrs with converted 18-pdr field guns and these did score some successes. The British secret weapon, however, was their 25-pdr field gun. When used against tanks at close range it proved to be an excellent weapon. Another use, overlooked at the time, was that the 25-pdr could wreak havoc against the German anti-tank guns that were so devastating to British armor.

Note: The gun portees, consisted of a normally towed gun mounted on the bed of a open truck, represented a special case and were a problem to represent correctly in the oob. Doctrine called for them to be dismounted and dug-in for use but this was rarely done and they were initially represented as self-propelled guns giving them the ability to fire without unlimbering. This approach, however, resulted in them being hard targets, something that was definitely not the case. The ultimate compromise was to make them towed units but to increase their movement ability some.

Infantry

The Infantry on both sides is fairly standard stuff with their actual weapons mixes going into their rating make-up. They are much more susceptible to morale concerns and I have show its evolution throughout the campaign. This is especially true for the Italians who improved significantly over the course of the year. The following tables identify the morale values contained in the various oob files.

Tobruk '41 Game Unit Translations and Abbreviations