An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia

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An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/14/2022 10:09:54 AM

RFalvo69

Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013
From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
Status: offline

This is my first AAR ever on this site. I'm reading "An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson, and the book spurned me to finally learn GG: WitE and fire up the "Torch to Tunisia" scenario. I selected "Normal" difficulty but I gave 110 points to the Axis across all the variables. I'm playing as the Allies (100 at everything). Full FOW obviously, but "Movement FOW" is turned off, as suggested by the manual.

This will be a learning experience so expect a lot of SNAFUS. They will not be corrected with a reload (unless really serious) but considered part of the "historical realism" in my game and weaved into the narrative. Atkinson's account of the campaign, up to the point I got (halfway through), is a tale of misery, bickering and learning through painful mistakes. I fully expect the same as I go along.

Also, English is not my first language, so expect also some creaky grammar.

Anyway:

TURN 0 - Prologue
Before November, 10th 1942

(This entry will be long. I don't plan to be so detailed in subsequent turns).

After defeating Vichy France forces in North Africa, the Allies set their eyes on the next prize: Tunis. The great struggle between the Axis and the Free World is about to begin. Delusional slogans like "Christmas in Tunis!" and "Free Europe by 1943!" are liberally exchanged, amid a lot of toasts, between the "forever friends". Saner minds look doubtfully at the hopeful term "United Nations".

The general euphoria creaks a bit when the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica steal the kickoff by acting first. The Axis does a lot of recon missions but also shows that their ability to dominate the seas is intact. When pointed out how the Allies lost only 12 airframes versus 34 lost by the Axis, the angry retort is "Because no one went up!"

Entombed in his frigid headquarters at Gibraltar, the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force of the North African Theatre of Operations (whose eerie acronym is "NATOUSA") General Dwight D. Eisenhower ("Ike") looks at a theatre of operations that covers the whole of North Africa - from Casablanca in the West to Alexandria in the East. The weather is inclement. The Med is under a blanket of rain. On the "Western Sector" (Algeria and Tunisia), there are heavy rains the interior too. Terrain is becoming muddy and roads are disappearing, along with the idea of an "Allied blitzkrieg".

Right now the British and the French are the only fighting forces worth of mention. On the ground the US OOB comprises the headquarters of the II Corps at Oran; attached to it there are a lot of support units, but basically no one to whom send them. A battalion from the 26th Infantry Task Force guards the forward (empty) US airbase at T�bessa (curiously spelt "Tbessa" on the Allied maps - maybe no one can find the "�" key on the typewriter); the lonely 50th Parachute battalion is on sentry further South, at Gafsa airfield, after capturing it with a daring drop. That's it. The French boast a concentration of "pr�t-�-porter" troops at Constantine under the XIX Free French Corps. The rest, mostly along the coast, is British. Some UK units are tank formations but the British 1st Army (under whom almost everyone is allocated) is, for now, mainly composed of brigades and battalions. "Every Brigade is a Corps and every Division an Army" quip the admin people tasked to keep the Allied OOB in order. Morale, however, is generally high. The American military is animated by "can�do" zeal and a desire to win expeditiously - even if their Army is in Morocco facing the neutral Spanish. "Just everybody here itches to teach Rommel how a war is fought" a Yank writes to his mother.

On the East the morale is even higher. The vaunted Afrika Korps is, supposedly, in disarray and on the run. The heroes of El Alamein, the British 8th Army and their leader, Field Marshal�Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein ("Monty") are poised to chase. A number of Commonwealth units, British, Australians and South Africans, is earmarked for withdrawal, but the Allies still possess a tank-heavy force supported by the elite motorised brigades of the 2nd New Zealand Mixed Division. The aim is to catch Rommel and "teach him a second lesson" before he can reach Tunisia. Everybody is a teacher in North Africa. Absolutely no one, in turn, is worried by intelligence reports and ULTRA intercepts speaking of Axis troops reorganising in the Benghazi area, openly aided by intense supply airdrops.

Ike decides that before starting the campaign some administrative duty is in order. First, he drops the ill-boding "NATOUSA" alphabet soup and joins the simpler "AFHQ" ("Allied Forces Headquarter"). He then launches "Operation: Better to Prevent than to Cure" aimed at sending the inept II Corps commander, Major General Lloyd Fredendall, on the Algers beach with a pail and shovel. Yes, but substituting him with who? Patton? Bradley? Clark? After some agonising hours Ike decides to go with Bradley and, maybe, switch to Patton later. He needs a good administrative commander in what is shaping to be, for now, a war of infantry for the US. That Bradley costs a single Admin point vs. Patton's four is another important factor, especially after bleeding seven bloated points to sink Fredendall.

Regarding the air war, Ike decides to set the general directives but leave their implementation to the various Air HQs. It is obvious that the Axis will send reinforcements from Italy, via Sicily. The Strategic Forces are ordered to hammer ports and straits, while the Tactical Aviation will support friendly units, hit enemy ones and, hopefully, interdict a bit. The Allies decide that flying pure Air Superiority or Airfield Strike missions with the paltry number of Allied aircrafts in the theatre will only result in them being chewed up by the Axis air forces. Not everybody is happy about this. The Tbessa airfield is assigned to the 12th US Air Force (under James Doolittle), and the 47th USAAF LB Group is is taken from the National Reserve and redeployed there. Finally, a mandatory check reveals that the Eastern Sector is in need of some recon aircrafts. The No. 60 SAAF Recon Squadron is taken from the National Reserve and sent to Fuka - the most forward available airfield - under the Desert Air Force. It is composed by short range "Mosquitoes". Ground crews are ordered to reactivate these airfields on the double. The planes land on forgotten airstrips where only the sound of desert crickets can be heard; the pilots hope for the best.

Ike, suffering from a bad cold and perfectly sure that he forgot something important, sighs, and orders the start of "Operation HOLIDAYS" (the proposed "CHRISTMAS" being ditched after some cringe amid African Jews). The Allied Air War and the "Reconquista" of Europe are about to start...

_____________________________

"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..."
"Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?"

(My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")

Post #: 1

RE: An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/14/2022 10:32:36 AM

RFalvo69

Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013
From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
Status: offline

TURN 1
November, 10th 1942

The air war starts with 62 planes lost and 193 damaged for the Allies vs. (according to intelligence reports) 8 lost and 17 damaged for the Axis. These numbers offend everybody and surprise no one. There are also rumbles that a single Axis soldier was killed. Unexpectedly, most of the murder happened in the Eastern Sector - the opposite of what the Allied planners assumed. Air commanders everywhere pore over the data and try to come up with a better strategy.

Also unexpectedly, but in a good way, the recon operations worked well. Sadly, they discovered two concentrations of troops around Tunis and Bizerte. The ground war hasn't yet started and HOLIDAYS already seems a bad omen. "Morale Units" try to explain that the name isn't tied to a specific holiday; they are met with blank stares. Benghazi remains a mystery, due to the short range of the Eastern Sector's recon planes. Monty's Army will trundle into the unknown.

Of all units, the one that starts the Allied ground war is a French one: the "Barr�" Infantry Brigade. These are the remains of the Tunis Division, whose commander, General Georges Barr�, brought in the wilderness when the first German troops landed in the Tunisian capital. Ike, seeing that they are earmarked for withdrawal anyway, uses these men as "disposable forward scouts". The brigade reaches Medjez el Bab and stops - her ceremonial role concluded. No one is around. The whole XIX Free French Corps (an infantry division and a mountain battalion) is then railed forward from Constantine.

The Allies surge towards Tunisia. �Vive l�Am�rique!� shout the Arab children, to mostly British troops. Units move by rail - usually to discover that they could have reached the same place by themselves, detrained. Seaborne transport along the coast seems a given but no one wants to gamble with the Axis' dominion of the sea. Truth is: no one will reach Bizerte by mid-November.

The best parts of British V Corps and 1st Army chug slowly along the shaky Algerian railroads and are unable to detrain. All of sudden having an air superiority umbrella doesn't seem so stupid. Bradley decides to "be near my lads". He promptly commands some trains and moves his HQ south of Constantine. His staff watches the skies from the long theory of trains' windows. "No one will attack us", predicts an officer, "because no one thinks that we are so stupid." The battalion from the 26th Infantry Task Force is ordered further East, to Kasserine, as an advanced guard. "Life is wintry", a soldier writes to his dad. "The only consolation is that nothing ever happens in places named Kasserine."

On the East the situation is much, much different. The New Zealand Mixed Division outflanks Bardia and captures Tobruk "on the fly", easily dislodging the paltry Italian garrison. Gazala suffers a similar fate. Advanced elements push on and capture Derna and its depot. A lightning beginning for the Kiwis! South of them, brigades of the British 7th Armoured Division "liberate" Bir Hacheim and Mekili. Bardia falls to the 4th British Light Armoured Brigade. The Italians just shatter. The 4th then destroys the stragglers of the Tobruk "fortress" - a leftover from the fast moving Kiwis. The British X Corps HQ is forced to race forward; they manage to keep everybody just within the command range.

Places remembered for bloody, never-ending, struggles now whizz by like forgotten underground stations. The ponderous (for this theatre) 1st British Armoured Division exploits the breakthrough, refuses to stay in command, and is already between Derna and Tolemaide. Engineers are sent to repair the Sollum-Tobruk railroad. Finally, the 51st British Infantry Division reaches the outskirts off Sollum by rail, along with the British XXX Corps HQ, and awaits orders there.

A true blitzkrieg - in mostly empty landscapes - marks the beginning of the Eastern campaign. No one is worried by the fact that the railways used for supply stop at Tobruk - with the next railhead at Gabes, in Tunisia, across the continent and under Axis control. Only Monty doesn't move. "He is so prudent that he is still shelling El Alamein" quips a joker. Everybody is happy to fight the Italians. "Come fuori! Pasta!" is the sentence shouted to encourage them to surrender. This, indirectly, points to the main shadow: where is Rommel? Ike marks the British conquests on his maps but his mind is on the fragile Tunisian front. What will the Axis do, there?

Axis' reaction is rather conservative. The Eastern Sector is completely quiet, except for the uninterrupted supply launches on Benghazi. On the West, Axis planes bomb a bit everywhere except where Allied units are. The still entrained troops are safe. Yet, two moves cause serious worry.

In the North, the advanced "Barr�" French Brigade was caught dallying and is now surrounded by German troops. The only light in the dark is that Ike can have a clear idea of their composition: "An Airlanding Brigade; a Luftwaffe Motorised (!) Fallschirmj�ger Regiment; a Panzergrenadier Regiment; and three motorised regiments, possibly belonging to the same division." These reports are initially dismissed as "nerves" - until disquieting pictures show heavily equipped German soldiers holding big signs that say "Besser Deutsche als Tote".

In the South, two Italian regiments (one infantry, one armoured) ring the bell of the 509th US Parachute Battalion guarding the airfield at Gafsa. All of sudden underestimating the Italians is considered in bad taste. Their signs just say "Pizza Here!"

_____________________________

"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..."
"Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?"

(My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")

(in reply to RFalvo69)

Post #: 2

RE: An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/16/2022 12:01:13 AM

RFalvo69

Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013
From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
Status: offline

TURN 2
November, 17th 1942

On the Western Sector it rains in the air on the Med and on the Allied sector. Western Tunisia, where the Axis is pouring, is sunny. "Better a rain cover than our planes" murmur the soldiers. Airforces are ordered to create a superiority umbrella anyway over Allied units and to hammer ports and airfields. Tunis and Bizerte are heavily bombed with no discernible results. It is in the air that the Allies achieve 60 total Axis losses vs. 57 friendly ones. Nothing to cheer about: Allied planes fly 3000 sorties vs. 8000 flown by the enemy, so the Axis just suffers from higher operational losses.

The Recon arm, working tirelessly, discovers how the Axis front (because by now it is a front) ranges from Bizerte to Bou Arada. A reserve is deployed west of Tunis and Nabeul. Further south, units of unknown composition are moving towards Kasserine. Italian Air HQs are reported south of Bizerte. In the Eastern Sector, forward recon (finally!) by the Desert Air Force discovers a second strong concentration of troops and tanks between Ajdabiya and El Agheila. This is, very possibly, Rommel and his Afrika Korps finally moving west out of Benghazi. "The Russians must have done something good", comments a staff officer in Gibraltar, "because the whole f**king Wehrmacht is now here."

Barbarians at the gates! Barbarians at the gates!

Geometry dictates the reaction. British V Corps and French XIX Corps reach defensive positions in the North. The Combat Command B ("CCB") of the US 1st Armored Brigade arrives in the theatre and reaches Thala. The II Corps HQ detrains at Tbessa and nearby US units are assigned to it. "Americans for Americans!" is the motto - which smartly forgets how everybody is still under the British 1st Army. Other, meagre, reinforcements reach the rearguard areas entrained, fully aware that "we are a hour late and a dollar short". Nothing resembles a front - for sure not in the South, where lonely US units are separated by 60-70 miles' gaps. Everybody hopes that the good defensive positions and the terribly rugged terrain will stop the Axis from advancing too much. It is the first time that the word "defensive" is officially used at AFHQ.

In the East the 1st British Armoured Division and the New Zealand Mixed Division attack the Italian defenders left at Benghazi, routing them and capturing another important port. But are the brigades of the 7th British Armoured Division (the "Desert Rats") that make headlines: with a mad rush across the desert that cuts off the "Cyrenaica bulge" (like it happened during Operation COMPASS) their vanguard catches, near Adjabiya, the rearguard of the mass of units identified as the Afrika Korps. This time, however, prudence calls for a consolidation of forces, or Rommel will be just able to turn around and destroy the Commonwealth units piece by piece.

Catchin' Rommel by the tail...

Reports from the "victory at Benghazi" show that no aircrafts from either size flew in support of the troops. While the Allies do their best to organise a "leapfrog" operation using captured airfields, the Axis is closing to friendly, up-and-running ones. Soldiers look up and hope for, at least, an empty sky.

The hope doesn't last everywhere. The superiority of Axis forces in the air on the Western sector is absolute, but, possibly thanks to the rain, the results are insignificant. The 12th Air Force is magnificent in denting Axis airstrikes on troops and airfields, with a lot of aborts and even some airframes shot down. In turn, the tentative Allied raids over the Axis front are annihilated. Luckily only a bunch of planes was involved. The supply launches for the Africa Korps don't stop and and this time the target is Tripoli. The Desert Fox escaped the jaws of the Desert Rats but the AFHQ can follow his march along the coast by looking at the air supply operation!

Nothing really changes on the Western frontline and it seems that the Allies will be able to consolidate it. The Axis just shuffles units around.

Don't worry! Someone arrived!

In what constitutes a symbolic blow to the Allied morale, however, it is the Germans that launch the first attack of the war in the Tunisian sector. German motorised forces supported by German and Italian tanks attack the Barr� brigade, whose men are desperately trying to retreat and rejoin the Allied lines. The Luftwaffe supports the troops but it is intercepted and made ineffective. The infantry brigade holds in rugged terrain with minimal losses and the Germans don't press the attack in what ends up to be a skirmish. It may be a downer for the morale but an analysis of the battle shows how everything actually worked well together. Ike can retire in his room thinking of this. Before he can go to sleep a PR puke suggests a better way to send the AFHQ reports to the US and the UK: use pictures!

Amid all this data there must be something useful...

_____________________________

"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..."
"Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?"

(My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")

(in reply to RFalvo69)

Post #: 3

RE: An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/17/2022 7:56:14 AM

loki100

Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012
From: Utlima Thule
Status: offline

this is a really good scenario, the key is in the logistics for the Allies, for 8A limit your forward commitment and air drop to the bases, for Tunisia its a case of knitting together a depot network before pushing on

to your last question - yes, quite a lot, of importance the battle was decided by disruptions as that removed quite a lot of combat value from the attacker but you hurt yourself badly in how you had the command lines organised. Merely being linked to AFHQ is a 20% malus, that is worse as that was the largest single unit in the battle. If you'd had both reporting to XIX French Corps then your final CV would have been up around 35, in this case of no real gain but could have made all the difference in a more marginal battle

_____________________________

(in reply to RFalvo69)

Post #: 4

RE: An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/17/2022 10:10:44 AM

RFalvo69

Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013
From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: loki100

this is a really good scenario, the key is in the logistics for the Allies, for 8A limit your forward commitment and air drop to the bases, for Tunisia its a case of knitting together a depot network before pushing on

to your last question - yes, quite a lot, of importance the battle was decided by disruptions as that removed quite a lot of combat value from the attacker but you hurt yourself badly in how you had the command lines organised. Merely being linked to AFHQ is a 20% malus, that is worse as that was the largest single unit in the battle. If you'd had both reporting to XIX French Corps then your final CV would have been up around 35, in this case of no real gain but could have made all the difference in a more marginal battle

Thanks for your suggestion! Yes, I now see that, and it is a lesson learned.

The reasons as why I choose this scenario to finally learn WitW are two folds. First, it is a fascinating mini-campaign with a bit of everything, so by the end you have to learn everything. Second, my two main references ("An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson and "A History of the Mediterranean Air War, 1940�1945: Tunisia and the End in Africa, November 1942�1943" by Christopher Shores and Giovanni Massimello) show how the Allies were learning "to play the game" on the fly.

There is a lot of role-playing involved from my part and I hope to give a fun narrative of this learning experience. For example, right now I'm learning the rules about depots; conversely, by this time in the real campaign this idea was still considered "heretical". "French for the French!" is already my next step. Also, AFHQ was swamped by every kind of data, with too few analysts to make sense of them. Everything was considered important with the end result that nothing was given the proper attention.

Right now I'm really feeling in Eisenhower's shoes: forced to delegate too much in a job too big for an inexperienced man. Let's hope that things will improve!

_____________________________

"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..."
"Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?"

(My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")

(in reply to loki100)

Post #: 5

RE: An Army at Dawn - Torch to Tunisia - 1/17/2022 12:53:15 PM

loki100

Posts: 10920
Joined: 10/20/2012
From: Utlima Thule
Status: offline

agree, the scenario is a gem, as you say you have to use all the assets and none of it (esp the Allies in the West) is really ready for the task. 8A and the Desert Air Force is, but not so easy to bring to bear on the main axis resistance.

getting the logistics sorted out here will help if you move onto the 1943 campaign. In particular in 1944 as the Allies approach the Rhine it gets very tight everywhere, but especially in Eastern France/Vosges. So the tricks to squeeze down demand, prioritise scarce resources and build up all come into play

esp vs the AI I approve of self-imposed role plays, I never hook French units to CW commands (or vice-versa), keep the S Africans in the Med, just makes it all feel more right. As does not over using the Polish or Czech formations

< Message edited by loki100 -- 1/17/2022 12:54:24 PM >

_____________________________

(in reply to RFalvo69)

Post #: 6