"North Africa Terrain - Research?" Topic

What sources do people turn to for researching Terrain in north africa? My friend and I are in the middle of an Axis of Attack campaign for Flames of War centred around the Gazala period. For hypothetical allied-counter attack I gave the Germans a "bases" as it were.

Anyway. I the british player managed to win the last battle and now the Germans are regrouping at Benghazi, so my question is what sources would people turn to look up what sort of terrain might've been prevalent in the area during the conflict? I know there's like GoogleEarth but, that's 60 years out of date sort of thing.

My opponent is dreadfully unsatisfied with the random terrain in the main rulebook so he wants me to do up a map (I do the map, he picks the side per the scenario).

Have a look at the relevant volumes of the official histories produced by the British, New Zealanders, South Africans and Germans. The latter also has several short map volumes as part of their main narrative series.

I just tried entering Benghazi, Libya for a Google map search. Next, choosing the satellite option will give you some table top options.

Cheers,
Robert
18thcenturysojourn.blogspot.com

It depends on the level of game really. For the type of North African stuff I do (operational) all I need are major escarpments, coast road, tracks, significant areas of bad going and significant ridges. These are usually fairly well marked in pretty well any of the campaign histories, and there is always the old fallback of digging out a boardgame

At a tactical level, it is really very variable, however much of it is flat, really flat, with slight undulations. Some bits in the Cyrencian bulge are fairly hilly. To get a feel for it google earth gives a reasonable idea of the changes in elevation, otherwise you need to find photos. Even if the road network and built up areas have changed a lot, the general lie of the land hasn't.

The approach in AHGCs 'Tobruk' was to model it as a completely featureless plain (in the optional expansion to have either very slight elevations and/or to divided the plain into zones with a specific chance of obtaining a hull down position).

Most of the desert terrain is very very flat.
There are tough little scrubby plants at fairly regular intervals.

The desert was the only theatre where a 9 foot high "hill" could be a major terrain feature.

Contrary to what you might think from looking at FoW games, it was extremely rare for any sort of actual building to feature in battles.

There were, however, several instances where wadis were used for defense and set piece battles fought across them.

I recommend getting tank battles in miniature by don featherstone transferred to your local library.
You might also ask about "valentine in north africa 1942-43" which has fairly detailed maps including one of such a battle across a wadi.
Both long oop.

Buildings? there aren't any buildings in the desert (well, there are in towns, but these are few and far between).

The map section of the library may be able to help you. The U.S. Army Mapping Service produced a series of 1/200,000 scale maps of most of the world right after the Second World War. Though no longer available for sale, sets of these maps ended up in depository libraries throughout the US. These are usually the main libraries in big cities and the large public universities. My local university library had the equipment to photocopy these maps (in black & white) for my use. Since you are in Canada, you may not have access to this set without coming south. However, the U.S. Army was extremely anxious to field these maps, so they obtained the basic data from various sources (creative cartography is nice, plagiarism is quicker). Hence, my map of Libya is based on a British Army wartime update to an Italian original from the 1930's, and you might be able to turn up either the British or Italian maps. The maps show roads, trails, intermittent streams and other details needed to reproduce the scene on the tabletop.
Grelber

Flat, even really flat, even very very flat, is relative when fighting in the desert.

But we've been over that before in some detail on the Terrain board. Or in discussions about terrain boards. Or… oh, never mind.

Allen

Look for photos of the relevant area/period and check out the background terrain…

I know there's like GoogleEarth but, that's 60 years out of date sort of thing.

Well, don't know what has changed in the desert. It's desert. Shrubs here and there and lots of dry rocky terrain. Sand dunes are few and far between. Some elevation depending on where exactly you are but lots of flat rocky terrain. 60 years isn't that long a time and if they build a Mcdonalds there don't include it in your game cause it wasn't there in '42. :)

I use the documentary series you can get online filmed by the Brits and the Germans. They give you a good idea.

I just started Cyril Joly's _Take These Men_, and he has a striking description of the Western Desert. He says it's exactly like Southern England, but with every bit of greenery and soil scraped off, leaving only stones. He makes particular reference to the rolling, low-hilly nature of the blue.

Little slow at work today…here's some photos:

link

Great site, Jeff

Take a look at Chadwick's "Benghazi Handicap". It includes a number of historical scenarios with maps and a master map designed for DYO games.

Those pictures were taken 500 miles to the Southeast of the area were the battles were fought during WWII and not really very representative of the terrain fought over.

The one thing that is always mention in the books about the battles in how rocky & hard the ground was in that area.

Google Earth is actually very good for the desert.
Around Tobruk,the red and blue lines defences are still very obvious as are the antitank ditch,and some of the wire. Around Sidi Rezegh airfield the defences are still identifiable, and features like the escarpment and Halfaya pass haven't changed either.Sadly the defences at Gazala and around Alamein seem to have vanished, although the topography is still the same.
Egg

I hope the mines have been removed or exploded by now.

Some visual reference can be had in the old documentary/propaganda film "Desert Victory", now found with five other items in a two-DVD set at Walmart for the princely sum of $5. USD

The documentary also shows the rare left-handed Grant ;-)

Oh hey thanks everyone for the comments. You guys are a lot more helpful than the Flames of War board :D

I know that the land itself should not change that much, but things like irrigation and crops might. And there's a difference in a tactical game between flat empty space and space occupied by new vineyards or whatever they grow down there. I know the desert is also in general a very flat and I'd be fine playing in a desert with minimal terrain but my opponent tends to be all about using terrain or he gets bored or something. When he rolls random terrain if it says 3-8 burnt out tanks he puts 8 tanks on the board. If it says 1-3 patches of salt marsh, he puts three of them. That sort of thing. Kind of annoying actually because I find it a-historical (at least compared to the photos I've seen in the few books I have).

Suppose I shouldn't be too bothered since more terrain will favour my Crusaders IIs in flames of war (since their abilities work at short range).

When it says 1-3 of something, make him roll again to see if its 1, 2 or 3!

And presumably 3-8 is 1d6+2 -- they do look like ranges to roll for rather than to choose.

No the Flames of War charts are pretty much "pick a number from here to there" sort of thing. Doesn't matter anyway as I think we're moving to one of us making the map before hand instead of using the random terrain which my opponent doesn't seem overly fond of.

Well, if it is causing problems, then I'd go with a die roll for numbers of each item.

For 'random' desert terrain I usually just stand a couple of feet back from the table and throw bits of terrain onto it. This only really works if your terrain items are fairly unbreakable of course;-)

On a completely different subject, Akalabeth, you were asking on the FoW forum about another source for a Cromwell ARV than the Old Glory three-pack. As you're in the UK, you can just get a single model from Skytrex:

skytrex.com

It's the same code as the OG pack, CD 411:

picture

And Skytrex attends a number of the major shows in the UK.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but as one can't post competitor info on the FoW forum, I wanted to try to get this across somehow.

Oh, and OG/CD/Skytrex Cromwell chassis are very close in size to the Battlefront Cromwell models, so a Skytrex ARV won't look out of place in a formation of Battlefront tanks.

Allen

The documentary also shows the rare left-handed Grant ;-)

Ah! Just to make the Brits feel at home! Lol!