Tactical Combat at Gallabat

Saturday, November 19 saw the action of Gallabat, November 6, 1940. Using South Florida Miniatures Gamers member Mark Ritchie's minis and Tactical Combat rules (see here for a previous round), we reenacted this fight from British East Africa. I'm already familiar with it, from Field Marshal Bill Slim's witty account in his 1960 short story collection, Unofficial History.

The first part of this game has already appeared on Oriskany Jim's Youtube channel: 

So my poorly photographed account may not be as interesting! But I enjoyed the game and the miniatures very much. Here goes.

The entire field, several turns in - Gallabat fort has been
ineffectively bombed. The thin blue stream at right marks
the border between Ethiopia and Sudan.

From the Italian side.

With Mark GMing, we had three players a side. The Italians had some colonial infantry and assorted guns in and around the fort, a handful of camel-mounted lancers in the village at the crossroads, two armoured cars, and five CV33 tankettes and a CR42 Falco for reserves. There were also two emplaced guns, a 25mm AA gun, a 45mm and a 100mm Skoda off-table.

Against that, the British had five A9 and A10 infantry tanks, five Vickers light tanks, six armoured cars, and a smattering of Indian and British infantry mounted in assorted trucks and carriers. This meant four two-pounders (one of the tank guns could be exchanged for a CS weapon), one field gun, and a <bleep>ton of machine guns.

Our air support was this Fairey Battle in faint
brown-and-green camo; the first model of this
light bomber I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it could
not be used for strafing with its one MG, but we were
allowed two sorties.

This classic Fiat biplane was magnificently painted,
but oddly unpiloted!

More infantry and a couple armoured cars. Radios
are denoted by a metal ring antenna. The sandbags
at bottom could be placed as the Italian players desired -
mostly around the large buildings across from the fort.

CV33s, one with a flamethrower and another with a radio.

Indian infantry platoon, with Indian-Pattern carriers to left.

British armour. The front heavy tank has two sponson turrets.

More infantry, vehicles and field-gun.

The Italians placed roughly half their infantry and all their light guns in and around the fort, while the rest of the infantry and a couple machine guns went into the village and the lancers around the small huts. The Brits, with me as the armour commander, focused on the left flank, with a smattering of infantry and light vehicles on the right facing the fortress. I believe my theory was to sweep around the Italian right, using the buildings for cover from the fort's guns; in practice the relatively slow movement stymied this.

The first action of the game was a preliminary bombardment from the Fairey Battle, which aimed for the two guns in front of the fort but hit the fort instead. It cleared the parapet of infantry and did some damage to the wall, but left the guns intact.

A remarkably nice eight-piece fort. Visible are craters,
guns in the turrets and emplacements, and a couple
motorbikes. The red puffs denote damage.

The village of Gallabat, which I thoroughly plastered
with machine gun fire from the armoured cars.

Native lancers among the huts, cunningly made from
toilet paper roll and carved foam.

The compact but powerful British left.

The lancers charged and took out our only forward observer!

The situation in my sector was somewhat confused; I moved all units flat out, so could not fire at the lancers, whose only casualties came from their own artillery trying to drop a 100mm round on our field gun!

In turn two, I declared one of the tanks to be a close-support vehicle with a 3.7 inch gun, which I used to drop smoke in front of one of the Italian guns before the fort. I placed all the tanks hull down and left them there for the game, bombarding with their two-pounders. The armoured cars, on the other hand, rained fire on the village, killing one opposing armoured car and shocking and immobilizing the other with heavy machine guns. Tank machine-guns killed several gun crew. The Fairey Battle attempted another run on the guns, but only killed a few crew:

Our infantry used reactions to shoot up more of the lancers, but they were surprisingly still alive to cut us up. (In Tactical Combat, units can move their full distance, move half and fire, or reserve a "reaction" to fire and/or move in response to opposing actions. Not using these in our first turn was probably a mistake.)

On the British right, infantry advance towards the fort.

Close-up on the varied British vehicles, including the curious
Indian-Pattern wheeled substitute for the Bren carrier.

Field gun and prime mover,
with wrecked armoured car
in the distance.

The smoked fortress - yellow cap indicates that one
"puff" will dissipate next turn.

In Turn Three, Jim as Italian forward observer dropped a round on the CS tank, which the Italian players seemed fearful of. Hulldown protected it, but the gun was knocked out - though not before dropping another smoke round. I also managed to kill the second Italian armoured car, while our field gun and a mortar plinked away at the fortress guns.

Cars and infantry advance.

Indian infantry squad, with Bren gunner at right of
front line and a helmeted medic working his magic.

In Turn Four, the CV33s turned up, but neither side realized at first that the stream was actually the table edge, which meant the tankettes got to move farther and throw a lot of fire at the Brits. Had we caught that, I would have used my tank guns on them. Jim concentrated on our lonely fieldpiece, destroying the prime mover with a good scatter:

In Turn Five, I fired the tank guns at the tankettes - and missed every time. In return, I lost two armoured cars - one to the 25mm AA and the other to crew casualties. My .50 cal did manage to kill a tankette before it was knocked out. Our infantry suffered most - those on the left machine-gunned, those on the right bombarded.

Turn Six was the last, as we were all getting tired and a couple of us had to leave soon. The CR42 finally turned up and blew my cars to hell, while the Italian artillery caused more infantry casualties. My surviving vehicles wore down the crew of a gun whose cover had been destroyed earlier.

"Dio mitraglia l'Inghilterra!"

The result.

End result: a not unexpected British defeat - the historical result. Mark informed us that the last time he ran this scenario, the Italians in the village were wiped out; in our runthrough, seven were still alive, three wounded, but still manning their machine guns with gritted teeth.

I think the British loss was due (aside from the fact that I was commanding it!) to a lack of focus. We were concerned about the fortress guns' ability to hurt our vehicles, but at the same time put a lot of fire down on the village. Had we managed to bring down the fortress wall with our bombs (a distinct possibility!) there might have been a different battle.

The rules are well considered, though having the creator for a gamemaster simply telling us what to roll was immeasurably helpful. The miniatures and terrain were appealing. I'll always be happy to play another round - Mark has about a hundred scenarios ready to go!

The scenario and battlefield map.