"The Lord opened the young man’s eyes,
and when he looked up,
he saw that the hillside around Elisha
was filled with horses and chariots of fire."
Kings 6:17
A couple of weeks back Phil and I got together to push some 6mm tanks around the table using Charlie Don't Surf. He expressed a desire to play with some Israeli "Super Shermans" so I painted up some Jordanians and devised a basic scenario loosely based around the Battle of Dothan Valley on the West Bank at the start of the June/Six Day War of 1967...
Historically the Israelis launched a pre-emptive strike on Egypt and then, following some artillery exchanges, Jordan. The IDF's 45th Armoured Brigade formed the vanguard of the Israeli attack pushing into northern Samaria. tasked with eliminating the Jordanian 155mm ‘Long Tom’ howitzers threatening Ramat David airbase across the border in Israel.
On the night of the 5/6th June the 45th took the town of Jenin after fierce fighting against the Jordanian 47th Tank Battalion, however the next day saw the Jordanians commit their armour reserves of the 40th Armoured Brigade to the battle, with its 2nd Battalion threatening to envelope the reconnaissance company of the IDF 45th Armoured Brigade. The scenario was inspired by the Jordanian 40th's counter-attack and the IDF trying to stop them cutting off the recce unit.
The IDF AMX-13 recon platoon was positioned on the ridgeline overlooking the Dothan Valley...
Across the valley dust clouds were spotted moving forward (a mix of Jordanian and Dummy blinds).
These swiftly moved across the valley floor towards the Israeli position. Where they enemy tanks or just dust whipped up by the wind?
Sergeant Yossi Benayoun's AMX-13 attempted a spotting roll to try and identify the cloud nearest to him...
Phil rolled successfully revealing one of the clouds to be a platoon of Jordanian M-47's commanded by Sergeant Anas Bani Yaseen.
Benayoun opened fire on the advancing enemy...
Inflicting two points of Shock on one of the M-47's and damaging its engine.
One the opposite flank another AMX-13 uncovered another enemy tank platoon but its shot missed.
Fortunately for the AMX's reinforcements arrived in the form of an M-51 platoon commanded by Lieutenant Avi Cohen.
Lieutenant Cohen ordered his Shermans to engage the enemy...
The Israeli Shermans taking out one M-47...
And then a second!
On the opposite flank, the Israeli right, two blinds moved down the road towards the Israelis...
Whilst the M-47 platoon led by Lieutenant Hamza Al-Dardour took out the AMX-13 that had spotted them.
Lieutenant Al-Dardour ordered his platoon forward cresting the hill to reveal a second IDF M-51 platoon led by Sergeant Ronny Rosenthal.
Al-Dardour order his tanks to open fire on the Israelis but their shots were generally ineffective and only inflicted some Shock on the M-51's, damaging the engine of one of the IDF tanks.
The Shermans returned fire inflicting two Shock on Al-Dardour's tank and ensuring it would not move when next activated.
The AMX-13's did some more spotting...
Revealing one of the dust clouds in the centre to be a third M-47 platoon.
With his initial command wiped out, Sergeant Bani Yaseen rashly decided to move across to the third platoon to lead them to victory...
Lieutenant Cohen could not believe his luck and ordered his platoon to engage the M-47 - flank on...
Rather predictably Sergeant Bani Yaseen's battle ended in a big explosion!
On the Israeli right flank a third platoon of M-51's was revealed and moved to support Sergeant Rosenthal's platoon.
Their fire saw another point of Shock inflicted on Lieutenant Al-Dardour's tank and the crew bailed out. This meant the Jordanians had lost both their Big Men in one turn!
More Sherman fire saw the tank crew of a second M-47 bail out...
And a third explode as several 105mm shells slammed into it!
However things were not exclusively going the way of the IDF as a fourth platoon of M-47's was revealed...
Their 90mm cannon taking out three Israeli M-51's in one withering volley of fire!
And then a fourth from Rosenthal's platoon!
The battle then swung back in favour of the Israelis as the AMX-13 recon tanks opened fire at the Jordanians...
Their 75mm cannon taking out two of the fourth platoon's M-47's...
Sergeant Rosenthal lining up a shot against the survivor...
And brewing it up with a well aimed 105mm round!
At this point, down to just four M-47's, I realised it was not going to be the Jordanians day and conceded the plains of the Dothan Valley to the Israelis.
Well that was a (very) bloody battle - and reflecting the historical result (at a couple of points the Jordanians ran low on ammo and fuel as happened in 1967). As the Jordanian commander I was probably a little too rash in closing with the Israelis and maybe a more conservative approach engaging the poorly armoured IDF tanks at long range would have served me better.
At some stage I need to get some infantry and support weapons on the table for my Arab-Israeli Charlie Don't Surf games, but as a set of rules for pure tank battles (not uncommon in 1967 and '73) it provides a fun and engaging game with lots of tanks going boom!
Nice. Picky point - unit designations are off. The 45 Brigade was a mechanised, not armoured brigade under Bar Kochba. It had 34 M50 Sherman and 31 M51 Sherman, but no AMX-13. These didn't form part of recce coys in any case which were predominantly jeep borne with the odd halftrack. 45MB was part of 36 Ugdah (Ugdah Peled) which also contained 37 armoured brigade under Uri Ram which had 15 Sho't, 26 M50, 28 M51 and 44 AMX-13 (266 tank btn).
ReplyDeleteUgdah Peled was part of Northern Command v Syria but was required to send troops to northern Jordan / West bank.
The Jordanian independent 12 tank btn had M47 and the 10 btn Centurion, other armour was in the 40 and 60 AB the "47th" appears in the Born in Battle 6 Day War book which is generally accurate, but nowhere else. A sqn was attached to the 36 Inf brigade ( the 12 was attached to 25 IB), but it's unclear if this was from 12TB. The 47 is an odd number which doesn't match known TB (2,3,4,5,10 & 12).
Neil