The Arab-Israeli Wars offer an interesting variety of scenarios for the modem wargamer. Wargamers in the modem era usually enjoy pushing a lot of armor around the table, and these wars offer some of the most armor heavy fighting that the world has seen. Arab oil revenue provided the best that Russia could offer, and attempted to make up for with quantity, what they lacked in quality when fighting the Israelis.
The Israelis, with their limited manpower, opted for armored formations as the most fighting power for size of their army. Secondly, the terrain in the Middle East is generally good tank terrain, and hard on infantry. The Egyptian desert offers wide-open spaces, similar to the battles of World War II. With the exception of the terrain passing between the coastal plain and the Syrian plateau, the countryside is also quite passable for vehicles, both wheeled and tracked.
Scale
The first thing to consider is the scale that you want to game in. The armored vehicles used in the Middle East tended to be old equipment forwarded on by the superpower patrons. The Israelis highly modified most of their equipment to stay even with their Arab neighbors in the arms race. A lot of the Russian equipment such as the T-55's, T-62's, and BTR's made be readily substituted for the Arab vehicles. The Israeli's vehicles need to be specifically manufactured for a realistic representation. Until recently, the only figures and vehicles on the market have been in micro armor, and the infantry was generic. This is a great scale for recreating the sweeping battles between the large armored formations, especially if you don't want a lot of infantry action. FREI CORPS-PLATOON offers a line of 20mm figures. These scales would work well for skirmish gaining, but the main source of vehicles for these lines would come from customized WWII models, or from plastic kits, which offer an incomplete line at best. Within the last year, the Arab-Israeli wars are finally being addressed in 15mm.
Peter Pig recently released Israeli infantry as part of their modem Africa range, but with no vehicles as yet. QRF (Quick Reaction Force) out of England has a line of vehicles and infantry for both the Arabs and the Israelis, including the Sherman hull with an AMX-75 turret on it, used by the Egyptians in the 1967 war. They also produce several lines of cold war equipment to use for the Jordanians. These include several self-propelled guns such as the AMX-105mm SPG. Quality Casting from the US is also starting to work on a he for this period, with several Sherman variants, and an M-3 half-track. Infantry will be on the way this fall as I understand it. They also offer a good line of Russian equipment for the Arabs, and modem Russian infantry which can be used as Arab infantry. All three of these lines are new, and will probably be offering expanded product lines as time goes on. I have seen the Peter Pig infantry, and it has some of the best detail they have produced. QRF's infantry is about the same size, and paints up well. Their vehicles are well detailed, and again paint up well. (A Sherman with a 105mm long barreled gun is impressive in any scale). Both of these lines are manufactured to 1/100, and seem to be compatible in size. Quality Casting produces to a 1/108 scale. I have no seen any of Quality Casting's Israeli vehicles, but I have several of their Russian types, and they do not look out place with the QRF. Assuming that their infantry will be the same as their other infantry lines, their figures will be slightly smaller that the other two, but not noticeably so, and should mix well on the table top.
Rules
The second consideration is what rules to use. This is probably the most important consideration when gaming this time period. The first problem is the scope of equipment used. The mixture of modem and obsolete equipment is beyond the scope of most rule sets. For example, in 1967 the Israelis used both the Sherman M4 with the 76mm gun (WWII vintage), and the modem Centurion with the 105mm gun and APDS amino. The Arabs used the modem T-55 and T-62, but used the T-34/85 and the Syrians even used PZKW-IV's and Stug-IIIs. If the set of rules you choose does not have all of the equipment, use a set that has the modem equipment, and work out statistics for the older equipment that are agreeable to everyone.
Another major consideration for the rules is the subject of morale. The Israelis almost always fight outnumbered, and in certain instances, outnumbered by as much as 10 to 1 or more. I have not seen many rule sets that allow one side to at least hold their own against these kind of odds, as the Israelis often did. Secondly, the Arabs also present a problem, in that they could fight tenaciously to the last man during one instance, and collapse the first time they were shot at during other times. Most rule sets will have to have their morale systems fudged to handle this problem. The Israelis were not supermen, but were better trained, and were confident, having never lost to the Arabs. As an example of these two concepts, the Israeli tank commanders all took a course on range estimation out to 1500 meters. This was the flat trajectory of the 105mm gun, and any target within that range could be bore-sighted with a high probability of a hit. The Russians when providing the T-55's and T-62's to the Arabs, took great pains to translate their technical and training manuals into Arabic, only to find after the fact that most Arab tank crewmen could not read, and had to learn by example. These conditions need to be factored in to reflect historical performance.
There were several equipment problems encountered in the 1967 and 1973 wars that should also be considered when working with the rules. The T-55 and T-62, with their rounded egg-shaped design were hard to penetrate, but is was found that almost any hit by a high velocity round striking the turret would set off the ammo stored in the racks. Even tjie rounds, which didn't penetrate, would cause an explosion, which generally blew the turret off of the tank. If you look at photos of the war, you see a lot of Arab tanks in this conditions, so this is a significant aspect that needs to be considered. This could also be factored in to help the Israelis against heavy odds. Studies have shown that when a tank is hit, about two thirds of the hits are on the turret, so this can be significant.
On the Israeli and Jordanian side, the hydraulic hoses (which were used for the turret traverse) were very vulnerable to penetrating hits. The hoses when cut would spray out the highly flammable fluid as a mist, and the resulting explosion would destroy the tank and kill the crew. While not as numerous as the above mentioned Russian problem, there was still a significantly higher loss rate with the M-48 than with the Shermans or Centurions as a result of catastrophic explosions.
During the 1973 war, when the Egyptians and Syrians first used the Sagger guided missile, the hit and kill rate after the first encounters dropped dramatically, as the Israelis learned to counter them by movement and fire suppression. By the end of the war, less than 10% had hit their targets and the early heat warheads did not always destroy their targets, especially when it struck a glancing blow. Most rules tend to give ATGM's like the Sagger very high hit and kill rates, which certainly wasn't the case here, and some adjustment needs to be done.
The final decision concerns the scope of the battles you want to create. Everything from skirmish gaming to brigade level battles can be handled, and with a little research, actual historical battles can be recreated. In addition to the scenarios listed at the end of this article, I have enclosed a reference list that can provide good background and research for staging historical games. The rules that you choose will probably dictate what size battle you stage, as well number of players available and size of the table. I hope this series of articles have been helpful, and hope you enjoy this time period.
More Wargaming the Arab-Israeli Wars
Back to Dispatch February 2001 Table of Contents
Back to Dispatch List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2001 by HMGS Mid-South
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com