Can anyone tell me what the Africa core hand when it first touched down in Africa.. I need SPECIFICS:

What Tanks and how many.(Panzer II, III IV? Etc..)
Other Armored Vehicles(again, armored cars, half tracks?)
Support Vehicles.. (trucks, motorcycles them wagens w.e them funny cars are that are pretty much the German "jeeps")
How many Soldiers...

Can anyone come close to tell me.. if not.. give me a estimation, or just a website This is more curiosity rather research, but Im doing a project during the summer 'bout the African War.

thanks

~Hawker

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Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

bump

__________________
Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

Do I get paid for this?

Hawkerace,

You are asking for quite a bit of information that probably is not readily available in one spot without a great amount of work being involved in its procurement. The numbers and types of equipment changed constantly throughout the campaign, as more units moved to NA and losses through combat and attrition occured. The Deutsche Africa Korps and its successors used a lot of captured equipment, especially transport. The early units were not standard formations. When it first arrived, the 5th Light Divison was an ad hoc formation, more of a large kampfgruppe if you want to use that term.

My suggestion to you is to start on Google and search for yourself. I am certain that you will find most of what you want. A lot more can be found in books, as I am sure some author out there has the same inquisitive nature about the DAK as you. One suggestion is Brute Force, by John Ellis, 1990. It has a 58 page chapter on the Western Desert Campaign that is chock full of numbers then another 54 page chapter that discusses Tunisia in the same manner. I have read other books on this subject.

Happy Hunting!

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Best Regards,
JW

I took your advice, and currently purchased the book.

Very interesting.

And yeah. I soppose I was asking to much. A man's curiosity is too great

__________________
Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

You'll always forget the numbers, but you will always have books.

Unfortunately when we started having children, I had to move my books elsewhere. Most of them are boxed up and inconvenient to locate. Maybe one day...

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

Gotta love history

__________________
Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

The Rommel Papers edited by Liddell-Hart also has a pretty good initial order of battle for the DAK, although the details of non-fighting vehicles are pretty much generalized or omitted, as with most historical OOBs I have seen for Africa. For the details of fighting vehicles, that can be pieced together by taking the aggregate numbers from the OOB and comparing to the more detailed breakdowns given in the early part of the narrative of the first reconquest of Cyrenaica and the editor's footnotes to that narrative section.

I was trying to find out the very same thing not too long ago. I would recommend checking out the Osprey Battle Orders series of books specifically the Rommel's Afrika Korps title which can be found on Amazon for around $20. This book will have a listing of what specific armor and how many of said armor were issued/used by the DAK broken down by year and specific units.