1stUkrainianFront

Y'all would probably like David Halberstam's *The Coldest Winter* -- as good as Atkinson, but covering Korea

Someone could start with "Dulce et decorum est..."?

Gpig -- Not my story, it belongs to Elena Pivovarskaya. I just retold it because I figured people on the Forum would appreciate it. Most of the stories you hear out here are so unbearably sad, over and over. This one had such a great dash of humor that I couldn't resist posting it. Thanks again for your drawing, I'll share it with Elena and her kids and I'm sure they'll get a kick out of it. If you don't mind I'll swap out the horse's thoughts with something like "Oh no, here we go again" because they won't get the game reference. But they'll love your drawing. John D. -- Yep, according to Elena, her grandfather did recover the soup ladle but it was slightly bent and besides he had to polish it all over again

Gpig -- Hey, that's fantastic. Thanks! Cheers

I had dinner last night with my neighbor here in Kiev. After a while the conversation drifted to family history and she told one of her grandfather's war stories. The grandfather served as a cook in the Red Army and had three field kitchens blown up in various ways. She told the story of how the third kitchen was lost. One day in the summer of 1944, her grandfather is marching along a dirt road somewhere in Poland. Four horses are pulling the field kitchen up a hill. It's hot and dusty and the horses' tongues are hanging out in the heat. The kitchen crew is helping to push the wagon over the ruts. Her grandfather's got his helmet on, PPSh slung on his back, and the battalion soup ladle, recently polished, is tucked into his belt. Suddenly a Tiger tank trundles onto the crest of the hill and levels its cannon at them, point-blank. "Run!" the grandfather shouts and the cooks scatter in all directions. He makes it about ten meters away when the Tiger fires. Boom, the blast hits. The grandfather is knocked down, but the shockwave plucks the gleaming soup ladle out of his belt and he watches it soar lazily halfway across the field. The Tiger disappears. The kitchen crew gather back together, dusting themselves off. Nobody is hurt. But of the kitchen and the horses, there's nothing left.

Hee hee. I love CM. I remember spending hours with PanzerBlitz back in the 80's trying to see how battalion orders of battle were made up and how they interacted. This is so much better. BigDuke, shoot me an e-mail off the forum with whatcha need.

Keegan's great. Okujava is a different kind of singer, though. Not a brass band, Bulat.

The famous Russian bard Bulat Okujava sang about the paratroopers fighting as infantry: The Tenth Parachute Battalion (We Need One Victory) By Bulat Okujava Here no birds sing, No trees grow And only we shoulder to shoulder Dig here into the earth. The planet is on fire as it turns, Smoke is rising over our Motherland. And so we need a victory! One for all of us, and we’ll pay any price. One for all of us, and we’ll pay any price. The deadly fire awaits us, But it’s powerless after all. Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent Tenth Parachute Battalion, Our Tenth Parachute Battalion. No sooner has the fighting stopped – Than another order sounds. And the messenger goes out of his mind Looking for us. The red rocket goes up, The tireless machinegun beats. And so we need a victory! One for all, and we’ll pay any price. One for all, and we’ll pay any price. The deadly fire awaits us, But it’s powerless after all. Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent Tenth Parachute Battalion, Our Tenth Parachute Battalion. From Kursk and Orel The war has brought us To the enemy’s very gates, That’s how it stands, my friend. One day we’ll remember all this And we won’t believe it ourselves. But now we need a victory! One for all, and we’ll pay any price. One for all, and we’ll pay any price. The deadly fire awaits us, But it’s powerless after all. Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent Tenth Parachute Battalion, Our Tenth Parachute Battalion. ------------------------------ In Russian, it's one hell of a song.

OK, sounds good. Lemme know if I can help out, otherwise I'll sit tight. Turns out BigDuke6 and I are physical neighbors out here in Kiev. Cool.

Here's a photo of "people pods" for carrying paratroops on a Soviet R-5 biplane. http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/RAFAQ/R-5.html

I knew a guy a while back who had been a MiG-21 pilot. He said he was coming in to land one time and the gear wouldn't go down. Nothing to do but eject...he ejects at 50' altitude and the chute only partly opens as he comes back way down...smash! It took him two years in traction before he could walk again. When I spent some time in Russia as a kid in the 1970s there was a big youth organization called DOSAAF. This was sortof like Junior ROTC but on the usual massive nationwide & ideological Soviet scale. DOSAAF's job was to get kids involved in military-type activities, including parachuting. I think the organization's roots came out of some of the paratroop experiments they did in the 1930s. I'll ask around out here and see what I can dig up.

> Most of the time, real Russian mech formations > defended with such motor rifle units, holding > ground the tank portions of the parent unit had > taken. Vehicles let them keep up and shift > forces to meet any threat. But the actual > ground-taking attack was tank led. Jason, what are you basing your very interesting comment on? I.e., what are some good sources to read about the actual Russian tactics? Pretty much the only thing I've been able to find in the Russian sources is the old junk from the Red Army guys after they got passed through the Communist censor. You know, titles like "The 34s Went Into Battle!" (Shli v Boy Tridtsat' Chetverki) and pablum like that. Inside they explain their victories in fascinating detail with deathless phrases like "Our tanks were fast and their armor was strong!" (Tanki bystri i krepka bronya!) But as to actual tactical employment of a T-34 company, or how to link it with infantry, or how to conduct recon for it -- nada. This is why it's been so much fun to discover CMBB, because it provides a tool to learn in detail how the stuff realistically *was actually* used. Thanxx

I'd be interested in joining as a tac commander if y'all need one. Either side is fine.

There's a really great CMAK scenario called Bieville that you could try out if you want to practice with AT guns on the offensive. It has a mixed British infantry/AT gun/tank force pushing in from the Normandy beaches vs. a tank-heavy German counterattack. The Brits' main firepower is from several batteries of towed antitank guns. You need to reposition the individual guns using the techniques the folks have described above. But the additional point is that when you have enough of them -- several batteries' worth -- you can use the ATGs to establish fire dominance over key areas of the terrain **in areas where the enemy hasn't moved yet, but must move in order to accomplish his objectives**. Any individual gun is quite vulnerable, but when used together in an integrated fashion they can establish a fabric of control over the terrain that you can then gradually push forward as you shift the guns forward a few at a time.

One really key thing is the interaction between the overall positioning of your tanks and the *terrain*. You have to learn to read the terrain in both 2D and 3D. I think this is what Vortex is saying when he talks about appropriate use of the map. You need to learn to read the CM terrain and understand where there will be obstacles that you can hide behind, and once you are hiding there, where you will have fields of fire. Then you need to pick obstacles and hide tanks or groups of tanks behind them so that (a) their fields of fire overlap, and ( so that in order to get you, the enemy has to move into the zone of overlapping fire. Then when he comes into the kill zone facing one of your tanks or groups, he ends up getting zapped from the side by the other tank or group. The Germans can often use this approach using single tanks, because they spot and shoot so much faster. The Russians more often need to have whole platoons or companies together to get the same effect, because they take longer to spot and their rate of fire is lower. When it's done properly as the Russians, you can get a company to pour out an incredible torrent of fire on any enemy who walks into the fire zone. It's best of all when the fire zone is in an unexpected location. Another useful concept is LOS footprint. You need to have your vehicles positioned so that all the vehicles in each of your groups can see the same area **and only that area**. That's what makes them mutually supporting -- anybody who walks into the footprint gets seen & shot at by all the vehicles in the group. Having the vehicles physically close tends to give them the same LOS footprint, but doesn't always do so. The key is reading the terrain to see what the LOS footprints will be, picking a place ahead of time where the footprints will be to your advantage, and maneuvering your groups into the firing locations that will give you the LOS footprints that you want. The US Army calls this "Development of Engagement Areas." Check out Field Manual 3-90.2, "The Tank And Mechanized Infantry Battalion Task Force," at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-90-2/chap6.htm " (2) The critical planning piece for both maneuver and fire support during defensive operations is Engagement Area (EA) development. Although EAs may also be divided into sectors of fire, it is important to understand that defensive systems are not designed around the EAs but rather around avenues of approach. EAs and sectors of fire are not intended to restrict fires or cause operations to become static or fixed; they are used only as a tool to concentrate fires and to optimize their effects. The seven steps listed below represent a way to build an engagement area. Although listed sequentially, some steps (marked by an asterisk) can and should be done concurrently. "