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Soviet Doctrine in WW2 - 1944


Aured

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  • 2 weeks later...

Back after experimenting with Jason's OOBs above with a few custom scenarios. They make for very fun battles. Plus they are quick to modify to see how slight equipment and/or enter timing affects the battle. One thing however. I have been using maps (farmland & rolling terrain) with 1 KM frontage and 1.5 deep. The effective frontage is more like 750 meters given objective placement. That seems about right. But I will ask anyway.

Kevin

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Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II?  No they did not.

 

Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure.  But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.  Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.

 

Quite. To give an example from a Red Army division commander memoir: in the prep for the L'vov-Sandomierz Operation his rifle division was selected for the initial assault (the honour!). This entailed carrying out lengthy recces along its front line to ID all German strongpoints and whatnot to be able to plaster them appropriately with the heavy stuff that came in support. So a few days before kick-off, Konev shows up at the divisional CP and berates him for not having fulfilled the expected norm of identified strongpoints. The flogging done, he left, suggesting that if the rate of ID'd German strongpoints did not improve substantially, he would assign the artillery to a division that had done a better job. The implication of course being that in that case, this particular division could go into the assault with no support.

 

An extra effort was made.

 

All the best

 

Andreas

Edited by Andreas
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Kevinkin - sure that frontage is fine.  The actual attack sector could be as narrow as 500 meters for that kind of column, but to see how all its different bits help the formation do its job, it helps if the column has some choices about where to hit, to get the most from its recon etc.  A front 1000 meters wide is barely enough for that, but works.  If you went wider, a realistic version would need to have a second element just like the one depicted running parallel to the first, and able to shift in behind the easier spot or not etc.  But the scale creeps up on you if you try to depict that.  Better in playability terms to stick to the scale above, and maybe err somewhat on the side on an emptier battlefield (in total space terms) to give maneuver options.  You won't see the value of having the infantry motorized if the field of battle is 400 meters wide by 500 meters deep...

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Yes. The value of truck delivered forces only becomes apparent on deep maps where they can operate outside enemy small arms range. Additionally the scenario may want to have a requirement to reload the force so to reach the next objective on time. Otherwise, design the scenario with the motorized infantry off loaded. Moving them around the battlefield loaded is a big risk. That said, armed half tracks can be deadly mopping up the last objectives if you are careful.

Kevin

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That one mission in the FI campaign where you have to squeeze the Livorno Division by a heavily armed Company of American riflemen on a map only 800m wide grits my teeth every time. The briefing is completely wrong about it in my mind. Their simply is not enough room to maneuver the trucks around the Americans on the map and the only real choice i've found everytime is to give battle.

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  • 1 month later...

This thread seems to have tailed off now, but I followed a link and came across this absolute gem.

 

JasonC your explanation of Soviet doctrine is one of the best posts I've come across on any subject, on any forum. Credit to you sir.

 

I noticed someone posted a link to a post you made some years back about German strongpoint defensive systems. I'm hoping that out there in the ether of the BF forums you've contributed many such posts over the years about various forms of doctrine. Please, please let this be the case?

 

If so, has anyone managed to collate them, or at least signpost them?  I notice Jason, you have made many thousands of posts, so trying to find them from scratch may be problematic. But if you or anyone else on the BF forum could point me in the right direction of other such posts I'd love to read more.  

 

Here's an idea - a JasonC 'doctrine' Youtube video series which uses CM to illustrate various WWII combatant doctrines (I can dream).

Edited by Odin
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I'm hoping that out there in the ether of the BF forums you've contributed many such posts over the years about various forms of doctrine. Please, please let this be the case?

Heh, yes, there are quite a few, but I've never seen a compilation, and most are buried within other threads, so it could be a chore to find and compile them.  But surely a worthy endeavor...

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  • 1 year later...
On 01/05/2015 at 11:03 PM, JasonC said:

In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.

I completely forgot I'd posted this topic. Excellent reply JasonC. Can you clarify where you found this information? Also, can you clarify the going to ground part? It may just be me, but I don't get it. If they all just dropped when they were shot at, wouldn't they just get slaughtered by mortars? Wouldn't the Company commander try and get them to keep moving?    

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There were no "waves" organised as waves. In the regiment were companies of 1-st echelon, usually 4. Companies of 2nd echelone, usually 2. Than 3rd battalion with 2 companies in 1st echelone and 1 in 2nd. 4 "waves" in summ. 4-2-2-1.

Though I read document where division was organised in waves, (assault of Perekop, Crimea 1944) but it is an exception.

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On 05/02/2017 at 6:02 AM, Vergeltungswaffe said:

Jason hasn't been on here since July.  Not sure he'll be back.

That's a shame. Guy really knew his stuff. I wonder if he has an e-mail or something? 

The problem with asking questions about this sort of thing is that there is little to no information available online and people who really know about it are few and far between; learning about military history really seems to be a niche hobby. If I wanted to find out about, say, German infantry doctrine, a quick Google search reveals nothing but five pages dedicated solely to the formation of the average Wehrmacht section and a single military handbook. It's maddening. 

Edited by Aured
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6 hours ago, Aured said:

The problem with asking questions about this sort of thing is that there is little to no information available online and people who really know about it are few and far between; learning about military history really seems to be a niche hobby. If I wanted to find out about, say, German infantry doctrine, a quick Google search reveals nothing but five pages dedicated solely to the formation of the average Wehrmacht section and a single military handbook. It's maddening. 

There is actually a fair amount of information online, but you have to phrase your search carefully—a skill I am still trying to master. Search engines, including even Google, are not too good at intuiting what it is you want of them and must be told in just the right language. Good hunting.

Michael

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On 10.02.2017 at 6:38 PM, Aured said:

That's a shame. Guy really knew his stuff. I wonder if he has an e-mail or something? 

The problem with asking questions about this sort of thing is that there is little to no information available online and people who really know about it are few and far between; learning about military history really seems to be a niche hobby. If I wanted to find out about, say, German infantry doctrine, a quick Google search reveals nothing but five pages dedicated solely to the formation of the average Wehrmacht section and a single military handbook. It's maddening. 

It's a typical problem. You can find tons of information about divisions, armies, fronts. But you won't find anything worth about company level. When you take divisional documents, you see nice red line, showing 1-st line of trenches. Long line. In reality there were few company trenches and some platoon. On maps and schemes - nice uniform formations, regiments, battallions. In reality - half strength without heavy weapons. And no sources bellow regimental level! (And regimental documents are also few, mainly divisional)

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Try this series, http://www.soldat.ru/files/4/6/15/218/ which gives tactical examples down to platoon level

The Company level one is easy to access see: http://militera.lib.ru/science/taktika_rota/index.html as your browser can translate the webpages for you automatically.

Similarly Pamyat Naroda does have extraordinarily detailed maps, for instance this one of the Sandomir Bridgehead which shows virtually every single German Machine Gun position. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=100681962

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/3/2015 at 11:57 AM, JasonC said:

The CSS failures are huge by western or even later war Russian standards.

Thank you for your colossal and thought-provoking material. I just have one question - who exactly was implementing those far superior operations in the West at the same time?

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On 6/21/2017 at 3:40 AM, DreDay said:

Thank you for your colossal and thought-provoking material. I just have one question - who exactly was implementing those far superior operations in the West at the same time?

Nobody else had armored formations, with AFVs numbering in the triple digits, fall apart inside of a weak with only minimal enemy contact. For all their failures, I don't think any French armored formation had over ninety percent of its tanks lost while just moving around on the map like the Soviet 15th Mech Corps.

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