Skipper
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Posts posted by Skipper
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Strange... On a board that generates 200 posts about ROF of ISU-152, one would expect this to cause a dicsussion.
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Another pre-cooked opinion, huh? I'd second Jason's advice: get yourself a map, read up some modern russian sources on soviet WWII operations and soviet WWII losses, and dont talk BS anymore. Thank you in advance.
By the way, I understood what your point was. And I disagreed with it.
> My point is that the sovs lost an
> unacceptable amount of human lives in
> their nations defense and in the winning
> of the war on their front.
When I think about what would happen if nazis won, to me those losses seem to be 'acceptable'.
> No free people would have put up with it.
Of course, they would rather let germans kill half of them and enslave the other half. You know, I have more faith in 'free people' than you. In brits, at least. Have you ever heard about british pikemen (sic!) units? Thankfully, they never saw combat, but if Hitler would choose to go for Sea Lion, they were ready for him.
> where are these decimal point numbers of
> loss ratios that people are coming up with?
From those "little records", that occupy absolutely enormous shelf areas in TsAMO and several other archives. They were all kept undisclosed until 1990s.
> The early Blitzkrieg success and the
> US/anglo retaking of France had the same
> element of complete airpower.
Trust me, RKKA had airplanes, too. In 1944-45 as well. Lots of them.
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> You must be able to send to Siberia badly
> performing commanders in an important
> peanut and cabbagge plantation mission. Or
> as tooth pick recovers. Or somefink like
> this.
Never happened. The choice was demotion, shtrafbat (penal batallion) or death.
Germans considered the whole eastern front a penal batallion.
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Have you seen Hidden & Dangerous? The benchmark for the WWII-ish style in a game, IMHO.
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> But the armored war in the later years did
> depend alot on guns and armor. A stubborn
> superior vehicle could hold up an armored
> onslaught till defensive measures could
> arrive. The will of an attacker could be
> sapped (perhaps beyond all reason) by
> superior weapons.
Somehow, it didnt help germans in 1944-45 on eastern front. Soviet advances were very rapid.
> They used sledgehammer tactics to get
> victorys/stalemates at very great costs.
Korsun-Shevchenko, Umansk-Botoshansk, Lvov-Sandomir - rings any bells? RKKA went from Moscow to Belorussia to Berlin in 2 years, cutting through a fully mobilised and battle-hardened german army, taking several lines of permanent fortifications and fording several major rivers in the process. It was done by aplication of superior operational art, not by sledgehammer tactics.
> The US and the Anglos would not have been
> capable of using these tactics.
US and Anglos had 3 (three) years to get ready to D-Day. By the time of landing, they built such an overwhelming superiority in artillery and tanks that they never have any need for what you call "sledgehammer tactics". They had no need for too much operational finesse, either.
> The use of infantry AT
> weapons made tank roaming a dangerous
> affair and combined arms became the mobile
> prosecuter.
I dont think development of infantry AT weapons throughout the war changed much of anything in that respect. Tanks needed infantry and artillery support in 1941 practically as much as in 1945.
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I think many people here would read the following text (written by Alexey Isaev, translation mine).
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So, what happened in 1941? Let's begin with traditional question "Plans of the sides". Military plans of Germany and USSR were, traditionally for superpowers, offensive, aiming to frustrate opponent's deployment and to crush his army under the most favourable circumstances. The mere existance of offensive plans is not unusual, plans of countries who began WWI in 1914 were offensive, too. Offensive plans are easier to carry out. By striking first we impose our will on the opponent, forcing him to use forces asigned for his own offensive to parry the strike.
Building a stable defence across hundreds of kilometers, even using permanent fortifications, is generally a non-trivial task. It is very difficult to determine where opponent will strike, and thus line up own troops with sufficient density. On the contrary, striking first, we could concentrate our troops on tips of strikes, leaving only the minimum number of troops on secondary directions.
To carry out military plans in XX century such thing was necessary as a strategic deployment. Ie, troops for the operation (milions of people, tens of thousand trucks with ammo and equipment) had to be moved through the country's road network to the border. This process is not fast, and depends upon a throughput capacity of opponents' railroads.
Actual condition of railroads in USSR is illustrated by the following figures (in pairs of trains per day):
District before 1941 planned opponent
Low Baltics 87 216 1923
Western 120 166 216
Kiev 132 266 362
Odessa 28 96 91
'Planned' capacity means the capacity after modernisation of railroad network according to the plan for 1941. The figures are quoted from the document TsAMO f.67 op 165389 d.1 pages 68-85. Published in Terra, Vol. 14.
For reader's guidance, to carry through one rifle division per day, capacity of 48-50 pairs of trains was required. Ie, the bigger the throughput capacity and the shorter the redeployment distance, the faster is the strategic deployment.
While the troops needed for the operation are being pushed through railroads to the border, the border is covered by so-called covering armies. Density of these troops (30-50 km per division, deployed in one echelon) is not sufficient for any serious defensive or offensive actions. They can only cover the border during the period of deployment and concentration of troops from small-scale attacks to capture bridgeheads, favourable locations etc.
Based on WWI experience, it was thought that from the beginning of war until the beginning of active combat actions (ie, planned operations), there will be a period of deployment and mobilisaion. Realities of WWII were such that there was no such period.
Germany carried out mobilisation and deployment secretly, and delivered a blow on an opponent who was not yet deployed (ex, Poland, whose plans, buy the way, were also offensive). Therefore, taking into account experience of war in Poland, USSR also carried out various actions for secret mobilisation (calling reservists up), deployment of troops (relocation of divisions, corps and armies from internal military districts to the west). In May 1941, directives were issued to relocate armies formed in internal districts. These armies were: 21A (66 rc, 63 rc from Volga district; 45 rc, 30 rc, 33 rc from Orel district), 19A from North Caucasus district (34 rc, 67 rc, 25 mc) and 16A from Baikal district. In reality, deployment of these armies was not finished - in may, 34 rc of 19 A was relocated to Kiev district, 16A was relocated from East Siberia just before the beginning of war.
If those May directives were carried out, there was a chance to deploy ahead of Germans. The problems were lack of information about opponent's real plans, and a huge length of soviet railroad network.
Intelligence about Germans was contradictory (see Meltyukhov about it), and on May 31, 1941 Wehrmacht forces were not yet apparently grouped against USSR (120 divisions in the East and 120 in the West). Only when in the beginning of June german buildup in the East continued, the threat has become clear. Urgent actions were taken to complete deployment (relocation of Second Strategic Echelon troops from internal districts). 21 A began to redeploy to Gomel. On June 14 redeployment of rifle corps' formed in special districts in spring 1941 (including 31 rc, in which Lyudnikov's 200 rd, mentioned by Suvorov, was a part of).
Simultaneously, political steps were taken to delay Germany's strike. Simply speaking, soviet leadership was trying to win time for completion of strategic deployment. If it was possible to delay germans for two weeks, there would be a chance to have on the border covering armies, corps' from special districts and armies from internal districts. In that case, it would be possible to carry out defensive and offensive operations against Wehrmacht.
Most profitable would be to inpose own will on the enemy and strike first, advancing from Belostock and Lvov salients, encircling germans between Bug and Vistula. But completed strategic deployment would allow successful strategic defense, too.
So, why was summer 1941 disastrous? Defensive plans have nothing to do with it. Incomplete strategic deployment was the problem. With incomplete deployment, defensive plans would have the same catastrophic result.
What was an incomplete deployment? It is when 19 A, that was, according to 1940 plans, supposed to defend on the tip of Kleist's 1st TG strike, was partially still in Northernm Caucasus, and partially reached Kiev. It is when 20 A, that was assigned to defend the same area according to Vatutin's notes of 13.06.41, is still in its own districs, hundreds of kilometers away. It is when, instead of those two armies, Sokal salient on Southern Front is defended by a SOLE 124 rifle division. Which was rolled out to a pancake by five german divisions.
It was the same stopry in the area of Brest, on Western Front. Outnumbering 4 A fivefold, germans happily broken through the front and went quickly on towards Minsk. This happened for the same simple reason that troops assigned for defending Brest area were still in railroad cars near Minsk, again hundreds opf kilometers away from the border.
Both examples are given for those places where, according to its defensive plans, RKKA was to defend, thus securing the center of "Cannes". At planned strike locations, also only covering troops, withd ensity 30-50 km per division, were present. Again for the reason that rifle division and corps' assigned for offensive actions either marched towards the border (Lyudnikov's 200 rd) or moved by rail to the special districts (13 A, tat was supposed to strike on Warszaw).
Only mechansed corps' were ready, but they were unable to do anything without infantry support. This is why the strongest 4 mc was threaded down by german infantry division around Lvov, the same thing happened to 8 mc at Dubno, to 15 mc at Radekhov. The problem was not german superiority in tanks, but their overwhelming superiority in infantry.
Specific figures at Western Front are as follows. Defensive zone of 3 A was 120 km wide, 10 A - 200 km and 4 A - 150 km wide. On the average, there was 36 km per division, in 3 A - 40 km, 10 A - 33 km, 4 A - 37.5 km.
For comparison, let's take troops densities at Kursk. 13 A defended on 32 km front, particularly 15 rd - 9 km, 81 rd 10 km. 8 km behind them, there were 6 Grd on 14 km front and 307 rd on 10 km front. 148 rd - 7 km; 8 rd - 6 km; 6 km behind themthere was 74 rd on 14 km front.
Additionally, 20 km behind the front, there were also 17 Grc, 70 Grd, 75 Grd and 18 Gsc.
On the rest of the front (over 200 km), there were another 17 rifle divisions and 4 rifle brigades.
[skip]
At Voronezh Front area, loaction of german strike was not exactly determined, and even with these densities of defending troops the defence was pierced, and germans managed to cut 35 km into soviet defensive formations. Situation was recovered by counterstrikes of 1 TA and 5 TA.
It is easy to see that densities of troops at soviet border on 22 June 1941 were several times less than at Kursk. It was due to the problems with strategic deployment.To prepare for defence (or offence), it was necessary to line up at the border covering troops, formations from special districts, and formations from internal districts. With incomplete deployment, with three echelons, containing slightly more than 50 divisions each, and separated from each other by hundreds of kilometers, RKKA was not ready either for defence or for offence. "Unpreparedness" of soviet troops in 1941 is in this factor. Enormous work was done to raise country's readiness to war, but undeployed army was not ready to the german strike.
Density of troops was not sufficient for defence or offence, germans outnumbered each of the three soviet echelons - border armies, line of rifle corps' from special districts and armies from internal districts moving by rail. On 22.06 only 83 echelons of soviet troops arrived at their destinations, 455 were on the way and 401 were not yet loaded (!!!).
It also necessary to note that RKKA was not even fully mobilised. This is why many mechanized corps' (15 mc, 19 mc, Rokossovsky's 9 mc) were not yet supplied up to full strength with trucks and tractors from civil sector. Because of this, they actually were nothing more but rifle corps' heavily reinforced by armor, but without cartage. And of course, they were inferior to germans in mobility.
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> You mean the Russians did not have very
> many to mass.
Initially, RKKA had quite many tanks - more than Wehrmacht, in fact. But because of incomplete soviet deployment, these tanks went to battle without proper infantry and artillery support and were nearly all lost very quickly.
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Katyushas were indeed used to fire at area targets - batch of forest, hilltop and such. Not to KO a particular MG bunker - that was a job for the normal artillery.
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> Stalin was more likely to use troops from
> places not firmly in Soviet control far
> more often than say Russian troops.
Wrong. Out of RKKA's 11.9 mln irredeemable losses, 7.9 were from Russian Federation.
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Roughly about 2/3rds of USSR population was russians, ukranians and belorussians -> 2/3rds of the army were them, as well. That's it.
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> One must remember that while European
> russians are by far the majority, many of
> them were in German Occupied areas until
Not as many as to make a meaningful difference, really.
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> During WW1, the Germans were referred to
> as Huns
They were often referred the same way in WWII. Ex, I've seen this nick in diplomatic correspondence between allies.
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> I don't think the PzIII ever had a long 75mm gun.
Not as a tank, not in production series.
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> Perhaps he saw a lot of Asian troops
If he was captured in the operational area of a division formed somewhere like Kazakhstan - then, easily.
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Most (i think, something like 70%) were slavs, of course. Conscripts's nationality didn't make much of any difference (with few exceptions, especially for resident germans). So, quite naturally, the ratios were about same as in the general population.
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> Just what is the advantage of the Katyushas?
Rate of fire and, sometimes, surprise factor. It is one thing to spend half an hour under a barrage of a battery of 152 mm howitzers. It is quite another to when as much HE lands on one's head simultaneously.
Germans were ahead of everyone in ballistic missiles, but MRLS was a soviet invention.
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> If memory serves, Chechin rebels took
> hostages in a Russian town near the
> border. The Russians soon declared the
> hostages were all dead (based on what
> info?) and proceeded to blast the town to
> pieces!
:confused: What was the name of that town? :confused:
I know the story of that war better than anyone else on this BBS, and I can recall exactly two (2) incidents that even remotely resembles this (in the hostages taking part). None of those included any artillery.
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> Can you deny their validity?
I can. But this sort of discussion is (rightfully, imho) not greeted by moderators. If you dont know the difference between this and real history, it wont help you anyway.
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Ari, your other two links are not much better, honestly.
As for Stalin's reputation during and after the war, as well as a lot of other information I advise you to read Churchill's fundamental tome "Second World War".
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Of course, BM-13 was not designed for direct fire. However, occasionally they did it. On one occasion I've heard of, there was an attack by several german SPGs. BM-13 battery that happened to be at firing positions in view of those SPGs, unloaded at them and they retreated (none was KO'd, but I guess they were suitably impressed). On another occasion, BM-13 was used to blow up a bridge, through which german tanks were moving to a newly captured bridgehead. In both cases they needed to fire from a slope, because of positive minimum elevation of the rails. I've also heard that sometimes people dug sligtly sloped firing positions for these things - for direct fire, or less than minimum range fire. But there also was a specific order prohibiting such practice.
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hehe... so it seems
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> Not abandoned equipment - this vet was
> telling me Russia was preparing to invade
> Germany.
RKKA was deploying in response to german deployment. The deployment was still unfinished when germans made their move. Lots of hardware from sceleton formations was already unloaded in the deployment areas, while mobilised reservists were still on the way to that hardware. This about sums it up.
Most T34s deployed in the west in June 1941 were in mechanised corps formations. I have an URL for the history of these formations, but now it doesnt work. I do recall that they went into battle quite early into the war - in the early July, if not in the late June.
The URL [in russian] http://mechcorps.chat.ru
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> Nice try to deflect the rather effectivce
> rebuttal to your statement.
Okay, although the point is quite moot.
> Juha already mentioned how the USSR
> violated it’s peace treaty with Finland
Yup. I didnt say USSR was a diplomatic angel.
> The Soviets invaded Poland on September
> 17. 1939
When it (Poland) already ceased to exist as a sovereign state, thanks mainly to Germany, but also France and Britain.
> Btw. it’s very interesting to note that
> the Katyn prison camps were prepared (by
> executions) to take in 20 000 Finns in
> February 1940.
You know, there were many enough prison camps much nearer the theater. This connection by whoever made it is telling something about by the author.
> Japan and the Soviet Union were not at war
> throughout almost the entire period of the
> war because a neutrality pact was
> concluded between the two countries in
> April 1941.
Relations remained quite hostile and there were multiple REAL incidents, which could be (and were) interpreted as violations of the neutrality pact by Japan.
> the Soviet Union, violating this
> neutrality pact, entered into war against
> Japan
> that was already on the brink of defeat.
Somehow, it wasn't how americans thought about it in summer 1945. After the war in Europe was over, western allies were pushing Stalin to comply with his liabilities concerning Japan as soon as possible.
> The Soviet Union militarily occupied not
> only the Japanese Chishima Islands but
> also Habomai and Shikotan islands, which
> were not even referred to in the Yalta
> Agreement.
iirc, Yalta Agreement did not prohibit USSR from doing that.
> The Azerbaijani Republic was recognised by
> many foreign States...
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic itself was not recognised by foreign states in 1920. Ie, this is completely irrelevant to the topic.
Everyone knows how surprisingly treacherous Hitler was. France occupied Ruhr. Britain failed to perform on several vital security guarantees in 1939-40. And I wont even mention Imperial era here. I could go on, but what for?
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> The loading time is irrelevant if it is
> not the limiting factor, and I am betting
> getting the gun laid on target and
> adjusted for range is the limiting factor.
With one shot in 30 seconds, I'd imagine that it is not so for all shots at the same target except the first one.
ROF we are discussing for the ISU-152 is limited by loading and rollback (whatever is the english term for returning the gun to ready state after a shot) times.
Steve (BTS): ROF of ISU-152
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
> The bottom line is that just like the US
> TD doctrine, the russian IS2 doctrine
> (whatever it was) didnt last long in
> combat.
Point 1. It did.
> It was an asset and it had to be a player.
> In face-offs with fast shooting tanks, it
> might have been best to pull back and
> reload with AP as SOP.
Point 2. SOP was to fire the already loaded HE at the target, then load AP.