Ivanov
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Posts posted by Ivanov
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I think this is a book about the Battle of Radzymin. I've never heard anybody referring to it as a "Battle of Praga". Later on, during the uprising there was some fighting in Praga, but the tank battle is called just Battle of Radzymin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Radzymin_(1944) -
32 minutes ago, Machor said:
[Presses the brain reset switch.]
Well there's one conclusion to be drawn here - enjoy the games but don't learn the history from them. Their authors are not historians but enthusiasts. The Eisenbach series is made by people who grew in the 80's and wanted to remake the games from their youth.
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21 hours ago, Machor said:
Do note the quote from the summary that AKD found: "T-64As began arriving in 1976 in 16 and 35 divisions (and were mistaken by Western intel to be T-72s – hence the beginning of the myth that T-72s were in GSFG)." Sounds like the author is with the 'T-72s were never in GSFG' camp.
And yes, even if we can come to a conclusion with this, I will also be left asking why the T-80 has shown up in post-Soviet conflicts much more rarely than the T-72, why so many T-72s were produced (assuming they weren't sent to Germany), and why so much was invested in upgrading that tank by the Soviets.
Frankly, this discussion has moved CMFG to the top of my wishlist. My reasoning being: If we're having such a hard time with basic facts like these, how much more is there to learn (and unlearn) about the period? I would trust BFC to set the record straight.
Never thought I'd find myself in a discussion of Soviet tanks as if we're discussing ancient chariots.
The Soviet T-72's were newer deployed to Germany. As stated above, the T-64's were often confused with them. Many board games from the 80's feature GSFG equipped with T-72's, so the myth lives on until today. But honestly I've never encountered any serious publication, that would repeat the mistaken claim about the T-72's in GSFG. The Soviet follow-up, stationed in Soviet Union had them. These were those forces, that were supposed run over the smoldering, nuclear remains of Europe and eventually get to the Channel. Also the Soviet units stationed in Asia, deployed against China had T-72's. BTW, the fragment cited by akd is really, really good. The whole Soviet tank development story is very confusing for the logical western minds. As Panzer has already stated, the competition between various construction bureaus and factories played a major role in it. There's no doubt, that by the end of the 80's, T-80 was the major Soviet tank in Germany. However overall it comprised a relatively small part of the entire Soviet tank force. What happened after the Soviet collapse is a completely different story. As already stated, the T-80 was made a scapegoat for the Russian disasters in Chechenya. BTW some of the units that were badly hit in Grozny, were before deployed to Germany. It's worth mentioning, that through it's service T-80's had technical problems with the engine. Eventually the T-72 team prevailed in the late 90's, when the Russians decided, that the more reliable T-72's would become the main tank of their greatly reduced tank force. What happened with the T-80's in the 2000's? Overall about 5400 were produced. Most of them were inherited by Russia, some by Ukraine and right now they are being kept in the storages.
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2 hours ago, IanL said:
So, I know all to well how excellent English does not always mean that someone knows the goofy expressions and slang. Like I said if if you already know then just ignore me.
Just for your information: the expression about being packed like sardines exists also in Polish and in Spanish ( spoken in Spain, not sure about the Latin countries ). So it's one of those expressions that are international.
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18 minutes ago, Machor said:
If this stands - and I'm not challenging it - it'll become one of the greatest corrections I will have had to make into my knowledge of military history - in which case I'm grateful.
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6 minutes ago, shift8 said:
For example, he might have been using whatever the most up to date estimate or source was, etc. Not necessarily from the year of publishing.
That's exactly what happened IMO. The numbers in Central Front reflect probably the estimate from circa mid 80's, hence don't reflect the actuality from 1989.
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8 minutes ago, shift8 said:
Tank War Central Front------By Zaloga
It's ironic that we both quote the same author. However Central Front was published in 1989, so some data was incorrect and not up to the date. The T-80 book I'm referring to is from 2009.
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12 hours ago, shift8 said:
Group of Soviet Forces-Germany
5700 tanks in units
T-64 A/B------------------65%
T-80-----------------------15%
T-62-----------------------15% mainly in independent tank regiments and training units
2000 tanks in reserves
I realize this is CMFB forum and I apologize for an off topic but I have to respond
This looks pretty accurate for the first half of the 80's. One thing I'm glad, is that there are no mythical T-72's in your GSFG equipment summary. Secondly, if we agree, that there were about 5700 tanks in GSFG and take into the account the CFE treaty documents cited by Zaloga ( which state that in 1991 there were 3020 T-80B/BV's deployed in East Germany ), you'll get over 50% of T-80, with the rest being T-64 ( a tank for some reasons ignored by many western military enthusiast and I suspect often confused with T-72 ) and a small number of T-62's. Again, this is not author's imagination or fantasy but an official Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe document. BTW I'd like to know your sources.It doesn't mean that the Soviets had any significant numerical advantage in number of modern tanks. It just means that by 1989 T-80 become the most common Soviet tank in Germany and that there were no damn Soviet T-72's there
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It seems that Bradley is like Lenin. Always alive
http://defence-blog.com/army/bae-systems-debuting-next-generation-bradley-prototype-at-ausa-2016.html -
38 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:
So it is true that by 1989 the OoB's changed around a bit. Tank variants were upgraded and others discarded. For instance I know that the Soviets were trying to move away from the T-64 due to a number of reasons, reliability in the field being one of them, and that they were extensively upgrading their tank variants (see T-72B obr. 1989) but the majority of tanks in Eastern Europe were not the T-80 variant. They were likely only about 1/3rd of all Soviet tanks in Europe. While I don't necessarily dispute Zaloga's numbers, I think he inflated T-80 tanks produced to tanks fielded. If you look at the Soviet OoB, there are not entire tank divisions made up of T-80s. There tends to be only 1 regiment of T-80 tanks per division.
Let's just agree to disagree. By 1989 the T-80's became the main Soviet tank in Germany, however overall it never comprised the majority of Soviet tanks. In the follow up units stationed in Soviet Union and in the depots, there were probably more than 50k other types of tanks like T-64, T-72, T-62 and T-55. I'm somehow confused by the attention given in the west to the T-72. The main Soviet tanks were the T-64 and then T-80. T-72 was designed as a cheaper alternative to T-64 and it was also widely exported. During the Soviet time T-64's and T-80's were never sold abroad. Let's not confuse the Cold War with what happened in Russia in the 90's. For variety of reasons the T-80's were withdrawn from the service and T-72 and later T-90 become the main tank of modern Russian forces. Also, the T-80 production effectively ended in the early 90's.
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49 minutes ago, Machor said:
In Avalon Hill's Tac Air from 1987, of the three Soviet divisions that were supposed to spearhead the advance through the Hof Gap, only one - a Guards tank division - was equipped with T-80s; the other two with T-72s. I would appreciate if this matter could be clarified.
If anything the Soviet armor strength was underestimated by the Western planners.
Steven J. Zaloga, T-80 Standard Tank, Osprey publishing 2009:
sube
Apart from that, there were about 300 T-80U's. The rest of the tanks deployed in East Germany were T-64's Only one Soviet regiment of GSFG was still equipped with the T-62's.I'm not entering a discussion about the supremacy of Soviet or Western armor. It's just the numbers.
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8 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:
. The Soviets were mostly using T-72 series tanks (T-72B obr. 1985 in particular) in the Guards divisions. There were T-80 variants in some of the Guards units, but the vast majority were T-72s. Reason being as I've heard is that the T-80 was primarily a prototype tank that never truly developed fully. They still made a decent number sure, but there were only 500 T-80Us, the best variant. Kind of a King Tiger of the 1980's. The non Guards divisions were mostly T-55 and T-62 variants with BMP-1 mounted motor rifles. Other NATO and WARSAW Pact nations would have a similar smattering of new and not so new hardware to play with.
Ehm, the majority of the first line Soviet tanks deployed in Eastern Germany in the 80's were T-80's or T-64's. The second echelon forces were mostly equipped with T-64. At that time T-72 was primarily designed for export. Only in the 90's a decision was taken in Russia to make T-72 their main tank. The T-72, T-62 and T-55 were the backbone of Iraqi army during the Desert Storm, but not of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. The allied WP armies were much weaker in terms of armor - around 80% of their forces were T-55's and the rest T-72's. So the situation on the central front, would much different than on the deserts of Iraq, where the allies deployed their best equipped units, could wear down the enemy with a month long bombing campaign, had numerical superiority on the main axes of advance and were able to chose the place and time of the attack.
It seems that CM Fulda would attract a lot of attention. No surprise here - I'm guessing that a lot of people here were even deployed to Germany at that time. I guess that as always money is the main problem. So why not to organize a kickstarter? It works very well for the niche board games designers. I'd gladly contribute my hard earned Euros for that purpose, even knowing that we'd need to wait years for the final product.
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OK, here are my two cents.
WW2:
CM Storm of Steel
Year 1943 on the Eastern Front. Hundreds and hundred of battles, starting from Third Battle of Kharkov, Operation Citadel, Soviet counter offensives and Battle of the Dnieper. The German were still efficient on the tactical level so it would be a tough fight for both sides. That would be my number one wish.
Early War - Barbarossa and France
In general Barbarossa is overrepresented in strategic and operational gaming and it doesn't excite me anymore, but in the scale of CM it would be very interesting because the Germans had often hard time defeating better Soviet tanks. Same can be said about the France 1940.
Post WW2:
CM Korea
I like the idea. It would pretty similar to WW2 but this conflict is virtually forgotten and I think it would work very well in CM scale.
CM Fulda Gap/Central Front 1985I would be very excited to see that game. I mean c'mon - just look at that painting:
subir fotos online
CM Baltic Storm/PolandHigh intensity, hypothetical conflict, a successor of CMBS. New nations including the Brits, Germans, Poles and Belarussians, again I'd be very excited to see that game.
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3 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:
I'm playing the Russian campaign in Red Thunder right now and one thing I would wish for: A Red Army campaign focused on a tank unit.
Get the Road to Minsk campaign. You are in charge of a Soviet tank brigade there.
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I'd also look at the IFV SOP - they too often fire cannot at tanks, instead of ATGM. Russian BMP-2's now fire ATGM's but Ukrainian BMP's and BTR's still don't.
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I also love this game but please fix the Oplot tank. In my current game my Oplot got immobilized with a few shots from the BMP-2 cannon. So far the performance of my Oplots has been abysmal. They got killed by BMP's and rarely are able to hit anything with a first shoot. T-72B· are much better.
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Another thing - based on your experience gents, is the tank more likely reverse and launch smoke when targeted, while executing hunt or slow command?
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13 minutes ago, womble said:
An additional nugget of info: Hunt-ordered elements will ignore spotted enemy that they have been directed not to fire on. So if you give a partial Target Arc, spotted (or tentative contacts with) enemy of any kind outside that segment will not cause the element to halt, and any unit with a Target Armour Arc will ignore infantry contacts or spots for the purposes of deciding whether to halt their Hunt. Incoming fire will still cause the Hunter to halt, though.
I think, again, this is more relevant for keeping your WW2-era tank-hunting elements from being spooked by distant infantry, given that it's potential suicide for even MBTs to blanket "ignore" infantry at almost any spottable range in the C21st time period.
+1
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Thank you for all the input. It seems to me that slow is more relevant in WW2 titles, for example in case of ignoring spotted enemy units. In CMBS if you see the enemy in most of the cases you can kill him, so hunt seems to me more useful. What about the noise levels? Is there any difference between slow and hunt and quick vs fast?
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4 minutes ago, TJT said:
Slow is useful for negotiating difficult terrain with less risk of bogging/break downs.
Good point, thank you.
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OK, but in what situations do you use "slow"? If I expect enemy contact, I want my guys to be super vigilant an fire before the enemy does because otherwise they'll die, so in those situations I use "hunt". If I don't expect enemy contact, I want my troops to get as fast as possible from point A to point B, so I never use slow. The slow command seems redundant to me in case of the vehicles.
Similarly, why use "quick" instead of "fast"? Intuitively I was using quick because I thought that with the "fast" command the vehicle was prone to damage it's track or that the driver would suffer from the fatigue, but it seems never to happen. So if I need speed, I just give "fast" command. I also thought that I may need to increase and decrease the speed gradually like in a real car with manual gear stick, but it seems that I can go directly from move to fast and the vehicle would be fine.
BTW, I've never seem the vehicle crews to suffer from the fatigue.
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I'm not sure about that in case of modern vehicles with cannon stabilization, that can fire on the move. But yes, I think with the hunt command they most likely will stop the movement, which I think in most of the cases is much better for the survivability.
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Can anybody tell me if "slow" command has any advantage over "hunt" if it comes to the vehicles? I understand that in case of the infantry, slow would mean that they would basically crawl , so they become less exposed. But in case of the vehicles I never use slow because hunt makes them more responsive to the potential threats.
Similarly - why use quick if you can use fast? In case of infantry quick is more sustainable but what about the vehicles?
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The only problem with leaving infantrymen inside the vehicle is, that most likely they all will die with it. I always keep them dismounted whenever there's a risk of enemy contact.
Black Sea v1.04 released!
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Out of caution, I'm not going to install the patch yet
What about the known Oplot commander bug? Has this been addressed?