LESSONS IN TANK TACTICS - Anecdotes for Discussion

[womble]

This was always difficult to recreate successfully in CMBBx1 until we discovered that if you used the 'shoot and scoot' command - BUT KEPT MOVING FORWARDS - and put one command after the other - what you got was a tank that rolled forward continuously with short stops to fire (aimed and stationery) and a very rapid speed of advance.

This would allow 4 T34/76 to beat even the StuGIII (with its 80mm front armour) as they were hard targets for the SPG to hit, the fire was distracting and one of the tanks would always survive even crossing open ground to get a flank shot.

What's the experience of CMx2 Normandy on this?

Simply from a mechanical point of view, that's eminently doable using the commands available to us in x2. Pauses at waypoints, with area targets (which could change every waypoint if you wanted) let you do the "firing halt" thing pretty intuitively. If you're keen to ensure that your tanks don't waste ammo while actually moving, you can even put two movement legs between firing stops. A very short one to separate the most recent firing waypoint from a (presumably longer) leg that has a cover arc imposed that would preclude firing, and keep the turret pointed where you want it. No pause at the waypoint where you set the cover arc of course, and the tank will just keep on rollin'.

How effective it would be, I can't answer. Would very much depend on the circumstances I feel.

[Der Alte Fritz]

This must be a recent introduction since I have all the earlier CMx2but not the later modules and it does not appear on the CMFI demo.

[George MC]

This must be a recent introduction since I have all the earlier CMx2but not the later modules and it does not appear on the CMFI demo.

You patched your CMBN to the latest patch 2.12? Makes a huge difference.

[womble]

This must be a recent introduction since I have all the earlier CMx2but not the later modules and it does not appear on the CMFI demo.

What I've described has been standard functionality in the engine since CMx2. It's been discussed and referred to dozens of times on here over the years. It's certainly available in the CMFI demo, and in CMBN, all patch versions. I'm referring to the ability to add orders to waypoints. If you're referring to an explicit "composite" Shoot-and-Scoot order, no, that's not there, but the tools to recreate it absolutely are.

[Duckman]

What kept the Soviets from improving significantly at the tactical level until at least midwar was the losses, which kept them in a negative feedback loop where high losses lead to shortened training and inexperienced troops sent into combat, where they suffer high losses, etc. The German entered the same downward spiral in the second half of 1944 (a bit earlier for the Luftwaffe and Ubootwaffe).

The Soviet air force were able to stop this spiral by 1944 (partly due to the Luftwaffe being withdrawn to protect Germany) when they managed to get losses to an acceptable level, which started a positive feedback loop where recruits could complete their training and then be sent to an operational training unit to get tutored. This had been the Luiftwaffe's model until about the same time, when they were forced to abandon it and entered their death spiral.

The situation in the air is a bit easier to track because both pilot training hours and losses are very well documented. On land it gets a bit more muddled, but based on Robert Forczyk's books I'd say it's pretty clear that Soviet tank training was quite rudimentary even by midwar which led to simplified tactics. German tank training was meanwhile still very good and didn't really turn sharply downward spiral until the need to replace losses after Normandy and Bagration broke the back of the training establishment.

Of course there were still individual Soviet units and commanders that were very good, but in a general comparison the Germans probably come out ahead until at least midwar when it comes to armour and combined arms (and would also be ahead of e.g. the British, albeit for different reasons).

[JasonC]

"high losses lead to shortened training and inexperienced troops sent into combat"

I think this is mostly a myth. There were periods and locations where relatively untrained men were sent straight into combat, but they are exceptions, not the rule. German side accounts pretend they are the rule and were the whole war, when they were only a few short months in 1941 (more on that in a sec) and late 1942 in the south. On the whole, the Russian army was trained before being sent into combat.

The tankers were trained for a lot longer the infantry. Walter Dunn has documented the unit formation cycle for tank brigades, for example, and they typically had a year of training, and almost always six months. Infantry typically had 4 to 6 months. The Russian replacement system was quite deep.

In 1941 there were a lot more rapid call ups sent into combat with little intervening time for training, but what western accounts miss is that most of those men were reservists, who had prior training in the 30s. Being plucked from civilian life they were certainly rusty, but not completely raw.

The second wave drafted in the late summer, many of them were only actually committed in the battle of Moscow. The famous "siberians" of German accounts were not regular units sent from the far east - only about 6 divisions made that trip, out of ~250 formed during the year. Some were raised in the eastern portions of country, but most were raised in European Russia or the Moscow military district etc, where most of the population was prewar. (34 in the Moscow district alone, within 1941). And they were trained for up to 6 months before entering combat, despite the disasters facing the Russians at the front.

Then in the early 1942 period there was a lull of months between the end of the winter counterattacks and the May fighting around Kharkov. There was plenty of time for the early 1942 class of draftees to get their training before being put into action.

That does change again in the second half of 1942 specifically in the south, but again western and German accounts focus on the outliers and not the norm. The 62nd army famed at the main defenders of Stalingrad was formed in May of 1942 as the 7th Reserve army in the training army. It was redesignated the 62nd army in July, when it already had 1 guard and 6 regular rifle divisions on strength. The army did churn its divisions. 98th was originally formed in the far east in January 1942, went to the 62th army in August, and was still with it late in the year - not a sign of no training cycle.

The Russians had 141 new divisions from December 1941 through mid 1942, when the German offensive in the south started. They had months of training; what they lacked was actual combat experience.

In the fall fighting, it was normal to see divisions committed only 3-4 months after being formed, but by November that lag had increased to 6 months. The Russians were able to form extensive reserves on the flanks of the Stalingrad position, of units with 6 months of training or better. Its draft system was no longer in new unit creation mode, but instead was upgrading brigades to divisions and filling out reduced cadres; the epic encirclements that removed scores of divisions form the order of battle were over. The unit count for rifle divisions was basically complete by the end of 1942. New mobile formations and supporting units were added after that date, and lots of guards redesignations, but the replacement system was feeding forces into existing divisions, not making new ones from scratch, from then on.

Were the Russians less prepared in 1941-42 due to previous losses? Absolutely. That even includes prewar purge losses of officers, incidentally. But most of the formations sent into combat even in 1941-2 had formal training, months of it. And by the end of 1942, they all did.

The only late war exception was the way recruits from reconquered areas were incorporated into the army as areas were liberated. They sometimes got only a few weeks training before being assigned to units. But many of them had former training, or had fought as partisans, or both. The rest were expected to learn on the job, with a veteran assigned to each new man. This was mostly an administrative convenience issue - it didn't make sense to try to survey all the men, find and formally draft them, and send them off to a training camp much farther east, when they could just be picked up in the battle area and incorporated on an ad hoc basis.

Anyway, the story of the Russians all being raw conscripts without training has been retold so many times, I didn't want to let in pass. People who have examined the actual Russian mobilization miracle in detail know better, and those stories are mostly recycled German propaganda picking outlier emergencies and disaster cases, and presenting them as typical.

[LukeFF]

"high losses lead to shortened training and inexperienced troops sent into combat"

I think this is mostly a myth.

It certainly wasn't a myth in the Luftwaffe by mid-1944.

[JasonC]

LukeFF - sure, or the Japanese pilot pool from 1943 on. We know it can happen as a casual sequence, my point is that it really wasn't happening to the Red Army from the period when it took the initiative, clear to the end of the war. Their losses remained very high throughout the war. But training time was not shortened to deal with it. The replacement pipeline was both long and stuffed, and after 1941 they did not need to - or chose not to - get more thruput out of that pipeline by shortening the training time. Other than the south in the fall of 1942, where 1941 practices continued a bit longer.

In other words, it is a choice to react to high losses by cutting training times, trying to push more toothpaste out of the tube as a crisis measure. Losses alone do not force that choice. The Russians had long period where they were losing 2 million men a year and 20,000 tanks a year, but they kept training time high anyway. They recognized that it was a false economy to send untrained men into action before they were ready. They had also built up a strategic reserve that gave them the flexibility to deal with crises without resorting to that expedient. Possession of the strategic initiative meant they did not need to resort to that practice, and they didn't.

So, yes it can possibly happen, but no, it didn't actually happen for the Red Army's ground forces from the end of 1942 on.

[Dadekster]

You sir, are a well of knowledge regarding the East Front it seems. I had no idea that they invested that much time in training their tankers. Can you suggest a good book or two dealing with the East Front by chance? Preferable something without a lot of political spin. I enjoy good dry reads and its been a while.

[Vark]

The schizophrenic nature of German propaganda, alluded to by Jason, is highly revealing. Faced with an obvious decline in fortunes the Germans had to invent the myth that the Russians outnumbered them vastly, everywhere, in everything. Trouble was, during the glory days the mindless stoicism and bravery of the Slavs (everything was seen through the prism of race) had been constantly mentioned to accentuate the Teutonic victory.

What to do? Surely if the Russian hordes descended, full of stoically brave soldiers the war would be over in months. Simple, start a new meme and develop an older one. The Russians are poor at attacking due to their simple peasant brains being unable to replicate the complex tactics used by the Teutonic warriors and they have been so badly savaged by the Ubermensch they have to resort to sending untrained soldiers to make up the numbers. Examples of T-34's driving off production lines in Stalingrad are not seen as exceptions but subtlety insinuated into the narrative to suggest a typical tactic and Soviet brutality and drunken stupidity looms over every battlefield encounter. In reality, the Soviets were more than aware of the importance of trained tankers and had specialist medical units who were experts at dealing with the unique combination of injuries common to armoured warfare.

[BletchleyGeek]

Anyway, the story of the Russians all being raw conscripts without training has been retold so many times, I didn't want to let in pass. People who have examined the actual Russian mobilization miracle in detail know better, and those stories are mostly recycled German propaganda picking outlier emergencies and disaster cases, and presenting them as typical.

Not raw Jason, just worse than the standards of the Wehrmacht until 1944. I think everyone is on the same page on this. Reaching the conclusion that the standards or the average level of profficiency and skills of replacements for the Red Army, were lower than those of the Germans for a substantial part of the war, can't be helped if one takes a look at recent research

The Deployment of Reserve Units and Formations on the Territory of Siberia During the Great Patriotic War

Rostov Nikolay Dmitrievich

Journal of Slavic Military Studies, volume 23, pages 641-655

2010

Some excerpts

The uninterrupted support of the regular army by combat reserves is one of the most complex tasks during combat operations. From July–August 1941 to the beginning of 1942, the accomplishment of this task in Siberia was complicated by the simultaneous formation of a large number of rifle divisions, rifle brigades, and separate military units and teams for the manning of which were sent, in the first order, trained contingents of reservists subject to call-up.

Reserve units were set up from the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 8–15 days in accordance with the mobilization plan; their complete establishment and mobilization was completed in 16–30 days. 7 On 23 June 1941 the Siberian Military District and Transbaikal Military District administrations began to set up the reserve military units and formations envisioned by the mobilization plan, with the task of continuously providing the front with trained reserves.

So yes, the Soviet Union had a quite deep system to organise and train replacements, not too different from the Wehrmacht Replacement Army, since really early in the war. Yet the attrition suffered by the Red Army was so atrocious that

The Red Army’s heavy human losses in Summer and Autumn 1941 could not be replenished by the formation of new military units alone. “The principal work of preparing new untrained recruits was conducted in the reserve brigades,” noted General-Lieutenant S. A. Kalinin (Chairman of the Stavka of the Supreme High Command in the Siberian Military District) in his memoirs. 24 The network of reserve and training units in the Siberian Military District and Transbaikal Front were inadequate to completely satisfy the requirements of the regular army for trained reserves.

I've noted in bold the assessment made, not by some rabid Nazi propagandist, but the top officer of the Military District tasked with training those replacements. The term brigade, for the Red Army, is quite more flexible than the typical Western brigade. Here's one example of such 'Reserve Rifle Brigades'

The reserve rifle brigades that had been formed began training specialists—riflemen, machine gunners, mortarmen, tank destroyers and others. 30 On March 20, 1942, the 39 th Reserve Rifle Brigade consisted of four rifle regiments–the 104 th , 119 th , 126 th , and 387 th —with authorized personnel numbering 5,000 each, the 29 th Separate Signal Company and 33 rd Separate Combat Engineer Company, numbering 250 each, a convalescent battalion (1,500 men), and the brigade administration (72 men). Thus, the overall numerical size of the brigade was 22,072 men. 31 On 29 August 1942, the formation of the 35 th Reserve Rifle Brigade began at Mal’ta Station (Irkutsk oblast’, Transbaikal Military District), with an authorized manning of 21, 221, of whom there were 57 senior and 1,148 mid-level command personnel, 1,534 junior-level commanders, and 18,482 rank-and-file

Many of these 'Reserve Brigades' were activated to absorb recruits, but the start of the program was indeed rocky

During the formation of reserve rifle brigades, serious difficulties arose in supplying the formations with living quarters and administration buildings.

...

This situation was characteristic for all regions in Siberia. War veteran A. I. Narkozhevyi recalls: “Instead of barracks, large and strong shelter trenches were dug out along the sides of large Siberian ravines, with separate rooms for the headquarters, maintenance of weapons, and company and battalion property.”

The massive losses in the frontier battles meant that there were very little junior officers and NCO's available to take up the task of training personnel so

...

the quality of combat training was low, and for the most part rank-and-file soldiers fulfilled the responsibilities of junior commanders.

this nonetheless improved as the war progressed, as soldiers and officers cleared from hospitals also were integrated into these Reserve Brigades, so the mix of veterans with raw conscripts - and rusty reservists - indeed did help to overcome the shortcomings of the system in 1941-42.

How many men could the Soviet Union muster from Siberia? Actually, a substantial proportion of the population east of the Urals

With a population (on January 1, 1940) of 14,612,700 in Siberia, during the war 3,288,600 men subject to call-up, conscripts, women who were not subject to call-up, and men over 50 were mobilized, equal to 23 percent of the total population of the region, which exceeded the average Russian indicator of 19.8 percent. An absolute majority of the above-mentioned citizens were called upon during the most difficult period of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1942). One can see this well on the example of individual Siberian regions. In the Novosibirsk oblast’, during the first two years of the war 643,362 men were called into the Red Army, equal to 81 percent of the number called up for the entire war [from there]. In the Omsk oblast’, 383,945 men were called up in 1941–1942, equal to 81 percent of the number called up (from there) in 1941–1945. The situation with respect to mobilization of human resources was similar in other regions of Siberia as well.

those numbers are quite substantial, nearly 1 million personnel, in two years, subject to the shortages in equipment, facilities and experienced officers and NCO's above.

Note how the numbers of recruits diminished after 1942 - indeed, the Soviet conscripting system reached its peak by the winter of 1942 and 1943. It is not too hard to extrapolate a similar situation and dynamics to the Military Districts east of the Volga - but west of the Urals.

So the question is: where did came a substantial portion of replacements for the Red Army from 1943 to 1945? One obvious possibility are the Central Asia republics - far less developed than the Russian heartlands - and the liberated territories.

[JasonC]

BG - we don't need to make these things up, or try to deduce them from reports. All the mobilization and manpower details are available in Dunn's various works, based on Russian sources. No, the manpower didn't cone from central Asia. The ethnic minorities of Muslim central Asia had tiny populations in the 1940s. Yes, the Urals and Siberia contributed, every place did. But the bulk came from European Russia because thats where the money was - or in this case the people.

Examples - in June 47 divisions formed, all of 5 in central Asia and 7 in the Transbaikal military district. Orel and Moscow built 10, the Caucasus 16, Odessa and Kharkov 7.

In July, 15 volunteer (militia) divisions formed in Moscow and 11 more in Leningrad - the cities. The Moscow military district produced 34 divisions in that one month, Orel another 12, Odessa district another 10, the rest of the Ukraine another 12 split between Kharkov and the rest. The Urals produced --- 3. The far east --- 4, most of which stayed there. This was the call up of reservists, it created a flood of new formations where the population was concentrated.

In August the more remote regions started contributing more to the totals, and it was likely divisions actually created in that month that are behind the famous "Siberians" of the battle of Moscow, because lots of them were actually being trained for months and were only committed to action in December 1941. There were 14 divisions in this August wave formed in the Urals, and another 12 in Siberia. That is a lot, but Moscow and Orel added 11, Odessa MD 15, the Volga region 14, Kharkov, the Crimea, and the Caucasus 4 each. So only 1/3rd of the August "class" were from the Urals or farther east.

I say they are behind the German take because we can see when those specific divisions entered combat and where. 10 of the divisions formed in the Urals in August first entered combat in December with Kalinin Front, including nearly all of the 39th army. 2 more went to Kalinin from the Siberian ones proper, while 6 more of those went to Volkov, forming the bulk of the 59th army. In comparison, the regular prewar divisions in the far east sent west only amount to 6 divisions, and the arrived 3 in September, 2 in October, and the last in early November - not enough, not at once, and too early to fit the battle of Moscow narrative. The Germans were in the act of declaring war on the US following Pearl Harbor, hoping that the Japanese would reciprocate by declaring war on Russia, and thus freeze Russian forces in the far east. But that was all a German misunderstanding.

The Germans simply had no idea where the Russians were getting all these new divisions to cover all the losses. That divisions formed clear back in August had just been training, and held in reserve, and only committed in December as the Germans were stalling out at the gates of Moscow, was too incredible to German thinking to be believed, or even imagined. But it wasn't only Siberians that took a long time to get there or something. 10th army got 7 August divisions assigned to it in December that had formed in the Moscow (5) and Orel (2) districts, and had trained the entire intervening time. 13 divisions formed in the Volga military district in August, were first committed to combat, in December and on the Moscow direction.

In the meantime, the Moscow sector saw 37 new tank brigades get formed in August and September, against 16 in the south and none in the eastern areas. Most of those entered combat almost immediately, with only a month's training - 1941 was definitely an exception to the usual thing of tank formations getting twice as much training as infantry before going into action.

Overall, the Russian mobilization effort of 1941 was based first on calling up reserves, then on raising multiple annual classes at once, and combing out all regions for able bodied men up to age 50. They then got the non reservists 3-4 months of training and held layered reserves as they committed them to action. Very high losses killed the pre war regular army by August, but the reservists were standing in their place. Kiev and the start of Typhoon killed the reservist army where it stood, but the newly drafted and trained one then stepped in, and took *their* place. In November when Russian losses finally leveled off, front line strength soared past German levels, and that's all she wrote.

As for sustaining the army in the later years, Russia had 3 million men reaching military age annually. After the encirclement battles were over - the last major one was in May of 1942 - most Russian battle losses were wounded, not killed or captured. The wounded returned to service 4 times out of 5, within 3 months typically. And once the front was moving west, new recruits were found in the liberated areas. The draft stream formed new units through the end of 1942, doubling German front line strength despite continuing losses. Then the next classes, and the pool of formerly wounded streaming out of the hospitals and back into action, combined into a deep, layered replacement and training stream, that kept Russia front line strength at 6 million men, clear to the end of the war.

The army was not growing, numerically, after late 1942. Its loss rate and replacement streams matched at that point, sustaining the larger front line force. Instead, weapons improved dramatically, first in quantity and then in quality. Heavy guns double in 1943. So do automatic weapons for the infantry. Tanks improve in mix, the lights replaced by mediums in 1943 and supplemented by upgunned types in numbers in 1944. The air firce doubles, then doubles again, and gets a lot better equipment and tactics. Etc. In other words, what sheer manpower was going to do it was already doing by the end of 1942 - the huge additional improvements after that were not numbers of men, but number and quality of weapons, plus improving skill using them all.

No this isn't the faceless horde that outnumbered us 10 to 1 of German folklore. But it is what actually happened. Russia never had more than 2 times Germany's manpower in any of it. The Germans were just late using theirs, and then split by commitments to other fronts.

I hope this is interesting...

[Dadekster]

It is...which I why I asked if you had any good book recommendations. Was hoping to purchase one off the net but I guess a trip to the local bookstore and thumbing through interesting stuff works as well...selection just sucks usually. Last time I did any real reading on this topic I was still using GHQ minis.

I've never assumed the Russians were some faceless horde. A horde as far as manpower goes but not some faceless horde with zero training. Even I realize movies like Enemy at the Gates are exactly that.

[JasonC]

Stackpole has editions of Dunn's books, and they are on Amazon. Most people know him for Soviet Blitzkrieg, his Bagration book, but he also wrote Stalin's keys to victory, which covers mobilization and war production, and Hitlers Nemesis, which covers the organizational aspects of the Soviet army - still including coverage of manpower, training, and equipment, which are his forte really. Where Erickson is the standard for full war operational history, and Glantz is the standard for the military chess of specific major operations, Dunn sets the standard on all those issues. I hope that helps...

[Dadekster]

Stackpole has editions of Dunn's books, and they are on Amazon. Most people know him for Soviet Blitzkrieg, his Bagration book, but he also wrote Stalin's keys to victory, which covers mobilization and war production, and Hitlers Nemesis, which covers the organizational aspects of the Soviet army - still including coverage of manpower, training, and equipment, which are his forte really. Where Erickson is the standard for full war operational history, and Glantz is the standard for the military chess of specific major operations, Dunn sets the standard on all those issues. I hope that helps...

It does immensely so thank you very much. Google sometimes is NOT your friend it seems. I appreciate the summary for each author as well. Figure if I am going to throw digital soldiers across the battlefield I may as well pay them the respect to understand what is going on behind the scenes.

[Duckman]

Good discussion. I wasn't familiar with with Dunn's work but will check out his books.

I am not advocating the "Red screaming hordes" argument, which is an obvious self-serving sham, however there are some finer points that bear discussing even given the better-than-supposed Soviet training times. If I remember Forczyk correctly (don't have the book with me) he compares the tanker training syllabuses by midwar and finds that the German one was more advanced. Soviet troops in training were also used for other purposes, like helping with the harvest, which detracted from training time.

At a unit level there's also the question of top-down leadership (which later carried on in the Nato-vs-WP debate) and the issue of experienced junior leadership. You can train soldiers and crews fairly quickly but officers and NCOs take longer. The huge losses suffered in 1941-42 must have been heavily felt there, especially since the units lost during Barbarossa would have contained a large proportion of the peacetime (non-reserve) officer corps.

[76mm]

The huge losses suffered in 1941-42 must have been heavily felt there, especially since the units lost during Barbarossa would have contained a large proportion of the peacetime (non-reserve) officer corps.

Presumably you are referring to both the German and Soviet armies here? I would argue that the Germans suffered more from this process, as the experienced cadres that they lost had more and better experience than their Soviet counterparts.

[JasonC]

Duckman - peacetime led to even larger losses from the officer corps. It was called a purge. But I don't buy the soldiers didn't train because they were just used as labor bit.

There is a serious difference in the recruits, especially for the infantry rather than the armor or other technical arms. The Soviets had to use a much larger portion of unschooled men. That was just a side effect of a much more rural population, much more recent industrialization and growth of the city population, combined with the need to go to higher ages. I will explain.

The Soviets drafted men up to 50 years of age. A man 50 in 1954 was born in 1892, and passed school age before WWI. If he grew up on a farm, he was very unlikely to gave had long formal schooling. He might have had as little as 4-5 years as a child - finished elementary school in US terms - before going to work on the farm. For a younger cohort it would still be similar (and they were more numerous). Only the men in their 20s or younger had a chance at later Soviet era schooling. And that was quite chaotic until about the mid 1920s, when both the civil war and the immediately following "war socialism" period - which practically wrecked what was left of the economy - ended. Things only settle down after a decade of chaos from those and WWI, in 1924 when the regime backs off, with the so called New Economic Policy or NEP, which is actually the very old economic policy of letting peasants grow and raise what they like and sell it on local markets.

If you were 23 or younger, you reached elementary school age after the NEP. There was another round of rural chaos in the early 30s with forced collectivization. Between them was the highest birthrate period - one big reason the Soviets had 3 million men reach age annually is they were the kids of the NEP period, which was a baby boom.

Then the technical services got the first pick of men with the most schooling, which tended to be urban rather than rural. Party types and their kids had more as well. They landed more in the technical branches and also in the safer ones (artillery e.g.), because they had the pull for it. The line rifle formations got the leftovers - the rural kids who hadn't even finished elementary school, the 40 somethings who never learned to read in their Czarist era childhood on the farm, etc. It was perfectly normal for a Soviet rifle platoon to have only 2 high school graduates, and 20 to 25% men over 40, and a third to half the men functionally illiterate. The Soviet Union was also a wide mix of nationalities, and the men in one platoon might speak up to four languages, with half of them knowing only a smattering of Russian.

It really isn't a matter of how technical and proper a field manual is, under such conditions.

The men were not dumb, they had lots of practical life experience, they were often tougher than nails. But the were not foo-foo Bay Area programmers on the hunt for the hottest start up, let us say. You don't make an army out if that material by stressing tactical complexity and seizing the initiative and recon pull. You keep it simple, stress the one sound way that is right 80% of the time, and then you drill until the men can do it in their sleep.

There is an internet gun meme comparing the AR, AK, and Mosin-Nagant. High maintenance precise, sounds like pew pew, helped win the cold war (kinda). Low maintenance rugged, sounds like pow pow, won some revolutions. What is this "maintenance" of which you speak? Boom! Won Stalingrad.

[JasonC]

Sorry, I meant in 1942 -- weird typo from trying to type on an Ipad...

And if the moral of the gun meme is hard to follow, it is just this. Sophistication is not necessarily the most important thing in matters military. Simplicity, directedness, toughness, simple bravery - go a long way.

[John Kettler]

Bil,

Here's a great piece on Russian micro tactics. Quite the read. This is but one of several such battles depicted, complete with sketches. The resource represented by the Tankers portion of IRemember.ru is simply tremendous. Combat accounts by the score.

http://tinyurl.com/pprfw2u

Regards,

John Kettler

[weta_nz]

Thanks for the link JK. That memoir is a great read.

[LukeFF]

And if the moral of the gun meme is hard to follow, it is just this. Sophistication is not necessarily the most important thing in matters military. Simplicity, directedness, toughness, simple bravery - go a long way.

And that's why I like the Mosin-Nagant so much - it's a simple, durable, and easily-maintained rifle that gets the job done, and that's even more so with Finnish models like the M39.