Russian Recce Sections

[Der Alte Fritz]

What is the best way of replicating Russian recce sections infiltrating the German lines to gain information. I tried scattering a few sharpshooters about the German lines in the hope that they could see something but they do not.

I notice that Russian Mech troops have an option of "Scouts"

cheers

[JasonC]

Take a recon A platoon, give it a +2 stealth commander, and make it veteran or crack quality. Use sneak and minimal covered arcs. Split into SMG-close assault and LMG-fire support teams with 2 of the squads if you want, keeping one squad full strength and near the HQ at all times. Other units stay near the rest of their squad but are perfectly willing to leave command radius. So 3 teams of 2 units each are sneaking around the field.

You can also use a night battle - that is when they actually did it.

"But that isn't fast enough". Fast enough for what? They had weeks.

If you want to simulate it already having happened, put the above in various spots in no man's land or the German set up zone, on "hide" and without digging in, at set up. Padlock their set up. Sections within a group up to 40m apart, the 3 groups anywhere, no need to be close to each other.

Unimportant terrain. Woods interiors, low ground, cover next to a marsh that leads nowhere, etc.

They want sound contacts first and foremost, rather than spots. Those will come. Their own moves are all within cover and on sneak, unless they know there is nobody around.

[John Kettler]

Apropos of the Russian scouts, I don't know how much

the scenario designers can do, but these units, per veteran accounts at I Remember, were very grenade heavy. One such memoir says he had 10 F1 "lemon" grenades.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Der Alte Fritz]

Tried out padlocked units behind the German lines last night with a lot of success. They get initial sound contacts but you can unhide them for one move and then pick up actual contacts. This works well on my fairly open map with a green Russian battalion as it allows support weapons to engage HMGs long before the battalion would normally spot them. I feel this replicates good Russian scouting quite well.

Shame the Recon A uses the standard Russian uniform and not the camouflage airborne uniform mod. Can you mod the Recon A unit or does it use the standard infantry uniform.

cheers

[JasonC]

AdamL - on probe doctrine, the Recon formations proper worked independently in ordinary circumstances and focused on both infiltration and taking prisoners. They avoided main contact etc. They also sometimes hid to allow Germans to pass over them as one way of passing their lines, without the spotting risks of movement. They definitely sought the thinnest areas. They would stay out up to a week then return to their own lines.

(In major offensives they had a different set of roles - pathfinding and blinding the attacked sectors by stealthy close assault on small forward outposts. Frequently delivered by first getting between those an the main German line etc).

Russian RDs had another recon-ish, infiltrating SOP that did not rely on them. Which was to send a single ordinary infantry battalion on a night infiltration mission through the worst terrain in the area, aiming to reach some piece of defensible terrain by dawn, without seeking contact. In the morning they would fire on any movement they saw and defend the location reached. This was a means of actually taking ground, and of making the Germans fight more than once for any location if the Germans had the local initiative.

If this second type of movement ran into something during the night movement they would typically attack it. And they were less discriminating about where they made the attempt, just probing lots of places on successive nights across the division's frontage etc.

[Grisha]

Soviet troop razvedka was a number of things, from raids for capturing 'tongues' (taking prisoners for interrogation) and/or documents, to observation, to combat reconnaissance.

Observation was pretty much as Jason states, the razvedchiki maneuvering under cover of darkness or terrain to their assigned objective, then setting up camouflaged OPs to observe and record. Radios could be taken when intelligence was timely.

Raids were often bloody affairs since the objective was to capture either personnel or documents. There was usually no rhyme or reason to the objective, mostly to keep the Germans guessing. Subsequently, who or what was captured could vary quite a bit in intel value. The possibility for a raid to SNAFU was always there though experienced troops saw less of it than others. The Soviets took a lot of pride in their ability to snatch 'tongues'.

Combat recon was usually done immediately prior to a planned assault (say, a day before to hours before). The primary intent was to confirm the 'freshness' of a specific intelligence picture, so the task was mainly to draw fire in a convincing display of an assault, then start matching gunfire to location.

As the game of Soviet prep artillery against exposure of German troops in the trenches developed in the war, combat recon in turn developed with it. By 1945, combat reconnnaissance was conducted hours prior to an actual assault, sometimes with a short arty prep, sometimes not. The recon battalions assigned these missions had orders to see if they could take the first couple trench lines without much resistance, and if so, to radio back, at which point the army HQ would give the go signal for immediate full assault. Because of all the ploys and counterploys between Soviet and German wrt artillery barrages and exposure in the trenches, it was easier than it would seem at times.