Russian motorcycle recon

[JasonC]

In some of my scenarios I provide Russian mech forces with motorcycle recon, typically in platoon strength. They get jeeps to simulate their cycles. Based on feedback at TPG, I realized that how to use these was not readily apparent. Hence this post (also at TPG).

Since apparently it is something of a black art, I will explain how Russian motorcycle recon works.

The key is to use it piecemeal instead of as a formation. Counterintuitive, perhaps.

One dinky half squad gets in its jeep and tear-asses straight at a suspected enemy position. It makes for a spot next to some form of cover with the infantry set to bail out into that cover. But nobody really expects the first one to make it.

If the defense is utterly silent, perfect fire discipline, then the half squad bails into the cover, sneaks a little, and hides. Then unhides, and you now have eyes close enough for full spots of anyone who fires.

So the defense can't stay utterly silent. Instead somebody fires and blows up the jeep. A busted half squad bails somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and sneaks for cover as best it can. Probably drawing still more fire and getting shot all to rags.

Who cares? It is one lousy half squad.

Now, blow apart every shooter. If you only have sound contacts, deduce what piece of cover they are in from where the first cyclists got shot, from where the sound contact is, from where there is decent cover with LOS, and where you'd put the MG or whatever it was.

T-34s have enough HE ammo to remodel a medium sized city. Use it.

If you want a closer spot, send a BA-64 running up to 150m from where you think the fire came from. Keyhole the LOS a bit by poking around cover if possible. You will spot trenches, and shooters when they fire again. The defender might reveal a gun or schreck to KO the BA-64. If so you will spot it and can kill it with tank fire, on map mortar fire, or an FO etc.

Now, send the second half squad tear-assing at the defense on its "jeep". Blow up whoever shoots at it. (The rest are standing by singing "tra la la", they don't need to risk themselves).

Done properly, by the time you have used even half of one recon platoon and its supporting BAs, you will have unveiled the defense, plastered the heck out of it, and pushed some survivors close enough to ID everything that moves. You have therefore developed the contact. Now stop playing recon and launch an actual attack, using FO and AFV prep fire, full regular infantry platoons (more than one), T-34s, SMGs, etc.

It isn't worth trying to get a platoon of recon infantry into position to attack themselves like an ordinary infantry formation anyway, since they are very lightly armed. They are meant to see things and harass from a lot of points on the compass with a few diddling rifles, so weak as to barely be worth shooting at. Not to charge in a compact mass or try to shoot things down themselves. Leave that to the tanks.

[Bigduke6]

A not-quite-doctrinal but nonetheless effective wrinkle to the above is that after you have got the first impression of the enemy positions, the next wave of jeeps carries ATRs. Hopefully you have figured out where the major enemy locations are and so, can give your ATRs a half-decent chance of making it to cover 200-300 from the enemy position. Dismounting and sneaking the final bit is fine, but a swarm of jeeps also can work, as the enemy usually cannot shoot up all of them.

If you manage it, there are lots of benefits. ATRs have binoculars, so they spot better than simple scouts, and at more than 200 meters in cover they are usually invisible when firing. This makes it much harder for the German to repond to your scouts with light armor, as ATRs will pepper most German light armor to death. Thus your opponent is left with several irritating options: wasting artillery ammo on the ATRs, bringing up a tank, or just ignoring the ATRs.

A variation on this theme, and of course bread-and-butter tactics, is making the big recon push from one direction, and building a firing line of ATRs and if you can reinforce them MGs, mortars, and artillery looking in on the enemy postion. This is obviously the "overwatch" group.

Then your infantry comes at it from another direction, meaning that for the enemy to deal with it, he has to expose flanks to the overwatch group, and CM units do not like dealing with fire from two clearly different directions.

[jtcm]

Apologies for being a pedant, but that can't be how MC recon was used in Real Life ? Set up overwatch, then "Mad Max" some guys in motorcycles at suspected MLRs ?

[Bigduke6]

Of course not, in RL there were motorcycles that had excellent cross-road performance and a fighting chance of drawing fire and getting away. By early-war doctrine they would be followed up by armored cars, by late-war doctrine a mobile and according to the rules well-commanded combined arms force. Bear in mind that as the war went on (late 1943 basically) one of the three motorcycle companies in a battalion got switched over to White armored cars, and a company of tanks got added to the standard mech recon battalion.

But even them, that meant that every mechanized/tank Corps had its own motorcycle battalion, and every tank/mech army a motorcycle regiment, and two thirds of those formations were, according to the standards, motorcylce-mounted. So it's not like motorcycles were few and far between. They were an important part of Soviet mechanized warfare and more specifically recon ops.

The jeep charges we are discussing are, essentially, the tactical result, given the limits of CM, of the Red Army's having a bunch of motorcycles in its mech formations.

Bear also in mind that a non-mech unit by line and block did not have many motorcycles on the leading edge.

All this from Red Army Handbook, plus some interpeting by me.

[JasonC]

jtcm - in real life, the recon role of the motorcyclists was primarily operational level stuff. They simply flood the road net with cyclists, dividing at each junction, looking for undefended routes. If they see any enemy or evidence of enemy, or take any fire, then they halt. A dispatch rider returns to report the enemy location.

To fight for further intel, their armored cars would push forward if a weak roadblock were expected, while the recon infantry itself would try to hook around any blockage and bypass it. Mounted if the terrain and distances allowed, dismounted and sneaking otherwise. Without really delivering any attack, just locating and fixing enemy positions by building up a line of riflemen lapped around it. A single MG nest or listening post could be overwhelmed (with armored car help if possible).

The tanks are behind them on the road net and receive reports from the returning dispatch riders. They choose their route to avoid enemy strength and push into their rear as far as possible - sometimes the second element will choose to attack a position just to free up more of the road net, though hopefully after the lead elements have bypassed it.

Any place an attack has been decided on, therefore, would usually have some motorcycle riders already present, "hanging out", when the tanks appeared. They could report the enemy sightings that caused them to stop in the first place, and any routes around them they might have developed by then. They would act as guides over such routes, or stop back by the arriving tankers and physically point out the positions to them.

The tanks (and their riders etc) then deliver the actual attack.

My showing them in my scenarios - sometimes arriving a few minutes ahead of the tanks, more often already present on the field at set up with the tanks arriving in the early minutes - is meant to show the aftermath of the initial scouting "approach to contact". They can still be used for tactical recon in the manner I describe, though it is a bit gamey and recon by death like. (lol).

Overall, the motorcycle recon comprised up to 20% of the infantry of the mech formations, when higher level regiments of the stuff are included. Another 20% or so were riders working directly with the tanks, and 10% or so were pioneers, who were mostly dedicated to route improvement in the mech arm (including mineclearing, but especially bridge repair and road improvement). The other half were the standard motor rifle with more conventional infantry missions.

[JasonC]

BigDuke - I for one do not recommend using lots of them all at once, hoping the enemy can't shoot them all. Usually, any real fighting position can indeed shoot them all easily, and it is a waste of fine scouts. The whole point is economy of force. It lets you try every route you need to probe, in sequence, and to probe again as needed, after fire has worked over whatever the first lot found.

The point of having cycles aka jeeps is just to avoid all the delay in careful advances and dodging through every scrap of cover, trying to keep enough men up together so that some can continue when an MG fires, etc. None of that is needed. The balance of the platoon can be clear back in safety on your own side of the field, and still reach the position you want to scout in a minute flat, the moment you decide to risk another half squad.

[Bigduke6]

Fair enough.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Of course according to the book, the Russians distinguished between various size of patrol for diferent missions. 2-3 jeeps etc for a normal patrol, perhaps 6 to investigate a particular location and that plus a platoon of tanks and a couple of guns a location off the line of march.

My scenario Russian Offensive 3A deals with this very subject and the information you gain is used in RO3B.

cheers

[jtcm]

whew, glad we clarified that

[jtcm]

Must look at DAF scenario. Otherwise, one could imagine a series of interlinked "operations as seen at the sharp-end" small scenarios, good for solo play, with exit zones, indeterminate enemy locations, to simulate being part of a "recon net" being pushed forward...