billcarey Posted October 20, 2002 Share Posted October 20, 2002 are most excellent. They (as far as I've seen) behave like the Americans in CMBO could only dream of. With a pack of SVT rifles and plenty of ammo (no SMGs) they can stand off at 150m ~ 200m and just wail. They appear to be particularly effective in meeting engagements where, paired with Maxims they can absolutely deny movment to enemy units for many many turns. Soviet Airborne division also have SMG platoons which make up an excellent assault element to compliment the ranged firepower and long ammo load of the SVT platoons. It's a lot of fun to play with infantry whose firepower curve hits its stride out at medium range. Anybody know what sort of armor support Soviet airborne troops could expect to see? Were they used like American Airborne troops, thrown into battle as line divisions? Anybody else had a go at tactics with these SVT weilding warriors? - Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boy_Recon Posted October 21, 2002 Share Posted October 21, 2002 IIRC: never any big scale soviet airlandings in WW2, although the Russki's had pioneered the concept in the '30's way before even the Germans. I think there were some small scale drops mid- and late war, but never bigger than battalion level, and mostly concerned with reinforcing partisan groups. However the Airborne divisions had a number of integral arty/at units which would have been dropped along with the rest of the troops, and also some of the little tankettes would have either been dropped or glidered in along with their parent formations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted October 21, 2002 Share Posted October 21, 2002 Boy_Recon, mefinks you should understand that some of the German officer authored pamphlets purveyed by CMH are pure and unadulterated crap. Bollocks. Not worth the paper they were written on. Crap. Oh, I said that, didn't I? Positively harmful to our understanding of the war in the Soviet Union. Because I assume that is where your information is from, sounds suspiciously like this one publication written by former German officers on airborne ops during WW2. Apologies if they are from somewhere else, but they are still wrong. The Soviets had major airdrops on at least three occasions I know of: 1941 - Moscow counter-offensive, west of Moscow, Rzhev/Belyi area of operations I think (don't know the strength). The airborne troops were cut off and had to exfiltrate later with heavy losses. 1942 - Demjansk, AG North. One airborne corps (three brigades) used, one brigade airdropped, the other two on land. All three brigades destroyed, to all intents and purposes. 1943 - Dnejpr, vic. Kanev. Major airlanding, 8th Airborne Corps and yet another huge and unmitigated desaster. The Soviet version of 'A bridge too far'. Here is an interesting article by Col. Glantz on what we don't know about Soviet operations. fortunately enough he is hard it work to lessen the amount of what we don't know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rune Posted October 23, 2002 Share Posted October 23, 2002 Red Parachutes on the CD is a historical drop also. Rune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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