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mldtchdog -> RE: Unit Descriptions: Air, Naval, Land (2/5/2007 3:52:48 AM)
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I have begun looking at the Russian land units [&:] and would like your thoughts.
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ORIGINAL: wusong
Problem is, there's not so much info about Russian Armies and tank/mech corps. Perhaps, best would be just to collect the few available infos right here on the forum in a collective effort.
Not a bad idea.
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ORIGINAL: capitan
Since the Russian Army had no corps after the winterwar (source: Anthony Beevors Stalingrad) but only Armies and Divisions that will be a great hurdle for the writeups.
True for a while but by 1943 corps were being reintroduced into the force structure. Unless I am mistaken the Russian units are Army level (except for the specialized troops and the Siberians) so this will not be a problem. I hope.
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Original: trees trees
I also think you may have problems trying to do a counter-by-counter writeup of the Russian units. The MECH and ARM units are just numbered sequentially; the first one to appear in the force pool as a white-print becomes the first one designated a 'Guards' unit. I think in real life those designations were earned in combat for a unit that performed well ... it would keep it's original number with the Guards label appended to it. In WiF there are also no "Shock" armies that became the biggest and best Soviet units by the end of the war. The GBA designations are also simply sequential. The initial black-print INF units (and GARR units, requiring another explanation of the WiF design for this type of unit) do use historical designations, so the 62nd Army that initially held the core of Stalingrad is a WiF counter. Another example is the 23rd Army, which held the front northwest of Leningrad. In WiF that is a 3-1 GARR.
The historical Russians fielded, as best as I can tell: 70 field armies, 5 shock armies, 5? tank armies, 11 guards armies, 5? guards tank armies and a costal independant armybut not all at one time. Many of them were reformed several times and changed status during the war. The famed 62nd army (which I do not believe is represented in mwif if I read the master list correctly) became the 8th gds army in april, 1943 (which is in mwif). another example is the 1st tank army which was first formed from the 38th arny but disbanded after two weeks. It was then reformed from the 29th army and became the 1st gds tank army. There are many more examples.
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Original: trees trees
A lot of units in WiF don't have a realistic historical designation. Perhaps a majority of them do have one, but plenty don't. In addition to explaining that there was no such unit as the "2nd Guards Garrison Army" (there were a scattering of "Fortress" units in WWII, but not very many officially designated static units), a land unit write-up will have to explain that the "MECH" units are another design innovation of WiF. Aside from German 'Panzergrenadier' regiments I don't think many of the WWII armies used 'armored infantry' units on a large scale, particularly at the corps level. The American army did somewhat with their flexible Combat Commands (Brigades) that could feature two tank+one infantry CC or two infantry+one tank CC in a division. Probably someone else out there would know more about the American OOB than I. But I am fairly sure that some of the German MECH units in WiF have numerical designations that correspond to Panzer corps, in actuality an ARMored corp, so I hope that is mentioned.
The differnece between mot, inf and garr; arm and mech is strictly a choice of the strategic commanders tactical needs. i.e. the combat power and mobility required/ avaliable at the time. garr have fewer men but a higher ratio of maching guns for example. mech has 2 corps rifle troops and 1 tank corps vs arm which is 2 tank, 1 rifle corps. So in my view the russian 1 Gds INF, 1 Gds MOT, 1 GDS GARR all equal for historical refence the 1 Guards Army (which by the way existed in at least three difernt formations during the war).
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ORIGINAL: trees trees
People have also pointed out that with the possible exception of the American portion of Operation Market-Garden, there were never any corps-level paradrops in WWII, nor corps level parachute units.
The Russians deployed ten airborne corps, three of which made significant drops (4th, 5th and 10th)
major scources: wikpedia, david Glantz
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