Soviet invasion of Norway 1963

[Suhiir]

You're right, 1962 ... no clue where I got 1963.
Thanks!

[shahadi]

No problemo.

[wulfir]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

I keep wondering what I'm missing, I've never thought of the Soviets as stupid, over-centralized and doctrine-bound yes, but not stupid.

The Soviets broke the German defences above the arctic circle in October 1944. The heaviest burdon fell upon 'leg infantry' which essentially was the deciding arm - but a number of problems surfaced - in offensive battle it was especially hard for the Soviets to keep the artillery support going because the artillery lacked the mobility to keep up with the infantry in this particular terrain. It was also hard to keep the artillery supply going - and the Soviets used numbers to make up for accuracy which meant they needed greater quantity of ammo brought forward instead of a limited number of shells for a limited number of guns.

When the infantry out paced the artillery support it lowered their combat power condierably. While mortars were easier to transport and could reach beind slopes etc their effectiveness were limited because of the terrain - supposedly they were too light for really penetrating the rocky soil or exploded more or less harmlessly in the swampy parts.

In October there can be lots of fog, rain and snow, the temperature ranges from between -5 C to +5 C, the Golf Stream keeps the ocean from freezing but the wind is cold and there is basically no way to get out of the wind - the weather conditions, the difficulty of resupplying the 'leg infantry', lack of arty support seriously degarded their combat effectivness over time.


In 1944 the Soviet commander Maretskov requested heavy armour to support his offensive because it thought that the Germans, having no armour of their own would be vulnerable to tank attacks. He wanted both heavy and numbers - he even requested to be given by then obsolete lend lease M3 Lee/Grant type tanks as he thought he would get more if he requested old stuff.

In actual battle the tanks did not play a very important role. They could hardly move outside the very few roads which meant they could fight with one or two tanks up front and all the rest trailing behind. The Soviets did have a fair number of combat and mobility losses to AFVs during these operations but I guess they still kept their faith when it comes to armour in the arctic...