Red Army = most effective force !

[narwan]

Siddhi said:
- "logistics, etc." this is the biggest myth of all - that soviet logistics was a nightmare or a mess. o/c after 1985 everything slowly went downhill, but the soviets beforehand were true masters of the art - more importantly, they were ther first to employ "computurised" logistic systems - basically big calculators - first at front then at army level, from 1975 onwards. these systems were so advanced they AUTOMATICALLY could issue (print orders ready for signing or teletype reley) movement and priority orders on supply coloums and MSRs. the fact that they were less "flexible" then NATO is completly irrelevant - if you do not resupply a regiment but simply pull it from the line and put in another you do not need flexibility. this approach was brilliant as while they knew it cut combat capability in some ways (lack of experienced NCOs, commanders, etc.) in allowed the "same" factors to be considered fresh each time in the battle management computers, i.e. they knew exactly what equipment would be how worn out over how much time, and could therefore pre-order supplies, unlike the NATO system, which was "pull" rather then "push". finally the WP has a defence mobilisation scheme that only countries such as norway, austria and sweden have - every vehicle could be commandered for the front - effectivly the entire country could go to "war industy" at the flip of switch.

Just to be clear, I never said nor intended to say that soviet logistics was a mess. What I pointed out was the limitations of implementing the whole logistics oepration. You can have a finely tuned organisation, in the end it's the road space and other infrastructure that determine how much of and how well you can implement your organisation.

A historical case in point is the german advance in ww1 in august of '14. It is often said that the germans would have won if they had had those divisions there in the west of france that they had send to the eastern front to face the russians instead. What is forgotten is that there was literally no room for those divisions. A german infantry division on the march through belgium and france needed an awful lot of road space. So much that often the end of the column ended a days advance more or less on the same positions that the leading units had started of from that morning. The roads in belgium (the east of belgium being the bottleneck) and france were already packed with moving columns of troops and supplies (of which there were often shortages due to the congestion of the roads).
From a battlefield point of view those additional divisions could have made all the difference, from a logistical viewpoint it made more sense to send them elsewhere.

While I don't debate the existence of a complex supply system, or the abundance of bridging equipment and engineers, nor the waterfording capabilities of many soviet AFV's, what I do debate is their ability to advance all those troops, their supplies and reinforcements along the limited infrastructure available. This is NOT just about bridges, what some people seem to think. You can just as easily take out large sections of roads, crossroads etc with modern engineer and demolition equipment so as to make them unusable (as roads etc) for quite some time. Which is what matters, time. Every minute and hour lost means more pile up of vehicles and the more they pile up the harder it becomes to 'un-pile' them. You might say, well they can just go around it right? Tracked vehicles and all terrain wheeled vehicles can, but trucks will quickly become stuck (all that traffic going over non hardened ground will soon turn it into ploughed fields, hard to croos with trucks). So as soon as you have column of trucks stuck/slowed, everything behind it, including tracked and AT wheeled will get stuck in the traffic jam too.

It's simply a matter of the amount of traffic density that the exisitng infrastructure could handle, then add deliberate delays and blockings and you'll come to what is realistically possible in terms of nr of manouvre units and supply chain. Add in doctrine (fast or slow advance, high or low ammo expenditure (artillery especially) etc, etc) and the number gets higher or lower, basically the faster you want to advance, the lower the nr of troops.

In my opinion, assuming a reasonable disruption by NATO, a WP advance would have stalled quite quickly after initial succes.

Narwan

[Smersh]

In my opinion, assuming a reasonable disruption by NATO, a WP advance would have stalled quite quickly after initial succes.

How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?

[narwan]

Smersh said:


How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?

Not that much. Measured in kilometres from the border I'd say you'd be counting in double digit numbers, with maybe in one or two 'schwerpunkts' in the (very) low triple digits. In some area's the territory gained might not even reach 50km depth.
And it wouldn't be a golden period either. WP losses would have been massive, much higher than NATO's losses (who would have had the advantage of defending). Whether they would be able to hold on to that territory is dubious, but too speculative to make any clear claims on.

But again, that's just my opinion.

Narwan

[Smersh]

I hold the opposite view. I beleive west germany could have been over-run and occupied within a week. If the objective was to re-unify germany by force, then I think thats very possible. on the other hand a full-scale invasion and attempt to incorporate the whole of europe would be a stretch, although not maybe not impossible.

losses of course would be high, but if tactical nuclear weapons where used losses on both sides would be much higher, in addition to big envirinmental destruction.

In the end success and failure depends on alot of factors,strategic and tactical suprise,strategic objectives, western will, nuclear weapon use, etc.

[Listy]

From what I worked out from talking to people who served in BAOR, is that it would come down too, if we run out of bullets to send down range before the Godless Commie Hordes(TM) ran out of spares to keep their tanks mobile.

They where of the opinion that if it didn't involve so many casualties, it wouldd be the worlds biggest comedy routine. Then it'd all be down to whose nerve broke first, and started hurling Brick bats at each other.

BAOR's main role was that of speed bump, and there was one fiction book which ended with BAOR getting Tac nuked by it's own side.

[Marcello]

"You can just as easily take out large sections of roads, crossroads etc with modern engineer and demolition equipment so as to make them unusable (as roads etc) for quite some time."

I don't know. You can put some demolition charges on the key points of a bridge and continue to use it until the last minute, then blow it up. Railroads are easy to take out too. But how would you destroy a paved road? Explosive charges? You will need to drill a lot of holes. Buldozers?
Tarmac and the underlying layers seem pretty hard for your typical dozer blade to negotiate quickly. At any rate every time I have seen it removed specialized equipment was used.And that hardware was comparatively rare.
I will also note that from what I remember from their doctrine the soviets emphasized the use of forward detachments to seize key passage points.That could be bad news for a bunch of engineers trying frantically to fill a road with holes.

"Tracked vehicles and all terrain wheeled vehicles can, but trucks will quickly become stuck"

I will note that most soviet vehicles have comparatively long unrefueled cruising ranges (like in the case of river fording it was accomplished with trade offs, see BMP-1 rear doors). The T-62 and the BMP-1 can, on paper, do more than 600Km. The T-55 can, on paper, do 600km, and so on.Those are not a trivial distances in Western Europe. I suspect that it was done on purpose to enable them to quickly seize NATO airbases and other key objectives without the hassle of dragging fuel trucks along. Which is not to say that trucks will not be needed but that "reasonable disruption" might be called in question. Again the specific historical period is important.

[baggypants]

Post deleted by baggypants

[Siddhi]

[/quote]

How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?

[/quote]

depending on operational/ and some strategic suprise being achieved by the WAPA, assuming moderate WP air superiority for the first few days, and moderate SF action, all within the 1980-85 timeframe, i would give the WP good chances in breaking NORTHAG completly. the belgiums and dutch are good soliders and each have national distinctive charachteristics (IIRC the belgiums could mobilise very quickly, and the dutch had a very smart supply system), but the real question would have been if they could retreat fast enough to keep their armies intact. if NORTHAG was smart and the germans did not insist on saving Hamburg AND the dutch and belgiums could save their army in a retreat they, together with BOAR and the germans, could probablly have stablised the line at Hannover by D+3/5. OTOH the chance that the dutch or belgiums would simply disintigrate given the equipment pairing (old Leos against T-72/80s/ BMPs) was simply very large in such great terrain. CENTAG and US VII Corps OTOH would probablly have stopped them within 20-50km, at least until the second echalon would hit.

@on supply and obstacles.
austria was "obstacle mad" and prepped everything imaginable for demolition, also it had the heaviest fortified lines in europe (possible exception of the swiss), and still the ability of solid engineers and good planning to overcome these hindrances are not that great, IF terrain and weather play their part. having said this the germans were perfectly willing to blow everything to hold the WP, this included even "over the road canals" (water cannals that are in effect "reverse bridges" over a roadway, if you know what i mean) - the questions is how often you are actually able to do this: demo lines are very easily cut by arty fire, especially 120mm airburst (i have no idea why, angle maybe?), also you can simply kill the demo team instead, there are a lot of options, the point being that at 10-25% faliure rating for each obstacle you will have a lot of obstacles left open that you PLAN on being closed, it makes your reserves very hard to position. as PLASMACRAB correctly pointed out, most of not all transportation infrastructure build in many european countries (incl. germany) post war had very definte national defence guidelines, there are dozens of interesting websites and pictures on the web for anyone that is intersted. NARWAN i talked to a HV District commander (Tromso) some years ago and he also confirmed that you, like austria, had pre-mined basicaly everything he said however the main problem was not the 51st(?) MRD advancing out of Kola but was the SOV airborne and marine forces landing in your area and capture the mob locations.

BAGGYPANTS talked about the high casulties needed to "breach" obstacles with speed - i agree. the only real cliche that is certainly right was the WAPA acceptance of casulties compared with western armies - you can see it in what they consider the minimum for combat effective (a MRR)= 30-40% (!!) while IIRC in the US it would be 50-60%.

if the WP was unlucky and the terrain was really muddy and wet, fine, little off-road movement of supplies possible, but in the NORTHAG area the monster ZIL trucks were perfectly capable of driving over fields, and most trucks have a recovery winch anyway. furthermore you cannot compare germany WWII with germany of today, there are MANY TIME more roads and villages today and the armies really are SMALLER then they were then (the amount of vehicles actually in use is not disimilar).

logistics is a science, not (or not only) an art, and people learn how to do it for YEARS. as i mentioned, the WAPA had some very easy solutions to complex problems, and traffic management for WAPA was very easy as they have their own "Kommandanten Force" troops that were its own command and purly in charge of managing traffic and logistic flow, unlike the west, that left it all the poor MPs who would be complelty overwhelmed. just imagine an expected 3-6 MILLION german refugees heading west in their own personal autombiles, all within 1 week, and you can see that the main thing getting in the way of the WP tanks could very well be VW Beatles...