So, You Wanna Be Historicool A Guide to using Soviet FOW lists in a way resembling how they fought By some guy I have been putting this off for a very very long time but I have stage 3 cancer and in October they’re removing my esophagus. I have nothing else to do until then. In short, this document is a guide to using Soviet FOW lists in a manner vaguely realistic. I use the word “vaguely” because many stats and tables of organization in FOW are just wrong. You’ll see as we go along. I am using Armies of Late War for this because despite big issues it’s a condensed vision of THE FUTURE of the game. Let’s start: Setting the Scene: Hungary 1945 As AoLW covers a huge length of time I chose to go with 1945, the period I know the most of, and Hungary, as that saw the largest concentrations of German competence and offensive efforts at this time. Things see-sawed back and forth as the top-priority German forces clawed at Soviet forces in what for them was a secondary front. It is therefore probably the best place of 1945 for FOW-type games. While the Konrad operations were fairly closely fought, Operation Spring Awakening was a total clusterfuck for Germany—in 10 days over 464 armored vehicles were captured by the Red Army, with an unknown number having been recovered. There are three books you should be aware of (or rather, that I am aware of) when gaming this theater: • Days of Battle. Author makes at least one mistake, namely his assumption that Soviet armored losses are 75% irrecoverable. It was significantly less than this, for units I’ve looked at more like 20%. Cheap ebook. • Tomb of the Panzerwaffe. An extremely readable account of the last German offensive. Goes into great detail down to company level. Most recommended book on this list. Again, ebook is like four bucks. • The Sword Behind the Shield. By same author as first book. Only in hardcover and like 80 dollars, can’t recommend for that simple reason. Kinda hard to read. Pretty maps! • There are no doubt tons of other books on this theater but I haven’t read them lel Let’s go over this via the Rifle Battalion in the book, and note where it is right, where it’s wrong, and how to beat it until it makes sense. SUPER IMPORTANT: Most of these stats are from tables dating to 6 March 1945. Earlier engagements would have at least slightly different ratios and strengths. RIFLE BATTALION GENERAL NOTES: • Every rifle division in this area was extremely under-strength. None of them had more than 6,000 men, except the Bulgarians who had 13,000 men each but were rated as basically worthless. This deficit also applied to guns, with the 26th Army’s divisions having only sixteen 76mm guns of all kinds each. Higher-level artillery units were generally at half strength. • Most rifle companies had 50-70 men although companies of just 20 men did exist. • For Operation Spring Awakening (the aforementioned last German offensive) more than 60% of the Soviet armor involved were self-propelled guns. The SU-76 and SU- 100 saw heavy use in particular. • Komissars: no THE RIFLE COMPANY • A company defense area was to have a rifle company (duh), 3-5 guns, and some number of mortars, anti-tank rifles and machine-guns. Panzerfausts were used but very sparingly compared to up north—in fact the two losses I see for them might have been friendly fire! • Unless you want to do Bulgarians (which were the opposite of Fearless), I strongly recommend no more than 15 R/MG stands per company. At that point it already looks painfully congested and overstrength. AT rifles are encouraged, along with the HMG. • SMG companies: same applies except they can only buy flamethrowers, which were of course heavily used inside Budapest itself. PTRD AT RIFLE COMPANY • They weren’t blobbed together like this, very weird. They would be company- level assets spread out such that any given tank penetrating the defenses would always show their side to at least one rifle. Can’t recommend. MG COMPANY • Again, odd that they all have to sit in the same spot together. Just do whatever man. 82MM MORTAR COMPANY • It’s super important to take this I feel. Not much comment needed, although a common Soviet practice was to group 40 or more mortars under one command for large fire missions. Of course they would never be physically grouped, as they had more than enough range to cover a full regimental sector from any point. 120MM MORTAR COMPANY • Another common and popular weapon. 107mm mortars were also in use too. 76MM REGIMENTAL GUN COMPANY • Here we come to BF fucking up. When you look at Soviet lists of artillery, these were “76mm regimental anti-tank guns, M1927 and M1943”. They were integrated into anti-tank defenses as such (in addition to their primary anti- infantry role) because they had good AT performance, despite the mount having limited traverse. You can’t take these as AT guns in FOW. You just can’t. 45MM ANTI-TANK GUN COMPANY • The penetration on these is weird too, but not as batshit crazy as on the previous entry. The 1942 model had similar penetration to the 57mm US gun, largely due to very high muzzle velocity (it actually performed better at 1000 meters than the US gun). It’s worth noting the 1932 model was still in use. Like the regimental gun, these were largely for anti-infantry work but still performed a lot of anti-tank heavy lifting, simply because they were there and better guns might not be. SCOUT PLATOON • A good defense requires lots of patrolling. Take them! OT-34 FLAME TANK COMPANY • I don’t think these were even used in Hungary. BA-64 ARMORED CAR COMPANY • Soviet armored forces mainly depended on Lend-lease armored vehicles for recon—the half-tracks and armored scout cars you see in Rota—but these definitely were a thing that were used, in surprisingly low numbers. 37MM ANTI-AIRCRAFT COMPANY • The backbone of AA for Soviet forces. 20mm guns of unknown make, probably German, were also in use here. IL-2 SHTURMOVIK • These were used quite heavily. Also fun to note Hungarian skies were still rather contested, especially compared to the Western Front. SU-76 ASSAULT GUN COMPANY • More than a quarter of the AFVS used in this area were the humble SU-76. Very solid infantry support vehicle, at least in reality—you should try them out! Also used as scout vehicles. ISU HEAVY ASSAULT GUN COMPANY • An even nicer vehicle, the wonderful 122mm cannon could comfortably wreck anything at 2 kilometers. Most of them here were indeed armed with that instead of the 152mm. ZIS ANTI-TANK COMPANY • The ZIS-2 was relatively rare but extremely good. The 76mm M1936, M1939, and ZIS-3 (all of them were in use) were not as penetrate-y but the ZIS-3 still outperformed the US 57mm while having better anti-infantry performance. Just a good field gun. SU-85 ASSAULT GUN COMPANY • They were used here, but outnumbered by the SU-100. Slightly higher ROF than the T-34 as far as I can tell. MEDIUM ASSAULT GUN COMPANY • Holy shit the SU-100 was good. Extremely high range, penetration, explosive power and accuracy. Most likely had less armor than implied in FOW. Also, same ROF as the T-34 (5 rounds per minute). Note that Soviet rate of fire tests were simply putting a guy in a typical filled tank and seeing, well, what his rate of fire was until he ran out. This meant it slacked off and killed the average as he had to dig deeper and deeper into the storage to find ammo. I honestly have no clue how to convert ROF between nations, unlike penetration data which is everywhere you look. If you want to be a cool history nerd and also speak multiple languages look into that thanks. 100MM ANTI-TANK COMPANY • Not listed as used here. I know basically nothing about this thing. 76MM ZIS-3 ARTILLERY BATTERY • See the ZIS AT company entry. The ZIS-3 was extremely common, almost half the guns in use in March 1945 were these. 122MM ARTILLERY BATTERY • Very common. Most or all guns of every type were to be dug in such that they could use direct fire in any direction. 152MM ARTILLERY BATTERY • The version in the list was not used at all in Hungary at this time. Only the ML-20 shows up as listed. GUARDS ROCKET MORTAR BATTERY • The BM-13 was by far the most common model. T-34/85 TANK COMPANY • It’s a T-34/85, they were everywhere, what do you want from me. T-34 TANK COMPANY • The T-34/76 was still used in Hungary right up till the end. Whole battalions continued to fight with them. VALENTINE TANK COMPANY • Don’t appear to have been used, although they were fairly common and popular scout vehicles. TANK RIDER COMPANY • Defensive strongpoints in the 18th tank corps used 2-5 tanks, a platoon of motorized infantry, and 2-3 guns. The 1st Guards Mechanized Corps used company-sized strongpoints with 5-8 tanks and AT guns as well. Each armored unit did it differently but the concept of strict defense was employed by all of them for Spring Awakening. Like everyone else the armored units were quite under-strength.