Quote:
Originally Posted by zraver
Dale, your maximum numbers ar eoff by about 50% Most tank armies went to battle with between 400-800 tanks not 250. This would make a tank army only about 1 step lower than its designation would indicate in the West.
Also Bessenov in his memoirs clearly remembers being being assinged 3 JS-2 for spear heading the 4th Tank Armies drive across Poland.
Evigenni Bessenov, Tank Rider into the Reich with the Red Army. translated to English 2003. stackpole books.
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As far as tank armies, sure, they are still large orgs, and keep in mind I'm only counting medium and heavy tanks. No lights or SPGs or assault guns. And also, the closest U.S. equivalent to a Soviet tank army would have been one of its early Armored Divisions! 2 regiments of tanks plus a battalion of SP TDs for a paper strength of about 350 tracks! Add in the Stuarts and you get at least another 50 or so! And then there's the 200-odd halftracks of the infantry and the SP artillery. The traffic problems of the 3rd Armored in NWE must've been nightmarish.
So I'm not trying to write a hard & fast Law of Equivalents, but instead point out that more often than not a Red Army WWII mechanized or tube unit is going to be a couple of steps "smaller" than its designation.
And 3 heavies at a time? Sure, why not? Everyone massaged their TO&Es according to the field requirements. By the end of the war cross-attaching tanks & TDs even at the platoon level was common for the U.S., for instance. But I'm mainly talking paper numbers to get at the basics.
-dale