"Soviet Armor in Europe mid 1980's question" Topic

Hey guys, in what year did Soviets start having ERA armor on their T-72 and T-80 tanks?
Getting ready for some cold war going hot in fulda gap scenarios.

Soviet Armour in Europe, so no T-72s! We started getting reports of it in the mid 80s on T-64s and T-80s,

Tally Ho!

So the first units that NATO would face would be T-80 and T64?

T-64s were the most common Soviet tank in GSFG in the mid 80s. The T-80 was just being introduced and there were a few T-62s left.

There are a couple other recent lengthy threads on the subject on the Modern Discussion Board.

As Cold Steel, 8GA and 1 GTA were in the South, 3SA central facing BAOR, 2 GTA in the North, and 20 GA central behind 3SA around Berlin. 20 GA was probably the last to convert to T-64 from T-62 based on imagery of T-62 around Berlin in the early 80s.

8GA and 1GTA were T-80, everyone else T-64, as Cold Steel mentioned there has been a great deal of recent discussion about the subject since BF announced they were taking FOW into the cold War,

Tally Ho!

The follow-on forces would be T-72s, though, right? Assuming that the Soviet formations led the party, backed up by Pact allies in T72s, and the reinforcing formations of Soviet armor also in T72s.

Chas just remoulded our T-64 range.

All of the Warsaw Pact allies fielded T-72s, and I assume a lot of those would be in the forefront of the attacks, in many locations, with Russian/Soviet armored vehicles/units behind, in order to ensure their "allies" move forward, and/or pay the price for not doing so.

Kind of like their political officers did during WWII, and presumably the Cold War as well, threatening to, or actually shooting anyone that waivers in their advance.

Therefore, you'll see T-72s and even T-55s for the WP forces.

Not sure on the ERA, but seem to recall that being around the early to mid-1980s period.

Wikipedia is probably a pretty decent resource on-line for that. Also, there's a posting with availability dates on the Pendraken Forum, which has info for various tank models, by year.

That's my impression, follow on units would contain pretty much everything and anything.

Geoff, you should let us know which lines have been remoulded. Apologies if you have already!

Soviet Armour in Europe, so no T-72s! We started getting reports of it in the mid 80s on T-64s and T-80s,

Tally Ho!

You might want to check your sources again Nick…

here's a publication that shows you are incorrect:
PDF link

Please pay attention to the paragraph on Page 6 having to do with the statement, "….The T54/55 is nowhere near as capable as the T64/72 Models currently representing over half the inventory of Soviet units in Eastern Europe."

The next sentence discusses numbers of T-72's in the Polish Army Inventory.

Petrov…the Soviets started putting "composite" armor on the T72 around 1979…with reactive armor on it in the mid-late 1980's…

Murphy, if you'll notice the sources cited in the article's endnotes, nothing newer than 1984. At that time, the US Army's supposition was that the T-72 was the next generation Soviet MBT and was to replace the T-64. As such, that was the "gospel" preached in intel circles. However, subsequent events and the opening of ex-Soviet archives have shown that we, the U.S. military, were wrong. Soviet T-72s were never actually forward deployed with the GSFG. They remained in the western districts of the Soviet Union as a form of "third wave" had the ballon gone up.

Murphy, why are some folks so desperate to get the T-72 into GSFG. They were not there. The NVA had some, as did the Polish, but GSFG had none, hence the phrase "SOVIET Armour in Europe, so no T-72" This pertains to the Soviets which is answering the initial question.

My sources are the sources that were looking at the individual barracks either from the air or on the ground at the time. At the time classified documents detailing the holdings of the individual Units gave readouts on what was there. It was part of my job at the time, so I am not incorrect.

History beat me to it! And to back him up is the old poster the US produced which showed the Big 7 (I Think) which had the T-72 as the MBT, wrong!

Tally Ho!

1983

pjm

I concur with the above (e.g. no T-72s for Soviets in East Germany), since there have been a lot of discussions about this on TMP, of late, or fairly recently.

Some of the people posting were even from the other side of the "Iron Curtain", and have confirmed the above.

Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia had the T-72, and they would have gone into Austria and probably Southern Germany.

The issue is more with the typical "standing start" scenario where everything kicks off with forces in place. In which case you aren't going to see T-72s forcing the Fulda Gap.

All of the Warsaw Pact allies fielded T-72s, and I assume a lot of those would be in the forefront of the attacks, in many locations, with Russian/Soviet armored vehicles/units behind, in order to ensure their "allies" move forward, and/or pay the price for not doing so.

That really isn't my impression of Cold War Soviet doctrine. They would have only resorted to those tactics once the fighting bogged down. They wanted to fight a quick mobile war if they could. Also mobilizing the WARPAC into East Germany would have been very noticeable and goes against the "standing start" concept that was developed later in the Cold War.

There were a lot of different theories at the time on how things would have occurred.

NATO, generally believed that there would either be a buildup over time, and/or one of the Soviet/Warpac exercises might be used as a ruse, to get the forces into place for an attack.

Perhaps, they wouldn't have been in the "standing start" strategy you mention, though I think for most of the Cold War, NATO presumed, either correctly, or incorrectly, that they would have at least some notice of the attacks.

Also, at issue, is the strategy of putting the best units in the vanguard, or putting less capable ones there, to soak up some of the punishment to be meted out by the front-line NATO units.

Supposedly, the Soviets planned to sortie most of their older subs through the Barents, using the above strategy, in order to keep their better subs available for later, and to try to locate the enemy, and attrit them a bit.

The Chinese, similarly, are believed to want to do that now, with their SSMs against our naval forces, and their air defense missiles, in the hopes that by the time the better, more capable missiles are launched, all of our top-line SAMs will be spent.

Therefore, as you can see, there is precedent amongst the communists for at least considering such tactics.

Thankfully, we never had to find out, and I hope we never do.

Can only speak for myself, but part of the appeal of cold war gone hot is that uncertainty of how it would have gone down. That and the sheer size of the Warsaw and NARO war machines involved – I'm still amazed at just how militarised Western Europe was up till the end of the eighties, and the state of readiness it was kept in.

The received wisdom I've got says that for conventional warfare by the 90's the western tech curve was way ahead such that the Soviets would be unlikely of a win, but up till years like 86/87 it was pretty much up in the air as to how it would have come down.

I just hope that the upcoming FoW rules gets most of it right. I really enjoy company to battalion games in 15mm and since I'm not planning on competitive play, and will be playing on an 8 x 5 ideally, I hope they give us something that can get me started. There's a distinct cinematic style to FoW that I enjoy, warts and all.

Big fear is that it will just be a port of the WW2 rules, down to crud like "Hen and Chicks" special rule. Big waste if it's just Flames of Fulda.

2 weeks of fighting with top of the line gear, then it's rusty old T34 and Centurions duking it out over the radioactive remains of Bremen :-)

Battlefront getting something right? As far as historical accuracy is concerned I wouldn't count on it, with that being said I play fow on a regular basis because its fun.
I would never do modern conflict in 15mm with more than 2-3 vehicles per side.
Only way to do true justice to Fulda gap tanknrush is 6mm. Short ranged ww2 tanks loook silly as it is in 15mm, in a 6 by 4 foot table it turns I to a Napoleonic game.

Central Group of Forces were far too South for my interest, however online I can only find reference to T-80 and T-64, in addition there was a nice image of T-64s being loaded onto rail flats in Cz prior to returning to the Soviet Union.

BRIXMIS and the other nations missions were expecting to see a massive increase in activity over a month period prior to any attack.

For the larger "scenarios" 6mm is good, in 20mm the table quickly becomes very crowded!

Weasal, you forget to add pockets of BAOR around the Herforder/Warsteiner breweries and Wolfgang's brattie wagon!

Tally Ho!

Geoff, you should let us know which lines have been remoulded

T-64 and T-80 so far. About to remould the T-72s (all of them)…. and perhaps add one or two new models ;-)

Here's a question, in 86 with BAOR forces how widespread was the stillbrew upgrade?

That time frame for the US, we're talkin M1 and M1ip only still?

86 is when it was first introduced, I think. Not sure when the whole fleet was upgraded, as from 83 CI was being introduced,

Tally Ho!

I believe there were some M1A1s deployed by late '86.

ERA is one thing that drives me a bit nuts in Cold War gaming – an armour upgrade that in the main only affects some weapons used against it, and even those weapons are affected differently.

I think I've sorted it out for my smaller scale (company per side, individual vehicles and fire teams) project, but not my brigade-per-side scale.

Anyone ever gotten to a happy place with ERA in games?

Chris

I deal with ERA by avoiding mid/late 80s Cold War:)

In the 80s ERA would not have affected Kinetic Energy rounds, it was mainly to counter Chemical warheads such as ATGM. The new Sabre Squadron rules give AFVs two levels of protection, one for KE and the other for Chemical.

A HESH round landing on ERA would have most of the force dissipated, however it would strip the era and anything not nailed down. There is a chance that the force of the explosion could cause anything from damage to extreme discomfort to the inside and the crew!

However a KE round would be the round of choice,

Tally Ho!

Thanks Nick, giving armored vehicles two ratings is where I landed for smaller command scale games, assuming that most tanks are shooting KE, except for older ones that are limited to HEAT etc. For those modern tandem-head ATGMs I just bump up their ability to cause damage.

For a higher level game (Nordic Weasel's Brigade Commander at the moment), I'm not sure it's worth the work, so I may tweak the effect of ATGMs based on what their target has.

By the way, from your opening sentence are you suggesting modern (2010s) ERA would have more effect on KE?

FFoT does that too I think

Apparently the latest stuff has plates that move with the intent of breaking or deflecting the KE warhead,

Tally Ho!

Lovely, lovely, lovely. Time to look at my ratings again.

McWong73:

That time frame for the US, we're talkin M1 and M1ip only still?

1st AD started getting M1's in late 1986…

And yes I have photos of M1's on the washrack at Graf in early '86. 11th ACR had them first I think….

M1s (to replace M60s), or M1A1s?

Murphy, why are some folks so desperate to get the T-72 into GSFG. They were not there.

Nic, based on how you are saying and what you are saying, I would say it's time to switch to decaf…

Cheers!

Geoff….When I was at Graf in 86, we still had M60A3's…the A3's were replaced by the straight M1's, (105mm)….

I know that 11th ACR got them first as they were there for gunnery….and I know that 2nd BDE 1st AD traded their A3's for M1's back around Sept '86….

Murphy,

It's Tuesday so a nice Merlot!

Tally Ho!

So how many M60's in 86? Half of all US tanks? A third?

And a follow up, I've read that the west germans still had some M48's on the books in this time frame, that correct?

Yes, with their reserve, on Certain Strike in 86 me and a QDG mate were stood in a woods having a brew as a Bn of M48 rumbled passed the Bde HQ.

Tally Ho!

The last West German M48A2s (90mm) disappeared by 1983, with the last ones being used as engineer tanks (gun removed and fitted with dozer blade – very basic conversion). However, the 105mm-armed M48A2GA2s persisted in large numbers with reservist brigades right up to the 1990s.

A friend of mine drove an M60 in Iraq in the first Gulf War, so I imagine plenty of them were around in the mid 80's.

And certainly, any that had been withdrawn but not yet sold off or used for gunnery targets would have been sent back into service soon enough, once attrition started accumulating.

The M-48s are in this video at about 5 minutes in, followed by a Chieftain Regt, make sure your volume is as high as possible and after a stiff tot you will feel quite splendid!

YouTube link

Tally Ho!

From OOBs I've seen at least a 1/3rd of US Army Europe tanks would still have been M60s in the late '80s. The concentration was higher amongst continental US units, and some National Guard units would still have had M48A5s.

As Nick and others have plainly stated time and again, no T-72's in GSFG. If anyone absolutely needs SOVIET T-72's to show up on the tabletop in Germany, forget the North German Plain and Fulda and head south to the Hof Corridor or Danube River Valley, where Czech and Soviet formations would be equipped with the T-72 (Soviet forces from the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia).

I have been searching for TO&Es for the rest of the Sovs in Europe, and so far can find reference no to T-72 except for the non Soviet countries. Indeed there is an interesting Facebook site (T-62 & T-64 site) with some photos of T-64 being loaded onto flats to return to the USSR from either Czech republic or Hungary, in the 90s. One photo has a Hungarian/Italian porn star waving goodbye! (It is, however, safe for work!).

Tally Ho!

Good video there Nick! Ah, the sound of freedom… :)

Interesting vehicle at the back of the M48A2GA2 column – a Beobachtungspanzer 4-5, which was a Kanonenjagdpanzer 4-5 with the gun removed and OP kit added. They were mainly used as OP vehicles for battalion 120mm mortar companies.

I might add that just because T72 were not present in the forces stationed in Europe, they might well show up in follow-up waves.

At the rate of attrition, whatever was initially fielded isn't going to last long.

I think some folks are using "Soviet" to mean all the Soviet allies in the Warsaw Pact, not restricting it to the actual member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics like it should be.

So, if I've got what Nick has been saying right: NO T72s in actual Soviet front-line forces, but T72s in Warsaw Pact forces (second line troops if the balloon went up) and in Soviet troops actually based in the Soviet Union (3rd wave troops).

Though to be perfectly honest, I'd be all over a few T64s. Smallest tank with the biggest gun!