"Soviet tanks in Catagory B Division in the 80s" Topic

Hi All

Any ideas of tank types in Soviet Cat B Divisions. I'm assuming all T62 as they filter down from A units that are getting T64/72/80?

However do Motor Rifle regiments keep T55 that then receive upgrades?

Anybody know if Cat B units get newly minted T72s or do they all go to Cat A units?

Finally do Cat C units have a BMP Motor Rifle Regiment or have 2 BTR Regiments and one with MTLB/BTR50 or even BTR.

Many thanks!

Go to yahoogroup forum on spearhead or and Fistful of tow3, can't remember which, one Russian chap who obviously 've been there and done some, knows a lot on these and left loads of usefull posts. Vassily if I remember. I think he lurks here too, though not from where one might think!

Old history for me but if I recall, being cat 1/2/3 does not mean anything about new or old equiment, geography and missions, notably wartime mission has more to it. At least cat1/2.
Go there ferret and ask if you don't find the answer.

Yes the Frog is right, the Category refers to the level of manning, not necessarily the equipment. Soviet doctrine was to burn through formations fast, rather than service fighting formations, so they would all expect to take their turn at the cutting edge eventually.

In 1989 the stats show that the 39 Tank Divisions and 29 Motor Rifle Divisions in the Soviet Western Districts had 11,245 'New' tanks and 9,900 'Old' tanks.

By 'old' is meant the first generation; T-54/T-55, which constituted 38 percent of the Soviet inventory in 1989. The T-62 constituted 24 percent of the Soviet inventory.

'New' tanks are the T-64, 18 percent, the T-72, 16 percent, and the T-80, 4 percent.

(Tank War – Central Front; Nato vs Warsaw Pact, Steven J Zaloga, Osprey, 1989 pp.10-12)

Here is a good website by Russian formation It will include Cat B units:

ww2.dk/new/newindex.htm

Here's a definition of the various readiness categories from another source:

Soviet forces were divided between 4 readiness categories, Category A is a combat ready formation. Category B is between 50-75% strength with modern equipment requiring a few days to be combat ready. Category C is less than 50% strength with older equipment requiring 2 months mobilization time. Category D has less than 5% strength and real old equipment requiring 6 months. All Divisions outside the USSR and all Airborne Divisions are Cat A.

From this source:
link

This source also has a link for the corresponding NATO OOB from June 1989, if you're interested.

paulgenna, interesting site – too bad it doesn't have search function. Found our neighbours, who, correctly, are listed as having T-55 tanks and being NATO cat. 3.
What I don't understand, is why such a long mobilization period is listed for their (and for our unit). During my 2 years there, we had 4 mobilizations that were carriedjust in several days, and we could move the location clear in a day even without most of recruits arriving….

How many units were mobilizing and receiving full equipment and supplies at the time of your drill? It could be that for a small number of units the mobilization but wide scale they knew it was not possible to equip and move them that fast.

we're talking about of 64th Guard MotorRifle division, our neighbours were a part of it. During "razvertovanie", i.e mobilization and deployment, all equipment, ammo and supplies were activated, fueled, loaded and moved to the drill location.
In order to do it in a day period, there were several "waves" of recruits coming – first mostly consisted of drivers from nearby locations, the rest were coming from bigger cities around, including S-Petersburg, located ca. 100 km to the South. It was a busy time for ca.60 soldiers and same N of officers, who were the "core" stuff.
The recruits were assigned to our units in the mobilization structure, so there were lots of guys whom I've seen 4 times – during each drill.
All equipment and supplies was located within several km from our barracks, so the only task was to get people and handle the stuff to them…

Interestingly, these categories are almost precisely the same as the French pre-WWII categories.

If you look at the mobilization of some of the units for Afghanistan, it was a c------ f---.

What would have happened if you had not met your deadlines. The units prepping your vehicles and equipment could have been pre notified and equipment checked and any vehicles and equipment with problems could be replaced. Also the muster list could have been checked and any holes in personnel filled. Your unit could have been at full TO&E before the call up so the command was looking good.

Yours is not the only army that does that.

Well, of course all vehicles had maintenance checks, and you were not allowed to store broken stuff. As each 6 months everything was moving across vast spaces, it was seen as necessary testing. We always had HQ reps who were overseeing the the loading and moving out…of course there were glitches, and it was harder in winter time, but we're talking days, not months.
I guess this readiness gradation could mean that the Army was not prepared to supply us if we joined the battle at once…

Also, situation with our division might have something to do, that some troops were deployed very close to the border, and not somewhere in the West Siberia…

may be you know it already, but just in case…

the unit like ours, and the whole 64 division was so-called "kadrirovannyi" i.e. reduced stuff unit.
The peace time roster had ca.64 soldiers and about the same N of officers. As we were artillery unit, we had divisions and batteries. First division, first battery (where I was) had all gun commanders, gun operators and mechanics, as well as most qualified jobs in recon units filled with draft soldiers. We had all officers, too. 2d battery had only one officer, 1 mechanic and 1 gun commander as far as I recall…Communication battery also had specialists, who need additional training. Our main purpose was to keep everything in order, check and inspect everything in storage, guard artillery warehouse, etc., and have trainings in accrodance with our military speciality. During "razevrtovanie", i.e full scale drill, mobilization orders were issued to the people, who were assigned to our units in nearby cities/villages and Leningrad/Petrozavodsk. All mechanics/drivers from nearby collective farms had to arrive to our gates in one day period, here they were receiving uniform and weapons, and were taking part into loading of stuff and taking everything out to mobilization location nearby. By the time other recruits were arriving – normally in several days – the roster was filled to 100% strength.
I can tell you that we even had propaganda officers and special shells, that were throwwing pamphlets on the enemies of the Soviet Union…;)

After the Yom Kippur war, Isreali officers gave lectures to the Armor school on findings from the war. There were several but the one I remember most was a report from the Golan Heights. It pointed out that the Russian made tanks could not elevate their gun tubes high enough to engage the tanks on the crest. As a result the Isreali inflicted almost 100% losses on the attacking battalion.
The ability to elevate and depress guns is not often a feature of rules or board games.

Barin1 – this is fascinating stuff!

Sounds like you could have been ready, on the road / railroad and heading west in just a few days after mobilization?

Scary thought for NATO.

Was all your artillery towed, D30, D20 etc.?

Best wishes!!

When I was drafted in 1985, we still had M30, WWII howitzers. Then they left for Vladivostok to be shipped somewhere to AFrica, may be they're still operational – very reliable gun.
Then we've got D-30.
We also had 160 mm howitzers, that were replaced with BM-64 in 1987, shortly before I was demobilized.
During most of our drills we were still staying within Karelia itself, as we were so-called "border covering units". Not that our commanders were aftaid of Finns – somehow, our potential opponents were supposed to be Canadian and US paradropping units. Once we went to central Byelorussia.
Loading or unloading of the whole unit on the platforms was supposed to take a day, maximum two if we had to do it with skeleton stuff. Normally, we hated all these spine-breaking activities, however it was normally compensated with live ammo shooting on the drills ;)

Barin was the neighbouring unit part of your division and if not do you know what type of tanks your division had at the time you were serving?

we were both part of 64th motor rifle division, but they were motor rifle unit (ok, in Russian it is "polk") and we were artillery unit.
Think they had a unit of T-55.

Thank you so much Barin1 – that's so interesting.

With Canadians and US Paras as expected opposition maybe they had plans for the Division to cross Finland and Sweden and then go for NATO units and bases in Norway.

Sounds like you may have been getting newer stuff filtering down from other units maybe? Were the D-30s new or had they been replaced by 2S1s in another higher category unit?

I also assume you were with the Divisional Artillery Group / Regiment rather than an artillery battalion with a Motor Rifle Regiment? Do you recall if your Motor Rifle Regiments had their own artillery battalion or was all the artillery held at Divisional level?

Also did your artillery regiment have any D-20 or other 152mm weapons or was everything apart from the mortars 122mm?

Thanks again for such brilliant information. So great to hear the story from over the border.

Very best wishes!

Red Fox, correct, we were divisional artillery group of 64th, we had black chevrons, and motor rifle had red. They had 85 mm modtars and T-12 100 mm Rapira AT guns.
We didn't have 152 mm calibres, I think a unit in 64 th HQ had them – I've seen them at artillery repair base where I"ve been once, but may be they were from somewhere else.
One of the confusing things with naming western equivalents of Russian organization is, that even if you have the same name, say, "division" you think of large formation (as in the link of paulgenna). Russians were calling it "diviziya", and "division" in artillery unit like ours, meant a unit consisting of several (3-4 batteries) of 6 D-30 each.
Most of our guns were relatively new – there was a differnce between old modification and new one – old one had more complicated elevation mechanism, consisting of two levers you had to turn at the same time. There were soldiers legends that these levers are going to certain valuable part of the gunner, if you comrade wasn't turning his lever right. We had only several of those, that came when we were having a re-training from M-30 to D-30. The rest of our guns had hydraulic system that could be operated by single person.
We didn't have much variety in our arsenal – M-30/D-30 and M-160/BM-64 (old/new).
Speaking of the variety, I had RPG-7B in addition to PM as gun operator…

vk.com/club24215263

some b&w pics of the unit…you'll not see much of the stuff here, but there's even Zis-3 that we've used for training, GTT and M-30. Most of them were taken several years before I was there…

Thanks very much again Barin

Clarification on unit Terminology vocabulary, Diviziya (Division), same as the Western "Division" (More or Less), Divizion, a Battalion (Or US "Squadron") level formation, normally Artillery or Cavalry.

Always amusing to see the ADA (Air Defense Artillery) "Divizions" (Battalions)identified as "Divisions" in some of the 6/22/41 OB translations.

The US Army had a (Machine Translation) of a Soviet manual on "The Artillery Division in Combat" floating around, obviously better translated as Battalion…. Wish I had acquired a copy when I had a chance, purely for the linguistic entertainment value of the title.

"Polk" is usually translated as "Regiment".