Cuprum2 | 23 Mar 2021 7:02 p.m. PST |
Forcing the river with improvised means and seizing a bridgehead on the enemy bank. A scene from the Kazakh film "The Road to Mother": YouTube link |
Yellow Admiral | 23 Mar 2021 8:26 p.m. PST |
Or, as one would say in Russian: грабеж спасения рядового Райана |
Cuprum2 | 23 Mar 2021 11:11 p.m. PST |
If they try to imitate you – it means you have done a good job))) But here I'm not talking about the plot – I am talking about the process of crossing the river. The Red Army had big problems in this area. In the overwhelming majority of cases, improvised means were used (boats found on the spot, rafts from improvised means). |
Yellow Admiral | 24 Mar 2021 9:46 a.m. PST |
Improvised means and horrific casualties. The accounts of assaults like this are really quite horrifying. |
Yellow Admiral | 24 Mar 2021 11:08 a.m. PST |
Putting on my GM hat – this does look like a theme for an impressive multi-player convention game. Imagine this on a 12'-16' table with a river running down the middle, with a large and eclectic collection of miniatures. The defensive players wouldn't have any maneuvering to do, but they would get to BL*W SH!T UP for the entire game, and it might be fun to make them argue about who gets to call in artillery fire each turn. - Ix |
Wackmole9 | 24 Mar 2021 11:41 a.m. PST |
Yes a eye opening game with unlimited Russian Soldiers dieing. It might make you just as unfeeling and Uncaring as Uncle Joe and His Generals. |
79thPA | 24 Mar 2021 5:49 p.m. PST |
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Cuprum2 | 24 Mar 2021 7:13 p.m. PST |
The tales of horrific Red Army casualties have been greatly exaggerated. The huge losses of the population in the USSR are the result of the purposeful destruction of the civilian population by the Nazis. The ratio of losses of the armed forces of the USSR and Germany (taking into account the allies) is about 1: 1.3 – 1.5. And here, too, it accounted for a huge share of prisoners of war – deliberately destroyed by the Nazis. |
Yellow Admiral | 25 Mar 2021 5:57 p.m. PST |
No argument here. I think those comparative casualty figures make a good point about the whole war – both sides spent a couple years on the losing side making desperate defenses and spoiling attacks that turned into mass casualty events. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, we had only German accounts to guide us, and it takes extensive documentation of both sides to get a clear view of events and statistics. My view of the actual mechanics of Soviet military operations is still downright murky, but clearly Soviet arms tended to do better than the German accounts of my youth claimed they did. However, I would expect a contested river crossing with improvised equipment to be high in casualties, in any era, by any army. River crossings against prepared opposition are hard. The events in this film clip might be full of cinematic exaggerations, but the heroism and appalling casualties are believable. - Ix |
Cuprum2 | 25 Mar 2021 9:40 p.m. PST |
We are now talking only about the initial stage of the crossing – the capture of a bridgehead on the side of the enemy. Of course, improvised means of crossing are inferior in efficiency to specialized ones. And this leads to additional losses. But still, I do not remember a single case when the Germans managed to stop the Soviet offensive, relying on a river or other water obstacle. Moreover, we are never talking about any catastrophic losses during the crossing. At the beginning of the war, the USSR had enough crossing means, including a large number of light amphibious tanks (rather, tankettes: T-37, T-38, T-30). But the overwhelming majority of them were lost during the defensive battles of 1941-42. In the future, they were not produced, at least in large quantities. Nevertheless, I know of a case of mass use of pre-war amphibious tanks in 1944 when crossing the Svir River on the Leningrad front.
The rest of the time, crossing means were used, which were made in advance in military units when approaching a water barrier. These were quite typical designs developed by specialists. |
Cuprum2 | 25 Mar 2021 9:56 p.m. PST |
Since 1938, one of the simplest crossing means in the Red Army was the so-called "hard-to-flood property" – TZI, which was delivered by ordinary light trucks. It was based on rafts for transporting soldiers and light cannons, assembled from bag-like floats made of rubberized fabric, stuffed with hay, straw or shavings, as well as lining boards, flooring, oars, hooks and anchors.
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Cuprum2 | 25 Mar 2021 10:12 p.m. PST |
Sapper wooden boats (SDL) served as an additional ferry means for the troops. However, as the experience of the war showed, they often became the main means of crossing. SDL was a flat-bottomed plank boat with a carrying capacity of about 2 tons. Its weight was 280-300 kg. The time for the manufacture of the boat was approximately eight working hours of the sapper squad. She was transported on a cart by a pair of horses. Depending on the number of paired boats, it was possible to transport various cargoes: on one boat – a rifle squad or a battalion gun with a service crew; on two boats – a 76-mm gun with a limber end or cargo up to and including divisional artillery; on three boats – cargo up to and including corps artillery.
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Cuprum2 | 25 Mar 2021 10:25 p.m. PST |
Improvised crossing equipment manufactured locally from scrap materials:
Firewood raft for 8-10 soldiers
Raft with 12 floats from the cloak-tents, stuffed with hay, for nine soldiers.
Raft from automobile wheels chamber.
A raft of eight barrels. More serious means of crossing can be read here: link link |