The Commander Series Forum

Having finally got my blog back after being well and truly hacked last year I've finally finished off painting and basing some more Poles and some other assets for my Soviets. Full details on my blog: http://blog.belisarius.org.uk/2018/01/firs...

Some pics to be going on with:









More stuff to come soon. Maybe even a game...

Cheers

A

Looks good!

Very nice Andy.

Seen worse.

Ian's just SUCH a smooth talker
They look pretty good to me!
Cheers,

MarkJ

Cheers all. Artillery support on the way and more river assets for the Sovs!

If only I had time for a game...

A

Good for you. Gave up on my blog after hacked.

I'd had the blog for 11 years. It chronicled quite a large part of my hobby/life! I wasn't keen to just let it die...

And some more stuff finished! Full details on the blog:
http://blog.belisarius.org.uk/2018/01/more...

And some samples:









You can never have too much WarPac kit!

A

Nice work!

Cheers, Andy

How are you basing and organising your polish t-55 battalions given their unusual real-world structure?

I must have missed something. What unusual structure?

Company = 3 x 5 tank platoons + 1 (16 tanks) (same for the PT-76 companies in Naval Landing Regiments of 7th Division)
Battalion = did not exist in Polish T-55 regiments (!)
Regiment = 5 tank companies

Polish T-72 battalions followed the normal WarPac structure of 31 tanks.

I'm working from the micromark lists...which seem different...

I'd suggest that your source is in error then.

I have to admit that organization for the Poles is new to me as well. I thought they followed the standard WarPac structures throughout. Does anybody have a source for the 5 tanks per platoon/5 companies per regiment described above?
For CWC, I guess I would make that 3 tank models per company, 5 companies plus HQ per regiment, maybe a secondary HQ as well if feeling generous about the command quality of the Poles.
Cheers,
MarkJ

Could that be post 89, and demise of Warpact. Far as I can tell there is no deviation from standard Soviet organisation prior to that, but I'll ask elsewhere and see what we get. That is correct for the Naval infantry. Use the RHQ as a BHQ, and have 5 companies of 3 platoons, and I would add an HQ as well.

IanS

Fire and Fury web site, which I find quite good, suggests 4 tank Cos per Marine Tank Regt with a total of 6 T-55s and 2 OT-55s per company. I use 3 stands of T-55s with one based slightly differently, to represent the OT-55. I think I have just 4 Cos for the battalion. Always happy to add another company though, you can never have enough T-55s.

Marine infantry is definitely 5 Cos of three stands, per regiment (really a reinforced battalion), plus a company of PT-76s. Polish marines of the 7th Lusitanian are meant to have a high esprit-de-corps so I tend to use higher cv options for their leadership. They still have trouble dealing with Chieftains and Challengers unless they get within RPG range, which tends to be a lot more fun.

Cheers, Andy

Got this from Mr Bevis :

That was the 1970s organisation, it lasted through until the late 1980s in some divisions. Each regiment also had the usual support units, recce, artillery, engineers.

Exact details are in MicroMark collection. With the introduction of the T-55AM and T-72, they switched to more usual 31-tank and 40-tank battalions a regiment at a time.
Thus there was a short period for each division where you had an 81 tank regiment on the old organisation, one on the new 3x 31 tank organisation, and the Mechanised regiment with a 40-tank battalion all co-existing simultaneously.

I'm hoping for a more reliable source !

Aye. Just got the same from Mark. My lists were old versions. Need a minor re-think on what units to represent and how. And to acquire some new lists!

I'd stick to standard warpact organisation, it's much more likely. Mark tends to use single sources, and some, like "Raids" magazine are just a tad unreliable !

It's nice to have a variant organization for a Warpac nation. I'd be tempted to use it for one regiment just because it isn't the same old same old
Cheers,
MarkJ

Ask any Pole wargamer/military man - they'll confirm.

Interestingly, if you look at their 1939 orgs you'll see similar at the company level.

My Facebook contacts are rather lacking in Polish military and wargamers so I have to rely on other sources...

I shall bs consulting some of Marks updated lists later...

A

I've a couple of old rules sets that use that odd organisation - Command Decision for one. Without digging into the loft and finding it, I dunno what Frank Chadwick used as sources.

It did rate the Poles as significantly better commanded and flexible than the rest of Warpac, close on a par with NATO (from memory). Each company got a command stand, plus the RHQ unlike "normal" Warpac who got a HQ at battalion (and sometimes a "fighting command stand" for one company).

I have a dim memory of the org being confirmed after much discussion incl. Polish sources on the Modern Spearhead list some years ago but I can never find anything in Yahoo!'s archives so I could be misremembering

Latest repy on TOE group :-


58372Re: [TOandEs] POlish Armour Mid-late 80's
Expand Messages

Piotr_T._Szyma=c5=84ski
Today at 4:45 AM

The 5-company structure of the Tank Regiment firstly appreared in the Polish army in the early 1950s. It's unclear why we adopted organisation different to that of the Soviet army. Probably at that time there were no enough tanks to fill the Soviet-pattern three-battalion organisation. Initially the tank companies had 10 tank (three platoons each with 3 tanks), then (if I am not mistaken in the late 1950s or early 1960s) the number of tank in the platoon increased to five.
Such a structure was in force when the tank regiments had T-34/54/55s. When T-72s were adopted, the tank regiment organisation changed to that of the three-battalion, which happened from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.
It should be noted that there were two types of the tank regiment: (i) the tank regiment of the tank division: five tank companies plus a motorised infantry company (note that in the Polish army you had 'mechanised' divisions and regiments; battalions and companies were of 'motorised infantry' that were mounted on APCs/IFVs), (ii) the tank regiment of the mechanised division: five tank companies with no motorised infantry company.
Here you've got a structure of the tank regiment of the late 1960s. With minor modifications (eg. the addition of an anti-aircraft battery with 4 ZSU-23-4s and 4 SA-7 SP launchers) the structure lasted until it was replaced by the three-battalion organisation:
TANK REGIMENT
men – 923 (in Mechanised Division 841 – no motorised infantry company), including:
officers – 84
NCOs – 298
ORs – 541

HQ (1 tank)
5 x tank company (5 x 16 tank), each of: 3 x tank platoon (3 x 5 tank) plus 1 tank for the coy's CO
motorised infantry company (10 APCs)
recce company (3 tanks + 3 amphibious tanks)
signals company
engineers (or platoon) company (5 APCs)
transport company
medical company
security and movement control platoon
contamination detection platoon
logistics platoon
fighting vehicle reparation workshop
warehouse

medium tanks – 84 (incl. in 3 recce company)
amphibious tanks – 3
APCs – 25 (I would suspect that this is a typo in the source, as the motorised infantry coy had 10 APCs and the engineer coy 5 APCs)
RPGs – 16
MMG – 2
LMG – 15
radios – 35, incl:
R-114 – 1
R-118 – 2
R-105 – 20
radioline stations – 1
RWL – 1
off-road cars – 5
trucks – 60
special trucks – 42
armoured tractors – 6
trailers – 4
field kitchens -6
Piotr


I'd trust this one....

IanS