So there are no airports in the Soviet Union?

[fbs]

Let me say up front, I have no problem with highly mobile air bases that operate from unprepared surfaces, have machine shops mounted on trucks and people sleep on tents.

I get it. Field airstrips. These are fine.

But... it's not possible that in the entire Soviet Union there isn't a single hard-surface air strip, and it is not possible that there are no advantages operating aircrafts from hard, prepared surfaces (which you can't carry on the back) compared to unprepared field air strips.

Somehow I think of "mud", for example. Field airstrips get muddy, can't fly any more (or fly with trouble). True airports can. Hard surfaces = highly resistant to mud; field airstrips = not resistant at all.

[Mehring]

Good point. Like a proper road network, a disapointing omision from the map.

[Montbrun]

At this scale, there are permanent or semi-permanent airfields in every hex, so the mechanism for airfield "units" was devised - they represent the necessary technical and supply units to support the air units.

As for roads, you will find that all of the hard-surfaced roads of the period follow the on-map rail lines. If we put every road, track, path, etc., on-map, there wouldn't be any other terrain. Rail lines are the compromise for this scale. It was discussed ad-nauseum...

Brad

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: Brad Hunter

At this scale, there are permanent or semi-permanent airfields in every hex, so the mechanism for airfield "units" was devised - they represent the necessary technical and supply units to support the air units.

As for roads, you will find that all of the hard-surfaced roads of the period follow the on-map rail lines. If we put every road, track, path, etc., on-map, there wouldn't be any other terrain. Rail lines are the compromise for this scale. It was discussed ad-nauseum...

Brad

Actually I'm fine with no road network, as everything I hear about USSR in 1941 indicates that long paved roads were quite rare. So I expect to find paved roads only around cities, basically.

But it's kind of hard to suspend disbelief that every single airfield in the USSR was a muddy dirt field before Germany invaded, specially after the effort they spent on building their air force. It would be the same thing as saying that USSR had no ports because you can load/unload ships manually, so who needs ports?

I would say a compromise would be to decrease the effect of mud in land movement in city hexes (with the understanding that cities have paved surfaces around it), to have no mud effect for airfields in cities (understanding cities have airfields with prepared hard surfaces, at least on the bigger ones), and to have a big mud effect for air units operating outside of cities during muddy/snowy turns.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: fbs
But... it's not possible that in the entire Soviet Union there isn't a single hard-surface air strip, and it is not possible that there are no advantages operating aircrafts from hard, prepared surfaces (which you can't carry on the back) compared to unprepared field air strips.

Somehow I think of "mud", for example. Field airstrips get muddy, can't fly any more (or fly with trouble). True airports can. Hard surfaces = highly resistant to mud; field airstrips = not resistant at all.

I cannot confirm the situation in the Soviet Union in 1941, but I have read that all airfields in Britain in 1940 were grass, there is no reason to believe that Russia was any different. This is just the way aviation was in the 1930s and into the early war period. When it rains the surface gets muddy, I have seen video of P38s operating in the Aleutians and the airfield is like a lake, the aircraft are throwing up water like speed-boats.

These were wide grass airfields rather than just narrow grass strips, whole squadrons could take off together in formation, as the grass surface became damaged you could move the landing area to less damaged parts of the airfield. Obviously there would be times when there was continuous bad weather and flying would have to stop.

As aircraft operating weights increased and especially when nose wheel undercarriage came into use, it became necessary to build concrete runways and quite quickly hundreds of runways became available in Britain. A Google Map scan over Eastern England will show the outlines of old runways every few miles, which masks how the situation was at the beginning of the war. [:)]

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

I cannot confirm the situation in the Soviet Union in 1941, but I have read that all airfields in Britain in 1940 were grass, there is no reason to believe that Russia was any different. This is just the way aviation was in the 1930s and into the early war period. When it rains the surface gets muddy, I have seen video of P38s operating in the Aleutians and the airfield is like a lake, the aircraft are throwing up water like speed-boats.

That's a good point and I don't disagree. I just find it odd that in WitE it is exactly the same thing operating your P38s in the Aleutians and in San Francisco. There must be some sort of benefit flying from Moscow instead of from a god-forsaken muddy hex that happens to be next to a railroad, but I can't really figure any in the game.

I think that this aligns with the "cities are just another terrain" concern.

[Mehring]

At this scale, there are permanent or semi-permanent airfields in every hex, so the mechanism for airfield "units" was devised - they represent the necessary technical and supply units to support the air units.

As for roads, you will find that all of the hard-surfaced roads of the period follow the on-map rail lines. If we put every road, track, path, etc., on-map, there wouldn't be any other terrain. Rail lines are the compromise for this scale. It was discussed ad-nauseum...

Sorry, neither point is credible, discussion or not. Both are areas, like the crude weather zones, where the level of detail does not concur with the rest of the system's complexity.

An airfield in every hex is absurd, or even every other hex or three, or four. The number of hard surface air fields would have been fairly few at that time, and for that reason, possession of them important in bad weather.

I'm not sure there were any hard serfaced roads in Russia at the time, and if there were, there were not enough to accompany every rail line. There were plenty of roads that could impact upon mobility, however, and roads that both belligerents followed for fairly obvious reasons. There are plenty of games that model various road types in Russia of the time, and they do not all follow rail lines. Clearly the designer would have to research their whereabouts and the relevance to the game of various road qualities in which weather condition.

If a decision was made to prioritise development of some aspects of the game over others, that's an unfortunate aspect of comercial game production, but I'm not buying the corportate sounding excuses for inadequacies in the game. I'd rather see them put right at a later date or in subsequent editions as time and resources become available.

[SgtKachalin]

ORIGINAL: fbs

ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

I cannot confirm the situation in the Soviet Union in 1941, but I have read that all airfields in Britain in 1940 were grass, there is no reason to believe that Russia was any different. This is just the way aviation was in the 1930s and into the early war period. When it rains the surface gets muddy, I have seen video of P38s operating in the Aleutians and the airfield is like a lake, the aircraft are throwing up water like speed-boats.

That's a good point and I don't disagree. I just find it odd that in WitE it is exactly the same thing operating your P38s in the Aleutians and in San Francisco. There must be some sort of benefit flying from Moscow instead of from a god-forsaken muddy hex that happens to be next to a railroad, but I can't really figure any in the game.

I think that this aligns with the "cities are just another terrain" concern.

Googleing the history of airports shows some interesting results, with the overall impression that flying from just about anywhere was closer to the Aleutian experience as the norm than anything we would think of as an "airport" now a days. I'm surprised quite frankly. A couple of snippets:

From here:

In the spring of 1935, American Staff Sergeant John Cook undertook a “fact finding” tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the U.S. Army Air Corps to evaluate the condition of the USSR’s civilian airline service. What Cook experienced was, in his own words, “exceedingly unpleasant.” Everywhere he flew he encountered overloaded, uncomfortable, and poorly maintained airplanes, run-down and dirty (though recently built) airports, constant delays, and shocking lapses of safety. The aerial tour led Cook to conclude that what the Soviet Union offered in terms of air travel “cannot compare with even the poorest of American airways.”

And here:

Service throughout the 1930s continued to be poor. There were very few flights during the winter to remote places, mostly because of the poor weather. Although the country had as many as 150 airports, many were simply primitive fields with un-surfaced runways.

"As many as 150" for a nation the size of the USSR isn't saying much.

Anyway, not definitive, but if it's close to accurate then WitE sounds like a good representation. There really was no infrastructure advantage to being near/in a city in the USSR when it came to airport facilities.

[Mynok]

How's that boot taste, Mehring? [8|]

[SgtKachalin]

Who knew?

From here (emphasis added):

When the airlift began, there were only two airfields in Berlin; Tempelhof with one runway in the US sector and Gatow with one runway in the British sector. In 1945, when the Americans arrived in Berlin, Tempelhof's lone runway was sodded and had been used only for small aircraft and fighters during the latter stages of World War II. It was beautifully equipped with hangars and a large terminal building, but it was surrounded by high apartment buildings which required a 500 foot ceiling in thick weather.

A grass runway? [:D]

No need for any snarkiness; I for one thought of WWII city airports as *obviously* paved in any major city in Europe before, oh, about an hour ago. The interweb is a wonderful thing! [:)]

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


How's that boot taste, Mehring? [8|]

Uh?

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: fbs
That's a good point and I don't disagree. I just find it odd that in WitE it is exactly the same thing operating your P38s in the Aleutians and in San Francisco. There must be some sort of benefit flying from Moscow instead of from a god-forsaken muddy hex that happens to be next to a railroad, but I can't really figure any in the game.

I think that this aligns with the "cities are just another terrain" concern.

In 1938, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, flew to see Hitler in the then most up-to-date US airliner, from London's main aerodrome, Croydon, the landing area is grass, only the parking area is concrete. London was the largest city in the World at that time, the facilities at Moscow, or any other Russian city, will be no better and probably at lot worse. It's not that these facilities were primitive (to our eyes), the presence of a city is irrelevant, it's just that was normal for the era.

The tail wheel aircraft of the day are easier to handle on a grass surface, even today 'tail-dragger' pilots will prefer to land on grass.

In a WW2 combat environment there could be several airfields and landing strips in a area the size of a WiTE hex. WW2 Air Forces operated 1000's of aircraft (look at the Soviet inventory) from surfaces you wouldn't play soccer, or US football on, because that's the way they had always done it. They lost a lot of people doing it, because that was the way it had always been, flying was a short career for many young men.

In Russia, in summer, you could probably drive just about anywhere (excluding swamps, mountains and forests), road or no road, when it rained you couldn't. Even roads were not much help then as they quickly became broken up by the passage of 1000's and 1000's of military vehicles, again look at the inventory (look how much metal is on the move). Roads are practically irrelevant, it's the weather that counts. Only Rail gives a secure transit in most weather conditions.

The game is representative of the time. [:)]

[Tarhunnas]

Is there any good historical source than mentions an advantage had from operating from a permanent airfield on the Eastern Front? If so, would the effect be important enough to be worth adding to the game, balancing the gain against the effort and added complication? I suspect not.

[Mehring]

In Russia, in summer, you could probably drive just about anywhere (excluding mountains and forests), road or no road, when it rained you couldn't. Even roads were not much help then as they quickly became broken up by the passage of 1000's and 1000's of military vehicles, again look at the inventory (look how much metal is on the move). Roads are practically irrelevant, it's the weather that counts. Only Rail gives a secure transit in most weather conditions.

The game is representative of the time.

Well, probably you could drive anywhere you liked, in any weather, but how long it would take you, and the condition your vehicle would be in at the end of your journey would depend not only on the weather and your type of vehicle, but the presence and quality of roads.

Roads, whether they are axle deep in mud or not, do not have trees, undergrowth, walls, houses, hedges, and any number of other obstacles naturally strewn accross them. The habit of travelling by them causes people to clear them of obstacles or not put them there in the first place. They are also free of abrupt elevation changes which can prevent completely, the movement of wheeled and even tracked vehicles.

Where roads meet rivers, gullies, streams etc, they will have a bridge of some description to pass the obstacle, in any weather. The quality of bridges is an important point as it determines how much weight it can take before collapsing, also the width of any vehicle wanting to cross it.

Bridges can also be passed under, for example, in the case of a road meeting an embankment. Again, the width of the tunnel will determine what can and cannot pass through the tunnel.

So, you may be able to drive all over Russia, but you will have to make a lot of time consuming detours, even in the hight of a hot dry summer, if you do not follow a road. That is why, even Russian style roads of the period, particularly "main" dirt roads, should be accurately represented on the map and give a movement bonus to units using them, in summer too.

And if you've ever walked anywhere, you will know the benefits of a dusty track over an open field.

[SgtKachalin]

ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa
In 1938, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, flew to see Hitler in the then most up-to-date US airliner, from London's main aerodrome, Croydon, the landing area is grass, only the parking area is concrete.

OT but this discussion actually changes the way I think of WWII era documentaries I've seen. So many show planes landing/taking off on grass and my assumption has always been "must have been out in the boondocks" or "must be an emergency facility" or things along those lines. Don't think I'll look at them that way anymore.

(Present time bias? It's this way now, consequently it's always been this way... [:)])

[Aurelian]

A Russian road network is kind of an oxymoron for WW2.

And one doesn't need concrete runways to fly most of the a/c that were used on the Russian Front.

[Mehring]

deleted

[Mehring]

A Russian road network is kind of an oxymoron for WW2.

And one doesn't need concrete runways to fly most of the a/c that were used on the Russian Front.

Doesn't sound like you've followed the arguments in this thread.

[paullus99]

Well, there have been some arguments in the thread, but they've pretty much been demolished by actual facts.

[Aurelian]

I followed it well enough Mehring.

A "proper" road network such as you lament as an omission didn't exsist in Soviet Russia in the time period.

It was possible to not need what I guess you consider a "proper" airfield organization to operate from.

Not only possible, but was done.