Possible Lvov pocket fix?

[Klydon]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

heliodorus04 -

On this subject, you are utterly clueless and don't have any idea of what your talking about.

As I stated above, I have over 30 years experience doing EXACTLY this sort of thing in combat/near combat/emergency situations. Moving a factory in week as long as you have the manpower or the tools or both can be done.

Assuming the critical personal have been evacuated, and you have the rail or sea capacity without having to worry about bulking out, you dismantle the critical machine tools and parts and start loading. You have to make sure that you load in reverse order, pack the tools correctly, and get the marshalling yards/loading areas/docks clears as soon as the vessel or train bulked out. It is not container or vessel efficient - but that what your trading off - speed versus packing efficiency.

I've moved complete oil/heavy manufacturing/mining facilities/assemby plants factories in less than five days. Its doable. I've done it. In 3rd world countries. Under gun fire. Under near flood conditions. Under fire storm conditions. With minimal heavy equipment or loading equipment. Manpower can replace heavy equipment if that's all you have. Its not fun, its not easy, and its damn dangerous for the people doing the heavy work.

And it has nothing to do with being a Russian fanboy. It has to do with reality.

Reading comprehension FAIL!

I might be clueless, if I said a darn thing about factory movement. Find me the word 'factory' in my post. Then when you cannot, do the decent thing and apologize for yet another hystrionic post claiming I know nothing...

Looks like to me that Sulusea made the remark about being able to break down the factories in a week being unrealistic. His comments happen to all be caught in Helidrous04's response.

For the record, a lot of it depends on what type of equipment you are talking about when it comes to moving stuff. Most any machine shop stuff from that era is not huge and can easily be manhandled in a hurry. A lot of factories in that time were simply metal or masonry buildings built to keep the elements at bay and open floor spaces filled with relatively small equipment by today's standards. (Look at some of the early assembly line pictures of a Ford plant for some comparision).

Moving stuff like steel plant furnaces is another matter I would think, although part of that depends on how they are constructed as well and on that, I don't know a lot about the equipment in use back in that time. It could have been fairly modular and easy to take apart into chunks.

[turtlefang]

quote:

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I could be very wrong here, someone please point me in the right direction if so.

I'm a plankowner with the game but have litteraly hours on the Soviet side. The amount of evacuations not only from ports under enemy air cover without the threat of troop laden ships getting sunk and the sheer amount of troops the Soviets are able to rail out are just as big a problem if not more so than the LVOV pocket. Atleast the GHC has to make a strategic choice to invest assets at costs elsewhere.

Also factories should not be able to be broken down in a week, it takes much longer to break down and move equipment especially if transportation is limited.

From your post. Your selected quote. FACTORIES SHOULd NOT BE BROKEN DOWN IN A WEEK. At least learn to read what you quote. If you don't agree with it, then don't quote it and support the position.

And since I did find the quote in your post, I do expect an apology from you for your comment.

[turtlefang]

The most difficult thing to move in WWII in the Soviet Union would probably be an oxgen blast furnance. Based on the specs that I have seen on Russian blast furnances of the time, including the Tula furnance that was the largest one in Russia when it was built in 1946 (and I have toured), they wouldn't be that hard to move.

Average size would run about 400 to 600 metric tons and that includes masonary work. And due to the size, the break down should be in approximately 32 pieces based on the construction specs.

After that, its primarily pipes and bracings.

The single biggest issue would be making sure that all the smelting material had been removed from the furnance and pipes. If the smelting material was still there, cooled and harden, its a throw away and simply can be repaired.

Soviet factories in the early 40s, heck, even in the mid to late 90s as I have visited them, aren't in the same weight class as many of the US factories were in late WWII. And none of those are in the weight class that some plants were in the 1960-80s; however, plants today are actually downsizing signifigantly now. The day of the super-giant plant is dead. (There are a couple of exceptions, primarily shipbuilding).

And the fact is that the larger the factory, in general, the more assemby is done on site than actual heavy manufacturing. And assemby stuff is petty much pick up and pack unless it requires a sterile enviroment. Its more machine shop type items.

[Peltonx]

The only real issue I see would be the power to power the plants once they were moved.

Generally speaking the local power grids will only have and extra 10% of generation on hand. SHC was moving allot of factories 100"s of miles to new regions.

Where did all the extra power generation come from?

With out power all that equipment is usless iron.

It takes 18 months to build a new power generation plant, I am guessing during war 6 months tops if everything is on hand.

[turtlefang]

You actually raise two very good issues. One implied and the other explicit.

The implied one is how long does it take to put the factory back together once it gets to its destination? And that really varies on how well prepared the site is in advance of the move. With a heavy manufacturing facility, like a blast furnance, you'll looking at - best case - a month or two. You can get some production early but its not going to be consistent and probably not very good as far as quality control goes.

[Klydon]

Pelton's point is valid, but it also triggers something for me that says I think the Russians overbuilt their power grid in the Urals in terms of capacity since they were actively trying to industrialize the region both for strategic reasons and also because the raw materials were right there to work with, making it far more efficient.

We are also talking stuff designed in the 20's and 30's and it just didn't have the power requirements we think of today. A lot of that stuff was all manual work (not a issue for Russia). Steel furnaces didn't run on electric then.

[turtlefang]

Sorry, hit the wrong key before I finished.

The power grid the second issue. A powerplant, built from scratch and with signifigant output - six months is a good estimate. You might get away with in four months if you built it right next to the factory and didn't have to set up much in a distribution network (transmission wires, substations, etc..).

But, it appears that the Soviets overbuilt thier electrical generation facilities in the Urals in the 30s "in preparation for a potential evacuation". If I remember right - and I'm traveling right now - they overbuilt the generation facilities by enough that they could have supplied enough electricity to power 50% more industry than they actually moved. I have a paper on my home computer that I will look up and cite if I remember when I get home after Christmas.

I'm not actually sure how intentional this was. The Soviet post war work and papers all positions it as preparation in case of invasion. Not sure that I buy it but a lot of stuff came to light in the 90s on Soviet emergency industry evacuation prep. So maybe so. However, that means they expected a war starting in 1934 and started preping for evacuation - while building industry in the Don basin. Logically, not sure I buy it but they did build out the grid in the Urals.

The US, BTW, did the same thing. The Hoover Dam, all the TVA electrical dam projects, the Miss/Mo electrical build outs in the 30s as part of the alphabet soup is one of the unsung heros of the war. If the US had not built these out in the 30s - when we really had no use for that much electricity - the US war production expansion would have been a lot slower and lot longer. Many of these were more flood control projects and the electrical part was an incremental add on cost (its not chump change, but its not that big an add on compared to cost of building the dam without it). As an example, when built, the Hoover Dam by itself, provide 10-14% of all the electricity generated in the US. And up to WWII, it underran capacity by nearly 70%. Starting in late 42, the dam ran at 100% plus capacity for the rest of the war.

I wonder if the same thing happened in the Soviet Union as much of the initial electrical capacity came from potentially water control type projects.

In any case, your right. Without the power grid, it is just junk. In this case, the Soviets did have the power - either through dumb luck or brilliant planning.

[janh]

I guess it is also the wrong perception to assume that they had to move every bit and piece of a factory on evacuation? I suppose key items would be the large workshop tools, and more product-specific things, while there are items that can be built faster or more resource-efficient from scratch in the Urals than dis- and reassembled?

Taking a facility down is only one step. And given the haste, I'd guess it wasn't done very orderly, not as you'd imagine a peace-time move. Putting it back together was probably a lot tougher as it took them much longer to get the factories up to speed again. Yet with the Russian manpower at hand, it apparently was doable, and doable truly surprisingly well. At least the Wehrmacht guys were truly surprised.

On a side note, apparently the Russians made really good tools during WW2. Two years ago I visited a machine shop in a Polish University, and they proudly presented WW2 era Russian drilling, cutting, bending and what not kind of tools. Tools sufficient to rebuilt an entire tank. Not digital CnC and fancy stuff, but many of the guys there wouldn't have discarded the Russian tools for one anyway. The Russians must have had the steel machining and industry side well under control back then.

[turtlefang]

You usually take everything you can that not "common" such as tables, chairs, and stuff - although if you have time and space, you strip everything.

Putting it back together, as I noted earlier, takes much longer than taking it apart. First priority always the precision equipment, then specialized equipment, tools, general machine shop stuff, supporting equipment, then everything else.

But it never goes like it suppose to. Some of the reasons are:

1)Like it or not, screws, bolts, rivets - all that stuff is actually important but no one thinks about most of the time. But lots of these break, get lost, mismatched, or just plain won't work. And in the case of big equipment, many times, these are custom not off the shelf stock. So they have to be remade from scratch unless the moldings were at the factory. The can really put a time delay on putting stuff back together - can't finish A so I can't start B as A has to be finished now what do I do with C and so on.

2)While operationally, the Russian could do well with primitive rr signal equipment (manpower=communications), based on my research, the lack of long range communication equipment really hurt them here. A lot of the trains ended up in the wrong place, over 300 of the smaller factories disappeared (read: didn't get to where they were suppose to but end up used by somebody else), and you have to sort stuff out, especially if its loaded in haste. Now, exactly where did this pipe go and what did it support? Interesting enough, in many cases the engineers are not as critical on this stuff as the maintenance staff. And pictures really really help.

3)Critical personal and critical equipment don't always match up. And, I suspect, in a large scale evacuation, this happened frequently, and its hard to put them back together. Especially if your not properly labeling things - what? did I hear cannon fire? just throw everything on the train and get out of here!

4) Last, the work conditions for the factory personal were terrible in the first winter based on the reports I reviewed. Tents, limited food, limited firewood, limited medical support, lighting was in very short supply, and so on. Several of the reports I read was that lighting - due to the lack of lack light bulbs and light bulb manufacturing equipment (not regarded as a top priority initially), delayed the "put it back together" work.

The Russian's evacuated the military installations, and did a very good job considering, but they paid a heavy price in people. And production. Like it or not, the lack of change in major upgrades to tanks was probably driven as much by the evacuation as by a strategic decision. It really hard to upgrade facilities when your rebuilding them in a hurry.

Don't know if any western country would have been willing to pay the human price.

[Sorta]

So what is the latest on the Lvov pocket fix/ideas?

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

quote:

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I could be very wrong here, someone please point me in the right direction if so.

I'm a plankowner with the game but have litteraly hours on the Soviet side. The amount of evacuations not only from ports under enemy air cover without the threat of troop laden ships getting sunk and the sheer amount of troops the Soviets are able to rail out are just as big a problem if not more so than the LVOV pocket. Atleast the GHC has to make a strategic choice to invest assets at costs elsewhere.

Also factories should not be able to be broken down in a week, it takes much longer to break down and move equipment especially if transportation is limited.

From your post. Your selected quote. FACTORIES SHOULd NOT BE BROKEN DOWN IN A WEEK. At least learn to read what you quote. If you don't agree with it, then don't quote it and support the position.

And since I did find the quote in your post, I do expect an apology from you for your comment.

Hi Turtlefang, I don't know where you're going with this? Are you stating I owe you an apology? Thanks! [:)]

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

You usually take everything you can that not "common" such as tables, chairs, and stuff - although if you have time and space, you strip everything.

Putting it back together, as I noted earlier, takes much longer than taking it apart. First priority always the precision equipment, then specialized equipment, tools, general machine shop stuff, supporting equipment, then everything else.

But it never goes like it suppose to. Some of the reasons are:

1)Like it or not, screws, bolts, rivets - all that stuff is actually important but no one thinks about most of the time. But lots of these break, get lost, mismatched, or just plain won't work. And in the case of big equipment, many times, these are custom not off the shelf stock. So they have to be remade from scratch unless the moldings were at the factory. The can really put a time delay on putting stuff back together - can't finish A so I can't start B as A has to be finished now what do I do with C and so on.

2)While operationally, the Russian could do well with primitive rr signal equipment (manpower=communications), based on my research, the lack of long range communication equipment really hurt them here. A lot of the trains ended up in the wrong place, over 300 of the smaller factories disappeared (read: didn't get to where they were suppose to but end up used by somebody else), and you have to sort stuff out, especially if its loaded in haste. Now, exactly where did this pipe go and what did it support? Interesting enough, in many cases the engineers are not as critical on this stuff as the maintenance staff. And pictures really really help.

3)Critical personal and critical equipment don't always match up. And, I suspect, in a large scale evacuation, this happened frequently, and its hard to put them back together. Especially if your not properly labeling things - what? did I hear cannon fire? just throw everything on the train and get out of here!

4) Last, the work conditions for the factory personal were terrible in the first winter based on the reports I reviewed. Tents, limited food, limited firewood, limited medical support, lighting was in very short supply, and so on. Several of the reports I read was that lighting - due to the lack of lack light bulbs and light bulb manufacturing equipment (not regarded as a top priority initially), delayed the "put it back together" work.

The Russian's evacuated the military installations, and did a very good job considering, but they paid a heavy price in people. And production. Like it or not, the lack of change in major upgrades to tanks was probably driven as much by the evacuation as by a strategic decision. It really hard to upgrade facilities when your rebuilding them in a hurry.

Don't know if any western country would have been willing to pay the human price.

Superb post . Along my line of thinking but much more eloquent than I could have put it.

I've spent the majority of my adult life in engineering and have seen projects held up because of missing parts, wrong parts and what not and could only imagine issues with plants/ machinery hastily being broken down quickly, under fire in some cases with the threat of death looming over the project by what would probably be less than skilled workers or whomever was in the neighborhood in some cases and thrown on a train, cart , carried or what have you and set up in another location some kind of delay being the norm.


Putting some thought in on this something fair may be a standard delay depending on how many hexes the factory is moved before the factory is up to speed and a die roll for a possible even longer than the quickest time possible.


Sorry Pelton for derailing your thread and since I have your ear, I nbjoy your AARs. Thanks and Happy Holidays![:)]

[turtlefang]

You were quoted by heliodorus04 and I responded to one of his comments below a quote from you. My comment was made at him and his remarks not you. I should had ignored his comment and would have at any other time. Just got annoyed more than I should have.

If anything, I owe you an apology for drawing you into a less than professional exchange.

Sorry for the confusion.

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

You were quoted by heliodorus04 and I responded to one of his comments below a quote from you. My comment was made at him and his remarks not you. I should had ignored his comment and would have at any other time. Just got annoyed more than I should have.

If anything, I owe you an apology for drawing you into a less than professional exchange.

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for clarifying Turtlefang. An apology is not neccesary.

Have a great New Year to you and yours and thanks for your interesting contributions atleast the way I see it. [:)]