Unit Descriptions: Air, Naval, Land

[qgaliana]

Would it be better to speak of a "hypothetical" corps instead of a "fictional" one in the description?

Sorry to split hairs, but fictional makes it sound like Sgt Rock and Easy co. were added to the game.

[trees]

The German calvary divisions were re-formed mid-war and used extensively against Partisans on the Eastern Front. At some point, the evacuation of the Crimea I think, one of them did have to slaughter it's horses. I'll try and re-read the relevant parts of the book "Calvary in WWII" that I have somewhere in another two weeks when my 80 hour weeks finally end.... hopefully I could help you with any Calvary questions that arise for any Major Power or even minor country. That book is quite thorough...

[Mziln]

ORIGINAL: composer99

Isn't the "air landing" unit the mountain division that can paradrop if it goes along for the ride with a paratrooper corps or division? Germany and the CW have them.

AsA/MiF/PoliF option 2: The Commonwealth 51st air-landing and German 5th mountain divisions can also paradrop if accompanying a PARA (see 22.4.1).

[jesperpehrson]

ORIGINAL: trees

The German calvary divisions were re-formed mid-war and used extensively against Partisans on the Eastern Front. At some point, the evacuation of the Crimea I think, one of them did have to slaughter it's horses. I'll try and re-read the relevant parts of the book "Calvary in WWII" that I have somewhere in another two weeks when my 80 hour weeks finally end.... hopefully I could help you with any Calvary questions that arise for any Major Power or even minor country. That book is quite thorough...

Great! I have had trouble finding too much information to be honest. Please let me know. Maybe you would be interested in making write-ups for cavalry for various countries?

[jesperpehrson]

Question: The "Vlassov" Cavalry in WIF, should it represent the Russian Liberation Army or Cossack Cavalryunits? The former is actually connected to Vlassov but the latter is a Russian cavalry unit that fought for the Germans.

[Plainian]

Actually the part which starts "When the Wehrmacht turned east....." is not quite true.

1st Cavalry Division (upgraded from a Brigade after French campaign) took part in Barbarossa as part of Army Group Centre. It fought with distinction as part of XXIV Panzer Corps at Starry Bychov (sp?) holding off fierce Soviet counter attacks while Guderian pressed on to Smolensk with his other two Corps.

Probably as a reward for this the unit was returned to France in winter 41 and reformed as a Panzer Division. (24th Panzer) The men in the unit were allowed to retain their yellow epaulettes instead of wearing white?/pink? that was normally worn by panzer troops. (every book I've read makes a big deal about this?)

As far as mounted forces on the eastern front I agree that the Germans did probably use a lot of small mounted units behind the lines if not also for reconaisance.

However the only 'large scale' mounted unit I can find is the XV Cossack Corps? This was formed in early 45 when the Reich was scrapping the barrel and just stumbling along. I think it was made up of two Russian Cossack Divisions and commanded by the colourfully named Lt Gen Pannwitz.

However the 1st cavalry Corps in WIF clearly doesn't represent that unit.

[Jimm]

ORIGINAL: qgaliana

Would it be better to speak of a "hypothetical" corps instead of a "fictional" one in the description?

Sorry to split hairs, but fictional makes it sound like Sgt Rock and Easy co. were added to the game.

On reflection, probably "ficticious" is more appropriate than "fictional" which probably infers that the unit is referred to in fiction... (which to my knowledge, it is not!- I await a barrage of posts from Italian readers on this forum)

"Hypothetical" might be even better, but given the number of fantasy Italian units I think I'll reserve the right to use "ficticious" as a synonym for it in this case!

Jimm

[jesperpehrson]

ORIGINAL: Plain Ian

Actually the part which starts "When the Wehrmacht turned east....." is not quite true.

1st Cavalry Division (upgraded from a Brigade after French campaign) took part in Barbarossa as part of Army Group Centre. It fought with distinction as part of XXIV Panzer Corps at Starry Bychov (sp?) holding off fierce Soviet counter attacks while Guderian pressed on to Smolensk with his other two Corps.

Probably as a reward for this the unit was returned to France in winter 41 and reformed as a Panzer Division. (24th Panzer) The men in the unit were allowed to retain their yellow epaulettes instead of wearing white?/pink? that was normally worn by panzer troops. (every book I've read makes a big deal about this?)

As far as mounted forces on the eastern front I agree that the Germans did probably use a lot of small mounted units behind the lines if not also for reconaisance.

However the only 'large scale' mounted unit I can find is the XV Cossack Corps? This was formed in early 45 when the Reich was scrapping the barrel and just stumbling along. I think it was made up of two Russian Cossack Divisions and commanded by the colourfully named Lt Gen Pannwitz.

However the 1st cavalry Corps in WIF clearly doesn't represent that unit.

I just read another source on this and found more or less what you have found but it did mention the transition that the Eastern front meant for cavalry formations. No aircover nor artillerysupport for their actions meant less efficiency. This in the end meant the end of cavarly brigades until late 1943.

As far as I know there was no cavalry corps, except on paper. The Cossacks is a whole different story. I have made a compromise but I will use this new knowledge and make it better.

[mldtchdog]

[blockquote]quote:

ORIGINAL: Plain Ian

Actually the part which starts "When the Wehrmacht turned east....." is not quite true.

1st Cavalry Division (upgraded from a Brigade after French campaign) took part in Barbarossa as part of Army Group Centre. It fought with distinction as part of XXIV Panzer Corps at Starry Bychov (sp?) holding off fierce Soviet counter attacks while Guderian pressed on to Smolensk with his other two Corps.

Probably as a reward for this the unit was returned to France in winter 41 and reformed as a Panzer Division. (24th Panzer) The men in the unit were allowed to retain their yellow epaulettes instead of wearing white?/pink? that was normally worn by panzer troops. (every book I've read makes a big deal about this?)

As far as mounted forces on the eastern front I agree that the Germans did probably use a lot of small mounted units behind the lines if not also for reconaisance.

However the only 'large scale' mounted unit I can find is the XV Cossack Corps? This was formed in early 45 when the Reich was scrapping the barrel and just stumbling along. I think it was made up of two Russian Cossack Divisions and commanded by the colourfully named Lt Gen Pannwitz.

However the 1st cavalry Corps in WIF clearly doesn't represent that unit.
[/blockquote]


I just read another source on this and found more or less what you have found but it did mention the transition that the Eastern front meant for cavalry formations. No aircover nor artillerysupport for their actions meant less efficiency. This in the end meant the end of cavarly brigades until late 1943.

As far as I know there was no cavalry corps, except on paper. The Cossacks is a whole different story. I have made a compromise but I will use this new knowledge and make it better.

 
 
from "Slaughterhouse: handbook of the eastern front"
 
1 Cavalry Corps : Summer 1944 - southern sector
                        Nov 44          - East Prussia
                        Jan 45          - Hungary
                        May 45         - Austria
XV (Cossack) SS-cavalry corps
                        Feb-MAy 45
 
8th ss-cavalry division florian geyer : jun42 - feb 45 (mostly anti-partisan thru 44)
22d ss-volunteer cavalry division maria thersia : may 44-feb 45
37th ss-volunteer cavalry division Lutzow : feb -may 45

[jesperpehrson]

Excellent thanks Adam. From what I understand though, is that 1st Cavalrycorps never operated as a centralised unit but the divisons and brigades where quite independant from each other. This needs to be researched further. All write-ups should be considered work in progress!

I have yet to start with the ss-units but they will be a hoot to write about [:'(]

[mldtchdog]

Unfortuantly that is all there is on the 1st cav in this book. The SS are better. Especially compared to russian cavalry [:'(] which are detailed with one very short sentance [:(]

[mldtchdog]

The German calvary divisions were re-formed mid-war and used extensively against Partisans on the Eastern Front. At some point, the evacuation of the Crimea I think, one of them did have to slaughter it's horses. I'll try and re-read the relevant parts of the book "Calvary in WWII" that I have somewhere in another two weeks when my 80 hour weeks finally end.... hopefully I could help you with any Calvary questions that arise for any Major Power or even minor country. That book is quite thorough...

 
That would be great. If you could look at the Russian cav [:D]. When they started forming the cav-mechanized groups most scources do not identify which cavalry are involved.[align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align][align=right] [/align]

[trees]

I'll find the book in another few weeks. It is not a super detailed Order of Battle type book, it generalizes what each nation did with Calvary, occasionally summarizing by unit history, but not always. I can't recall what it did for the Russians. But I would be glad to help work on each country's Calvary unit.

In general I think the Russian OOB is so tangled that Harry/ADG simply number most of their units sequentially, except for the black print INF and GARR, and unfortunately didn't name any of them 'Shock Armies'.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

While travelling I read through all the land unit writeups (provided by Capitan) and marked them up with editting changes - mostly verb tense, commas, and capitalization. Since I have gotten back to Honolulu, I have made those edits to the file. Here are 4 (from the hundreds that have been written so far) that I found interesting.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

One of the Italian units.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I had already edited all the air and naval unit writeups (received so far) so this just brings me up to date with reveiwing all the writeups.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

This is one of the longer writeups and I have had to spread it out over two posts.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

5th and last post in this series.

If you would like to write some of these, send a PM to Capitan. He is always looking for more help.

[Neilster]

Patrice, (or anyone else in the know), what is the current French attitude to the Vichy Regime? I abhor the recent US fashion of French-bashing (which started off as "How dare they question us?" and turned into "How dare they be so correct!" [:D]) but I do find it fairly perplexing that so many French troops were fighting the Allies, who were actually trying to utterly defeat the evil dudes who were occupying a huge chunk of France.

Yes, yes...I know the British blew up some battleships at Mers-el-Kébir and lots of French sailors were killed but IMHO the French commander was given ample time to de-militarise his ships and refused. What choice did the British have? They couldn't possibly risk such powerful naval assets falling into Axis hands when they were already fighting the war single-handed against both Italy and Germany. Britain had offered an unprecedented political union with France during the German invasion which was unbelievably refused.

I can't help feeling many an Allied soldier died, (including some of my countrymen in Syria and elsewhere) as a result of a fit of Gallic pique. What on earth were they thinking? The Free French fought bravely and well. They actually helped to defeat Germany, which I would have thought was the general idea. Vichy France helped the occupier. [&:]

Cheers, Neilster

[qgaliana]

(brief thread diversion) I'm not an expert and it's very complex, but read a bit a bout it so I'll take a shot (from a friendly outsider perspective)...
 
Personal opinion is pride was a good part of it - or at least the attempt to salvage what was left. But different Frenchmen salvaged it in different ways. Some by refusing to stop the fight. Others by accepting defeat with some attempt at dignity. Remember the French army was well and truly cooked - they performed the military equivalent of ducking into an uppercut. The homeland was lost, not just some remote colony, so surrender was not unreasonable. In hindsight we see a more monstrous enemy and a long total war, but that wasn't so obvious then (propaganda aside).
 
In Europe (all countries) there was no shortage of fascists willing to setup puppet governments. In time the Vichy regime became more and more controlled by them under German pressure. But Vichy France was really only nominally in charge - the different military governors pretty much ruled as independent viceroys. The military men generally hated Germans more than they disliked the English. For the most part, those that hadn't gone Free French were hoping to take another crack at the Germans, but needed some favourable conditions especially since taking up the fight again was technically an act of treason. But politics has to be considered. The big names in charge of North Africa or the Near East were not likely to bow their heads to a junior upstart like de Gaulle. Pride.
 
Churchill didn't exactly help. The same pride that guaranteed they'd rather die than surrender the fleet to the Germans (which is basically what eventually happened), meant they wouldn't quietly accept an English ultimatum (and I may be wrong but I think the French admiral was an anglophobe). I don't think they believed the English would shoot. But once they had, it pretty much guaranteed a cold reception everywhere else. So: Dakar, Madagascar, Syria, operation Torch; at this last, the allies salvaged this mostly by laying some early political groundwork and keeping the British out of sight. Even then the French felt they needed to put a token resistance to save face. More pride.
 
But strictly speaking, the French never fired at allied units unless they were being attacked by them. Outside of the influence of German guns (i.e. european France), the most the Germans got out of them was overflight rights for planes going to Iraq. Impossible to oppose without going openly free french.
 
Still, I oversimplify. France along with the colonial empire was badly fragmented into much worse than just free french vs vichy. The politics of Gaullist vs communist vs Petainist vs militarists vs etc. is worthy of PHD discussions. But I don't understand that part very well, and it's hard to get objective material on political matters.