Showing posts with label Stalin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stalin. Show all posts

10 June 2014

The Extent of the Malady: Bagration and then some

The Obsession: Extent of the Wargames Malady Part 1

Surely every miniatures builder-painter-collector has to have an element of OCD.

Getting my Russian Troops ready for Operation Bagration also inspired me to document the extent of my malady: Why not photograph all of my armies ?

So here goes: Za Stalinha! : My 1943-44 Russian Army:

I have only photographed what is just about ready to roll out on the snow-covered steppe. No lend-lease vehicles or equipment either, only the hardware made in Mother Russia:


The River of Heroes, FoW book at the ready


Siberian Ski Troops and Guards Division Iosef Stalin IS 2 Heavy Tanks


Zis 3 Battery no.1 and Medium mortars 


IL-2 Sturmovik's Eye View of Soviet assault guns


The same Sturmovik taking a snap of Zis 3 Battery no 2 ... 


...and 122 mm Field Howitzers





And sweeping over the Tankovy: KV 1-Es, KV 2s and a single KV-85; 
T34s Obr 1941 (Stalingrad turret) and T34/76 Obr 1943s


The ungainly KV2s leading the way


T34/76 Obr 1943


T34 Obr 1941 w Stalingrad turren (I think)


Hastily applied whitewash Camo on two T34 Obr 1942 s and a T34/76


Pride of the Guard's Division: IS-2s


The heart of the Soviet assault: Strelkovy: The humble foot soldiers



Heavy mortars to beat the Hitlerites into submission


Medium Mortars too


Business end of the Medium 122 mm Field Howitzers



Cossacks on the warpath...

and dismounted


37 mm Antitank guns, and a commissar and standard bearer
(to enthuse those that may be slightly unwilling to fight for Mother Russia and Comrade Stalin)

26 March 2014

Crimea in the spotlight: History repeating itself ? Two opinions

Is Putin taking a page out of Hitler's book? Two opinions



Two opinions reposted:

Richard Cohen, Washington Post:
Putin forces us to reconsider poor Neville Chamberlain

Pardon the cliche, but I think we have come upon a teachable moment. I am referring to the crisis in Ukraine and what it teaches us, not just about the future but also about the past. Vladimir Putin has turned us all into Neville Chamberlain. The umbrella, please.

Chamberlain is famous for the Munich Agreement and his statement that, by acquiescing to Hitler’s demands, he had brought Britain and Europe “peace for our time.” He and the French gave Hitler the Sudetenland, which was the name applied to the substantially German areas of what was then Czechoslovakia. Hitler was a monster, but in this case his argument had a superficial appeal: Germans, he contended, ought to be in Germany.


What complicates matters is that we now know — indeed, we soon learned — that for Hitler the Sudetenland represented mere batting practice. He was soon to invade Poland and much of the rest of Europe, faltering only when he disregarded the bitter lesson Napoleon learned and plunged into Russia. It was a very cold winter.

Putin is demanding for Crimea more or less what Hitler wanted for the Sudetenland: Russians ought to be in Russia. No doubt the Crimean Russians agree and, come Sunday, will vote accordingly. That would place a patina of democracy — or at least self-determination — over what is essentially a power grab, but it will be hard to argue that the Crimean Russians aren’t getting the government they want, if not the one they deserve.


So we can see — can’t we? — that Chamberlain was not such a noodle after all. He certainly appeased Hitler. But the Western world — needing Russian gas for Germany, Russian rubles for London flats — over time probably will do the same with Putin. Just as we — especially our European brethren — can see the logic of Putin’s demands, so could Chamberlain appreciate that the Sudeten Germans might be on the wrong side of the border. Hitler’s homicidal anti-Semitism, among other character blemishes, bothered them not a bit. No one’s perfect, after all.


The fly in my Sudeten ointment is that, as with Chamberlain in 1938, we are not sure with whom we are dealing. Hitler soon announced himself, making Chamberlain appear the fool then and forevermore. But what of Putin? Will he stop at Crimea or, after a pause, plunge into the rest of eastern Ukraine, which has many Russian speakers? And then, what next? Will he endeavor to protect ethnic Russians in, say, Estonia? Almost 25 percent of that country is ethnic Russian. How about Latvia, which is about 27 percent Russian. These are healthy numbers; if these Russian minorities become endangered — or are merely said to be — a Russian ruler has an obligation to act, da?

Hitler made things easy. By 1938, he had already purged (murdered) the hierarchy of his vaunted brown shirts, instituted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws and, a bit more than a month after he signed the Munich Agreement, launched the vast pogrom known as Kristallnacht. By then, too, he had ruthlessly suppressed all dissent, created the first of many concentration camps and lit the German night with bonfires of unacceptable books.


Putin is no angel, but he has concentrated power without widespread violence or murder. While the gulag remains mostly a memory, he has sent his opponents to labor camps, such as YaG-14, where the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was eventually sentenced. Putin is autocratic and kleptomaniacal, but he is not Hitler or Stalin. He has a keen ear for the 24-hour news cycle and must have noticed that the Ukraine story has slipped off Page 1 and, on TV, is not as important as the weather.

It would be wrong to allow Putin’s seizure of Crimea to fall into some sort of memory hole. Putin got away with the seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 (George W. Bush was president then) and now he seems poised to retain Crimea — at the very least. In the long term, he knows we are short-term thinkers.

This teachable moment has many students. Around the world, there are nations that suffer the grievous loss of this or that strip of land, even worthless rocky islands in the middle of nowhere. What have they learned? I hope it’s not that the rest of us have learned nothing.

Matt Vasilogambros, National Journal:
It's Too Early to Say Putin Is Using Hitler's Playbook


Crimea is not Sudetenland, Putin is not Hitler, and Obama is not Chamberlain.

"I believe it is peace for our time," Neville Chamberlain said, standing outside 10 Downing Street on Sept. 30, 1938, upon returning from a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Those infamous words by the British prime minister, which followed a deal to give Nazi Germany a part of Czechoslovakia in return for a promise of no war, have been repeated for more than 75 years as the example of appeasing to a dictator in modern history.

And now, a growing choir of politicians and pundits, warning of the consequences of Russian aggression in Ukraine, are using it too.

 On the same day that Hillary Clinton said that Vladimir Putin's claims of protecting ethnic Russians was "reminiscent" of Hitler's claims for ethnic Germans living in Sudetenland, Rep. John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican, told the House floor that the world was acting like Chamberlain "as Russia continues to gobble up sovereign states."

Comparisons to Hitler are overdone and often inappropriate. The man did kill 6 million Jews and brought the world to war. But in this case, those on the left and right seem to be comfortable suggesting that Crimea is the new Sudetenland.

So, what actually happened in that slice of the former Czechoslovakia in 1938?

Sudetenland is a thin region in the northwestern, western, and southwestern parts of what's now the Czech Republic, bordering Germany. At the time, it was mostly inhabited by German speakers who were particularly vulnerable to unemployment and poverty during the 1930s—making it easier for some to cling to political extremism.

As Hitler expanded his reach in Europe, annexing Austria and looking to enlarge the Third Reich, he started coordinating with the local Nazi Party to pressure the Czechoslovakian government for more minority rights for ethnic Germans. Those rights were granted, but Hitler pushed further. He wanted to annex Sudetenland, and he threatened to go to war to secure the region.

Fearing a second major conflict in their lifetimes, Britain and France met with Germany and Italy to find a solution. Czechoslovakia was not included in the meetings. After several rounds of negotiation and threats of military force from Hitler, the four parties met in Munich to agree to a solution that would let Germany annex Sudetenland and immediately occupy the territory militarily. Later, this would make Germany's invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia five months later easier, because Hitler had taken away any sort of border defense.

Chamberlain, Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement on Sept. 30, 1938, labeled as a victory for peace.

Right now, it's fair to say that Vladimir Putin is making similar claims of protecting ethnic Russians in Crimea. Crimea, like that region of Czechoslovakia, is also strategic militarily and plagued by a weak central government.

But the position that the world finds itself in now is completely and utterly different than in 1938. Putin is not Hitler, in neither intentions nor actions. Ukrainian government leaders are at the table and involved in international discussions. And Western leaders have not signed Crimea over to Russia for a promise of peace.

Could Crimea for Putin, like Sudetenland for Hitler, be "batting practice," as The Washington Post's Richard Cohen said in a Tuesday column? Will Putin now go after countries in the region with large Russian populations like Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, as Hitler did in Czechoslovakia and Poland? Or is this an isolated instance?



There are similarities between that infamous moment in modern history and what we face today, and leaders should want to prevent such atrocities again. But these questions remain unanswered. It is just too early to call Putin Hitler and Obama Chamberlain.

9 June 2013

WW2 Curiosity photographs

Some WW2 Curiosity photographs



Hitler's shredded tweeds after the Wolfschanze blast (attempt on his life)



Stalin horsing around


Hitler delighted at the Volkswagen (Ferdinand Porsche, the designer at left)



Churchill (The First Sea Lord) emerging from the sea



Incoming over Moscow

 

Downed Kamikaze


Contrails and Fire in the sky
London Blitz

7 June 2013

Russki Tankovy: KV1 and IS-2 and ISU-122

Russian WW2 Tankovy for FoW 1/72

Building and painting my Russian Tanks for the Planned Armourgeddon Kursk Event at the Kapiti Wargames Club later this year, and also working on my D-Day and beyond Forces.


Jagdpanthers, Cromwells and ISU-122s in my workbench assmebly line

Jadgdpanthers and Cromwell kits from Armourfast, SU-122 from Italeri. The ISU-122s have the alternate barrels to build the ISU-152 variant too, but the instructions are pretty vague, and don't even mention the ISU-152



 Joseph (Iosef) Stalin 2 Tanks (Source Wikipedia)



Italeri models top and die-cast Altaya at bottom, weathered



JS (IS)

The Iosif Stalin tank (IS, in Cyrillic "ИС" tanks, (meaning the Joseph Stalin tank) was a series of heavy tanks developed as a successor to the KV-series by the Soviet Union during World War II. The heavy tank was designed with thick armour to counter the German 88 mm guns, and carried a main gun that was capable of defeating the German Tiger and Panther tanks. It was mainly a breakthrough tank, firing a heavy high-explosive shell that was useful against entrenchments and bunkers. The IS-2 was put into service in April 1944, and was used as a spearhead in the Battle of Berlin by the Red Army in the final stage of the war.



KV1s (Altaya models, repainted and weathered)







KV and IS-1


The Kliment Voroshilov (KV) tanks were a series of Soviet Red Army heavy tanks, named after the Soviet defense commissar and politician Kliment Voroshilov. The KV series were known for their extremely heavy armour protection during the early part of World War II, especially during the first year of the invasion of the Soviet Union.




They were almost completely immune to the 3.7 cm KwK 36 and howitzer-like, short barreled 7.5 cm KwK 37 guns mounted respectively on the early Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks fielded by the invading German forces. Until better guns were developed by the Germans it was often the case that the only way to defeat a KV was with a point-blank shot to the rear.


Prior to the invasion, about 500 of the over 22,000 tanks then in Soviet service were of the KV-1 type. When the KV-1 appeared, it outclassed the French Char B1,the only other heavy tank in operational service in the world at that time. Yet in the end it turned out that there was little sense in producing the expensive KV tanks, as the T-34 medium tank performed better (or at least equally well) in all practical respects. Later in the war, the KV series became a base of development for the Josef Stalin (Iosif Stalin, or IS) series of tanks.



The KV series of Soviet heavy tanks was criticized by its crews for its poor mobility and lack of any heavier armament than the T-34 medium tank. In 1942 this problem was partially addressed by the lighter, faster KV-1S tank. The KV series were much more expensive than the T-34, without having greater combat performance; the heavy tank program was nearly cancelled by Stalin in 1943. However, the German employment of substantial numbers of Panther and Tiger tanks at the Battle of Kursk in 1943 changed Soviet priorities. In response, the Soviet tank industry created the stopgap KV-85, and embarked on the KV-13 design program to create a tank with more advanced armour layout and a more powerful main gun. The IS-85 (Object 237) prototype was initially accepted for production as the IS-1 heavy tank and first deliveries were made in October 1943. Production ended in January 1944.


The lighter KV-1S was released, with thinner armour and a smaller, lower turret in order to reclaim some speed. Importantly, the KV-1S also had a commander's cupola with all-around vision blocks, a first for a Soviet heavy tank. However, the thinning-out of the armor called into question why the tank was being produced at all, when the T-34 could seemingly do everything the KV could do and much more cheaply. The Soviet heavy tank program was close to cancellation in mid-1943.


The appearance of the German Panther tank in the summer of 1943 convinced the Red Army to make a serious upgrade of its tank force for the first time since 1941. Soviet tanks needed bigger guns to take on the growing numbers of Panthers and the few Tigers.





A stopgap upgrade to the KV series was the short-lived KV-85 or Objekt 239. This was a KV-1S with a new turret designed for the IS-85, mounting the same 85 mm D-5T gun as the SU-85 and early versions of the T-34-85; demand for the gun slowed production of the KV-85 tremendously and only 148 were built before the KV design was replaced. The KV-85 was produced in the fall and winter of 1943-44; they were sent to the front as of September 1943 and production of the KV-85 was stopped by the spring of 1944 once the IS-2 entered full scale production.

IS-2

Gun choice
Two candidate weapons were the A-19 122 mm gun and the BS-3 100 mm gun. The BS-3 had superior armour penetration (185 mm compared to 160 mm), but a less useful high explosive round. Also, the BS-3 was a relatively new weapon in short supply, while there was excess production capacity for the A-19 and its ammunition. Compared to the older 76.2 mm tank gun, the A-19 had very good armour penetration, similar to that of the effective 75 mm high velocity gun mounted on the German Panther, and delivered 3.5 times the kinetic energy of the older F-34.



Out with the old and in with the new, IS2 passing the (unpopular) Churchill and Shermans, Stuarts





After testing both BS-3 and A-19 guns, the latter was selected as the main armament of the new tank, primarily because of its ready availability and the effect of its large high-explosive shell when attacking German fortifications. The A-19 used a separate shell and powder charge, resulting in a lower rate of fire and reduced ammunition capacity, both serious disadvantages in tank-to-tank engagements. The gun was very powerful, and while its 122 mm armour-piercing shell had a lower muzzle velocity than similar late-issue German 75 mm and 88 mm guns, Soviet proving-ground tests established that the A-19 could penetrate the front armour of the German Panther tank, and it was therefore considered adequate in the anti-tank role.




German Army data on the penetration ranges of the 122 mm A-19 gun against the Panther tank showed it to be much less effective when the Panther stood at a side angle of 30 degrees to the incoming round: the A-19 gun was unable to penetrate the glacis plate of the Panther at any distance, and could only penetrate the bottom front plate of the hull at 100 m. It was the large HE shell the gun fired which was its main asset, proving highly useful and destructive in the anti-personnel role. The size of its gun continued to plague the IS-2, and the two-piece ammunition was difficult to handle and slow to reload (the rate of fire was only about two rounds per minute). Another limitation imposed by the size of its ammunition was the payload: only 28 rounds could be carried inside the tank


The IS-122 prototype replaced the IS-85, and began mass production as the IS-2. The 85 mm guns could be reserved for the new T-34-85 medium tank, and some of the IS-1s built were rearmed before leaving the factory, and issued as IS-2s.
The main production model was the IS-2, with the powerful A-19. It was slightly lighter and faster than the heaviest KV model 1942 tank, with thicker front armour and a much-improved turret design. The tank could carry thicker armour than the KV series, while remaining lighter, due to the better layout of the armour envelope. The KV's armour was less well-shaped and featured heavy armour even on the rear, while the IS series concentrated its armour at the front. The IS-2 weighed about the same as a German Panther and was lighter than the German heavy Tiger tank series, and was slightly lower than either.
Western observers tended to criticize Soviet tanks for their lack of finish and crude construction. The Soviets responded that it was warranted considering the need for wartime expediency and the typically short battlefield life of their tanks.


Early IS-2s can be identified by the 'stepped' front hull casting with its small, opening driver's visor. The early tanks lacked gun tube travel locks or antiaircraft machine guns, and had narrow mantlets.


Later improved IS-2s (model 1944) had a faster-loading version of the gun, the D25-T with a double-baffle muzzle brake and better fire-control. It also featured a simpler hull front without a 'step' in it (using a flat, sloping glacis armour plate). Some sources called it IS-2m, but it is distinct from the official Soviet designation IS-2M for a 1950s modernization. Other minor upgrades included the addition of a travel lock on the hull rear, wider mantlet, and, on very late models, an antiaircraft machine gun.

SU-122

Soviet High Command became interested in assault guns following the success of German Sturmgeschutz III SPGs. Assault guns had some advantages over tanks with turrets. The lack of a turret made them cheaper to produce. They could be built with a larger fighting compartment and could be fitted with bigger and more powerful weapons on a given chassis. However, assault guns could aim their cannons in high degree only by turning the entire vehicle, and were thus less suited for close combat than tanks with turrets.



The first SU-122s produced in December 1942 were sent to training centers and two new combat units, the 1433rd and 1434th self-propelled artillery regiments. Initially, each of these mixed regiments consisted of two batteries with four SU-122s each and four batteries with four SU-76 tank destroyers each. Each regiment had an additional SU-76 tank destroyer as a command vehicle. It was planned to raise 30 self-propelled artillery regiments operating within armoured and mechanized corps.


In January 1943, the 1433rd and 1434th self-propelled artillery regiments were sent to the Volkhov Front near Leningrad as part of the 54th Army. On 14 January they saw combat for the first time in Smierdny region. After that it was decided SU-122s should follow between 400 m and 600 m behind the attacking tanks; sometimes this distance was shortened to between 200 m and 300 m.


The use of SU-76 tank destroyers together with SU-122s proved unsuccessful. Based on combat experience, the organization of self-propelled artillery regiments was changed; the new regimental organization consisted of two batteries of SU-76 tank destroyers and three of SU-122s, for a total of 20 SPGs. In April the organization of self-propelled artillery regiments was again changed. Separate regiments were created for SU-76 tank destroyers (light self-propelled artillery regiment) and SU-122s (medium self-propelled artillery regiment).


The medium self-propelled artillery regiment consisted of four batteries of four SU-122s each. Each regiment was also equipped with either an additional SU-122 or a T-34 for the commander and a BA-64 armoured car. This organization remained in place until the beginning of 1944 when the SU-122 started to be replaced by the SU-152, ISU-122 and ISU-152 heavy SPGs and SU-85 tank destroyers.




The SU-122 proved effective in its intended role of direct fire on strongholds. The massive concussion of the 122mm HE round was reportedly enough to blow the turret off even a Tiger I if a direct hit was scored at close range, although longer range penetration against heavier German armor remained poor, a trait shared with the larger 152mm howitzers. The new BP-460A HEAT projectile was introduced in May 1943; however its primitive warhead design was only minimally more effective than brute concussive effects of the old HE shell at close range.

At least one SU-122 was captured by the German Army.


ISU-122



A prototype of the ISU-122 (in Russian ИСУ-122) heavy self-propelled gun was built at the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant, (Chelyabinskiy Kirovskiy Zavod (ChKZ), Chelyabinsk, Russia), in December 1943. The design shared the chassis of the ISU-152 self-propelled gun and differed only in armament, having an A-19S 121.92-mm gun as its main weapon instead of the ISU-152's ML-20S gun-howitzer. Towed versions of these guns used the same carriage: 52-L-504A (Russian designation 52-Л-504А), so installation of an A-19 instead of an ML-20 gun was not a difficult task. After completing development of the ISU-152, ChKZ engineers mounted the A-19 gun on the ISU-152 chassis to create "Object 242" — the first ISU-122 prototype. It was successfully tested but not immediately launched into mass production.

At that time all ISU hulls were being equipped with the ML-20S gun-howitzer, but the production of hulls increased quickly and there was a lack of ML-20S tubes in the beginning of 1944. State authorities ordered these uncompleted hulls armed with an A-19 gun (specifically with the A-19S variant, slightly modified for the self-propelled gun mount). A further advantage of rearming the ISU was increased direct fire range against heavy German tanks. For these reasons the State Defense Committee adopted Object 242 for Red Army service as the ISU-122 on 12 March 1944. In April 1944 the first series ISU-122 left the ChKZ production lines.



The A-19S gun had a manual-piston breech, which reduced the rate of fire to 1.5 from 2.5 shots per minute. Soviet designers developed the D-25 by modernizing the A-19S's breech, creating a semi-automatic variant of the 121.92-mm gun. The D-25 gun was installed in IS-2 tanks as a priority, but in September 1944 became available for self-propelled guns. The prototype ISU vehicle, armed with a D-25S was designated "Object 249" and successfully passed plant and state testing. The fire rate was improved to 2 to 3 shots per minute and with two strong experienced loaders the rate of fire reached 4 shots per minute. Due to the muzzle brake reducing recoil forces the D-25 had a smaller recoil buffer than the A-19. This improved the crew's work conditions and allowed for a smaller, lighter gun shield with the same armour thickness.




After testing Object 249 was immediately launched in mass production as the ISU-122S (ИСУ-122С) self-propelled gun. However, the original ISU-122 remained in production (along with the ISU-152) due to a large stock of A-19 guns (the ML-20 and D-25 came directly from artillery factories). Mass production of the ISU-122 and ISU-122S ceased at the end of 1945. ChKZ produced 1,735 ISU-122 and 675 ISU-122S variants in total.


ISU 152