Atheory's Project: Operation Fischreiher (Stalingrad42)

[Plain Ian]

Plain Ian: That is indeed the 38th motorized rifle brigade.

The Soviets abbreviated brigade as "br" (in Cyrillic, obviously) as "b" was already taken by battalion contrary to the confusing NATO standard where the "B" can mean both battalion and brigade.

Unit names/abbreviations on Soviet maps also tend to be in italic script, which means some Cyrillic letters do not match their upright forms. This can be confusing until you get used to it.

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I'll give the campaign a go when the motorized brigade has been added.

After looking at the map and OOB a few times, I'm very worried about the life expectancy of all those company-sized Soviet battalions, but we'll see how long they last.

Yes the Rifle Divisions are easy to spot although you keep thinking that cd stands for Cavalry Division rather than Rifle Division. The special symbol for Guards (ze?) is obvious if you are aware that certain Guards units were present at that time. And of course MK is pretty obviously a Corps unit. Tank Corps?

Size of Russian units? I've looked at the on map units and the OOB as well. Yes there are a lot of anaemic looking units there. However it looks like most of these appear on the flanks of the campaign area, and I think this will help the scenario.

In the north the 63rd Army has one Division at Serafimovich and 3 making their slow way south on foot. The 21st Army has one also near Serafimovich, two just arriving on the Don River and four more in transit. These two Armies could pose a theat to any advance by 6th Army if they were stocked with 'full' strength units. The Russian player will see that it makes sense to keep them north of the Don or possibly bunched to gether trying to hold a small bridgehead where possible.

In the south 51st and 57th army also have a lot of weakened rifle Divisions. This should make it easier for 4th Panzer to push back and also encourage the Russian player to withdraw them.

In the centre of course we have the 62nd and 64th which have stronger Rifle Divisions. They should be able to make some sort of stand as they historically did.

So hopefully the scenario will move in a historical direction.

Time for a map......sorry can't resist it. Here's the situatio. Its not to scale and of course the Russian OOB's are just cut and pasted to show the relative strengths of their Rifle Divisions.



I'll post a comparison of German and Russian Rifle Divisions next.