WesWorld

Would anyone terribly mind if I updated the NPC Polish Army and Air Force? The last couple years have seen some confusion in their procurement, and I'd like to make things clear and maybe write an article on it for Le Spectateur Militaire.

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Originally posted by Brockpaine
Would anyone terribly mind if I updated the NPC Polish Army and Air Force? The last couple years have seen some confusion in their procurement, and I'd like to make things clear and maybe write an article on it for Le Spectateur Militaire.

I have no objections in principle. Of course, if they emerge with sixty divisions or so, I might be a bit concerned.

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Originally posted by BruceDuncan
Of course, if they emerge with sixty divisions or so, I might be a bit concerned.

Heavens, no. I'd want to match what Poland has to what they can reasonably afford, and what makes sense.

If Poland is now an NPC then I guess its updated aircraft products should be added to the NPC Aircraft thread for ease of reference.

I'm assuming that Poland would broadly be using OTL equipment in its Army and Air Force, aeronautically speaking OTL 1939 was at the brink of several modern designs which in WW now would be quite mature.

I'm more than happy for Brock to do the OOBs etc for both (I had planned a brief NPC post on Polish and Czech AFs but I've never been able to find a decent OOB, especially for Czechoslovakia) and Brock is the OOB master. I'll work out some updated aircraft infos for the NPC thread, and I'm sure me and Brock can work out between us AF types. The aim with the NPC threads isn't to radically alter things but to give a flavour of what kind of stuff they are producing for home and export use.

OT

Updating the playerlist could perhaps attract some new players so that the numbers of NPC decrease or declaring some of the nations permanent NPC to reduce the confusion on who is playing what.

Quoted

Originally posted by BruceDuncan

I have no objections in principle. Of course, if they emerge with sixty divisions or so, I might be a bit concerned.

I think no more than 60 active Armored/Mechanized divisions is a reasonable limit, toss in 100 infantry Divisions and 10-15,000 fighters, another 5,000 bombers and Belgium will have a new best friend... 8p

j/k

nope, go for it.


I second Vukovlad's notion.

the USSR raised ~700 divisions, including ~100 Tank/Mechanized, on a smaller population base than the WesWorld RF has...

Yes- in the face of an extinction level event- they also shut down domestic consumption, lost people to starvation, imported great quantities of food/transport/electronics from outside. The USSR bled the Nazis white, but lost amazing numbers.

Little Belgium spent ~25% of it's Depression era budget* on (badly thought out) fortifications and the military, and tried to field a force of ~650,000 -about 2/3rds what much bigger Poland did.

*the WW paranoia is my extrapolation of the apparent OTL one.

One other caveat is that a "Division" is not a unit of manpower measurement, but can vary in manpower from country to country- and by which support units are attached at which level.

World War II German Infantry Divisions were 17,000 prewar, dipped to 12,500 by 1944 and some variants had 10,000. Soviet Divisions (as I recollect) started at the lower end, and were often understrength to start. Here in WW the Belgians have the mid-sized, the Dutch the larger.

Late WWII division counts can also be misleading also. How to deal with understrength units is one issue- does the army make new units with replacements, or reinforce the old units- if the former the "Count" goes up, but the efficiency goes down as the large groups of rookies have the new toys and the remaining veterans have the worn out gear.

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Originally posted by Kaiser Kirk
World War II German Infantry Divisions were 17,000 prewar, dipped to 12,500 by 1944 and some variants had 10,000. Soviet Divisions (as I recollect) started at the lower end, and were often understrength to start. Here in WW the Belgians have the mid-sized, the Dutch the larger.

And that was just the start of things. While the stated manpower of the divisions fell, their actual fighting strength fell much faster, particularly on the Eastern Front. Since Hitler refused to allow shattered divisions to be demobilized and reformed to bring them back up to strength, divisions regularly ended up with most of their rear-echelon troops and front-line combat strength equivalent to a regiment or even a battalion in size. The Panzer Divisions were often even worse off than the infantry. This led to singularly unbalanced ground forces.

If you want to read a good analysis of what happened and how it turned out, I suggest Blitzkrieg No Longer by Samuel Mitcham.

Thanks Brock,
it is things like that I was alluding too, but it's happened in lots of other wars too. Since the "Teeth"- esp rifle companies- are the ones that tend to get shot, the "Teeth to tail" ratio gets all off. Even when the Tail gets reassigned, they may lack the skill set and cohesion to function as well.

Germany added a particular twist by lavishing newly raised SS or Luftwaffe equipment with gear while veteran Heer units withered. In Germany's case the watering down of units was something..I think Guderian(?) tried to reorganize in 1943/44. Ah well, my problem is I've actually read a fair bit over the years, and taken military history courses, but I only mostly remember things read 20 years ago Edit : So I have to keep reading. Latest is a pretty poor eastern front book.

Now, if I want TO&E by unit type by year for the Germans, that I can just open a book for.