ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by bokkatankie

Go to Amazon Kindle shop type in name and hey presto. Downloaded to your Kindle and or andriod tab in a thrice.

first Chieftains page i went to, it had the "click here to tell the author you want to see this on Kindle" button. found it now, thanks (or should i say tanks lol)

All dependant on " Poland,shit on and subjugated by the Sovs,Czechoslovakia,shit on and subjugated by the Sovs,East Germany,shit on and subjugated by the Sovs,Baltic States,shit on and subjugated by the Sovs",and what would China be doing?

Personally,I don't think the Soviet Union really trusted their 'allies',if the 'crunch' came,but we'll never know!

I was told that we had a week before being 'over run.' Personally speaking, I would never have been 'over run'. Caught up with maybe, but never over run. I had one of the Section MCs and I'd have filled those panniers with as many Embassy No1 that I could have robbed from the Mess and as much Jack Daniels as I could fit elsewhere and I'd have been off like Barry fucking Sheene at the drop of hat. Motorbike, tabs and alcohol. Might as well enjoy your last week on the planet.

Originally Posted by DavidBOC

Back in '84-'86 I was in grad school in Cambridge, MA getting a Masters and for some reason signed up for a course called "General Purpose Forces" because a couple of classmates said it was interesting despite minimal military skills and experience (other than the ability to field strip an M-1 and put it back together with no parts leftover). I found myself dealing with differential equations and e to the power of (complicated equation) into which one plugged the sum of the weapon unit values of NATO vs Pact. We had to vary things around adding and subtracting things like organic air support, hardened C3I centers etc . After a few weeks of driving myself nuts with paper spreadsheets and a scientific calculator I bought one of those newfangled PC's (no hard drive) and a classmate, a USAF pilot, showed me how to set up the equations on VisiCalc (this was before Lotus 123 and Excel were being used)

No matter how any of us crunched the numbers NATO lasted 6 to 11 days against the Pact if we assumed no nukes used. The only real question at the time was whether Poland would stay in the Pact. Of course a few years later all was changed utterly.

Now if you had asked a bunch of European politicians to crunch the numbers, they no doubt would have managed to conjure up an answer along the lines of NATO winning in 6-7 days They are good like that.

Originally Posted by Biscuits_AB

It's a long thread and I haven't read it all so if I'm repeating here, then sorry. All of the bridges over the Weser were wired up to blow by the Bundeswehr. You would see them out periodically checking them up and down the Weser. I know that my Platoon task was to be on the wrong side of the Porta Westfalica Bridge with a REME element and some 'Billies' from one of the local Inf Bns to ensure that all the retreating Brits managed to get over it, then to make a run for it ourselves before 'Fritz the Bridge Fucker' did his thing. The Easties however, knew exactly which bridges were going to be used by us and they would have bombed the fuck out of them in the first round trapping as many as they can on the wrong side. The RE Bridging units at Hameln would have been busy.

The people I felt sorry for were 94 Pz Bn (might have the wrong designation there) who were up near Braunschweig who's job from what I've been led to believe was to get to Berlin? Why? I have no idea. If true, would they have made it? Doubt it.

From what I was led to believe over my time there, we were fighting a retreat down to the Ruhr and then holding ground there.

Actually I never thought of our forces in Berlin. Without checking the figures and official line on this one, does anyone consider they would have been anything other than marooned and doomed had the balloon gone up? It is hard to believe that would not have been the reality.

We were to be bypassed (we weren't going anywhere) and left until they'd sorted out BAOR, then the Eastie Beasties were coming back for us. Had a great two years there waiting for them! From what I could gather we had intended fighting them from the cellars and the sewers. Wouldn't have been much point if they'd wiped out BAOR. I reckon that we'd have holed up until offered the chance to surrender. Bit like Singapore but with free beer and fags.

Originally Posted by Pteranadon

Interesting thread.

The OP mentioned the early 70s and the assessment of the Soviet intentions. The assumption was that the Sovs were going to try to overrun Western Germany using mechanised forces mounted in vehicles which would protect them from the effects of the NBC environment of a nuclear war. On that scale, who cared where exactly they would cross the border.

The prevailing NATO doctrine was massive retaliation and ground troops were there as a tripwire before going nuclear. It is hard to find the facts about NATO thinking. I did an FOI request to obtain GDP plans for a BAOR Battlefield Tour and discovered that they had almost all been shredded.

Coming to the party a bit late, but wasn't Massive Retaliation (as a doctrine) shelved and replaced with Proportional Response during the Kennedy/Macnamara administration?

ISTR this was one of the drivers behind the French leaving NATO, as the implicit consequence was that Central Europe would be reduced to glow-in-the-dark glass, but the US and the USSR would remain (relatively) unscathed.

Originally Posted by DrStealth

set in the early 80's, but was worth a read.....

Team Yankee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I read it, still got it somewhere. Definately remember the concept being about the Russians going through Fulda however the North German plain was the other obvious one that was mentioned. Made sense at the time. AS to quaity of the book- readable and very American oriented- but noit shy about casualties