Review - Web Resources, Soviet 16th Air Army

For the last few months I have been working up a fairly large Helicopter force, in order to represent Soviet Air Assault operations.  As I have been building and researching this force it has become increasingly apparent that you need to develop a fairly good model of Frontal Aviation in general in order to play out a decent Air Assault Game.

I have known of the 16 Air Army site for a year or so but it is primarily presented in French and my interest in Airplanes to date has been at the bottom end of limited.  Today I discovered that they had a fairly extensive Orbat for GSFGs Army Aviation component which looked somewhat different to the model I was working.  Having now sorted translate for my browser I realise what a jewel this site is.  Not only does it include the Orbat of GSFGs 16 Air Army including its aviation components but also maps out the evolution of the force and its equipment throughout the 80s.

This is a truly first class resource it includes deployment details, Unit evolution and  Equipment evolution which when combined with other web resources such as Air Power Australia and the good old wikipedia pretty much allows the bulk of the picture to be assembled.  In addition to a lot of facts and some great pictures the site includes translations from Soviet Air Crews experiences during there time in Germany which includes interesting descriptions of exercises and other deployments that provide insite into their mode of operation and the support they would offer to the land battle.

Interestingly for me at least Hugo also references most unit titles and abbreviations in Russian (latin rather than Cyrillic alphabets), something I will probably take up myself.  A gem of a website that should be high on your hit list if cold war games are your bag.

16 Air Army