Wargames Unit - Soviet, Combat Helicopter Regiment, Attack Helicopter Squadron

Otdelnyy Boyevoy Vertoletnyy Polk OBVP or Independent Combat Helicopter Regiments were formed to support Soviet Armies from the late 70's and were part of the fronts Air Army.  The Regiments comprised:

• 2 Attack Helicopter Squadrons of 5 Flights of 4 Mi-24
• 1 Assault Helicopter Squadron of 5 Flights of 4 Mi-8

As a component of Air Assault operations undertaken by the DShV these units were critical for support, escort and elements of transport, depending on the exact configuration of the Mi-8s.

Having decided to build a Soviet Air Assault force I felt I really need some solid Attack Helicopter support and these squadrons could deploy in there entirety to support operations.  So a full squadron it had to be,  20 Mi 24 @ a ratio of 1-3 would give me 6 aircraft and a difficult problem of representing the flights.  So I decided to represent these boys at 1:4 with 1 Aircraft per flight, flights were capable of independent operation or as part of Squadron or indeed Regimental plans.

Building this sort of force presents a few interesting problems if your to avoid breaking the bank or the models every time you use them. Ebay was the primary approach to the first problem and as such I have a bit of a range of marks and models in the Squadron.  Breaking down to 1 Airfix, 1 Matchbox, 1 2 Italeri and 1 Zedveda all built as D/E variant Hinds.  Whilst some have Sagger rails and others Spiral launch tubes I'll probably use them all as one type in a game.  Of the different manufacturers I prefer the Italeri birds to the others more detail a better build quality and a nicer model.  As can be seen by from the pictures the range of manufacturers does not detract from the unit.

On the second problem, robustness, I decided to drop rotor blades and numerous smaller parts, making transport and handling easier as inevitably because of the way they are based they take a bit of a battering. The other problem the Rotors give you is the relationship of there physical size to the ground scale.  which means the aircraft which are otherwise fairly big beasts start to eat up a lot of real estate, more of a problem with the transports than the attack aircraft.

Without an airbrush painting also becomes a bit of a burden when building large numbers of aircraft, as does getting the markings right, particularly when you have three different manufacturers.  I managed to crack that withs some decal purchasing, more of which in the construction post.

can't wait to get them into action.

References:  

Global Defence - Ground Forces Aviation/Army Aviation

Global Defence - Ground Forces Aviation/Army Aviation Tactics

Global Defence - Ground Forces Aviation/Army Aviation Aircraft

Review - Web Resources, Soviet 16th Air Army

FM 100-2-1 Soviet Army Operations and Tactics

FM 100-2-3 Soviet Troops Organisation and Equipment

Soviet Tactical Aviation - Yefim Gordon & Dmitriy Kamissorov

Related Posts:

ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 1, Overview and Lift Assets
Review - Model 1/72, Mi-24 Hinde, Italeri, Zedveda, Matchbox, Airfix

Wargames Unit - Soviet Late 80's, Independent DShV Battalion

The Army Independent DShV (Air Assault) battalion comprised of a BMD Company and two parachute Infantry companies.  The Parachute infantry companies in the late cold war period included AT-7 and PKMS Sections.  For operations they would be heavily task organised with elements of the Battalions support platoons these included:

• Anti Tank
• Anti Aircraft
• Mortar
• Direct Fire Support
• Indirect Fire Support
• Reconnaissance

The organisation I am showing here has been task organised for an opperation with battalion assets distributed to the companies and grouped with the aviation assets required to deploy and support it. The aircraft were all part of Frontal Aviation although some of the units would be under Army command. It is loosely based on rapid Fire concepts scale is Ground Vehicles at 1:3 and Aircraft at 1:4.

The AT-7 is scratch built and crewed by Elhiem, the remainder of the figures in the Parachute infantry Company are by Liberation Miniatures and were part of my existing collection.

The support weapons teams are a mix of Liberation and Elhiem, AGS-17, AT-4, SAM-7 and Sniper are Liberation, the excellent SPG-9, Soviet 82mm Morter are Elhiem and the OP team are a mix of S&S and Elhiem. The Elhiem figures are all conversions from their Iraq range.

The lift is provided by two flights from the Army OBVP Assault and Combat Helicopter Regiment, in this case 1 flight of Mi-8TV and 1 of Mi-8T, I am currently not intending the TVs to carry troops and the Mi-8Ts to carry a reduced load, although I have no data to support this.

The remainder of the lift is provided by 2 flights of Mi-8 from the Fronts OTBVP, Independent Combat Transport Helicopter Regiment's Medium Transport Helicopter Squadron.  The air craft comming from a mix of manufacturers.

The other type of Company in The Independent DShV Battalion is the BMD company, equipped with 9 BMDs and a small company of dismounts, I have chosen to represent it with 2 BMD 1P and a BTR-D. This breaks with a traditional RF Route of only representing 1APC per company.  in this case I have decided to use the BMDs as "light tanks" or Fire Support Vehicles and the BTR-D will be used to carry the dismounts.  The Battalion Recce Platoon has been grouped with the BMD company.

The BMDs are by Liberation miniatures as are the figures, the BTR-D is an ACE Kit which as ever scrubs up well, crew figures are Liberation and stowage is Goffey.

Lift for the BMD company is provided by an Mi-8T flight from the Assault and Combat Helicopter Regiment and 2 flights of Mi-26 from the OTVBP's Heavy Transport Helicopter Squadron.  in this case the Mi-8 is by KP and the Mi-26 by Revell.

Battalion HQ is a 6 Figure Command team and Mi-8 Flight which would be a mix of command and control aircraft and ECM aircraft, and an Mi-2 which will act as an air OP.   The Aircraft are part of my divisional support squadron, but I am not sure that fits in with the late war Orbat, a bit more reading to do there.  Both aircraft are KP kits and the Mi-2 is a nice little kit.  The bases which I am probably going to use throughout my force are by East Riding Miniatures.

The projects been a year in the making and other than this battalion and the air-fleet required to shift it around the battlefield, includes a Strike package of Fighters and Ground attack aircraft and a fairly impressive Hinde Attack Helicopter squadron but more of them later.  All the references and research on Orbat Colour schemes etc are contained within the related posts.

Related Posts:

ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 1, Overview and Lift Assets
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 2, Army Air Assault Battalion
Review - Model 1/72, KP Mi-8 and Mi-8T Hip
Review - Model 1/72, Revell Mi 26 Halo
Modelling- Scratch Building Soviet AT-7 Saxhorn (9K115 Metis)
Wargames Unit - Soviet VDV Regiment

Cold War Gamer, a Post War Gaming Facebook information stream.

Scenario - Storming The Waidhaus Gap

This years game was an Air Land battle extravaganza played out by the usual crew, the guilds Panzerfaust 200, and Mausman were once again the Germans and Myself and Elhiem ran the Soviet horde. The detailed scenario can be downloaded from the link at the end of this post and the AAR will be the central theme of the Autumn magazine.

I started work on this project almost as soon as we had finished last years marathon. It all started with a desire to take my VDV units into the late Cold War period (Post 1985) after that it got a bit out of hand, resulting in the construction of 26 Aircraft of various types, which turned out to be a fairly large commitment.

It continues my fascination with the Soviet forward detachment, but starts to examine it in the context of offensive operations against the NATO covering force and in cooperation with Air Assault assets. The Scenario was set in the context of the military operations that formed the back ground to the Wissenberg Counter Attack, looking at the initial actions taken by 22 Combined Arms Army in crossing the German Czech border at Waidhaus. This present the army commander with a few interesting problems:

• The crossing point is a terrain constraint or bottleneck
• The Terrain opens up exposing the flanks shortly after moving through the constraint
• He needs to maintain the momenttum of the main body in negotiating the crossing point

To which the answer was to secure the gap with a forward detachment and the flanks with Scaterable mines and an Air Assault force. This then is the Soviet context of the scenario and provides a broad scope for the examination of Soviet Doctrine of the period.

The NATO plan in this part of the battelfield is also interesting, Germany pursued a concept of forward defence and so I have deployed a strong covering force along the border, the nature of the terrain allowed a degree of focus on the main crossing points with a mobile reserve left to deal with any other incursion routes identified by a weak recce screen across the more difficult approach routes.

The Divisional Recce unit was concentrated at the two primary points and reinforced by elements of the Divisional reserve 12 Pz Bde and the Korps Reserve, 25 Luftlande Brigade as well as being strongly supported by Air and Aviation assets. This made for an interesting German force structure and is broadly in line with their doctrine.

In terms of the scenario design I wanted to keep all 4 players amused and broadly have the game play out to a conclusion without it bogging down in any particular place. This required the following activities to happen:

• The Soviets had to get on the ground with the air assault force.
• They needed someone to fight before the reserves turned up.
• The reserves needed to be controlled and ultimately taken out if the Soviets were to reach the far end of the board.
• The Germans needed to be able to snatch victory at the back end of the game.

To meet these needs we developed an air superiority rule which allowed us to play a very full ground attack game but with the balance alternating between the two sides in the early part of the game. The Soviets had turns 1 - 3 the NATO team 4-6 and thereafter it was to be randomly determined. This should allow each side to dominate in turn the early phases of the game. Giving each early success and allowing the game to progress to plan.

This also met the need to create effectively two games one at the front of the board and one at the back. As we had an 18 foot by 8 foot table to play with I knew this would be broadly achievable. The Terrain was derived from the Google earth imagery but simplified to contain the main settlement, the main roads major wooded features and three prominent ridge lines.

The broad scope of play was therefore that the German covering force built around:

• 2 Recce Companies
• 1 Tank Company
• 1 FJ Battalion

would fight the ground battle forward against the heavily reinforced 480 MRB:

• 3 MR Coy
• 2 Tk Coy
• 1 Mobile Support Group
• 2 Bns of Guns

and that the covering force of 10 PG Bde together with the Air Defence assets of 4 FLAK Bn:

• 100 PzAufZug
• 100 PzJgrKp
• 41 and 42 AD Bty

would initially take on 901 Air Assault Battalion and its accompanying aircraft after the landing phase the germans would be reinforced by 2 Kp of Leopard 2s and towards the end of the game receive a further Kp and a lot of Artillery and Air to enable them to pull back.

Related Posts:

TTP

TTP-Forward Detachments and Tactical Air Assault

Scenario:

Scenario - Storming The Waidhaus Gap
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 1, Overview and Lift Assets
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability Part 2, Army Air Assault Battalion
ORBAT - Soviet Task Org, Fronts in the Western TVD

Wargames Unit:

Wargames Unit - Soviet Late 80's Independent DShV Battalion
Wargames Unit - Soviet Late 80's MRB
Wargames Unit - The German Army at Waidhaus
Wargames Unit - Soviet, Combat Helicopter Regiment, Assault Helicopter Squadron
Wargames Unit - Soviet, Combat Helicopter Regiment, Attack Helicopter Squadron

AAR:

AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 1 Ground and Deployment
AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 2 Soviet Air Land Battle
AAR-Storming The Waidhaus Gap, Part 3 Counter Attack

Downloads:

Storming The Waidhaus Gap, 19 Mb

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Review - Model 1/72, M-24 Hinde, Italeri, Zveda, Matchbox, Airfix

The Mi - 24 Hinde is another one of those Soviet designs that have become Iconic symbols of the Cold War, Its distinctive and unique shape together with its extensive combat deployment by the Soviets and a myriad of client states throughout and beyond the cold war have assured its place in history.  Brought into service in 1972 and based on the Mi-8 Hip's propulsion system it has served through to the present day with the Soviet Armed forces.  Almost uniquely amongst combat helicopters it has capacity to carry dismounted troops as well as a variety of anti personal and anti tank weapon systems including 57mm FFAR, 12.7mm Gatling MG and AT6 Spiral or AT2 Swatter missiles depending on mark.

As befits such an iconic system, just about every kit manufacturer worth their salt carries one in there range. Probably the most easily accessible today being:

• Italeri
• Revell 
• Zveda 
• Hobbey Boss 
• Bilek 

The most commonly available type being the D/E variants but with a smattering of Fs.  Prices Range from £10 - £15 depending on manufacturer and older kits are readily available on Ebay.

For my Attack Helicopter Squadron I have built a clutch of Hinde attack Helicopters from a variety of manufacturers, noteably Italeri, Zedveda, Matchbox and Airfix.

All the Kits are straight forward to build, although the Italeri needs the internal cabin to be built in order to mount the engine assemblies. This raised two issues if you don't fit the internal detail then look hard to check which way round your inserting it and the engine exhaust mountings can be a bit fidily to attach, other than that all were straight forward to assemble with the matchbox kit almost being a snap assembly designed for the younger modeller which somewhat put me off it as a product. Having said this in all cases I left out all rotor assembly primarily to ease handling and storage issues for gaming.

Italeri, Zedveda, Italeri and Airfix

Of the ones I built I preferred the Italeri's certainly from the point of view of quality and surface detail although the Zveda aircraft was comparable. All the kits are considered inaccurate by the aero modelling fraternity, but look fine on the table top. All scale out well and look ok together although you inevitably end up with a mix of weapons and decal sets. Creating a consistent set of decals for the unit proved challenging and I bought an aftermarket decal set from Bergamot for the SU 27B Sea Flanker which whilst it was designed for something completely different had a lot of red stars and groups of numbers in consistent colour and style.

An analysis of colour schemes of Soviet flown aircraft from across the web left me focusing on two main choices the Sand and green scheme seen in both Europe and Afghanistan and a less pervasive Green on Green scheme. For the Mi-24s I decided to complete them all in the more wide spread sand and green, with the Attack Helicopter Squadron carrying red markings and the Divisional Support Squadron yellow.  Its not clear from my research at what organisational level consistency of colour of numbering applied.

I painted them all with Vallejo paint using:

• 977 Desert Yellow for the sand coloured base
• 924 Russian Uniform for the disruptive patterns
• 961 Sky Blue for the underside
• 819 Iraqi Sand as a mix for highlighting

all Aircraft were undercoated black then had many dilute layers of Sand and sky blue applied before adding the disruptive pattern, it would have been a lot easier to paint 25 aircraft an helicopters with an airbrush. Panel lines were picked out in the relatively new GW Agrax Earthshade (brown) although the undersides were left, these were then over washed with dilute solutions of the main colour to make them less prominent. The cockpits were painted out with black grey which was used for exhaust ports and all weapon systems less the rocket pods which were sky grey.

All aircraft were mounted at a variety of flight angles onto Coresec Engineering bases using 1" 1.5" and 3" flight stands which were attached to 40mm Diameter pre cut MDF bases from East Riding miniatures. These were then covered in white glue and sand before being painted in GW Calthan Brown (sadly OOP) before being dry brushed Vallejo Dessert Yellow and covered in a variety of basing products.

References:

FAS Mi 24
Prime portal Mi 24 photos and walk around
Review of Hind Model and Book resources
Soviet Tactical Aviation
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Units Part 1, Overview and Lift
FM 100-2-3 The Soviet Army Troops, Organization and Equipment

Models:

Revell 1:72 - Mil Mi-24D/E HIND - 04405
ITALERI 1:72 Aircraft No 014 MIL-24 Hind D/E Model Kit

Cold War Games - Hobby News Spring 2013

Well its been quite a time since I posted anything new, I have been having a bit of a break from the hobby, a combination of a big project (Soviet Air Assault) that was taking to long to output anything to write about and an increase in the pace of activity at work,  The net result had slowed me down and in releasing less I had lost my way a bit in terms of the organisation of what I was trying to do. My intent now is to write four magazines a year releasing 10 - 12 posts around a core theme over a period of 3 months, these will cover the usual topics of Reviews, News, Orbat, AAR and Scenarios. 

The Summer Magazine will be focused on the completion of the Air Assault force and the development of Scenario material for a game that will be played out in July with a full AAR appearing in the Autumn edition, stimulated by finally completing a number of the units I have been working on for the last  year.

At long last then my 100th post and I note we are nearly upto 100 followers so plenty to celebrate.

The other thing that has brought me out of hibernation are some fantastic new releases and future releases that are popping out  a couple of the regular suppliers of cold war goodness and all focused on the British, these releases make covering the bulk of units for British forces very achievable and are very attractive to boot.

and now you can follow Cold War Gamer on Facebook

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FIGURES

Elhiem

Matt over at Elhiem figures has been extending his British range, which originally comprised a section patrolling with SLR, GPMG, 58 pattern webbing and tin hats in and out of NBC kit. Suitable for units up to 1987-1988 when SA80, PLCE webbing  and the Mk 4 Helmet all started to make an appearance.

To these he has added a mid 80's Milan team of three figures, 58 pattern webbing and Tin hats but a Milan post with Mira,  If you need an early 80's team the NATO Milan teams have a platform without MIRA.  The 3 figures are excellent as is the MIRA representation, 1990s teams could go a head swap or you can leave as is to save the cash which will be my approach.

In production are a section in fire positions, a Javalin AA missile system a GPMG SF Kit, Carl Gustav team and a mortar crew, all up a very comprehensive range, and the greens demonstrate the quality great stuff.  Hopefully we'll see these go live on Matts Elhiem Figures site in the not to distant future,

flicking through the Cold War Gone Hot, Force on Force supplement, he still has a few bits to go around the dutch, although his Canadians with SLR start to answer some of that need.

MODELS

S&S

Quite a flourish of activity in both Resin and plastic, we'll start with the resin cold war manufacturer of choice who has gone absolutely british cold war potty. A big shout out to Shaun at S&S who has just about filled nearly all the slots in the Orbat not covered by the plastic manufacturers and other easy to access resin manufacturers so without further a doe

First up Ferrit Armoured cars primarily employed in the 80's in signal platoons as liason and rebroadcast vehicles so part of BHQ 

Secondly the CVR(T) fleet of the year, Scorpion, Scimitar, Samson Samaritan, Sultan and Striker awesome, I'll be getting a few of these to cover off an Armoured Battle Group HQ Sultan, A Divisional Recce Squadron, all of them + spartan, and an Armoured Regiment close Recce Troop with Scorpio, superb.

We then get into the land of recovery, a 434 and a warrior recovery, I have the 434 but have yet to build it and will be getting the Warrior for my late 80s Warrior Battle Group.

and theres more 110 land rovers soft and open top

an M109

An FV 432 Mortar variant

and a finally some soft skins a collection of supacats absolute gold dust and straight into my 24 Airmobile project, and a foden drops that will grace my 1990s artillery unit, probably with a couple of AS90s which of course will be a little cheeky.

So whats left to do to cover off the cold war british force, tracked rapier is the obvious one a DAF 4 tonne and a cost effective Saxon are the ones that spring to mind although both the Rapier and the Saxon are available elsewhere if a little dificult to get hold of.  After that your into specialist variants and there is still quite a bit of ground to cover there. As I build my way through this lot over the next few years I'll throw up more detailed reviews.

Trumpeter

On the Kit front and staying with the British theme Trumpeter have been busy with a clutch of challenger 1s in various guises along with a few Warriors

An impressive haul of releases in the last year and thats just the Brits, sadly a pile of kits have gone out of production with no obvious site of resurrection notably from the Ace stable along with a few noteable titles from Revel, having said that new manufactures have started to fill the gap.  Maybe I need to slot in an interim news post in order to cover off the rest of the pile over the next three months.

If you have any cold wargaming product news that you would like to share drop me a line at coldwargamer@gmail.com