Soviet 1943 Cavalry Raid.

[Pat Holscher]

Interesting article on a Soviet cavalry raid in 1943.

Based on the text, I take it that at least part of the Soviet cavalry was mounted.

Anybody familiar with this event? I've never heard of it.

Pat

[patbailey]

Pat-
I have run on to a couple of accounts of this raid. Though the corps took heavy casualties, it was later placed in reserve where it received replacements, and fought on to the end of the war. Notably, in 1945 it was combined with the 9th Tank Corps into the Konstantinov Cavalry-Mechanized Group, which penetrated over 400km to the Oder river in just 17 days. It then swept into Pomerania, where it cleared the army's flank, swung north around Berlin, captured Brandenburg, and met up with troops of the US 9th Army at the Elbe river. Certainly a lot of action for the few men who survived the whole experience! The unit's title at the end of the war was "7th Guards Brandenburgskaya Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Order of Suvorov II class Cavalry Corps."

As for the Soviet cavalry being mounted, on June 22, 1941, the Soviet Army had 13 cavalry divisions. Though there were, at least on paper, some motorized and/or mechanized supports, the bulk of the troops were horse-mounted. By the end of 1941 82 additional divisions had been formed, though these were smaller than the pre-war units. These divisions provided the primary raiding and harrassing forces for the Soviet Army throughout the fighting in 1941 and into 1942. Most of the divisions were disbanded in 1942 and the troops utilized elsewhere, but by May 1, 1943, the cavakry still boasted 26 divisions with a total of 238,968 men and 226,816 horses. By early 1944 the Soviet Cavalry Corps consisted of about 20,000 men, about 2/3 mounted on horses, and the rest manning mechanized and support units, including 123 tanks and 20 self-propelled guns.

The above information comes from Charles C. Sharp's "Red Sabers: Soviet Cavalry Corps, Divisions, and Brigades 1941 to 1945." This book is part of Sharp's 12-volume series on the Soviet Order of Battle in WWII, which is the best reference I have yet found on this topic. I particularly enjoy his reference to the Soviet cavalry troopers travelling by "Organic Personnel Carrier." The books are available from the Nafziger Collection on-line, which is a great source of both military history books and orders of battle, of which George Nafziger has an extensive collection. I don't have the website address handy, but a search will quickly locate it, and I highly reccommed the site. George is a real gentleman, and has a great amount of military knowledge.

I hope that this information will be of some interest.

[stablesgt]

USSR = organic personnel carrier
USA = animal transport

[Pat Holscher]

I was looking this up and noted the URL has changed.

http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/documents/raid.htm

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by Subotai
One of the books I am currently reading [<u>Thunder From the East</u>] indicates that the Soviets mainatined a large mounted cavalry force throughout the war - with as what was noted above, a smaller divisional size. Even so the cavalry division had the organic artillery and mortar support of a full size infantry division. The author also notes that 29% of stategic Soviet mobile forces were horse mounted cavalry and that a cavalry corps [normally three cavalry divisions] had an organic tank regiment.

It appears as if the Soviets drew entirely different lessons about the utility of horse mounted cavalry on the modern battlefield than we did. This interestingly enough is somewhat mirrored by the Northern Alliance General Dostum's advance supported by American airpower [combined arms doctrine], toward Kabul Afghanistan in our war against the Taliban in 2001. He conducted numerous mounted assaults against the Talibs including one by 600 horsemen attacking en` echelon.

Only one of Dostum's attacks was repulsed [initially] and resulted in heavy casualties to the attacking force. One subordinate leader led 250 mounted men out against a Talib position which included ZSU 23-4 before it had been attacked with guided munitions from the air. The ZSU's location was known, the "lieutenant" simply got too eager; he lost 53 men. Once the ZSU was obliterated, the attack was made by another mounted unit successfully. Gotta Go</font id="Book Antiqua">

Jeffrey S. Wall<

The Soviet Union was unique in World War Two for having a fairly integrated horse mounted-armor force, at least up through 1943. While other armies retained cavalry, notably Germany, the Soviets approached mechanization and the retention of horse cavalry fairly seamlessly through much of the war. Probably the only comparable example is the US Horse Mechanized experiment, which of course never saw combat. And it isn't truly analogous, in that the Soviets incorporated horse cavalry in true armor units, which featured the use of much heavier armor, ie., tanks, than the US ever attempted.

This experiment worked well for the Red Army. Their cavalry managed to coordinate well with armored units, and their horse cavalry achieved some notable battlefield successes which have been almost lost to history. For example, cavalry featured in the encirclement of the Germans at Stalingrad, and if I recall correctly the first Soviet unit to actually close the gap around the Germans was a horse cavalry unit, part of an armored unit, which raced around and took a critical bridge, thereby closing the gap.

As part of all of this, it should perhaps be noted that battlefield conditions in the East remained suitable for cavalry, which was used by both the Soviets and the Germans, in part because of the primitive infrastructure in the East, and the terrain. It was not only the case that cavalry remained viable, but both combatants found they could not wage war without it. This was the case in spite of the improvement of automatic weapons between WWI and WWII, and the much improved nature of aircraft. The Germans found that they required less and less truly mounted cavalry as they retreated back into Germany, given the improvement in the roads, (and probably the constriction within their lines) which says something about why cavalry remained so useful in the East.

To widen the example out, what seems to be the case since World War Two is that where infrastructure and terrain suits it, and where the battlefield density of weapons (and the number and type of weapons) does not prevent it, examples of cavalry continue to be found. Certainly we've seen the notable examples of Rhodesia and Angola discussed here, as well as the recent example of Afghanistan.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

If we had to leave the forest during the daylight, we had to change our cavalry shoulder boards for some other type: like infantry, with raspberry piping, or artillery, with red piping. Such secrecy was necessary in order to conceal the direction of the main thrust of our forces, so the enemy could not prepare his defenses. It was especially important that the presence of cavalrymen be hidden, for we had a specific task: our role was not to remain in defense, but to enter gaps in the German line created by our infantry. We had to ride as far as possible into the enemy's rear, exploiting the success of the offensive. Thus, if a large cavalry unit arrived at a certain sector of the Front, one could expect an attack to be imminent.

On the Road of War, page 88.

[Pat Holscher]

At one of our daily breaks we received an order to return all captured small arms: only gun leaders were permitted to keep submachine guns. It was always like that. As soon as we entered a gap in the German defenses and went into battle, we would pile our cavalry carbines on a carriage and pick up submachine guns--be they Russian or German. After the fighting, we always received an order to hand in all weapons that did not fit our field manuals and switched back to carbines. Gun-layers were also supposed to get pistols, but they never go them during the entire war.

On the Roads Of War, 88.

[Pat Holscher]

Pat makes an interesting observation -

"To widen the example out, what seems to be the case since World War Two is that where infrastructure and terrain suits it, and where the battlefield density of weapons (and the number and type of weapons) does not prevent it, examples of cavalry continue to be found. Certainly we've seen the notable examples of Rhodesia and Angola discussed here, as well as the recent example of Afghanistan."
But I would like to perhaps shift the direction of his thought slightly. I am not sure that it is the battlefield density of weapons so much as the type of warfare selected by at least one of the combatants. The various countries of the world have a pretty good appreciation for the idea that insurgent or revolutionary warfare is the poor man's means of defeating a superior - and indeed technologically advanced - conventional army.

There is no doubt that insurgents can and have locally created a really discouraging density of weapons on a battlefield of their choosing. It seems to me that the need for, as David Galula in pointed out in his excellent work Counterinsurgency Warfare Theory and Practice, you need 20 trigger pullers for every insurgent remains applicable and they have to be in the communities [along with a whole host of other counterinsurgency actions]. Also as other contributors to this forum have noted, a man on horseback is an excellent patrol observer as he can see more and better and the horse can help detect threats.

And back to the Soviets for a moment, if memory serves, they maintained Operational or Theater reserves throughout the war and these reserves consisted of 29% horse mounted cavalry. A Soviet Cavalry Corps consisted of three horse mounted cavalry divisions and a organic tank regiment. Also a cavalry division while about half the size of an infantry division [man power wise] had the same organic artillery that an infantry division possessed. Seems to me that the Soviets concluded that horse mounted cavalry remained viable in a combine arms army. This is interesting in light of the British experience in Palestine and Syria in WWI where their cavalry successfully charged numerous times against heavily machine gun equipped Turk/German positions under the suppressive fire of their own machine guns and the organic Royal Horse Artillery [RHA]; in other words a combine arms environment.

While a horse and a man are large targets, so are tanks and APCs. They do not fight alone but rather as part of a combined arms team, the proliferation of shoulder fired anti-tank weapons has seen to that. The bloody truth is that no one moves successfully - at least not for very long - across a battlefield without suppressive covering fire.

My point then is simply that success on a battle field has remained fairly consistent throughout history -
Find the enemy, fix him in place with superior suppressive [SS] firepower and maneuver to destroy him.

How you maneuver is not as important as whether you can maneuver fast enough, horses do that; the 12th Lancers in Palestine in 1918 are an excellent example. While speed and surprise - such as a night movement/attack - can alternate for SS firepower they only work for a limited time. A brilliant example of this is the taking or redoubt #28 at Yorktown VA at the end of our [American] Revolutionary War. You must either achieve success within that limited time or have the SS firepower on tap. A fairly recent book entitled something like Special Ops, eight case studies, by a navy SEAL discusses this in detail. If I can find the book I will post the real title; it is a very worth while read.

Some interesting points.

When I first posted this thread, I had not yet read the book I most recently quoted from, and this overall topic has developed a lot since then. In some ways, I feel less certain about my initial opinions than I did then.

That something was operating on the Eastern Front to keep horse cavalry viable in that theatre, when it was not on the Western Front (keeping in mind we're speaking of true cavalry, not organic cavalry or horse supported operations, cannot be doubted. And it still seems to me that this was a function of weapons density and terrain. Indeed, I do not think that can be doubted. The vast expanse of Russia, the terrain, and the weather, all caused cavalry to remain viable, as we have seen in some other areas of the globe since then.

Having said that, the thing which I did not fully appreciate at the time of this initial posting was that the Soviets used their cavalry in conventional battles as a sort of very rapid mounted infantry. The author of On The Roads of War emphasizes this, noting that if a large cavalry formation showed up near the front, it was immediately known by the Soviet infantrymen, and the Germans, that an offensive was imminent. As soon as a hole was poked through German lines, cavalry was used to rush through and exploit it. This was a successful tactic on many occasions, but as the author notes it did leave cavalry vulnerable to being cutoff, which happened to his unit on several occasions.

Another interesting item explored by the author was that his unit did engage armor on occasion. Very clearly they were not capable of resisting a large armored advance, but they did encounter and engage armor with their anti-tank gun section.

So, to a degree that is now more plain, it would seem that Soviet cavalry, in 1939-1945, was able to do what Haig had hoped his cavalry would do in 1916-1918. Haig always kept it in reserve, hoping to use it for the Big Breakout. The Soviets actually used it in that role. That the British were not able to can be explained by a number of things. That the Soviets were able to do it some 20 years later, when automatic weapons, tanks, and aircraft, had all advanced considerably in design, is remarkable. Of course, the Germans used cavalry on the Eastern Front as well.

I should note that all this use is separate and apart from partisan, and anti-partisan, use of cavalry by the Soviets and Germans. That use is significantly different, it seems to me, as to make a really separate topic.

[Pat Holscher]

Bumped up due to related topic.

[Pat Holscher]

Bumped up due to related thread.