piersyf wrote:Actually I read somewhere that the Soviets mounted more amphibious
operations in the Baltic that the US Marines did in the Pacific. Not in scale, of course, just
frequency. If I remember correctly, about 50 landings made, nothing larger than a
regiment, all short hops to turn the German flanks on the Baltic coast.
More than the Marines? Could well be. Remember also that the US Army also made a
series of landings along the coast of New Guinea.
I guess the point isn't really who made more -- but that the Soviets conducted a LOT of
amphibious operations, a fact which is often under-appreciated in the west. Both in the
Baltic and in the Black Sea, the Soviets conducted more than 50 battalion-sized or larger
amphibious landings. Multiple regimental+ sized operations were landed on the Black
Sea (including some notable failures.) The Soviets also conducted many river
crossings, and some of those rivers were wide enough that they might well be
considered in the same realm as coastal amphibious operations.
In particular the Soviets developed the tactic of using river
networks rather than just
river banks, assembling their forces and boarding riverine watercraft on an un-
contested river (both banks in friendly hands), and then transiting down to that river's
confluence with a contested river (enemy holding the far bank) to effect a landing. In
this way they could assemble flotillas of watercraft that were too large to be
transported overland and launched within site of the enemy (river barges, armored
boats like the BKA-1125s, etc.). They also were masters at improvising, constructing
improvised watercraft from available materials in rapid order to cross rivers which Axis
forces left under-defended.
You can buy a plastic kit of an LST in 1:350 scale, and it's huge on table.
There is a two-model kit of LSM and LST (earlier open-decked model) made by Heller in
1/400 scale. Small enough to be visibly out-of-scale if getting to shore is the central
issue of your game, but close enough to be background units if your game is focussed
on the action on shore. (LSTs should not really be in the assault wave anyways.)
I'd love to see models of ... Soviet ... landing craft ...
I don't think the Soviets made any purpose-built landing craft. They modified barges for
their larger attempts in the Black Sea. But for the most part they conducted their
landings with watercraft that had been built for other purposes. The Soviet Union had
an enormous number of craft for riverine commerce. There were fleets of Soviet river
warships too (up to and including monitors and even an aircraft carrier barge with no
engines!), but not many of these were to be found as the Germans retreated.
The most important watercraft for coastal operations would probably be the various
submarine chasers, which in the Soviet navy was a sort of "catch-all" class of light
ships and boats, some purpose-built, others reclassified after failing at other purposes
(ie: MTBs that did not meet specified speed requirements were re-classed as sub-
chasers).
There are a couple vendors making these craft in our scale -- river commercial lighters
and barges, and BMO class sub chasers. The BMO class was reasonably popular for
coastal raiding parties.
