The Beginning

(edit: there used to be a picture of Za Stalina here, but it was a link to the old BattleFront site. For now I've replaced it with the Ostfront book until I can find and scan in my copy of Za Stalina.)

My main project for Flames of War right now is creating a Soviet Mixed Tankovy Batalon based on the units that fought during the second battle of Kharkov in May of 1942. The path I took to come to this decision involved several factors. The first was a desire to get a fully painted force on the table quickly. For me that meant an all armored force with no infantry units. Secondary to that was that I wanted a force that would still be competitive in the game. Third, I wanted to be reasonably historical in my unit composition.

I settled on Soviets after finding what I considered a fair match for Russian Green in the form of Testors Medium Green spraypaint (as it turned out later, the spray is a couple shades lighter, but it worked out). I then turned to my limited knowledge of the Eastern Front for historical inspiration. As it turns out, one of the more detailed books on my shelf is Kharkov 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster by David Glantz. I began going through the index of units and comparing them to an order of battle (OOB) I found on the web at armchair general (I later also checked OOBs from the game Kharkov '42, which differed some from those I found on the web). I then checked the OOB against Za Stalina to see whether I could recreate the unit using the army lists. If I could, then I went back to the Kharkov book and re-read any accounts of the actions that the units were involved in. Eventually I settled on the 197th Batalon, 198th Tank Bde, 21st Tank Corps, 6th Army.

The 197th fought in the southern part of the Kharkov operation, spending the first few days in reserve before being committed in a succesful attack towards Kharkov. The day after it completed that attack, it was pulled out again and sent further south to deal with German forces that were counterattacking. It spent the next few days in combat with elements of the 14 Pz, 16 Pz, and 60 Motorized divisions of the German Army. It was surrounded and eventually destroyed in the pocket formed by the Germans.

According to the OOBs I read, the unit started on May 11th with either 4 KV tanks, 8 T-34 tanks, and 8 T-60 tanks, or at full strength with 5 KV tanks, 10 T-34 tanks, and 8 T-60 tanks. In order to build a 1500pt force for Flames of War, I ended up taking 4 KV-1e tanks, 9 T-34 obr 1941 tanks, and 7 T-60 obr 1942 tanks. I added tankodesantniki to the T-34 company and Limited Shturmovik air support to use up the remaining points. The result adds up to 1495 pts.

Continued in Assembling the Troops