NATO, WAPA and the indefensibility of LandJut in NGP and D85

[Narwan]

Well I talked to a few old NVA soldiers as well over the years. Of course they might just have been bragging for "ostalgic" reasons ;-). The NVAs internal documents (http://www.eurobuch.com/buecher/isbn/381...1/Nva.html) also shows how the "Mobilmachungsdauer" was succesfully brought down from about a week in the 1960s-70s to just a few days by the early 80s (”Die Mobilmachungsdauer konnte von fünf Tagen (1976) auf zwei Tage (1986) reduziert werden”. page. 90) About the NVA and the T72, they still had over 500 of the critters (still only 1 T72 for every 2-3 T54/55s though ;-)). As for the BMP, they only had a battalion of BMP 2s, yes. But they had quite a few BMP 1s (over a 1000). Not quite enough to equip their units to soviet standards though, but still nothing to sneeze at.

Those numbers are a good illustration of the paper magic that was running rampant in the wp armies. I seriously doubt their real value. Semantics are part of it. Mobilmachungsdauer looks to me to reffer to the influx of reservists into parent units. That's not the same as getting a unit combat ready (if half the tanks are in the repairshop forexample, or if the nr of supply trucks are far below the minimum, etc).

Those nr for the T72's seem to be those of the official numbers for the NVA of the late 80's. AFAIK the numbers of T72's in 1985 was substantially lower (as the SU was not able to meet it's own requirements and had to sell as much as possible to non-WP nations for cash there weren't many left for the WP allies in europe).
Totals for 88/89 showed about 4 T55's for every T72.
But those bmps were mostly OLD bmp-1's. You know, the type where the Sagger tended to fall off the launcher when driving over anything but a flat road. ;-)

Narwan