Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I'm still not convinced that Polish and Soviet cavalry could have chased off a couple of German Panzergrenadier divisions (IIRC, one Panzer and two PZGR division, plus the Danish Jutland division). I'm not even convinced that most of the Soviet and Polish units designated as cavalry formations even had horses. Going Home actually clearly identifies the number of cavalry in a given unit and most "Cavalry" divisions listed therein have no cavalry strengths listed. (i.e. it differentiates between infantry and cavalry within a given unit). This seems to make sense. There seems to have been consensus on the old forum that the Europe of '96-2000 didn't have an adequate horse population to properly mount all of those cavalry units.
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Yes I remember this debate quite well, and I would tend to agree that with everything considered there wouldn't be enough horses to go around properly mount all of the troops.
As for the Cavalry Division that they list, remember these units had been previously MRDs and TDs that had been transformed over to Cavalry as their heavy equipment was stripped to re-equipped other units. At the same time there were personnel that they lost. So the Cavalry Divisions are basic new fresh units with few veterans. Remember the 10th Soviet Guard Tank Division received 3000 new troop during the spring of 2000 from Central Asia.
Then try to figure out when these the Soviet Union had transformed the Divisions of the 22nd Cavalry Army to Cavalry and were there areas of Russia where large horse population exist. Then could they move them to the staging areas of the 22nd Cavalry Army. This seems to be the largest formation to converted to Cavalry.
Some of the Soviet Division that were Austria, Germany, and Poland have been partial converted to Cavalry. Ironic the 96th Cavalry Division which was part of the 22nd Cavalry Army still has Infantry listed, leading me to believe that there was still a limited amount motor transportation by some means to help move the Infantry as needed. Then again the 22nd Cavalry Army HQ and 96th Cavalry Division were quartered together so maybe the infantry come Army level units that was absorbed into the Division after things had settle down.