Greece v. Turkey

[Lurken]

Originally Posted by Olefin

And the East Europe Sourcebook is frankly a joke - it has the Greek Army armed with Soviet tanks and vehicles - and the Turks have Russian equipment too

Hmm... Then I will put less credence to the book and what it claims is happening in Estonia.

[Legbreaker]

The Greeks (and Italians) are essentially Pact by 2000 - the offensive by Italy northwards did occur in conjunction with the Pact offensive at the same time into the same region.
Therefore, why is it so unbelievable the Greeks wouldn't have received some tanks from the Soviets?

Also, why shouldn't Turkey have some soviet vehicles? Couldn't they have captured them sometime in the proceeding several years? After all, we've got evidence of US units using captured equipment for most of the war (the M81 for example in the Soviet Vehicle Guide captured and used since 1997).

[Olefin]

Leg - they have units exclusively armed with Soviet tanks - and the chances of that are zero - neither army had any Soviet tanks at all - zero - and the lack of any of the tanks that were in their actual armies makes that book basically worthless - its like a City of Angels on steroids (i.e where the heck did the Mexicans get all that Soviet equipment)

I basically ignore the whole Sourcebook as to what tanks the Greeks and Turks have - and remember the Turks are mentioned in the NATO sourcebook and it does tell what tanks their army actually has - all it would have taken is the author literally cracking open a GDW published official canon book that was available at the GDW office to get it right for Turkey

And I highly doubt the Turks - who got their asses kicked and their army destroyed in Thrace - have much in the way of any captured Soviet equipment

[Olefin]

example from the NATO sourcebook

Remember that these are prewar levels and do not represent the current (1
July 2000) condition of any unit. MBTs are either Leopard Is or M60s refitted to
M60A4 standards.

Also if you look at the two sourcebooks the Turks have a completely different order of battle in the official NATO sourcebook versus what is in the East European Sourcebook

The East European Sourcebook lists four divisions and one Corps with 62 total tanks

The NATO book lists one armored division, five armored brigades, nineteen various infantry divisions, four infantry brigades and three specialist brigades and a grand total of nine tanks - which is probably way way too low

The one book refers to the Turkish entry in the NATO book - but the two descriptions are two very different armies

[Legbreaker]

Why wouldn't they have units exclusively equipped with captured equipment? It makes absolutely perfect sense logicistally to lump all of one type into one location.
If only recently captured, well, that's one thing, but given they've had quite a long time of relative stability to reorganise, I'm just not seeing any reason those tanks, etc wouldn't have been reassigned if only to ease the logistical and training issues.