Polish 6th Pomeranian Airborne Division

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by chico20854

On the Podhale Brigade, it was formally the 5th Internal Defense Brigade, an Army formation with territorial defense and internal security duties (part of the WOW Internal Troops), assigned to the Polish Internal Front's Warsaw Military District and not assigned to the Warsaw Pact command structure. I don't have any particular unit history for it; it was stationed near Krakow and potentially would have fought in southern Poland. GDW totally missed the WOW's existence, so I could see how many of the references to the ORMO are actually militias built upon the framework of WOW command structures.

Yes, WOW wasn't well known in the West. More detail here:

Structure of the 5th Podhale Brigade of Internal Defense Troops
- command and staff
- three motorized infantry regiments (in each three battalions, a mortar battery and a gun battery)
- tank battalion
- a 76 mm cannon battalion
- a 120 mm mortar battalion
- a 37 mm AA cannon battalion
- a reconnaissance company
- a sapper company
- a chemical company
- a communications company
- a traffic regulation company
- a medical company

[https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Podh...n%C4%99trznej]

So, it's basically a reduced motorized rifle division in which all infantry regiments lack their tank battalions and the tank regiment is reduced to a tank battalion. Presumably, "motorized rifle regiment" means BTR-152 at best, but I find trucks more plausible. Poland never bought BTR-60s for its armed forces and just fielded some in the riot police forces. All equipment is likely obsolete by 1989 and I presume the tanks to be T-34, probably T-34-85M1 or M2, which were similar to the Soviet Models of 1960 and 1969. I don't know if the Polish ever got around adding infrared for their drivers.

In addition, Krakow had - until the end of the Cold War - it's own Territorial Defense Force regiment named in the name of "Bartosz Głowacki". Its forces were organized as such:

Regimental Organization
- command and staff
- 4-6 infantry companies with each:
• 3 infantry platoons and
• a heavy machine gun platoon
- special company:
• sapper platoon
• communications platoon and
• chemical platoon
-supply platoon

The Territorial Defense Forces were subject to the armed forces, but not integrated into Warsaw Pact command structures, similar to how the German Territorialheer was organized (and others in Western and Eastern Europe).