Polish Lancers 1919

[cuprum]

By the way, Budyonny recalled that for the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War, tachankas were made centrally at the factory.
All the machine guns in the cavalry units of the Red Army were on tachankas, as part of machine-gun platoons.

[Rogerc]

iNTERESTING GUYS THANK YOU, SO APART FROM wARLORD AND wARBASES (HAVIGN EXCLUDED eUREKAS) IS THERE A CIVILAN SPRUNG BUGGY i CAN USE IN 28MM? mY INITAL THOUGHT IS PROBABLY NOT i AM BEST MODIFYING THE wARLORD ONE BUT OPEN TO THOUGTHS.

[Mark Plant]

So tactically they were Poles apart?
Yes.
The Poles mainly was an infantry army, first when 1 Cavalry Army under Budyonny attacked, the Poles formed and fought in large cavalry groups.
The Poles also thought the use of Tachankas very "un-sportly"  .
I have never seen any mentioning of the Poles using or forming units of Tachangas during the Polish-Russian conflict 1919-21.

I'm going to disagree here.

The Poles attached cavalry regiments to most infantry divisions. They were a mostly infantry army, but they liked their infantry to have good mounted support.

Cavalry only brigades were formed too, but no higher units. Polish cavalry "divisions" are merely two brigades put under operational control.

The equivalent of the Red Army where Rifle Divisions might have only rudimentary cavalry but there were whole armies and Corps of cavalry did not exist.

I'm not sure why you think Poles had no tachankas. My information is they used plenty. As Cuprum says, Polish cavalry did not use firearms much, so they needed them to provide fire support.

Pygmy Wars has a couple of orders of battle and you can see the cavalry brigades had plenty of MGs. I'd be astounded if a cavalry unit of the time had unmounted MGs, so I presume they are all tachankas.

There's also some accounts of Polish cavalry at the time using lots of tachankas. Unfortunately I'm on holiday at the moment so can't give a direct reference.

[cuprum]

There is one problem that confuses me. I have a fairly extensive collection of photos of the Polish army during the Polish-Soviet War, but there is not a single photo of the Polish tachanka. It seems to me quite strange.

More precisely, there is one photo, but it is of little use.



1919. The machine-gunners (14th Lancers) cross the river Stryi.

[Mark Plant]

Why does it bother you Cuprum?

I'm impressed you have a large collection of photos of Poles though. I have parade photos, studio photos, propaganda photos, photos from Poznan and photos taken by journalists around Warsaw. Photos from the front lines aren't that common.

I have wondered if the Poles actually flew pennons on their lances in action, given it's a stupid thing to do and the other armies they came from gave it up. Finding photos of Polish cavalry in the field with lances at all proved tricky.

[cgh]

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=75557.msg923696#msg923696

[cuprum]

I like accuracy)))

Field photographs of Polish cavalry with peaks are not really common, but they definitely exist.

[Mark Plant]

Well we agree about liking to make sure.

I don't think I've ever seen a photo of a White tachanka either. Not even a White Cossack one.

[cuprum]

I have this photo. This is the Don Cossacks 1919. But I guess White didn’t use the tachanka widely and didn’t learn from the Reds their effective tactics.

[Mark Plant]

I'm pretty sure the Whites used plenty. Just the people who were on tachankas weren't officers, so didn't get many photos. For White photos to exist they had to not only be posh enough to take them, they had to get out as well.

Mamontov's horse battery had tachankas just to protect the guns.

I really like those photos too. 

[cuprum]

I do not think. I am familiar with a mass of memoirs, both white and red, and I rarely see in them the mention of white tachankas when describing battles (as opposed to red ones). I think that if whites used them, it was only due to the initiative of some commanders. In addition, in the red cavalry, all the machine guns were supposed to be on the tachanka according to the staffing table - I haven't seen anything like this in whites.

Found another image of the Polish tachanka - in the picture. Here is a good idea of its action before the cavalry attack.

[Mark Plant]

The Soviets seem to have think they invented tachankas and made more fuss about them, that's for sure. They also emphasized firepower more. But we must be seeing different things, because I have loads of references to White tachanka. (Plus references to the number varying wildly between regiments, because one of the weaknesses of the White armies was that they didn't share resources, whereas the Soviet command was much more in control of that sort of thing.)

That Ural Cossacks page I just posted has orders of battle where almost all the cavalry units have MGs (and the Ural Cossacks were considered short on MGs). The article on the attack on Lbishchensk mentions one being used directly.

I've got some soldiers who were at the front talking about White and Polish cavalry on my page: http://www.pygmywars.com/history/cavalry/cavalry.html and they all mention tachankas as standard in the Polish and White armies.

[ts]

According to Isaac Babel , who was a political officer at Budyonny, his 1st Horse Army used two types of taczankas:
light taczanka, so-called assessor, who used light carriages confiscated from officials of the tsarist Russia, and heavier carriages confiscated from rich peasants in the Volga region used, in particular carriages of German settlers. These were often richly ornamented, with hand-painted ornaments, equipped with springs, and their bottoms were iron-shod.

When it comes to the Poles using taczankas, I believe these mostly must havebeen captured from the Reds, normally themounted regiments with have carried their machine-guns on horses,much in the same way as can be seen on pictures here
http://odkrywca.pl/kawaleria-ii-rp-karabiny-maszynowe-na-jukach-,756182.html

The French rapport on your site is very good and gives a correct view on Polish cavalry in that period.

[cuprum]

Who first invented the tachanka is not possible to say. But Makhno used it most effectively. Only he had a horse-machine-gun regiment, which numbered about 200 tachankas. In a maneuverable battle, it is a monstrous force. With the help of these machine guns, the Barbovich cavalry corps was destroyed in the Crimea.

I read your translation of the article by General Shinkarenko. He does not mention the use of white tachankas by the white troops. He talks about machine guns carried by a horse and machine guns mounted on cars.

Of course the tachanka was used by white cavalrymen, as it is convenient, but, as I said, it was an initiative of individual commanders, but not an official rule. Accordingly, the scale of use was less, and the practice of use is less common.

[Mark Plant]

Well Shinkarenko isn't going to call them tachankas when speaking to a foreign audience who wouldn't understand the word. He uses cart..

I just can't see the White cavalry using large numbers of machine guns, but refusing to use tachankas. I know they were old-fashioned but that's ridiculous. Carrying round dozens of guns that the open form of warfare doesn't allow them to use much?

It's not like there's heaps of references or pictures of cavalry with horse carried mgs either.