Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Back of Beyond => Topic started by: Rogerc on December 18, 2018, 06:18:22 PM
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So as I had these out for a game that was called off I thought I might share my growing collection of Poles for the 1919-20 Russso-Polish war. More details on the blog.
https://gapagnw.blogspot.com/2018/12/polish-lancers-1919-1920.html
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4804/44553918120_fe87f65445.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2aT5tC5)polish legion (https://flic.kr/p/2aT5tC5) by Roger Castle (https://www.flickr.com/photos/152172226@N06/), on Flickr
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Nice work! :-* :-* :-*
An interesting conflict!
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How are you going to do tachankas? (taczenki) That usually seems to be the sticking point for 25mm.
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Thanks Traveller, it is a really interesting conflict.
Mark Warlord games have a really nice Tachanka for WW2 I think I can just Swap the heads on the crew and we should be there. If not I may require new crew but the cart and horses should work just fine. Warbases also do one in 28mm MDF but I am not quite as keen. The Eureka miniatures one is lovely but its too small to fit with other 28mm figures.
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Actually, it would be the Warlord cart that would bother me, if I was going to be bothered. It's clearly one of the later Soviet purpose built ones, rather than a commandeered civilian carriage.
I've seen the Eureka one in among 28mm and it didn't bother me. Sure, it was too small if you got to study it beside cavalry, but it did at least make for a less bulky item (and at least in that game it spent its time far enough away from other figures anyway).
But then I use an N scale train with 15mm figures, because I worry more about footprint than staying in scale.
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Thanks Mark, I will have another good look before I decide which one I am going to buy. Already bought and sold the Eureka one due to the scale, might need to consider the Warbases one, watch this space.
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If you've sold it, you'll never come round to the Eureka one. The consensus does seem to be it is too small.
The Warbase on is post RCW too -- the lack of back seat is a giveaway. I confess I would take the Warlord one and give it a seat. I like their horses more.
Beautiful figures, by the way. I didn't have patience to do those conversions in 15mm.
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First weekend of Fbruary we have the York show so I will mkae adecision then. Your right the Warlord horses are much nicer.
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Why not use some kind of civilian carriage, eventually with some small changes?
Tachangas then were not in military production, but mostly civilian carts with perhaps some refurbishing were in use.
When it comes to the Poles, I have only seen one photo with a simple East-European farm cart in use with a cavalry unit, never the more "high-class" carriages used by the red army.
Furthermore the Poles cavalry explicitly writes, they preferred to fight cavalry from a dismounted position, if time allowed it, with their machine guns on the ground. So Poles fighting fighting from a racing or standing cart, like the Red Army is often shown, would be rather unique.
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I think the point of using nice carts is that they were sprung. Taking an unsprung cart cross-country would be unpleasant.
Infantry often took their mgs in ordinary carts.
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I fully agree with you.
It was different tactics, I guess caused by mainly different resources at hand.
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So tactically they were Poles apart?
It’s the diminutive crew and horses that make the Eureka tachankaclook small. I have one and to be honest it doesn’t bother me.
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Tachanka had high mobility and speed, thanks to the sprung base, which allowed her to accompany the cavalry on the march, without limiting its speed.
The machine gun on the tachanka is always ready for battle without prior preparation. Tachanka allows you to maneuver fire on the battlefield, quickly focusing the fire of many machine guns in the right place.
The tactics of using a tachanka in a cavalry battle is simple - the tachankas drove to the flanks, turned around, and opened fire on the enemy. The cavalry at this moment attacked the enemy in equestrian ranks. Tachanka often acted "waves" when half fired, and the other half, under their cover, moved to a new place for firing. They acted in the same way during the retreat, covering their troops.
In addition, tachankas, with a significant number, could be used to transport infantry, increasing the mobility of the army. Makhno used them very widely and successfully, the speed of which the army was moving was incredible for that time thanks to the tachankas.
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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" o_o.
I have never seen any mentioning of the Poles using or forming units of Tachangas during the Polish-Russian conflict 1919-21.
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I am not very familiar with the tactics of using the tachanka by the Poles.
I am aware of another feature in the actions of cavalry in battle. The Red cavalry, with the exception of the Cossacks, preferred to use pistols and revolvers in the cavalry battle to defeat the enemy (many riders had two pistols at once). The Poles (like the Cossacks) relied more on lances and sabers.
Sabers red cavalry preferred to attack against the infantry.
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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.
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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.
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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" o_o.
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.
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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.
(http://c.radikal.ru/c12/1812/a5/85a21d0a629b.jpg)
1919. The machine-gunners (14th Lancers) cross the river Stryi.
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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.
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http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=75557.msg923696#msg923696
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I like accuracy)))
Field photographs of Polish cavalry with peaks are not really common, but they definitely exist.
(http://b.radikal.ru/b07/1812/c7/11e82dfb948c.jpg)
(http://b.radikal.ru/b06/1812/5a/4de9f8372093.jpg)
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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.
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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.
(http://b.radikal.ru/b43/1812/7e/e6790e654646.jpg)
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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.
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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.
(http://d.radikal.ru/d34/1812/21/71193df01ea2.jpg)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Well, we will consider this question to require additional research.
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Indeed.
Merry Christmas! Although I assume you use the the Orthodox calendar and it's still a couple of weeks yet.
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Here is part of a picture, painted by a M. Bylina, a well known painter, showing, what could be a Taczanka.
The quality is awful, but so is the original in the book "Ksiega Jazdy Polskiej" (1938) also.
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An image search on the title pulls up a nicer copy of the picture, for me at least. "Bitwa pod Komarowem" (Battle of Komarow).
Also lots of nice pictures of re-enactors and some movie scenes.
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Indeed.
Merry Christmas! Although I assume you use the the Orthodox calendar and it's still a couple of weeks yet.
I also congratulate everyone on Merry Christmas!
We have many Poles and Germans living in Altai, a lot of mixed families. That's why many of us celebrate Christmas twice :)
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Actually, it would be the Warlord cart that would bother me, if I was going to be bothered. It's clearly one of the later Soviet purpose built ones, rather than a commandeered civilian carriage.
I've seen the Eureka one in among 28mm and it didn't bother me. Sure, it was too small if you got to study it beside cavalry, but it did at least make for a less bulky item (and at least in that game it spent its time far enough away from other figures anyway).
But then I use an N scale train with 15mm figures, because I worry more about footprint than staying in scale.
I agree. here's a pic of the Eureka Tchankas alongside Copplestone cavalry. Work absolutely fine imho
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Hi
Concur with Ignatieff - my Eureka Tchanka sits alongside my Copplestone cavalry and looks ok. With hindsight the only thing that looks a little undescale are the Eureka horses pulling it but, on the tabletop, it really doesn’t show.
Hope that helps.
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Thanks guys, this really did turn into a great discussion I appreciate it. I painted and based the Eureka model but just couldnt live with the scale difference, especially the horses, suppose I could have changed them for larger ones.
I am tempted by the Warlord Tchanka (Love all the diferent spellings, lets not have a debate about which one is correct) if I need to do a bit of sculpting to make it righ then so be it. I may pick one up at the York show.
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very Impressive!!