Saturday, March 28, 2015

More engineering goodness

My 1981 East German pioneer company is now complete. My previous post, "Bridging the gap" (March 8, 2015) was the beginning of this unit, showing a TMM-3 bridging platoon:

The other platoons of the company consisted of BAT-M bulldozers:

MTU-20 AVLBs:
A twin-treadway, cantilever-launched, box girder bridge 65.5 feet in length (20 meters) and capable of supporting 50 tons, all mounted on a modified T-55 chassis. 

MDK-2M trench diggers:
Actually, East German engineers in 1981 were more likely to be using the MDK-2Ms predecessor, the BTM:
But I'll have to use what Marcin has provided. I'll just consider my engineers to be extremely well equipped. 

Also IMR obstacle clearing vehicles:
Forgive the last two photos
Photos of the real IMR in action seem to be nonexistent.

IRM "Zhuk" (meaning "beetle" in Russian) engineer reconnaissance vehicles:
Which were specifically designed to reconnoiter riverbeds for suitable sites for bridging:
but also for detecting mines, either on land or on the riverbed, the underwater mining of potential river crossing points being common on modern battlefields:

The engineers themselves were generally mounted in obsolete APCs cast off by the infantry. As my company is to be attached to a motor rifle regiment, the APCs would be wheeled, so I'm using BTR-60Ps:
although BTR-152s or even BTR-40s would be possible for engineers in a reserve or training unit. For a company attached to an armored unit, BTR-50PKs would be the most likely. 

Each divisional pioneer company had its own reconnaissance platoon of BRDM-2s (or possibly BRDM-1s) for scouting and screening:
which for my purpose, is more usefully cascaded down to the regimental level, which is how I represent it.

And finally, the commander of a pioneer company required only a single radio for contact with higher command and so was usually mounted in a 4WD. I chose a UAZ-469:
But other similar vehicles were just as likely. 

And now here is my company:
Engineers, even more so than other types of support units, were prone to have a whole gaggle of various sizes of trucks accompanying them, so to represent that, I added a URAL-375D and a KrAZ-255B to the transport vehicle stands. 

Not a bad weekend's work. Now on to the next project!

2 comments:

  1. Our IMR is based on T-55 (count the wheels), so everything's fine ;)

    ReplyDelete