Quote:
Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
What? Why? What military did you serve with?
|
Ours (Canada). during the end of the cold war.
The Fulda Gap was the principle point of battle in any theoretical invasion by the Soviets which is why at one point NATO had 50 divisions of troops and tanks and massed artillery staged to defend it
At one point the American's had mined it with nuclear demolition charges
The Soviets primary strike group was their 8th army which included 6 armored regiments and a armored brigade, 10 motor vehicle regiments, 5 artillary regiments and attached air force and specialty units.
The 8th army was the vanguard. The Soviets employed operational maneuver groups behind it to push through any breach caused by the 8th army to attack Nato's rear. usually the OMG at the time consisted of two armies
A tank regiment had up to 200 tanks
iirc a Russian Motor Vehicle battalion had a least one one tank regiment as well. I'm foggy on org charts.
So the Russians would have had between 1200 and 1500 heavy tank formations in their vanguard army right off of the spot with another 3000 coming in behind them.
So yeah, that little piece of real estate was the lynch pin to hell.