Osprey ELI 231 Soviet Airborne Forces 1930 1991 By David Campbell True Pdf.pdf

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Soviet Airborne Forces
1930–91
DAVID CAMPBELL
ILLUSTRATED BY JOHNNY SHUMATE
Elite • 231
Soviet Airborne Forces
1930–91
DAVID CAMPBELL
ILLUSTRATED BY JOHNNY SHUMATE
Series editors Martin Windrow & Nick Reynolds
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY
EARLY YEARS OF THE VDV
Origins
Building an airborne force
4
5
6
THE VDV GOES TO WAR
Operations before June 1941
The Great Patriotic War begins
Stumbling in the snow at Rzhev–Vyazma
Dropping on the Dnepr
15
THE VDV IN THE COLD WAR
Hungary 1956
Operating in a nuclear world
Czechoslovakia 1968
Rotors, not silk
31
THE VDV IN AFGHANISTAN
CONCLUSION
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
50
62
63
64
SOVIET AIRBORNE FORCES
1930–91
INTRODUCTION
A paratrooper, wearing jump
overalls, a cloth jump helmet
and armed with what appears
to be a well-worn AKS-47
assault rifle, stands in line after
a route march, 1971. By this
time the men of the VDV were
a recognized elite; General-
polkovnik Vasily F. Margelov
had been relentless in his
drive to turn the VDV into a
strategic asset, and had used
the invasion of Czechoslovakia
as a demonstration of their
capabilities and élan. (Sputnik/
TopFoto)
During the 1930s the Soviet Union was the unquestioned world leader
in the development of airborne forces and doctrine. With its first tactical
parachute jump on 2 August 1930, the RKKA (Raboche-krestyanskaya
Krasnaya armiya,
‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army’) opened a new chapter
in warfare that would have far-reaching consequences in the Great Patriotic
War of 1941–45 – though not, ironically, for the Soviet Union.
The airborne forces of the Soviet Union were known as the VDV or
Vozdushno-desantnye voyska,
literally ‘air-landing forces’; ‘air-landing’
(hereafter translated as ‘airborne’) was a term that referred to parachute
units, specifically air-landed units, and the type of operations that employed
them both. Innovative and forward-thinking, the VDV strove to explore the
possibilities inherent in the delivery of large numbers of highly trained troops
well behind the enemy’s lines. However, the Great Purge of 1937–38 (and
its grim echoes down to 1941) ensured that such ambitions were smothered.
That damage to strategic leadership combined with chronic
shortages of transport aircraft to ensure that the VDV’s
performance in the Great Patriotic War was overshadowed by
the ground forces of the Red Army (Krasnaya
Armiya).
Despite
a number of small-scale successes, there were only two major
operational uses of Soviet airborne troops in their designated
role, at Vyazma in January–February 1942 and the Dnepr
River in September 1943, both operations ending in failure.
In 1946, control of the VDV passed from the VVS (Voyenno-
Vozdushnyye Sily,
‘Military Air Forces’) to the direct control
of the
Ministr Vooruzhonnykh Sil SSSR
(‘Minister of the
Armed Forces of the USSR’), where it became a strategic asset.
Under the leadership of General-polkovnik Vasily F. Margelov
from 1954, the VDV was organized and trained to conduct
large-scale deep insertions behind enemy lines, attacking
command-and-control facilities, lines of communication and
key infrastructure targets such as nuclear power plants. To
overcome the traditional weaknesses of airborne forces – a
lack of mobility and low firepower – the VDV rebuilt itself
into a highly flexible striking force, well-equipped with integral
air assets as well as large numbers of air-delivered armoured
vehicles and self-propelled guns.
4
The VDV played a major role during the Hungarian Uprising of June–
November 1956, and in Czechoslovakia during the ‘Prague Spring’ protests
of January–August 1968. During the Soviet–Afghan War (December
1979–February 1989), the VDV became the key assault force of the Soviet
Army (Sovetskaya
Armiya),
proving to be among the most formidable of
the Mujahideen’s opponents. During the conflict the VDV implemented
organizational evolutions and tactics that had started in the 1960s with the
development of the air-assault concept – the transport, insertion and support
of air-landed troops by helicopter rather than parachute.
Throughout its existence the VDV would reflect key aspects of the Soviet
Union’s broader history: its intellectually ambitious beginnings thwarted by
self-sabotage; the bloody exigencies demanded of it by war; its adaptation to
the realities of a nuclear ‘stalemate’; and its inability to solve what appeared
to be a simple problem in a client state on its southern border.
Airborne troops in training in
the Sverdlovsk region, 1975.
The overalls they wear are more
or less unchanged from those
issued to their forebears in the
1930s, and would continue to
serve the VDV right through the
war in Afghanistan and beyond.
(TASS via Getty Images)
CHRONOLOGY
2 August 1930
11 December 1932
December 1938
22 June 1941
July–December 1941
18 January 1942
April–June 1943
24 September 1943
3 June 1946
May 1954
3 November 1956
20–21 August 1968
24 December 1979
29 February 1980
April 1980–June 1985
19 November 1987
15 February 1989
9 November 1989
26 December 1991
Kombrig Leonid G. Minov leads a practice air
assault that informs the establishment of the VDV.
The first special-purpose airborne brigade is formed
in the Leningrad Military District. By 1936 the
force expands to three brigades and three regiments.
By this time six airborne brigades have been formed,
plus three airborne regiments.
Operation
Barbarossa,
Hitler’s invasion of the
Soviet Union.
The six airborne brigades are expanded into ten
airborne corps, later converted into rifle divisions.
The Vyazma airborne operation commences. It is a
failure, concluding on 28 February 1942.
Twenty new Guards airborne brigades are raised.
The Dnepr airborne operation is launched.
Control of the VDV passes to the Ministry of
Defence.
General-polkovnik Vasily F. Margelov takes
command of the VDV, continuing in that role (with
a hiatus in 1959–61) until 1979.
Operation
Vikhr’
(‘Whirlwind’), the Soviet invasion
of Hungary.
Operation
Dunay
(‘Danube’), the Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Soviet paratroopers and special forces overthrow
the Afghan government.
The Kunar Valley operation.
Operations
Panjshir I–Panjshir IX.
Operation
Magistral
(‘Highway’) begins, concluding
on 10 January 1988.
The last Soviet troops leave Afghanistan.
The Berlin Wall falls.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union.
5

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