AHC: Improve polish military performance in 2WW

[Toraach]

Inspired by this thread https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-italian-militarys-performance-in-ww2.429797/

The polish military's performance in '39 was bad, I mean really, really bad, I mean on strategic and operational level. Common soldiers and small units often fought bravery, and there were many heroic events. But overall the Polish Army lost badly.
My goal isn't to asking for a polish wank, about how Poland could have defeated Germany and won the War. I want to ask you what there could have been realistically done to making polish defence better, for the polish-german war lasting longer, and forcing Germans to having bigger cassulaties. By realistically I mean, what was avaible in Poland in late 30s, so no giving them heavy tanks, panzerfaust equivalents and jet fighters, or not a total mechanization of the Army.

I don't ask for making the polish military performance in later periods of the War, because polish units weren't fully independent and fought as parts of allied or soviet forces, with their equipment and their tactics under their orders.

I am thinking now about two things. Which they both are relativly easy, and in a case of one of them it isn't even money-depending at all.
1. Giving for the army a proper wireless communication equipment. I don't mean some cool radios on a company level, but in Poland even army commanders and Rydz-Śmigły the commaned in chief, didn't have any good communication between them, which of course severaly hurted performance. Of course there is also a matter of Rydz's escape from Warsaw to Brześć, and later to Zaleszczyki where didn't were any proper telecomunication.
2. A diffrent strategy during the campaign. Instead of armies screaning all borders with Germany, moving them into more defensible and shorter line in the country. Ordering them to dig, and preparing for the defense. Also I read somewhere that the polish inteligence gathered information that the main german attack will be from Silesia in direction of Warsaw, so moving more troops into this area.

At the end I want to admit, that Poland had been lucky in the eve of the war , that Poland avoided barely a totally humilating defeat. The original date for german attack was 26th of August, when Polish troops were less prepared and mobilized than on 1st of September. The total mobilization was called on 30th of August, still to late, but better even two days of a total mobilization, that not at all. If I'm correct french and british goverments pushed the polish goverment to postpone the mobilisation.

 

[starman]

Did you ever read Why Air Forces Fail? I'm sorry to say this but I think the Poles should've listened to Pilsudski, certainly not Rayski. Pilsudski said Poland shouldn't build planes except for a few recon aircraft. Rayski wanted a bomber fleet....There was no way Poland could match the Luftwaffe. What if Poland built very few aircraft and instead focused on antitank and antiaircraft guns, such as their homemade 75mm guns? That coupled with your point 2 above, would've improved performance.

 

[tomo pauk]

No bombers, apart from a token number as a show of force (aim is to fool the would-be-enemy to spend resources for air defense). Heavy anti aircraft guns belong to the 'fortress mentality', buy a small number to scare bombers over big cities, otherwise buy Bofors 40 mm in even greater nunbers than in OTL.
Fighters - forget the Mercury, buy either RR Kestrel or HS 12Y. Or make a V8 air cooled engine, using the Pegasus cylinders as base. Once monoplanes with retractable U/C are known to exist in USSR, make your own. Fighters need to be able to carry bomb(s). They need a good command and control system to work efficintly, so make plenty of radios. Have spies with radios close to German airbases, that will
a) warn of major raid taking off, and
b) fire illuminating grenades on set time during the night when you will be returning the favor
Observation posts are mandatory close to borders, but guard them well against German infantry attack.
Make sure that your A/C are well camouflaged and dispersed (was done in the OTL), have the AA traps ready near the air bases.
Try to have the Lorraine tractor license produced. Arm it with the French 25mm AA cannon, or Vickers 24.5mm, both for AA and AT job. Make a AT rifle for the heavy HG round, ot for the 15mm Besa. Don't forget the radios.
Make sure that 75-76mm artillery gets the split carriage, and hopefully install the muzzle brakes on the barrels. Split carriages allow for greater elevations and traverses, thus both classic artillery and AT job are made much better. Muzzle brakes will alow for a lighter carriage, and will lower the stress on the recoil system.
Ships - make small submarines.
Make hand-held mortars for infantry. Some SMGs would've been nice to have. I guess switch to the intermediate round is out of question.
Startegy - armies well spread are good to fight contraband, but not that good against a big foe that fights dirty and has bigger assets. Concentrate forces.

 

[Toraach]

Did you ever read Why Air Forces Fail? I'm sorry to say this but I think the Poles should've listened to Pilsudski, certainly not Rayski. Pilsudski said Poland shouldn't build planes except for a few recon aircraft. Rayski wanted a bomber fleet....There was no way Poland could match the Luftwaffe. What if Poland built very few aircraft and instead focused on antitank and antiaircraft guns, such as their homemade 75mm guns? That coupled with your point 2 above, would've improved performance.

You are both right and wrong. Right with that Rayski was a bad commander, wrong with the rest. Piłsudski is often regarded in Poland in non die hard fans of him circels, as a bad leader of the polish army during his dictatorship. As he was responsible for slowing modernization and creating a bad organizing scheme for the Army. But back to aircraft. Of course PZL 37 Łoś bombers were an expensive unnecessary toys, instead of them there should have been focus on fighters. And in that regard the polish air force was in a bad condition. Their planes PZL 11 were obsolete and there were problems with constructing new fighters, mainly caused by a lack of good engines for PZL.50 Jastrząb, which enlonged designing process, also too much efforts were put into constructing twin engine heavy fighters similar to unlucky Me110. To even more shown how bad was the situation in the Air Forces. They had this obsolete PZL 11, still that was still a capable fighter during the September Campaign. But after the stop of production of that, they waited for new fighters, but didn't get any, because design problems. But still the PZL concern sold a lot of a more advanced version of PZL 11, called PZL P.24 to Turkey, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, to be even funnier. This export was even continued in 39 when all knew that the war would start soon. So instead of buying fighters, the goverment allowed export.

No bombers, apart from a token number as a show of force (aim is to fool the would-be-enemy to spend resources for air defense). Heavy anti aircraft guns belong to the 'fortress mentality', buy a small number to scare bombers over big cities, otherwise buy Bofors 40 mm in even greater nunbers than in OTL.
Fighters - forget the Mercury, buy either RR Kestrel or HS 12Y. Or make a V8 air cooled engine, using the Pegasus cylinders as base. Once monoplanes with retractable U/C are known to exist in USSR, make your own. Fighters need to be able to carry bomb(s). They need a good command and control system to work efficintly, so make plenty of radios. Have spies with radios close to German airbases, that will
a) warn of major raid taking off, and
b) fire illuminating grenades on set time during the night when you will be returning the favor
Observation posts are mandatory close to borders, but guard them well against German infantry attack.
Make sure that your A/C are well camouflaged and dispersed (was done in the OTL), have the AA traps ready near the air bases.
Try to have the Lorraine tractor license produced. Arm it with the French 25mm AA cannon, or Vickers 24.5mm, both for AA and AT job. Make a AT rifle for the heavy HG round, ot for the 15mm Besa. Don't forget the radios.
Make sure that 75-76mm artillery gets the split carriage, and hopefully install the muzzle brakes on the barrels. Split carriages allow for greater elevations and traverses, thus both classic artillery and AT job are made much better. Muzzle brakes will alow for a lighter carriage, and will lower the stress on the recoil system.
Ships - make small submarines.
Make hand-held mortars for infantry. Some SMGs would've been nice to have. I guess switch to the intermediate round is out of question.
Startegy - armies well spread are good to fight contraband, but not that good against a big foe that fights dirty and has bigger assets. Concentrate forces.

A good point with SMGs. The only constructed in Poland called Mors, was a dissaster, technicaly, and industrially. Complicated, expensive, big and heavy. When the smg should be like PPS-43 or Grease Gun, cheap and easy to make and to use.
For ships, that was also a bad thing with the navy. They bought expensive destroyers, submarines. Which were unnecessary, and didn't play any part in the defensive war.
For hand mortals. But our troops had them. If I am thiking about the same thing you have mentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granatnik_wz._36 This is a very ligh mortal of polish designs.
Also I'm thinking about putting Maroszek's rifle into a production in the FK factory, instead of building Mausers for Republican Spain.

 

[TruthfulPanda]

If you read Polish I suggest the
http://www.dws.org.pl/
board.

 

[Toraach]

If you read Polish I suggest the
http://www.dws.org.pl/
board.

It is pretty obvious:

For hand mortals. But OUR troops had them.

 

[TruthfulPanda]

I'm not too bright

 

[starman]

You are both right and wrong. Right with that Rayski was a bad commander, wrong with the rest. Piłsudski is often regarded in Poland in non die hard fans of him circels, as a bad leader of the polish army during his dictatorship. As he was responsible for slowing modernization and creating a bad organizing scheme for the Army. But back to aircraft. Of course PZL 37 Łoś bombers were an expensive unnecessary toys, instead of them there should have been focus on fighters.

Even if they had emphasized fighters, would that have stopped the Luftwaffe? Didn't the Germans initially knock out Polish planes on the ground?

 

[Toraach]

Even if they had emphasized fighters, would that have stopped the Luftwaffe? Didn't the Germans initially knock out Polish planes on the ground?

No they did not. I am not asking about stopping Luftwaffe and winning the war but how to make this war harder for Germans.

 

[Driftless]

No they did not. I am not asking about stopping Luftwaffe and winning the war but how to make this war harder for Germans.

Shooting down more Stukas over the battlefield would do wonders for the Polish infantry's morale. Either the Germans might need to devote more fighter resource to protect them, or be more selective where they are used.

 

[General Ripper]

Maybe more tanks?

 

[Tizoc]

Okay, not in particular order:

1. Strategy - while not putting armies close to borders and concentrating them on shorter line deep within Poland makes military sense, it's bad idea politically. After all, if Polish army moves out of western part on makes a defensive line Narew-Wisła (down to ~Płock)-overland to Warta near Konin-Warta-OTL, what's stopping Germans from marching in and taking Greater Poland and Pomerania and then stopping and calling for conference of powers to keep their gains? After all, Poland didn't fight for those lands, so it doesn't really care about them, right? So there must be military presence in the west Poland and their must be resistance there. Just better planned than OTL.
2. Airforce - the problem with lack of modern fighters OTL came from earlier than PZL-50 programme. It stared with PZL-38/39 (heavy/light fighter) programs in 1934. Polish Air Force tried to leap forward with these two, but it didn't work out and it ended with obsolete fighters and nothing to replace them. If there was additional, "just in case", fighter programme - a direct replacment for PZL-11, assuming it starts in 1934/5, modern fighters would enter into service in 1938 I think (comparing to other succesfull programs at the time). Such a plane wouldn't be anything special - sth like a metal Fokker D.XXI (4 MG, ~450 km/h top speed), but comparable to BF 109 C/D.

 

[starman]

Maybe more tanks?

Best of all IMO would've been to mass produce antitank guns and AA guns. Mortars too. That would've been a lot easier than building tanks and planes and the most cost effective approach for a small power. It might not have saved Poland but it would've maximized German casualties.

 

[General Ripper]

it's bad idea politically. After all, if Polish army moves out of western part on makes a defensive line Narew-Wisła (down to ~Płock)-overland to Warta near Konin-Warta-OTL, what's stopping Germans from marching in and taking Greater Poland and Pomerania and then stopping and calling for conference of powers to keep their gains? .

Yep, this is important.

 

[TruthfulPanda]

A longer defence in 1939 was pointless - the WAllies were not coming. But the Soviet Army was.
The Polish Gov't/military (same thing) was informed that France will be able to launch an offensive on Mobilisation +14.

The only winning strategy in 1939 was ... not to play.
Agree to Danzig's reunification and negotiate over the corridor and wait until 1940, gaining half a year for itself and UK/France to rearm and retrain.

BTW - in 1939 the Polish airforce was dispersed to field airstrips and mostly not destroyed on the ground.
Poland also was making good AT cannon (and AT rifles) for that moment in time - the problem was with their quantity - only 36 per InfDiv.

Setting up defence at the "river line" carries the danger - as mentioned in a previous post - that Germany occupies the Corridor and Great Poland and calls it a day ... politically a no-no. So, again "not to play" ...

The Polish Army was as bad as the Italian one - 19 man squads with ONE LMG? And a lousy one at that - the BAR.
Reverting to the "long rifle" in the early 1930s - from the carbine - as to have 1km fire capability over iron sights?

BTW - motorisation is cheaper than horses - a field cannon needs 10 horses - six for gun and limber plus four for caisson. A good horse was close to 1000 Zlotys. To that add the cost harness and sadles. At this point a c.25K Zloty (5K USD or so) truck which can tow and carry the whole lot begins to look attractive.

 

[sdgottsch]

For ships, that was also a bad thing with the navy. They bought expensive destroyers, submarines. Which were unnecessary, and didn't play any part in the defensive war.

I've always been amazed that the European Baltic nations like Poland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark didn't buy old Clemson & Wickes DD's from the USA in the 1930s to increase their fleet size. In 1933, MGM bought an old Wickes DD for $35,000 for the movie "Hell Below". For the cost of a new DD, you could buy an old DD and refit it for much less than the going rate of $1M per DD. I acknowledge those Baltic countries used their Naval building contracts to prop-up their nation's shipyards during the Depression (trying keep the population employed) but these countries needed these type of ships to defend their coasts.

 

[TruthfulPanda]

I acknowledge those Baltic countries used their Naval building contracts to prop-up their nation's shipyards during the Depression (trying keep the population employed)

Even more stupid than that - Poland (or somebody) was basically bribed to order two Ouragan class destroyers (which were crap) from France, and later ordered two powerful destroyers from the UK. Powerful as in "ersatz cruiser penis waving".
Also - gigantic +1000 ton subs, instead of 250/350 ton jobs ...

 

[fasquardon]

But still the PZL concern sold a lot of a more advanced version of PZL 11, called PZL P.24 to Turkey, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, to be even funnier. This export was even continued in 39 when all knew that the war would start soon. So instead of buying fighters, the goverment allowed export.

It was because the Polish government figured they needed money more than they needed the planes (IMO they were right, since as things stood, there wasn't the money or the production volume to give them enough PZL P.24s to be worth the disruption - introducing new hardware on the eve of war is one of the things the French ADA got wrong, the Poles were wise to avoid this mistake).

fasquardon

 

[Lord Wyclif]

Not having to fight a war on two fronts, may have helped.

General Ironside turn up with a BEF, might have had a political impact. Much more difficult to escape from than Dunkirk though. British Mobile Division plus maybe an infantry division holds the Germans up for a few extra days before having to surrender.

 

[sdgottsch]

... introducing new hardware on the eve of war is one of the things the French ADA got wrong, the Poles were wise to avoid this mistake).fasquardon

Cannot agree with you more, even Germany impressed all serviceable aircraft in country in March 1938, including orders for all foreign governments, in preparation for the Anschluss. This impacted the delivery of FW-200 to foreign partners for example.