Polish Projects and Prototypes - 1939

[RoyalBengalTiger]

Wow, 50th post, 10 000 views.

This one is special.

I'll make this one with something cute.

Ciągnik PZInż 322


Seen here with bridging:


Seen here with the barrel of the 155 mm wz 40:


Engine displacement: 995 cm3
Power: 24 HP (18 kW) / 3600 RPM
Wheels: 16" front, 20" rear
Length: 2.3 m
Weight: 900 kg
Tractive effort: 855 kG force (8.3 kN), which is impressive for such a light vehicle.
Top speed: 33 km/h
Top speed with a trailer with a 5 ton load: 20 km/h

It will have like 3 mobility, but it will be all terrain, so better than the horse.
It'll be for bridging (historically accurate, and the in game bridging units will only walk 2 fields, I'll make sure this across all nations).
It'll be for the 155 mm artillery, because that's how it was used in the photo.
I'll probably find a couple other uses for it too, to have a cheap replacement option for horses from 1940 onward.





I could not find a good tractor icon that would look like this one, so I'm making one myself.
Apologies for the fenders, but all that will disappear when the resolution shrinks to OG icon level.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

Update:

Finding bugs such as the 100 mm Canet having the same range as the 100 mm wz 14/19, even though it had 4 km more range in reality...
Then the Ur had an HA of 7, while the PIAT had 6, even though the PIAT can drill through much thicker armor.

These are important, because Poland got PIATs delivered even to the partisans in the real timeline, so I'll have the PIAT as an AT infantry later in the war, but the newer unit should be better too, right?
In the end, the Ur gets the nerf treatment. It's down from 7 to 4. This will make it about as good as 20 mm autocannons, so don't despair.
The PIAT is about where it should be, a bit less effective than the panzerfaust, which is correct (more below).

Then I need to go over all other similar units, which is probably a couple dozen tweaks in total.


Also, the little tractor that could (pull with a force almost equal to its weight):


And finally, a unit that uses an existing icon.
This icon is not used at all in the efile, and it shows doods with a small rocket launcher.

Meet the Skowronek.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Skrzypi%C5%84ski
The only info I can ever find is that the above engineer was working on it. The book that the wiki page references does not have further info.
Poland had a rocket launcher in development, so this will replace the Ur in 1940 or 1941, and then it will be replaced by the PIAT later in the war (I'll have some weapon systems including tanks and airplanes and even cruisers in the Polish roster, but only those that Polish soldiers in exile, or the underground really used).

I'll do some speculation here, but it is what it is. Might not be real, but it will be realistic.
Skrzypiński worked on light weapons - pistols, sub machine guns (in fact he letter "S" in the VIS pistol is after his last name).
Poland had a 46 mm grenade launcher in service, the Granatnik wz. 1936


I'll assume the rocket launcher would use the same caliber as the grenade launcher. This was a common theme in Poland.
The 120 mm mortar wz. 40 ST was designed to use the same ammo as the 120 mm howitzer wz. 1878/09/31 for instance (I can find more if I dig deeper, this is one I can name without any research).
Regarding where to put the HA rating, HEAT rounds penetrate proportionately to their caliber, and more modern ones get better for a given caliber.

The PIAT had and 86 mm caliber and penetrated 100 mm of armor. HA of 8.
The bazooka had a 60 mm caliber and 75 mm penetration. HA of 8.
The panzerfaust klein had a caliber of 100 mm and 140 mm of penetration and the groß had 150 mm and 200-220 mm respectively. HA of 8 to 10 in the efile.
So a 46 mm HEAT round of similar tech level would drill through some 60 mm.
To keep it in line, it'll get an HA rating of 6.

That's all for now, time to grind some more.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

UPDATE:

I'm mostly done with infantry.
No more marine special forces. There was a regular marine infantry battalion though, so regular marines exist.
The marine infantry battalion had sapper unit. This unit was added to the efile.
National guard renamed (gwardia narodowa -> obrona narodowa). This is for historical accuracy.

Removed some of the special paratroop units, and a lot of the various commandos and assault infantry, but added the Cichociemni (Silent Unseen).
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cichociemni
Polish airborne commando/partizan unit, very Rambo.
Since these folks had broad extensive training, they'll be around in 5 varieties:
PIAT
SMG Infantry
Staff
HMG
Engineer

This should make up for the lack of fictional special forces, the real ones were cooler.

I also need a break, it took me hours to check wikipedia and verify everything.
But I'm happy tired.

[randowe]

Be careful! When you start editing units in a efile there will be no end and suddenly it is 2 years later and you are not even finished
Keep it up

[RoyalBengalTiger]

I know, I'm only doing big edits to Poland.
And even then I try to limit the scope to a couple days per unit type, a lot of which is replacing icons for vehicles.

I have infantry, AT, AA, DP, tanks all done in the first iteration, then I'll revisit and check for mistakes, but that should be quicker.
Fortifications and other types that have little stuff in them should be multiple per day probably.

The other countries only get edits if there is something really obviously wrong.
I was thinking that the bazooka, PIAT, panzerfaust and panzerschrek should all have different HA levels, but I figured that I would have to go through all nations and find every HEAT round based anti-tank weapon, so I'm leaving out small inconsistencies.
AT rifles were so much less effective that the rocket launchers made them obsolete right away, so those do get edited all over the whole efile, because they had higher HA than the PIAT.

So yeah, maybe not 2 years, but probably 2 months.

That means the whole campaign will be out I guess early next year.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

It was 10 000 views so recently, now it's over 11 000.
Quite a few people visit here.

I did kick out a few recon vehicles, those made by CWS that in the efile are available in the early 1940's. The PZInz 303 exists, and the CWS had no scout car projects that I can find.

I'm doing the dual purpose units now, I'm keeping a rule of thumb that if it's not an armored truck and it has an AA gun, it's going to be under the AA category, and if it is armored, then it'll be dual purpose.

The logic is that AA units already only shoot ground targets when defending, and in reality that would be the case with unarmored gun trucks.
The lowly rifle squad would defend against a truck that would try to go on the offensive with ease.

So while I'm keeping the Polski Fiat 621 with the 20 mm, the 40 mm and the AAMG, they will be moved to the Air Defense category.

Oh yeah, there was a twin mount design for vehicle mounted machine guns:





So these gun trucks would totally be built if there was a need for them. I don't know about the 40, but the AAMG version is very realistic.

And about the 75 mm Schneider, here's from the wiki:

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_621

W podwozia 621 L wyposażano też samobieżne armaty przeciwlotnicze 75 mm wz. 14. (the 75 mm wz. 14 anti-aircraft cannons were being equipped with the 621 L chassis)

Which is pretty cool.

More on the next one.

[randowe]

It was 10 000 views so recently, now it's over 11 000.
Quite a few people visit here.

Don't be too exited hehe. Most visits are probably search engines, bots, crawlers, machine learning stuff and things like that.

Have you already planed your campaign(s)? List of scenarios, maps, etc.?

[RoyalBengalTiger]

I have a plan for the campaign, it's not detailed down to every scenario.
I'm still browsing maps and working out a detailed story that will fit what's available. I saw there is a map of Lodz, Krakow, Vilnius, Warsaw of course, and many others.
It will be a semi-realistic story starting with general Kutrzeba not waiting for permission from Warsaw to do his counter attack.
This makes what historically was the Battle of Bzura to take place a week earlier, which is important for a few reasons:

Polish air force is twice the size it would be a week later.
40 mm guns are not low on ammo.
More importantly - Germany historically diverted several divisions to deal with this situation. Krakow is now not surrounded for an extra several days if Germany stops their blitzkrieg to counter the counter attack.
Most importantly - Germans did not capture Lodz yet, and now Lodz has an extra 2-3 weeks to prepare its defense. This means Warsaw is much harder to approach from the West, and only has the Northern approach to worry about. It also means that Army Poznan and Army Pomerania have a clear path to fall back from being stuck between Prussia and Germany proper.

So the first battle is around Lodz for sure.
I don't want to spoil the rest of the plan though, but it should be about as believable as the above part. There will be Hawker Hurricanes that historically did not make it in time, there will be Romania involved on the Allied side (it was until its govt was overthrown), there will be a few other factors that would have occurred if Poland survived the first couple months.

Anyways, time to clean up the transport categories, add some armored trains and a river monitor here or there...
I think I should have the units done this weekend, so I can get serious about scenario design soon.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

Double post, but it is what it is.
Found another gem...

Polski Fiat 618 Grom



https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_618

This is a light truck chassis, available with a passenger compartment, an open or closed cargo space and...


Oprócz typowych samochodów ciężarowych Fiat 618 występował też w wersji tzw. samochód kawaleryjski typu 618...
...there was a cavalry car version for carrying troops, also for carrying a machine gun in a mount to engage airplanes.

I'm trying to not get rid of the fictional CWS vehicles, but rather to rename them into vehicles that actually existed.
I'm having some success with this.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

Update.

Poland had quite a few self propelled armored artillery vehicles in 1939.
I'm not talking about tank based SPG's, but trains.

There were 2 squadrons of armored trains, and I found at least 5 improvised trains (with everything from 47 mm saluting guns, 75 mm artillery guns on lightly armored flatcars, or even possibly a twin Bofors 40 pulled off a warship sunken in port), and one that was a training unit.

While the trains in Gustlik's original efile were all with calibers of 105 up to 320 mm, which is much higher than what existed, I'll keep this idea artillery platforms to represent the improvised units, and I guess 155 mm wz 40 on a rail car is not that off the wall. It won't have a tank chassis mount, but I guess there will be a self propelled mount after all. I'll revise which guns will exist to remove the more wild ones, but this will still be a thing in the upcoming campaign. These are also not possible to purchase in the current efile, I am changing that so that all armored trains are.
I kinda like how Gustlik's Bardzo Wielka Polska campaign uses rail transport, artillery and armored trains in the Open General environment.

Be sure to have some railroad sapper units to fix the bombed tracks though. That was also a real thing the real armored trains had to deal with a lot.

Fun little fact:
Just after the war there was an armored artillery train with 194.4 mm guns in Polish service....



These were originally French guns, but then the train was taken over by Germany and sent to the Baltic coast - namely Oksywie (a district of Gdynia), and then it was taken over by the Polish, and then it was delegated to the Polish Navy in 1947.
Since Poland had even such heavy railroad artillery, I'm totally including it in the efile (and this, not the 320 mm, is the high limit on caliber), although the fictional story of this is French military aid will be far more boring than what really happened. Thus I figured I'll share the real story.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

And another update...



It just happens to be that the artillery train from the last episode had the same guns as the above SPG.
While the SPG was never used by Poland, it will be added to the Polish artillery as foreign aid. They used the guns and ammo IRL, so this is not too far off from realistic.
This will be the slowest, but also the largest caliber SPG for Poland in the efile.

I'm also working on airplanes today.
There are lots of fictional PZL's in the efile. These are getting the axe unfortunately.

However, just like I did with a couple extra variants on tank chassis, there will be multiple versions of fighters and bombers, even if only one was ever designed.

For example, the PZL-55:



Engine of 1400 to 1600 HP.
Armament of 1x 20 mm and 6 to 8 machine guns.
Up to 500 kg of bombs.

This allows to make an early version, a couple of upgrades, a multi role version, and then following with Poland's tendency to add extra cannons instead of machine guns on their planes, there can be a late war version with higher AA specs.
Even though only a prototype and production version was planned, I will have probably 5 or 6 different variants.

The PZL-54 was also being designed as a multi-role plane:


...so it will have the same branching out into variants.

I'm also cleaning up some bugs with bombers, the PZL-37 and 49 were under tactical bombers in the efile, they get moved to the level bomber category.
They were twin engine planes with bomb bays, so for realism and gameplay they need to go (and the 49 will get a few versions too of course).

Once I get through planes, the last several categories will be pretty easy.

Then I will finally be ready to actually do the missions.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

I might be making new icons maybe...

There was a plane project called RWD-24, and this one exists in the efile as a scout plane.
It was the land based version of the RWD-22, which was a float plane scout/torpedo bomber.
The -22 exist in 3 editions as an icon - bomber, recon and torpedo.

Here's the -22:


I therefore made these two new icons - RWD-24 bomber and torpedo bomber versions, so both types have all 3 variants:




Per wikipedia, the -22 would have 2x 470 hp engines, and the -24 would have 2x 700, so they will vary by stats quite a bit.
This also allows me to remove some fictional planes while replacing them with realistic ones.

On my second round (review/checkup/dates/prices) I'll probably add a couple icons extra, these airplane versions are easy to make.

More over the weekend probably.

[RoyalBengalTiger]

Looks like the unit roster is close to being complete.

I did the air transports recently, there will be the Fokker F.VII and the PZL.44 Wicher.

The 44 looked like this:


Only the prototype was built, it was evacuated to Lviv when the war broke out, and then got captured by the Soviets.
It was to be restored to working order by the Soviets (apparently it damaged its landing gear in Lviv), but that has yet to happen as of 2024.

I'm creating a b version too, the original had 2x 1000 HP, and the b version will have the engines that the PZL.49 Miś was to use, at 2x 1400 HP. The logic is that it's the same manufacturer, the designs are very similar (I made sure both engines are radials) and it's not unreasonable to think that they'd upgrade the plane when it's adapted for military use.
This in game means the a version goes 17 hexes, while the b version goes 21.

It's also to compensate for the fact that I'm kicking out 4 fictional transport planes. I must say that Gustlik and company did A LOT of work on the original efile.

Warships...

On the submarine front I do not find anything that Poland was working on, other than what was actually being built, so there's Orzeł and Wilk.
I'm adding the British U Class as foreign aid.

Surface ships...
Everyone knows the Grom class destroyer, ORP Błyskawica.

Seen here with the original 120 mm surface to surface guns:


Seen here with dual purpose twin mounts that it got in the UK:



This will be the Grom 1943 in game.
Note it got radar at some point too, so that's a good plus 2 or 3 to vision (another thing that will need to get rebalanced, as ships with radar had a yuge advantage over ships without, and some ships had better radar than others).

There was also 2 more destroyers under construction, they were to be improved designs, but armed similarly to the Błyskawica.
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_Orkan ... gan_(1939)
Zmiany te miały zmniejszyć opory aerodynamiczne nadbudówek, których pokonywanie w przypadku wybudowanych okrętów tego typu płynących z prędkością 40 węzłów pochłaniało 27% mocy układu napędowego.
For English speakers - the new ships were to have more aerodynamic superstructures, because at 40 knots 27% of engine power went to counter aerodynamic drag.
The ships were to be more welded and less riveted, they were considering replacing the 13.2 mm heavy machine guns with the 20 mm Oerlikon and have other small improvements.
They'll also have an original form with the Bofors single purpose 120's and then get a 1944 version with DP mounts for a much higher anti-air capability.

If you look back to older posts, the 120 mm guns will be reused on the 25TP based tank destroyer. I'm keeping the story consistent here.
https://forum.open-general.com/viewtopi ... 561#p18561

And finally - I'm going to look at naval gun ranges a bit, seems like land based artillery is unreasonably far reaching when compared to warships right now. This needs a bit of a balancing pass over a few units here or there.

That's all for now, I'll have to go a bit more quiet soon because I can't spoil the story for the campaign as much as I can show the projects, prototypes and realistic/hypothetical what if units...

[RoyalBengalTiger]

This took way more than I'd think it would, but it is what it is.


ORP Nieuchwytny (Elusive)

Originally it had a 40 mm Bofors in the front turret, and a 37 mm (like the one on the FT-17) in the rear turret.
The ship was rearmed during the war after being captured by the Germans, so I'll just assume it would have mods by Poland if it did not get captured.
Originally it was rearmed to 2x 37 mm and "a quad machine gun", which I assume is a quad 20 mm Flak.

In the efile it'll be described after the rebuild as having a 75 mm DP in the large turret, a twin 20 mm in the small turret and a twin 40 mm on the rear deck.
So quite a bunch of AA firepower and some usability to spank ground targets, and this is rather consistent with the various rebuilds that the various ships in the river fleet had.
There were wild ones like having twin 75 mm Schneiders in one turret and a single 100 mm howitzer in the other, and these configurations changed in the fleet over time:

ORP Kraków