AHC: Improve the Polish performance in 1939

Hi everyone: just a small thread to quench my thirst and curiosity.
We all know that Poland's strategic situation in 1939 was utterly desesperate: the country was surrounded by 2 powerful ennemies (and a small 3rd one). It was poor and lacked Germany's industrial potential for a war. Basically, except for ASB, Poland could not win in 1939 (I even personally believe that a determined and successful action in the Saar could not have saved Poland as a fighting state).
However, some things could have been done but as I'm not a Polish military history expert, I'm asking this question to you, partially hoping it will create a debate which can enlighten us all. So...
-With one or several relatively minor POD (meaning modifications about armament/strategy/foreign policy) which remain plausible (I don't think Poland could have produced hundred of medium tanks for example or would have become Germany's ally), try to improve Polish Army's performance.
-The POD can go back to the 1920's (for example, another destroyer instead of the disappointing wicher class or anything you like).
-The Germans will still be victorious but will more or even significantly bloodied.
I'm waiting your ideas with impatience and curiosity.
Sincerely,
JeandeBueil.
 
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Spend the money on airforce, predominantly fighters. Choose the Hispano HS12 engine, not Bristol Mercury for license production. If French stick too high a price on it, warn them that Rolls Royce or Issota Fraschini will get a deal. Stick the best 20mm cannon Oerlikon can produce to fire through the prop of your fighter. Don't forget the 2-engined bomber, but cancel 1-engined bombers. Go with monoplanes with retractable U/C ASAP, at least when I-16 and SB-2 are known for.
AT guns - 47mm Vickers. Produce as much of those as possible in self-propelled version. Combine them in units with 20mm AA in SP form. Try to have SP 'truck-borne' 40 mm Bofors in service in large numbers.
AT rifle - use the readily available .50 ammo as basis. A portable belt-fed MG is needed, try to make a deal with Belgians for the suitably modified Browning in 7.92mm ammo, with the French Darne as fall-back. Try to find the Avtomat Fedorova somewhere, then copy it blindly.
 
Spend the money on airforce, predominantly fighters. Choose the Hispano HS12 engine, not Bristol Mercury for license production. If French stick too high a price on it, warn them that Rolls Royce or Issota Fraschini will get a deal. Stick the best 20mm cannon Oerlikon can produce to fire through the prop of your fighter. Don't forget the 2-engined bomber, but cancel 1-engined bombers. Go with monoplanes with retractable U/C ASAP, at least when I-16 and SB-2 are known for.
AT guns - 47mm Vickers. Produce as much of those as possible in self-propelled version. Combine them in units with 20mm AA in SP form. Try to have SP 'truck-borne' 40 mm Bofors in service in large numbers.
AT rifle - use the readily available .50 ammo as basis. A portable belt-fed MG is needed, try to make a deal with Belgians for the suitably modified Browning in 7.92mm ammo, with the French Darne as fall-back. Try to find the Avtomat Fedorova somewhere, then copy it blindly.
-How costly would be these ideas? Wouldn't be better to build the PZL 24 as Polish Air Force main figther (a somewhat obsolete but still decent fighter in 1939)?
-And the Bofors 37mm gun still seems to be a good weapon in 1939, unless the 47mm was designed BEFORE the 37 mm Bofors, in which case it could be indeed a good idea.
-Larger number of 40mm bofors AA guns seems to be a good idea indeed (only 4 guns per division OTL). Quite effective against diving stukas If I'm not mistaken.
 

Deleted member 1487

An easy one is to be fully mobilized by the start of the war.

Try to find the Avtomat Fedorova somewhere, then copy it blindly.
Have you seen the internal mechanism? It was a Rube Goldberg device. They were better off with the BAR given that they were already committed to the 7.92 Mauser.

Converting the ZB-30 into a belt feed mechanism would be the best option.

Edit:
Apparently the ZB-26 prototype was belt fed, so it was doable to convert the design over, especially as the later Czech descendents of the ZB-30 proved.
 
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An easy one is to be fully mobilized by the start of the war ...

This, it aggravates the economic loss for the year, & has some small political drawbacks. But having eight more, or however many, infantry divisions stood up and deployed Slows the German advance several weeks & puts the southern enclave strategy in reach.
 
An easy one is to be fully mobilized by the start of the war.


Have you seen the internal mechanism? It was a Rube Goldberg device. They were better off with the BAR given that they were already committed to the 7.92 Mauser.

Converting the ZB-30 into a belt feed mechanism would be the best option.
ZB 30? You mean the slightly modified ZB 26? Would it not need at least slightly more decent relationship with the Czechs?

This, it aggravates the economic loss for the year, & has some small political drawbacks. But having eight more, or however many, infantry divisions stood up and deployed Slows the German advance several weeks & puts the southern enclave strategy in reach.
Good point. But could the Poles have a better plan (in terms of strategy and doctrine). And if yes, which one?

PS: Did you possess a bibliography I could find on the net (articles, books I could download) on the subject?
 
-How costly would be these ideas? Wouldn't be better to build the PZL 24 as Polish Air Force main figther (a somewhat obsolete but still decent fighter in 1939)?
-And the Bofors 37mm gun still seems to be a good weapon in 1939, unless the 47mm was designed BEFORE the 37 mm Bofors, in which case it could be indeed a good idea.
-Larger number of 40mm bofors AA guns seems to be a good idea indeed (only 4 guns per division OTL). Quite effective against diving stukas If I'm not mistaken.

PZL 24 was obsolete before it flew. Not going with 1-engined bomber will save money.
47mm vickers (called also '3pdr Vickers') was weapon from the ww1.

Have you seen the internal mechanism? It was a Rube Goldberg device. They were better off with the BAR given that they were already committed to the 7.92 Mauser.

Converting the ZB-30 into a belt feed mechanism would be the best option.

Fedorov's 'autmat' was assult rifle - each soldier in section gets one. BAR was deployed in 1 or 2 pcs per section.
 
...
Good point. But could the Poles have a better plan (in terms of strategy and doctrine). And if yes, which one?

PS: Did you possess a bibliography I could find on the net (articles, books I could download) on the subject?

The strategy they had was not bad. The failure was in thinking the Germans would sensibly negotiate, hence the slow paced mobilization. The additional units would have added density and depth to the defense. Preserving a Polish field army in the south along the Rumanian border into October was about the best the Poles could do with what they had. Their only hope was a French attack in the west would threaten Germany to the point where favorable negotiations could be started. That could have worked in 1937 or 38, but the Wehrmacht had moved on by 1939 & was capable of defeating the full Polish military in two months or less.

Most of my sources are too old and German oriented to be of much value. Look for Polish originated material post 1990. The Communist era Polish sources seem difficult to use.
 
PZL 24 was obsolete before it flew. Not going with 1-engined bomber will save money.
47mm vickers (called also '3pdr Vickers') was weapon from the ww1.



Fedorov's 'autmat' was assult rifle - each soldier in section gets one. BAR was deployed in 1 or 2 pcs per section.
I think you're mistaking the pzl 24 (a fighter) with the pzl 23 (the bomber).
so 3pdr Vickers. Good idea.
 
The strategy they had was not bad. The failure was in thinking the Germans would sensibly negotiate, hence the slow paced mobilization. The additional units would have added density and depth to the defense. Preserving a Polish field army in the south along the Rumanian border into October was about the best the Poles could do with what they had. Their only hope was a French attack in the west would threaten Germany to the point where favorable negotiations could be started. That could have worked in 1937 or 38, but the Wehrmacht had moved on by 1939 & was capable of defeating the full Polish military in two months or less.

Most of my sources are too old and German oriented to be of much value. Look for Polish originated material post 1990. The Communist era Polish sources seem difficult to use.
So the Pormoze and Poznan Armies weren't too much located in the West?
Sadly I'm French. I'm relatively fluent in English (at least enough to read books).
 

Driftless

Donor
Stick the best 20mm cannon Oerlikon can produce to fire through the prop of your fighter.

Employ some omniscient hand-wavium and produce the 20mm Polsten version of the Oelikon in 1938. The reduced expense of the Polsten could make more barrels available for both airborne use and ground AA for the infantry.


Don't forget the 2-engined bomber, but cancel 1-engined bombers.

The PZL.37 Los was a very modern, high performance twin-engine bomber, with it's successor already in the design pipeline when the invasion came. The Poles had some good plans in that regard, but not enough planes & pilots compared to the Germans. Even more importantly, seriously in-sufficient fighters; from both capability and numbers.
 

Deleted member 1487

ZB 30? You mean the slightly modified ZB 26? Would it not need at least slightly more decent relationship with the Czechs?
Not sure TBH, though it wouldn't hurt; I don't know the Czech policy of making weapon sales. Though given what happened between Poland the Belgium over arms sales in the 1930s (IIRC around the BAR specifically) then there is room perhaps to make them work out a deal if the BAR situation falls through.

Fedorov's 'autmat' was assult rifle - each soldier in section gets one. BAR was deployed in 1 or 2 pcs per section.
No, it was an automatic rifle, like a BAR or Chauchat and in fact inspired by the Chauchat. It was only issued to 1 soldier per squad and fired a full power bolt action rifle cartridge, just the weakest of the bunch. Fyodorov in fact wanted to use an even more powerful 6.5mm round of his own design, but was prevented by the war from introducing it; as the Russians already had plenty of Arisaka round and rifles lying around and were buying more from the Japanese to make up for their own shortages it only made sense to use. Avtomat was a term invented by Fyodorov that later came to mean assault rifle, but originally meant something like light hand held machine gun, aka an automatic rifle...aka a SAW.

It was even employed as a bipod and there was an assistant gunner/ammo carrier. It was also only about 30% cheaper than a Madsen LMG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat
Initially Fedorov wanted to call the class of weapons to which his new gun belonged ручное ружьё-пулемет (lit. "handheld light-machine-gun", i.e. a lighter class than ружьё-пулемет which denoted light machine guns like the Madsen), which reflected his tactical thinking behind the development of the weapon.[18] This designation appeared in a September 1916 article in the journal of the Artillery Commission.[19] Fedorov's superior, General N.M. Filatov, is credited for introducing the much shorter term "avtomat" for the gun—a neologism derived from the Greek word 'automaton' and synonymous with the English word "automatic",[20] this is the one that stuck. Written records of this new term being applied to the gun date to 1919.[21]

In contemporary Russian terminology, the word "avtomat" denotes assault rifle, although historically the term has had a broader meaning.[20] Contemporary Western writers have struggled to classify the Fedorov Avtomat. Some consider it to be an "early predecessor" or "ancestor" to the modern assault rifle,[5][22][23][24] while others believe that the Fedorov Avtomat was the world's first assault rifle, based on the argument that it was chambered in "one of the least powerful rifle-caliber cartridges then in use".[25][26][27]

It was not an assault rifle, it was in fact too powerful to qualify. Regardless, it was also extremely complicated to make and maintain and Fyodorov moved beyond the design post-war, as both he and his protege Degtyarov, inventor of the DP-28, which partially grew out of their work trying to develop the Avtomat after WW1.
 
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Employ some omniscient hand-wavium and produce the 20mm Polsten version of the Oelikon in 1938. The reduced expense of the Polsten could make more barrels available for both airborne use and ground AA for the infantry.
Interesting but how a weapon designed in 1944 could be designed in 1938 in a plausible way? The Polsten was a weapon designed to be very cheap: an understandable intention in a total war context. But in peacetime, even if some can suspect a war...

Not sure TBH, though it wouldn't hurt; I don't know the Czech policy of making weapon sales. Though given what happened between Poland the Belgium over arms sales in the 1930s (IIRC around the BAR specifically) then there is room perhaps to make them work out a deal if the BAR situation falls through.


.
Point taken. And I admit that I don't like the BAR (the least advanced LMG of WW2 IMHO). A modified ZB 26 or 30 serving as a LMG AND a MMG (like the mg 34 in fact but cheaper) could help the infantry.
 

Deleted member 1487

Point taken. And I admit that I don't like the BAR (the least advanced LMG of WW2 IMHO). A modified ZB 26 or 30 serving as a LMG AND a MMG (like the mg 34 in fact but cheaper) could help the infantry.
Well, it wasn't an LMG, it was an automatic rifle. It was certainly behind the times, as it was a WW1 design and not even using the quality upgrades the Belgians made, nor even the improvements other American designers had made. Still the Poles themselves made some improvements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browning_wz._1928
They reduced the weight and used the Belgian improvements. It's interesting that they found it superior to all the other options (doesn't look like they considered the Czech ZB-26). Apparently the Germans even found it useful enough to make use of captured Polish BARs. SLA Marshall found that they were one of the best weapons of the Korean War and were great as a SAW. IMHO it was too overpowered for it's role, but it was a highly reliable design and copies of elements of the design were incorporated into post-war FN weapons like the FN MAG.
Apparently the Poles liked it so much they modified it into an aircraft gun. They could have modified it into a true LMG/MMG with a belt feed system.
The thing is they just needed to find a system they liked enough to modify it into a GPMG for the LMG and MMG roles, perhaps also preserving the auto rifle role.
Still I'm very partial to the ZB30 becoming an early Uz vz.59:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk_vz._59
 

Driftless

Donor
Employ some omniscient hand-wavium and produce the 20mm Polsten version of the Oelikon in 1938. The reduced expense of the Polsten could make more barrels available for both airborne use and ground AA for the infantry.

Interesting but how a weapon designed in 1944 could be designed in 1938 in a plausible way? The Polsten was a weapon designed to be very cheap: an understandable intention in a total war context. But in peacetime, even if some can suspect a war...

That's where the hand-wavium would be the only way of making this happen. The Polsten didn't require a technology breakthrough to be possible, just a ton of diligent engineering - and 20/20 foresight to anticipate the need.
 
Well, it wasn't an LMG, it was an automatic rifle. It was certainly behind the times, as it was a WW1 design and not even using the quality upgrades the Belgians made, nor even the improvements other American designers had made. Still the Poles themselves made some improvements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browning_wz._1928
They reduced the weight and used the Belgian improvements. It's interesting that they found it superior to all the other options (doesn't look like they considered the Czech ZB-26). Apparently the Germans even found it useful enough to make use of captured Polish BARs. SLA Marshall found that they were one of the best weapons of the Korean War and were great as a SAW. IMHO it was too overpowered for it's role, but it was a highly reliable design and copies of elements of the design were incorporated into post-war FN weapons like the FN MAG.
Apparently the Poles liked it so much they modified it into an aircraft gun. They could have modified it into a true LMG/MMG with a belt feed system.
The thing is they just needed to find a system they liked enough to modify it into a GPMG for the LMG and MMG roles, perhaps also preserving the auto rifle role.
Still I'm very partial to the ZB30 becoming an early Uz vz.59:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk_vz._59
a weapon who only has 20 rounds and is longer to reload than others isn't a great LMG (or automatic weapon like you said) IMHO. But I digress.
So a modified ZB 26 could be a nice start and a start which could lead to greater collaboration between Poland and Czechoslovakia for designing and producing weapons, again a solution which leads Poland to find cost-effective solutions for its armament. Which (relatively cheap) weapons Poland could have with friendlier Czechs? Except for tanks of course (several dozens LT 34 or 35 could not hurt).
 
That's where the hand-wavium would be the only way of making this happen. The Polsten didn't require a technology breakthrough to be possible, just a ton of diligent engineering - and 20/20 foresight to anticipate the need.
that's the problem: for me perfect insight isn't the solution here (even if a Rydz Smigly SI would be fun to read TBH).
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Have one of your top agents become Gamelin's lover, then hold him by his b*lls until he launches a proper Saar Offensive. Sure, it will fail, but it will buy Poland more time (which is an improvement of sorts).
 
Have one of your top agents become Gamelin's lover, then hold him by his b*lls until he launches a proper Saar Offensive. Sure, it will fail, but it will buy Poland more time (which is an improvement of sorts).
Funny how Gamelin is everyone's personal nightmare on this forum... More seriously, IMHO, the Saar option isn't a ideal solution but could indeed buy some time. However, I would prefer something different to the "Mata-Hari option". Plausibility and all that stuff ;)
 

Driftless

Donor
Probably the most plausible last minute POD, is an early Polish mobilization after the 1938 Munich Crisis. Anticipate that Hitler would not be satisfied with that relatively easy addition to the Reich. The British & French may have tried to have the Poles defer that mobilization as being too aggressive,
 
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