An officer bag or a map-case was every Soviet boy's dream. This is how "commanders" were marked during the yard games. Yet, it was no easy to get one - they were not up for sale. So if a kid did have one, it was very likely that he was from a military or police family.
This piece of equipment was iconic for the Soviet officer of the Cold War time - you will see it on almost any photo. Let's see what had to be inside the bag.
The officers bag
A field bag (map-case) is included in the set of field equipment for officers, warrant officers and contract servicemen. The field equipment set also includes a leather waist belt with a belt (in army terms it is called equipment), as well as a shoulder belt for a cape.
Structurally, the equipment allows fastening the field bag by the lower half rings of a large clutch, the upper half ring of which serves to fasten the harness. This way of attaching the field bag to the waist belt is recommended but not required, allowing the bag to be worn separately from equipment.
A small strap between the half rings for fastening the belt is intended for attaching Adrianov's compass to it. In order to avoid accidental damage to the glass of the compass, the compass was often fixed inside the bag with elastic bands designed to fix documentation.
For constant control of the contents of the field bag, a leaflet with an inventory was glued to the leather insert. The inventory included all the necessary items for an officer to work in the field with working documentation and a map. At the same time, the content of the inventory was not sufficient to carry out this very work in accordance with the military specialization of the officer, as well as the nature of the tasks performed. Somewhere the content of the inventory was quite enough, and somewhere the contents of the entire internal volume of the bag were simply not enough for the things necessary in the work.
Basic kit of an officer's field bag
So, according to the inventory, the bag should contain the following items:
fountain pen
commander's ruler
compass
envelopes
curvimeter
adhesive tape
a set of colored pencils
penknife
battle map
workbook
rubber
flashlight
drawing compass
A commander's ruler, a curvimeter, a set of colored pencils, an eraser, a measuring compass - all these are tools for working with the map. The gluing tape is for gluing fragments of maps, and the penknife is there to always quickly sharpen pencils.
For a compass, some variations were possible. It is no secret that Adrianov's compass, the most common one in the army, in addition to its simplicity, has some significant drawbacks. Therefore, some officers, if possible, used tourist compasses, in which the magnetic needle was placed in a non-freezing liquid and quickly "calmed down". Great chic was the possession of an artillery compass.
As a flashlight, either an ordinary KSF-1 pocket signal light or ordinary flashlights from a civilian distribution network were used.
Artillery officer equipment
If, as indicated above in the report, we consider the contents of the field bag of an artillery officer, then in addition to the items from the inventory, his field bag, as a rule, contained the following items:
Artillery slide rule ALL-25
Chordogoniometer
Coordinate measurement (artillery circle AK-3 (AK-4) with MPL-50)
Correction calculator
Ruler for the distribution of areas of barrage fire
Microcalculator MK-52 (MK-75)
Shooting table
Shooting rules
Artillery notebook
Use of the officer field bag during the Soviet-Afghan war
Real combat operations have shown that it is not advisable to carry a field bag with you on constant bases. Firstly, its dimensions can constantly interfere with movement, and secondly, a field bag reveals a commander in its owner, and as a result, an important target for an enemy snipers. Therefore, if the performance of the task made it possible to refuse to carry a field bag with them, the officers willingly took advantage of this opportunity, leaving them in the compartments of armored vehicles or placing them in backpacks carried with them.
At the level of command of a company or platoon, at best, it was only necessary to have a battle map at hand, possibly not filled out, excluding the possibility of its correction. Therefore, the officers independently made a small “envelope” from water-proof plastic foil, which, due to the sewn twine, was hung around the neck. It turned out that the battle map in such an “envelope” was always at hand.
For a certain class of military specialties of officers working independently in the field, the “envelope” option did not always work, since their specialization already included direct work with a battle map or documentation. As an example, I would like to note a wide class of artillery specialties, in which the number of items placed in the field bag is the highest. Therefore, the option of filling the field bag in this report will correspond to this particular direction of the military science of the “gods of war”.
Use of the map-cases by the GRU Special Forces
In the practice of combat use (OKSVA), the commanders of the Special Forces (as well as the radio operators attached to the SpN units) widely used the following setup of working documentation.
A pocket was sewn to the back of the chestrig, in which following contents were placed (if necessary):
battle map
encryption notepad
working notebook - call signs of radio networks / channels and communication order / interaction signals / control signals
writing instruments
compass (for example, an artillery one - it does not have a wrist mount, it is not very convenient to carry it in your pocket, a “string and around your neck” is also not an option)
lighter / matches
Sometimes, for the sake of greater safety (protection from precipitation or sweat), documentation was placed in a plastic bag (in practice, in thick / strong polyethylene packaging from ROP / RSP)
Comments