Thank you. Didn’t Ustinov get over-ruled on the T-64/T-72 decision? Nearly 40 year old memories of GSFG order of battle are of a decision to split the T-64s and T-72s assigned to the Soviet forces, with the 64s going to Soviet units in Czechoslovakia, while the 72s went to 3 of the 4 armies in GSFG. The 4th had 64s. My memory may be a bit off on that though. Except I’m positive that the 8th Guards Tank Army had T-72s as it sat across the IZB from V Corps. And the East German MRD we expected to do the initial attack had a mix of T-55s & T-62s. Prost!
Your memory is pretty much spot on. I believe that economic considerations were a primary motivation for Ustinov and his successors to eventually acquiesce in the eventual domination of the T-72B series with it’s INNUMERABLE variants.
I too remember freezing nights in the turret of an M-60A1 tank near the Fulda Gap as we were expecting to be overwhelmed by that Vietnam era version of the 1979 “Seven Days to the Rhine” that would be spearheaded by the Soviet 8th Guards Tank Army. We spent nearly as much time in the field training for that as I did on combat operations in Vietnam. It was a night and day difference in tactical concepts, as our principle main gun ammo there was canister, beehive, Heat and HE (for bunkers) in our close range engagements against infantry. In Germany we were training for first and second round hits against enemy AFV’s with sabot at 2000-4000 meters.
I think that we anticipated a life expectancy of 72 hours, but they essentially told us to attrite as many of them as we could while successively retreating to different phase lines before we were annihilated and or reinforced.
That might be a partial explanation for all of the dope usage back then....