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Sorry again for this noobish question, but I've been searching Battlefield's website to try to find what kind of army I would like to start. I happened upon an article that mentioned parachutist companies from Germany, England, and the U.S. It mentions that the Soviets were among the first to experiment with paratroopers in the mid-thirties and used them sparingly throughout the Early and Mid-War periods. I'm not sure if there is a list for the Soviet's paratroopers and there don't seem to be any specialized troops for parachutists, but I saw someone using a Folgore Parachudisti Italian Parachutist unit with Armored Tank Hunters for support. He told me this was a legal army anyway. Is there a Soviet parachutist unit? Even if so, are parachutist units any good anyhow? I'm looking to start Flames of War and I want to find a perfect army so I'm looking for advice.

I'm not aware of any Soviet parachute lists for FoW. Have you looked through the free briefings on the FoW website?

No Sovient parachute list is published. In the eastern Front book you can field an Soviet guards airlanding force but its just a Gd inf Bn. No special rules or eqt.

If your heart is set on parachute infantry, then you need to understand that in most cases they are fielded as an eilite inf unit and lack some of the support choices of the leg infantry. There are very few missions where they get to actually make a 'drop'. And as elite infantry they are very brittle.

Problem with the Soviet paras was the lack of air to drop them. Just wasn't a soviet priority. The FoW Forums light up every once in a while about a possible PDF para list, but even then I think most talk is in a mid war context.

If you are looking for a soviet list that is unique with a bit of differnt flavor, check out the soviet naval "Black Death" list. Eliete units, possibly a bit lacking in choices, and most likely a special order army given it doesn't have a ton of blister support, but very nice in my opinion. Also, there are some LW cossack lists as well.

Shotgun wrote:Problem with the Soviet paras was the lack of air to drop them. Just wasn't a soviet priority.

Perhaps you missed the wealth of mid and late war German Fallschirmjager lists.

In all fairness you could probably use a Guards list to represent them as they had no specific air landing equipment so when they were fighting as regular infantry they would have been supported by regular army equipment.

The Soviets did a few big drops during the war, mostly deep behind the German lines to disrupt them. David Glantz has a good book on thiem that is available as a PDF. Soviet Airborne Experience in WWII.

http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/glantz.pdf

Table 7. Airborne Brigade, 1941
4 parachute battalions (678 men each)
3 parachute companies
1 mortar company
1 sapper demolition platoon
1 machine gun platoon
1 flamethrower platoon
1 signal platoon
Source: Lisov, Desantniki, 39.