The Armed Forces of the SFRY these days could celebrate the 75th anniversary. On December 21, 1941, by decision of the Central Committee of the country's Communist Party, the 1st proletarian people's liberation shock brigade was formed. The army, originally called the People's Liberation Army, then became simply the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). Russian readers know a lot about her combat path, but not much about the post-war JNA. But there is something to remember.
After 1948, relations between the Yugoslav leadership and the Soviet Union deteriorated until the Kremlin declared Tito's regime "fascist." The generalissimo and the marshal disagreed on the creation of the so-called socialist "Balkan Federation" consisting of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and in the maximum version - also Romania and Greece. Belgrade considered this hypothetical formation subject to the dominance of the "Great Yugoslavia". It is clear that the Soviet leader could not come to terms with the emergence of yet another communist leader with great geopolitical weight. With the death of Stalin, the crisis in relations was overcome, especially since no "Balkan Federation" has ever appeared. Nevertheless, the SFRY, continuing to pursue a policy independent of Moscow ("Tito and NATO"), did not want to join the Warsaw Pact Organization. In the 50s - early 60s, the main suppliers of arms to Yugoslavia were the United States and Great Britain. Subsequently, the SFRY also acquired military and "double" equipment or licenses for its production in Austria, West Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Despite the resumed large deliveries of Soviet weapons since the 60s, Belgrade, which in its own way took into account the events in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, never ceased to consider the Soviet Union and the OVD as a whole as a potential enemy when a serious military crisis. This was not publicly declared, but the Yugoslav mass media invariably stressed the readiness of the national armed forces to resist "any aggressor."
Nationality - General
By the mid-70s, the number of JNA reached 267 thousand people, in addition, 16 thousand served in the border guard. There were impressive reserve components of the armed forces - about a million Yugoslavs were assigned to the territorial defense units, another 300 thousand - to the youthful paramilitary structures. The military doctrine of the SFRY provided for flexible interaction of regular troops with militias.
The JNA was recruited on the basis of a compulsory conscription. The duration of conscript service was 15 months in the ground forces, 18 months in the air force and navy. Territorial defense reservists were regularly called up for training. CWP was a compulsory subject at school. In wartime or a threatened period, men aged 16–65 years were subject to conscription.
In the ground forces of the JNA, according to various sources, with 200 thousand personnel, there were six army headquarters (according to the number of peacetime military districts), nine infantry divisions, from seven to 10 tank divisions, 11-15 separate infantry, two or three mountain infantry brigades, 12 army artillery, six anti-tank destroyers, 12 anti-aircraft artillery regiments, a separate airborne battalion.
According to Western intelligence services, tank brigades stationed near Sisak, Kragujevac and Skopje could be organizationally consolidated into divisions (each with two tank and motorized infantry brigades, as well as artillery and presumably self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery regiments).
The Air Force (40 thousand people) in the second half of the 70s had more than 300 combat aircraft (fighters and light attack aircraft), the Navy (27 thousand people) - five diesel submarines, a destroyer, 85 small combat ships and boats. The reserve component of the Navy was the naval territorial defense units, designed to guard the coast and having small floating craft such as fishing vessels, when mobilized, armed with machine guns.
On the whole, the JNA was, of course, a serious force that had to be reckoned with in military planning both in the West and in the East. From an internal political point of view, Tito viewed the army as the main factor in rallying the SFRY into a single state (which was not justified after his death). It is worth noting here that at the beginning of the 70s, the Serbs accounted for 60.5 percent of the officers and 46 percent of the generals of the JNA, with a share of the country's population of about 42 percent. In second place (14 percent) among officers were Croats (share in the population - 23 percent), while among generals Croats and Montenegrins (3 percent) were 19 percent each. In the high command of the JNA, Croats were 38 percent, and Serbs - 33 percent.
Even during the Second World War and immediately after it, the Soviet Union provided Tito with significant assistance with weapons and military equipment, but in 1949 all this stopped and Belgrade moved towards rapprochement with the West.
How Tito was armed
The break in relations with the USSR meant, among other things, an orientation towards weapons and military equipment from the West, as well as the establishment of their production by domestic industry, including on the basis of Soviet models. Accordingly, a new stage began in the military-technical development of the JNA.
For example, at the end of the 40s, the Yugoslavs managed to develop on the basis of the Soviet Yak-9 and set up serial production of S-49 fighters. A total of 158 of these machines were produced, which were used in the JNA until 1961. At the same time, an attempt was made to establish the production of its own version of the T-34-85 medium tank, however, due to technological difficulties, only five or seven such vehicles were produced. Moreover, Yugoslavia began to receive the M4 Sherman from the United States (630 units were delivered in 1952-1953), and then the more modern M47 Patton (319 in 1955-1958).
The Americans shared the same systems with Belgrade as with their NATO allies.
In very decent quantities, the JNA air force began to be equipped with Western aircraft. Since 1951, the Americans began to supply piston fighter-bombers P-47D (F-47D) Thunderbolt (150, used until 1961), then - tactical jet F-84G Thunderjet (230, used until 1974 under national designation L-10).
It was the Thunderjets that opened the jet era in the Yugoslav aviation. They were followed by the American tactical fighters F-86F "Saber". 121 of these Canadian licensed vehicles were used in 1956-1971 under the designation L-11. The Sabers made the JNA Air Force missile-carrying - at the turn of the 60s, the United States delivered 1,040 AIM-9B Sidewinder-1A short-range air-to-air missiles to them.
The Americans, British and French helped rebuild the Navy, which was a pitiful sight in the early post-war years. In particular, with their support, the destroyer "Split" of the French project, laid down in 1939, was completed and armed. The ship received four American 127-mm Mk30 universal artillery mounts, two British anti-submarine three-barreled 305-mm Squid rocket launchers, and American radars.
Return of the Allied Arsenal
The normalization of Soviet-Yugoslav relations that began after 1953 led to the resumption of the supply of Soviet weapons and the transfer of military technology. This meant the onset of a qualitatively new stage in the combat equipment of the armed forces. However, the country has not at all curtailed military-technical cooperation with the West, although its level has somewhat decreased.
The service arsenal of small arms of the JNA has noticeably changed. In the 50s, it was represented mainly by Soviet and captured German samples from the Second World War. The resumption of cooperation with the USSR made it possible to focus on equipping the JNA with small arms based on the latest developments. According to Soviet templates, the Yugoslavs mastered the production of a 9-mm pistol "Model 67" (PM), 7, 62-mm self-loading carbines M59 (SKS-45), 7, 62-mm M64 and M64V assault rifles (AK-47 and AKS-47), as well as their variants adapted for throwing anti-personnel and anti-tank rifle grenades - M70 and M70A.
In 1964-1965, JNA received its first ATGMs - Soviet self-propelled 2K15 Bumblebee with 2P26 launchers on the chassis of the GAZ-69 car (later used its own Zastava jeeps). They were supplied with 500 3M6 anti-tank guided missiles. And in 1971, the 9K11M Malyutka-M portable complexes with 9P111 launchers appeared in the JNA. Until 1976, the Soviet Union supplied them with five thousand 9M14M ATGMs, and since 1974, the Yugoslavian defense industry has released another 15 thousand such missiles for self-propelled ATGMs of its own production with launchers on a unified chassis of the BOV armored vehicle, M-80 / M infantry fighting vehicles -80A and helicopters. The most advanced in JNA were the 9K111 "Fagot" portable systems, which were produced in 1989-1991 under a Soviet license. In total, a thousand 9M111 ATGMs were fired to them.
As for rocket artillery, in the 60s the Yugoslavs made a choice in favor of importing Czechoslovakian 130-mm 32-barrel MLRS M51 (RM-130) on the Praga V3S chassis. On the basis of its artillery unit in Yugoslavia, a 128-mm 32-barreled towed rocket launcher M-63 "Plamen" was produced.
The most long-range in the JNA SV was the Soviet TRK 9K52 "Luna-M". The divisional set of this complex, consisting of four 9P113 self-propelled launchers and the same number of 9T29 transport-loading vehicles, was supplied by the Soviet Union in 1969.
Soviet deliveries made it possible to significantly increase the armored power of the JNA. In 1962-1970, she received about two thousand medium tanks T-54 and T-55, and in 1963 - a hundred light amphibious tanks PT-76. In 1981-1990, the Yugoslav industry produced 390 T-72M1 under a Soviet license, which received the national designation M-84.
Since the 60s, the basis of the combat power of the Air Force and Air Defense of the JNA was Soviet MiGs, which supplanted American-made subsonic fighters by the second half of the 70s. In total, Yugoslavia received 41 MiG-21-F-13 (national designation L-12), 36 front-line interceptor fighters MiG-21PF and MiG-21PFM (L-14), 41 multipurpose MiG-21M and MiG-21MF (L -15 and L-15M) and 91 MiG-21bis (L-17). In 1987-1989, the air force and air defense fleet of the JNA was replenished with 16 multipurpose front-line fighters MiG-29 (L-18) and two combat training MiG-29UB.
As for the ground-based fire component of the object air defense forces, thanks to the help of the USSR, anti-aircraft missile troops appeared in it, the supply of weapons for which began in the mid-60s. They were equipped with 15 semi-stationary short-range air defense systems S-125M "Pechora" in the export version "Neva" (at least 600 5V27 missiles were received for them, each complex had four transported launchers) and 10 semi-stationary medium-range air defense systems CA-75M "Dvina" "(Plus 240 V-750V missiles to them).
