Russoswiss

Missing Swiss Army Battalions

I do them manually. I've created about 130 icons and then I create the graphics with Photoshop.

Well, the Swiss Army chart is a special one... The Swiss Army homepage holds the second place among disorganized and chaotic military homepages! (By far the worst is the British Army homepage, where it is impossible to comprehend which units belong to which Brigade- third place goes to Belgium). When I created the graphic I left out the militia battalions as they were not always named on the homepage. Also the flying units of the Air Force are missing, as the Air force part of the homepage is so annoyingly chaotic and contradicting that I decided, that as the Swiss Air force itself is unable to provide a description of its units and structure that I would not bother to try to figure it out for them. Therefore I left all of the flying units of the Air force out of the graphic. I just checked the 2n Brigade and to make you understand the problem with the Swiss Army homepage look at this: German version Franch version

Also: When I made the graphic in January half the units weren't even listed yet... That comes when Army command allows each battalion to create its own sub page. The best military homepages are the Italian Army, Austrian Army, French Army and German Army. Anyway I will update the graphic now and include the militia btn. which are listed and if you find errors or omissions in the chart, please let me know and I will fix them. noclador 06:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the kudos :-) If by any chance you happen to find a listing of the Airforce units of the Swiss Army, let me know and I will do another quick update. Oh yes- many Army commands are pretty lazy, when it comes to their Internet presence; but armies that are professional (the ones which must convince people to join) have the best homepages and the biggest amount of information. Thank you again for helping to improve the Swiss Army diagram :-) --14:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)noclador

I knew these links before, but as you saw yourself they are contradicting, confusing and sometimes plain wrong. Therefore I left the Swiss Air Force out. If you could help sort out this mess, that would be great- alas I doubt it! As soon as the graphic was online an officer of the Swiss Army complained about the missing Air Force units. I told him of the chaotic Swiss Army site and he promised to help and forward the information... that was in January... I guess he too couldn't figure it out :-) noclador 19:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Montenegro

That would be perfect! I've found the homepage and the graphic of the Montenegrin Army (and the Macedonian and Polish Army) long ago but could not read them and also did not find a native speaker to translate them! If you would be so kind to help, I am ready to create the graphics immediately and post them :-) (well immediately means- Tuesday as I'm currently away from my computer and typing from my Laptop that I carry around during holidays to keep in touch with my wikipedia addiction ;-) I also tried to start an OrBat graphic of the Russian Ground Forces, but as there are still immense holes in the information I created only a graphic for the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division... Which sadness me, as the Russian Ground Forces (and the US-Army and UK-Army) are the most interesting of them all! (UK and US are doing a major restructuring and therefore it is all ultra chaotic- plus the British Army website is useless ...) So if you have info of any other Army (or the time to translate from these languages) please- your help is very much appreciated :-) noclador 10:57, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I suggest to leave them on the talkpages of the Army in question (i.e. we did that at: Talk:Croatian ground army- I watch all wikipedia Army pages to see if someone adds some units.) noclador 11:25, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, excellent work on the Montenegrin Army :-) I will start the graphic Tuesday morning and thanks to your help it will be a quick work :-) noclador 16:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Done --noclador 09:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Military of the Republic of Macedonia

thanks for pointing out the link; I already updated the graphic with the units of the 2nd Mechanized Brigade :-) You are right- the Macedonian Army site is one of the worst and it hasn't been updated since 2005!!! but the data regarding the structure is mostly confirmed by the 2006 Military Balance Report, so I think we have a very acurate graphic :-) --noclador 20:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much Russoswiss for your help :-) included now the 1st & 3rd Brigade in the graphic. Macedonia is now complete :-) And for all your hard work in locating so much special information I award you hereby the Original Barnstar:

		The Original Barnstar
		For all your hard work in locating information about European Armed Forces I award you hereby the Original Barnstar noclador 10:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

--noclador 10:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Norway Army

Hi Russoswiss. I saw your scanned image on Talk:Norwegian Army. This information contradicts the information on the Norwegian army homepage- which contradicts itself, as I found three (!) diffrent future Army structures there!!! Therefore I made the graphic with the the most recent of these informations (Janauary 2007) and now I'm waiting for complaints/help from someone with data about the future structure. Your scan omits the units of the Mechanised Brigade North and from what I know the Telemark Btn. is the main unit of the Brig. North. So, as with so many Armies there is a lot of confusion and we will have to find another more detailed source. In the meantime am trying to figure out the structure of the Swedish Army- I have all units, but either threy are all under direct General Staff command or the Swedish Army homepage doesn't list its Brigades... Plus I'm still working on a graphic of Bulgaria (almost 0 information), Serbia (all units there, but no info on the structure), UK (still the most crappy Army homepage of them all!!!) and Greece (about 75% of info missing)... so if you have any info about these Armies or the - please let me know. :-) thanks --noclador 07:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

IDF Ground Forces

Hi Russoswiss, thanks for the unit listing :-) I'm already working on a graphic of the IDF Ground Forces, but until now my source was globalsecurity: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/army-orbat.htm pretty outdated info it seems now... the info on wikipedia is pure crap! but what you dug up and with part of the info from globalsecurity I'm able to create a quite accurate graphic now... but it will take time and work, so give me 4-5 days :-) --noclador 20:49, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It is done... Ground Forces OrBat Graphic --noclador 23:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Alpini

Of 48.000 Alpinis that served in World War II over 30.000 died in a battle in January 1943 in Ukraine: The Red Army overran the Italian 8th Army and annihilated 2 of its 3 Corps on the first day of the battle (January 14th). Only the Alpini Corps, consisting the Tridentina, Julia and Cuneense Division, resisted. The Alpinis- although completely surrounded by the 6th Soviet Army- walked 15 days and over 400km through the snow until they reached the new Axis frontline. During these 15 days the Alpini were at all times surrounded by Soviet Forces and fought 11 major battles: either battles when Soviet Forces tried to break the marching Alpini column into pieces or when the Alpinis fought their way through Soviet blocking lines. On January 26th the decimated and starving Alpinis arrived in the little village of Nikolajewka, where 2 Soviet divisions had prepared a blocking line. The Alpini went from walking to attacking as they arrived, but the whole day the Soviet Forces resisted. The last unit to arrive at Nikolajewka was the 5th Alpini Regiment of the Tridentina Division, which (as it was the last unit that was in fighting shape) served as rearguard. When the 5th arrived the general of the Tridentina Div. General Reverberi rallied his Div. and ordered the attack with the words "Tridentina avanti (Vorwärts)", leading the attack himself. The Alpinis broke through and after that battle Stalin ordered that the Alpinis would be allowed to march on without further attacks by the Red Army. When the Alpini reached the Axis line the Tridentina consisted of 4250 men, the Julia of 1200 men and the Cuneense consisted (legend tells) of 18 men.
Italian Army units are allowed to add (if they want) a symbol to their coats of Arms for every Medal the unit has received in combat. i.e. The Coat of Arms of the 4 Alpini contains (from top left to bottom right):

• Mountains with gold star= 1 gold medal for WWI
• "Tridente di Ucraina" in gold = 1 gold medal for WWII combat in Ukraine
• Furious silver bull with Silver Star= silver medal for combat (I don't recall where)
• Helm of Skanderbeg with a silver and blue star= silver medal and special unit citation for combat in Albania 1940
• Various lines with a silver star= silver medal for combat in the war of liberation 1943- 1945
• More lines with a silver star= silver medal for combat in Greece 1941
• 5 stylized mountains with 5 stars= 5 silver medals in WWI
• Red lion with cross and blue line behind= special honour earned in combat in Abyssinia 1936
  

and if you now count the stars and the flags around the coat you will see that the numbers are the same (the IV on the last silver flag on the right stands for 4 silver flags).
I think this explanation has become to long, but I think it also answered your question pretty good :-) --noclador 20:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You're in RAIDS

Thanks for the info :-) I did not know about it :-) I wasn't contacted by Raids magazine and I can't get my hands on it here in Austria, so I do not know if they "appropriately attributed it" (as is stated clearly in the wiki-license I use), but if they didn't credit me, but this translator Pleissinger, than I'm really pissed! Well, let me know if they did credit wikipedia and me (as is required by wikipedia) or not and if they didn't credit us, well than were gonna hit them! and hit them hard :-) Greetings, and thanks --noclador (talk) 18:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info - getting a bit of wikipedia staff on board first: Wikipedia talk:Reusing Wikipedia content/Archive 1#Raids Magazine. --noclador (talk) 18:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Those fucking cunts!!! I wrote them and clearly explained that they can not do this! They didn't even answer me! I will write them once more and if they do not react, I will sue - this is shameless arrogant thievery! --noclador (talk) 23:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, they got my mail the first time: a ********* wrote me to inform me that my email had reached Christine Vichy the "Responsable commerciale" of Raids magazine and that she forwarded it to "the editor of ******* Mr ********** by email". So they definitely got the email and I explicitly wrote them all this:

Good Day My name is *********** and I'm a contributor to Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. However there are some limitations on how you can reuse material published on Wikipedia. As I've noticed you used content which I created for the English Wikipedia for your article on the Finnish Defence Forces in Raid magazines January edition (RAIDS magazine #260, page 37), but you failed to attribute the graphic to me, as it is required by the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license. I, as the copyright holder of the aforementioned graphic, allow it only to be reused outside Wikipedia if it is attributed to me. I published the graphic (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Finnish_Army.png) on June 23rd 2007 under license Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 which stipulates: "you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one." Obviously you did not appropriately attribute it. There is no mention of my Wikipedia username "Noclador" or of Wikipedia in the article - with both these information's missing the publication of the graphic is a copyright violation of both: my rights as copyright holder and Wikipedias rights as the distributor of the copyrighted content. A Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses the work contrary to the Creative Commons license terms. This means that as you used my work and failed to attribute it to me; you have no longer the right use my work. As copyright violations by print magazines of content published under the Creative Commons license have already been punished and enforced by European Union courts, I suggest you will attribute the graphic correctly to me in the next edition of Raids magazine. If you should refuse to attribute the graphic correctly Wikipedia will enforce my and its rights as copyright holders of the graphics. According to your magazine the graphic was created by Matthieu Pleissinger. This is incorrect; he only translated it. I created the graphic and 103 further graphics of Army Organisations. For a full list, go to my Wikipedia userpage where you can find an alphabetical list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Noclador#done) or to my wikicommons category (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_OrBat_Graphics). If you intend to publish more of my graphics, please feel free to do so, but clearly and visibly attribute the graphics to me and Wikipedia! A correct attribution would be: "Author: English Wikipedia user:Noclador (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Finnish_Army.png); Translation: Matthieu Pleissinger; published under cc-by-sa-2.5." We at Wikipedia actually encourage the redistribution of our content, but only if the work is correctly attributed to us. We spend hours to create the material on Wikipedia and the only thing we demand in return is a clear and correct attribution. Not doing so, is seen as a grave insult to everyone who is contributing his time, his work and his creativity to Wikipedia. Therefore: as long as you attribute my graphics to me, you are free to use them - they are all correct and up to date and more will follow. Thank you for your cooperation

They nonetheless stole my graphics and this really pisses me off! Doing something wrong, than doing it again clearly shows ignorance and arrogance! I will try to get the Wikipedia legal team on board and see if they will write a letter to Raids magazine too. --noclador (talk) 23:29, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Swiss Air Squadrons

Thnaks for the link - I will have a look at it in the next days :-) also Raids did not answer, so I will have to write a follow up letter! cheers, --noclador (talk) 00:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Liechtenstein's defense

Have you followed the recent developments on Liechtenstein's military section? I guess it would interest you. Tomeasy (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The interesting development I wanted to hint you is that Copysan wrote an e-mail to the Swiss embassy and they confirmed that there is no agreement. It's on the talk page. Tomeasy (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

January 2008 World Defence Almanac

Hi Russoswiss, I have a question: Did Raids magazine use any other of my graphics? They did not answer me... and as I do not buy the magazine, I would like to know if they used more of my graphics. The reason is that this is becoming now commonplace: my Hungarian Joint Force Command chart is in the January 2008 World Defence Almanac on p.164, with the tag (Source: Hungarian MoD)... so once again I will need to write a letter and as I am already at it, I would like to know if there is once more the need to write Raids Magazin. greetings and thanks, --noclador (talk) 08:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

On the new pics in RAIDS question

Copying the coat of Arms of the Italian units without giving me credit is not correct, but it is legally ok... as it is I the sole copyright holder is the Italian State, which releases Coat of Arms in the PD. So this behaviour of Raids Magazine is annoying, but it is ok - the structural graphics are much, much more work and as the copyrights lie 100% with me, I will use my energy to make sure that credit will be given to me for these. and by the way: Thanks for you help :-) --noclador (talk) 09:48, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Don Republic

Ok, but what is this then? Esn (talk) 00:19, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Relevant section: ВКО объединяет т. н. «реестровых» казаков, то есть состоящих на государственной службе в соответствии с Федеральным законом от 05 декабря 2005 г. N 154-ФЗ «О государственной службе российского казачества», а его Устав утверждён Указом Президента РФ от 17 июня 1997 г. № 612.

Esn (talk) 00:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Military Abkhazia

Done :-)

--noclador (talk) 12:01, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Swiss Army

Yep, there is another reorganization in the works! I got a series of emails last October from a Oberstleutnant of the Swiss Army, who was complaining that the structure in the graphic is not the new and final one of the Armee XXI and so he sent me two publications of the Plannungsstab der Armee to change the graphics accordingly and I did. I can't find your email address anymore - mail me at [1] and I will send you the two files, in which you will find all changes (in some cases even down to Platoon level!) :-) all the best, --noclador (talk) 00:51, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

uh-oh... Ich weiß gar nicht ob ich die alte Grafik noch habe! Außerdem; die neue Organisation soll zum 1.1.2011 stehen... Die Reorganisation müsste also in den nächsten 14 Monaten komplett durchgezogen werden! Will it thus be necessary to go back to the old graphic now??? --noclador (talk) 12:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I meant the psd. that one is gone - I checked now! So the only ones we have are the ones stored in the file history on commons... = we can take one of the old ones from commons until the new structure is implemented, and then upload the new one again. but the ones on commons I can not change anymore... =they would be like that until the new one comes into force. --noclador (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Or: as the new structure is being implemented now; how would it be if we put under the graphic of the new structure: "Structure of the Swiss Army in 2011 after the current reorganization." --noclador (talk) 12:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: If I do not answer always quickly- I am not in Austria anymore, I live now 50m to the right of Maidan :-) --noclador (talk) 12:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Russian Airborne 106th Division (Tula)

Huh... that is a difficult one... if the unit was to be disbanded on June 1st, I assume that before that date all troops and all material has been shifted to other units and on that day only the colors of the unit to be officially put into storage,... the question now is: is the 106th Division alive and if yes in what form- with all its units and troops or just with a rump command that could be expanded if desired/needed??? I added the 106th to the Russian Airborne Troops article... but also noted that it was destined to be disbanded on June 1st, 2009... is there a possibility for you to find out if the 106th is still a full-strength division or just a rump unit??? thanks, --noclador (talk) 05:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, based my graphic on a document I got (thanks to connections) with the future unified structure of the Russian Army. Supposedly there is a major overhaul going on with all units and especially all higher commands being reorganized as the Georgian War showed some reform is necessary (i.e. all divisions will be disbanded and replaced by brigades). My informations says that the 51st Parachute Landing Regiment will become part of the 7th Guards Airborne Division and the 137th Parachute Landing Regiment will become part of the 98th Guards Airborne Division, with the remaining units to be disbanded... within the 76th Guards Airborne Division a new regiment the 23rd Guards Airborne Regiment in Pskov was formed to bring the divisions in line. That is the info I got. and what you say, that the only remaining units with the 106th Division are the two parachute regiments and the artillery regiment is consistent with my info: move the 2 regiments to the other divisions and disband the artillery regiment and then the 106th Division is disbanded... however what does the Kremlin think??? we are again in times where the job of Kremlinologist is required to understand Russian policy... :-) --noclador (talk) 06:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Abkhaz Army

Saw you gave some details to our great mate Noclador about the Abkhaz forces. I looked for your Russian sources on the Military of Abkhazia page and couldn't find them. Are they webpages or personal contacts? Buckshot06 (talk) 09:34, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your fantastically quick answer. Maybe I should have worded my query differently. To clarify, the "other Russian sources" - are they the ones you've now lost after switching computers or are they somewhere else? Thanks also for your hard work on the various armies. Can you point me to anything more about the Russian brigade transition? My ongoing translation of one source is at Talk:Russian Ground Forces#New brigades. Buckshot06 (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Russoswiss. Are you working on any other armies' information at the moment?Buckshot06 (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

File:Unidentified Flag.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Unidentified Flag.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 23:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)