Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Soviet era vehicles in Siberia

Well, new projects continue to beckon.  I'm now setting out on a USMC brigade group for a cold war turned hot in 1985 - thinking the unthinkable.  This would have been my peak time for call up had things gone a different route, although I might have been tempted to preempt call up at the time by volunteering for the RAF - it's the path my dad followed at 18 in WW2!

Anyway, having developed an interest in more modern equipment, I thought I'd share some photos that I took when I was working on a project in Siberia back in 2010.  We were visiting Nyagan and stumbled across these vehicles forming a war memorial - we thought to Soviet casualties of the Afghan conflict of the 80's, but my Russian is scant to say the least.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with the vehicle ID.

I think this is a BMP-1

 BTR-60
BMP-1  again
 BTR-60
 And again
 ZSU23/4 Shilka
 and again
All 3 in the memorial
 The image quality isn't the best but we were visiting in late September and only had a brief chance to look around the town so the sun was very low in the sky.  The week after we left temperatures were -10C and falling!

The cammo pattern on the Shilka is a base of bright green with olive green sploges outlined in black or very dark green.  The BTR-60 is similar although the edges of the spots are less well defined and the BMP seems to be just in bright green with olive green splodges.

Thanks to Richard (cardophillips) for correcting my ID on the BTR-60.

at

3 comments:

  1. Richard Naylor29 November 2012 at 20:42

    Hi,

    Sounds like you had an interesting trip (I saw your posting on the Blitzkrieg Commander forum as well), the T-34 seems to have survived being on the bottom of a lake pretty well. I was pleased to see from your pictures of the more modern Russian vehicles that I wasn't too far off with the paint scheme on my 6mm versions.

    Cheers

    Richard

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andy Canham29 November 2012 at 22:50

    Hi Richard

    Glad the photos were of interest. Yes, the more modern equipment looked like a relatively authentic cammo scheme to me - I don't think they had been painted for show. Bearing in mind the Afghan theme of the memorial, I suspect it reflects the mid 80's quite well.

    Cheers

    Andy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Richard Naylor29 November 2012 at 23:02

    I think the cammo scheme or something very similar are still in use as I painted the 59th Motor Rifle Brigade which is a relatively new formation having been created in the recent Russian army reforms. Unfortunately they didn't fare too well on the table top when they took on the Chinese.

    Cheers

    Richard

    ReplyDelete