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T34-85 in the snow


John H Dale

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My T34 is a 1944 model with the split commanders hatch.It was made at Nizhni Tagil at the Uralvagon factory No 183.It has indeed had the 1960s upgrade with better air cleaners provision for IR vision and T55 style starfish wheels,and a few other bits.It ended up in Bosnia where it was fighting on the side of the Croations.

The writing on the side was under the old paint when we stripped back for re painting and is undoubtably wartime as it mentions Stalin and it was on the very first layer of paint.

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It says 'The Good Old Stalin' but I expect you knew that ;)

 

Has anybody ever catalogued the patriotic slogans that ended up on these? I assume they were added by field troops as a morale booster and not named at the factory...?

 

Stone

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I would think many were painted at depots or factories, for example many Churchills are "marked for the soviet ukraine" in very stylised crylic. The same tanks often have a later Heroic name in more conventional script -but still very correct even beautiful caligraphy- even the more sloganistic writing as "crush the facist" or "kill the German invaders" is still well writen whereas the bort numbers (tactical numbers) are often quite crude.

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By sheer coincidence (really!) I found a T-34-85 manual in a batch of stuff I was chasing up. Frustratingly none of the manuals I was looking for showed up!

 

Just in case anybody was interested in having a look I've stuck it on my website here. Even if you can't read Cyrillic you can look at the piccies! Watch out if you're on dialup as it's nearly 60MB.

 

Modnote: This seemed as good a thread as any to put it but feel free to shift it if you'd rather :)

 

I've got some T-55/T-60/T-72 ones as well if they're of interest...

 

Stone

Edited by Stone
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