Very Tiny Wars: UAZ-469

Showing posts with label UAZ-469. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2015

An SA-4 Ganef battery

This weekend's post is more antiaircraft for my East Germans; an SA-4 Ganef battery:

Marcin at O8 has very recently put out a pack intended to represent an SA-4 battalion, but I have no need of three batteries, so I'm doing just one.

The Ganef medium to long range missile:

(Ganef being Yiddish for "rascal" or "thief" and predictably also for "lawyer") is called Krug ("circle") in Russian and it entered service in 1965. It was designed to fit inside an AN-22 Cock aircraft:

Yes, I agree. One of the most unfortunate of NATO reporting names.

The two versions operational in 1981 (the year my scenario is set in) were the Krug A (1971) and the Krug B (1973). The A had a maximum engagement altitude of 88,500ft/27,000m and a range of just under 45mi or 72 km. The B model sacrificed altitude and range for increased performance against lower altitude targets. The two types were visually indistinguishable from each other.

A brigade (three battalions) of Ganefs would have been an Army-level asset and would have operated 6-15mi/10-25km behind the front lines. Each battalion consisted of three batteries and a technical (radar) company.

So what should a battery consist of? Three TELs, two of which were armed with Krug B and one with Krug A:

four reload trucks:

and one Pat Hand radar vehicle:

Each battalion was also equipped with eight ZSU-23-4 self-propelled antiaircraft vehicles:

for close-in air defense, two of which accompanied each battery and two for the technical section. And finally, a BTR-60PU-12 antiaircraft battery command vehicle:

The separate radar unit, which served all three of the battalion's batteries, would have been a Long Track:

and a Thin Skin, with its accompanying generator truck:

I chose a simple UAZ-469 command vehicle for this one:

There would also be two ZSU-23-4s.

Unfortunately, some sources list only one reload truck per battery (only one reload missile for a unit that uses six!?!) and that's what Marcin has provided, but in reality, it was four trucks per battery. As the pack has only the three, I didn't feel it was worth $12.50 for a second pack just to get the one missing truck, so I'll just have to have three for my battery. And here it is:

Obviously, in reality, the TELs would never be packed in so closely, but wargaming requires some tweaks.

and the commander:

I added an MT-LB to accompany the Pat Hand, as the stand needed something else and I doubt the radar vehicle traveled alone.

Here's my radar section:

a Long Track:

with an MT-LB for the same reason, and a Thin Skin:

with the generator truck and the section commander's UAZ-469.

You generally see the missiles painted a light grey or left in bare metal, but as usual for me, I don't see this happening in real wartime conditions. You can see in the top photo of a TEL that they did sometimes paint the missiles green, which seems more sensible to me, so I have done the same.

That's it for this post. More next weekend!

Thursday, May 28, 2015

The 2S9 Nona-S

During the mid and late Cold War, each Soviet air assault infantry (VDV) battalion was accompanied by a platoon of eight M-43 120mm towed mortars and their GAZ-66 prime movers:

as well as an independent battery of six at regimental level.

In the mid-1970s, design work began on a self-propelled version of the mortar, based on the BTR-D chassis, which would allow the weapon to more easily traverse difficult terrain and provide it with the ability to "swim". The GAZ-66 had (and still does have) an admirable but limited ability to ford water. In late 1981, the Nona-S began to enter service:

though it would be 1985 before it was fully integrated into the Soviet VDV forces. It had been planned to use the Nona-S to replace all the VDV's towed mortars, but instead, it was decided to group the new vehicles together at regimental level and only replace the M-43's that served there as an independent airborne motor battery.

So, the boiled down version is that the battalion level kept its towed mortars (at least into the late 80s) and the regimental level replaced towed with the new Nona-S.

And here is my airborne mortar battery:

In all likelihood, the vehicles would've been grouped as three sections of two vehicles each, but the minis are quite small, so I went with three per stand. Two per stand just looked too naked.

The forward observer would have been mounted in a UAZ-469 4WD:

The battery commander presented me with a problem. In reality, he would've had a GAZ-66 R142 command vehicle:

but of course, O8 makes no sort of box-body Soviet truck, GAZ-66 or otherwise. So I finally decided to go with a standard GAZ-66:

A rather odd vehicle for a command stand, but I didn't really have much choice.

As my scenario begins on March 30, 1981 and the real Nona-S didn't begin entering service until later that year, I've stretched reality slightly and assumed the the Soviets would have pulled out all the stops and gotten new equipment ready in time for the planned hostilities.

That's all for my VDV for the moment. More in the next post.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

More engineering goodness

My 1981 East German pioneer company is now complete. My previous post, "Bridging the gap" (March 8, 2015) was the beginning of this unit, showing a TMM-3 bridging platoon:

The other platoons of the company consisted of BAT-M bulldozers:

MTU-20 AVLBs:

A twin-treadway, cantilever-launched, box girder bridge 65.5 feet in length (20 meters) and capable of supporting 50 tons, all mounted on a modified T-55 chassis.

MDK-2M trench diggers:

Actually, East German engineers in 1981 were more likely to be using the MDK-2Ms predecessor, the BTM:

But I'll have to use what Marcin has provided. I'll just consider my engineers to be extremely well equipped.

Also IMR obstacle clearing vehicles:

Forgive the last two photos

Photos of the real IMR in action seem to be nonexistent.

IRM "Zhuk" (meaning "beetle" in Russian) engineer reconnaissance vehicles:

Which were specifically designed to reconnoiter riverbeds for suitable sites for bridging:

but also for detecting mines, either on land or on the riverbed, the underwater mining of potential river crossing points being common on modern battlefields:

The engineers themselves were generally mounted in obsolete APCs cast off by the infantry. As my company is to be attached to a motor rifle regiment, the APCs would be wheeled, so I'm using BTR-60Ps:

although BTR-152s or even BTR-40s would be possible for engineers in a reserve or training unit. For a company attached to an armored unit, BTR-50PKs would be the most likely.

Each divisional pioneer company had its own reconnaissance platoon of BRDM-2s (or possibly BRDM-1s) for scouting and screening:

which for my purpose, is more usefully cascaded down to the regimental level, which is how I represent it.

And finally, the commander of a pioneer company required only a single radio for contact with higher command and so was usually mounted in a 4WD. I chose a UAZ-469:

But other similar vehicles were just as likely.

And now here is my company:

Engineers, even more so than other types of support units, were prone to have a whole gaggle of various sizes of trucks accompanying them, so to represent that, I added a URAL-375D and a KrAZ-255B to the transport vehicle stands.

Not a bad weekend's work. Now on to the next project!

Very Tiny Wars

Saturday, July 18, 2015

An SA-4 Ganef battery

Thursday, May 28, 2015

The 2S9 Nona-S

Saturday, March 28, 2015

More engineering goodness

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