Thread: From Russia
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Old 02-10-05, 23:41
centurion centurion is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: The Welsh Marches
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Default Red armoured car

It could be a reproduction - the uniforms are certaimly repros of the original Red Army uniform allegedly designed by Trotsky himself (and any one who designed headgear like that probably deserved to be hunted down by an OGPU agent with an icepick). Twin turrets were common on Russian Imperial Army armoured car designs. This vehicle looks like a Fiat (1915). These were designed for France but found wanting. The standard French prqctice of the time for military equipment that was of unacceptable standard for their own forces was to flog (sell) it off to their allies (they for example sold the deadly [to its own crew]Spad A1 fighter to the Russians and obsolete aircraft and unreliable heavy artillery to the Americans). The Fiats were re turreted to Russian tastes with twin turrets. The bonnet does not look quite right for the Austin or Renault twin turreted armoured cars used by the Russians. Doubtless the Reds took over some Imperial armour. Incidently the two civilians on the vehicle appear to be representing Lenin and Stalin. The skull and cross bones motif is interesting as this was originally adopted in 1914 by some ultra patriotic imperialist Russian units on the 'death [and glory' basis. (for example the group of pilots led by Nesterof who adopted 'Kamikazi ' tactics well before the Japanese) One wonders how it metamorphised into a red Army symbol.
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