Russian Vehicle Markings

[Owen Evans]

Not strictly CMP related, but does anybody know of any good websites, books or other resources accurately detailing the markings applied to military vehicles by the Russians in WW2. I found this site:

http://www.wio.ru/tank/oz/oz-en.htm

but it appears to be for armour. I'm looking for info on the markings applied to softskins. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Owen.

[Lang]

Owen

If you are not looking for a particular unit those armoured unit insignia would have also been on the thousands of soft skin vehicles in those units (maybe as many as ten trucks/jeeps for every tank).

Russian soft skins appear to have almost no markings except for a few numbers on the door.

Case in point about my comments on armoured units above. From your marking link this Chevrolet with the elephant is a soft skin vehicle belonging to the 14th Guards Mechanised Brigade.

The others demonstrate the sparse markings, most photos show no markings visible at all on Russian vehicles. They often have those detachable signs on the sides - perhaps these were pool vehicles just given temporary identification for particular jobs. Maybe they had large central workshops where units just exchanged vehicles and they did not "own" their personal vehicles so had no unit markings?

Lang

[Lang]

Here is one with a unit marking on the windscreen. This reinforces my thoughts about centrally owned and temporarily issued vehicles. From the shop name this is in Romania.

[Owen Evans]

Lang,

Thanks for your responses. Looks like in the main they just had a serial number in cryllic on the doors, with occasionally (but more often not) a unit marking too.

There is a wealth on info out there on the British, Canadian, US and even German vehicle markings, but the Russian markings much less so.

Owen.

[Lang]

Owen

Another picture of a jeep.

But more telling is the military vehicle club in their restored vehicles. These people (no matter where in the world) all want to cover their vehicles in numbers and unit signs of the "correct" period. These blokes have nothing, leading me to believe that is what it was.

[David Dunlop]

A desire, perhaps, to make it more difficult for the enemy to know who they are dealing with on the battlefield?

David

[Tony Mathers]

Probably more to do with "" Why bother, it will be lucky to still be going in a week!""

[Lang]

David

I don't think that is the case. Unmarked things just create confusion for your own people. In the Eastern front situation with the scale of operations, both sides would know exactly who they are dealing with the first prisoner captured quite apart from the intelligence brought back by active patrolling.

The stupidity of having things unmarked was taken to the extreme in the UK when some idiot decided to remove all the road signs. It created untold confusion for a vast mobile population of both British and Allied servicemen without local knowledge.

This clown (and the people who approved it) could only have thought that the German Army only got to Dunkirk by using tourist guides and his cunning plan would confuse the mapless invading amphibious or parachuting Germans so much they would end up in the Outer Hebrides instead of London where they were planning to go.

The same with unmarked vehicles, particularly at borders between major formations, where people could not tell whether vehicles were theirs or the next door division. Trans-formation convoys would have a bad time trying to keep untangled from the local traffic if everybody was unidentified.

Lang

[David Dunlop]

Ahhh. Stalinism at it’s finest.

“If nobody knows what’s going on in the Army, it can’t rise against me.”

David

[Lang]

Tony

I think you might be selling the Russian vehicles short. Although they had hundreds of thousands of American vehicles and you see a majority of these in combat photos because they are 4x4 or 6x6 the great bulk of the Russian fleet were home built vehicles.

They were known for their simplicity and ease of maintenance. They do look old fashioned.

We now know the Soviet block have had the best off-road military vehicles in the world for nearly 70 years. They have kept them simple concentrating on all-terrain ability without the complicated sophistication and comfort of western vehicles - most of which are adaptions of civil designs and merely side-line production by huge corporations earning their main living from commercial sales.

Lang