My Cold War collection would not be complete without a few Russian hordes to oppose my American Army. Here the Petner Panzer T-72 sits next to a Tomy T-34/85 II, the post war version of the T-34.
Time magazine ran an article a few years after the first T-72 tanks were displayed in public. They showed a low silhouette version with a self loading, unmanned turret, called the FST, the Follow-on Soviet Tank. I built one based on their artists conception drawing.
The venerable Roco T-44 sits here in the corner, and the bright green tanks are the Armourtec T-62 tank. The Russians never threw anything away and often older tanks were kept in service as Category Three units, police or just kept in storage. Sometimes they were pulled out of storage and placed along the border as bunkers, dug into the ground to provide a line of defense. Other times the turrets were removed and they served as towing vehicles for damaged tanks.
A few support vehicles round out this unit. Supply trucks, artillery towing tractors, fuel tankers, are all part of the needs of a modern army.
A pretty impressive line up of Soviet equipment. It's too bad that Petner Panzers and Armourtec never really got off the ground. Their products were not perfect, but were great first efforts. Fidelis Models probably has some of these gems in stock. When Armourtec when out of business the models passed on to Petner. He spend some significant amount of money to improve the kit, and there are a few of the new ones in my collection too, but that's another box.
The venerable Roco T-44 sits here in the corner, and the bright green tanks are the Armourtec T-62 tank. The Russians never threw anything away and often older tanks were kept in service as Category Three units, police or just kept in storage. Sometimes they were pulled out of storage and placed along the border as bunkers, dug into the ground to provide a line of defense. Other times the turrets were removed and they served as towing vehicles for damaged tanks.
A few support vehicles round out this unit. Supply trucks, artillery towing tractors, fuel tankers, are all part of the needs of a modern army.
A pretty impressive line up of Soviet equipment. It's too bad that Petner Panzers and Armourtec never really got off the ground. Their products were not perfect, but were great first efforts. Fidelis Models probably has some of these gems in stock. When Armourtec when out of business the models passed on to Petner. He spend some significant amount of money to improve the kit, and there are a few of the new ones in my collection too, but that's another box.
4 comments:
The Petner's T-55 or 64 mold was made by my dad's company, Globe Metal Engravers that was in Orange at the time then moved to Anaheim. I remember seeing the mold being made as mostly we made bottle molds and mattel molds. That tank was cool for a kid like me. I remember he gave it to me on Thanksgiving day so Petner must have received it just before then. It was in that thin spartan box too. Nice blog post. Chris Remy
Very cool Chris. I just finished building a few Petner Panzers that have been languishing in the collection unassembled for a while. By a while I mean about a decade!
Bunkermeister
And now, 30 years later I am printing my own 1/72 T-55 army in my house, a couple of hours each at a about .30 cents ea and almost the same quality.
Amazing how far making a toy tank has come.
Yes, that is amazing.
Bunkermeister
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