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| In 1955 the Soviet Union revealed a 6-wheeled armored personnel carrier built around the Zil-157 truck chassis, this variant was the BTR-152V. BTR (БТР) is short for Bronetransporter (Бронетранспортер) which is literally "armored transporter. |
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| A year later a variant of this vehicle designated BTR-152S appeared as a Command and Communication Post vehicle for infantry commanders. It had a significantly higher full cover roof and additional radios and antennas including the powerful R-118 radio set. The BTR-152S was manufactured from 1955 through 1959 and 272 were made. |
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| This is a tough looking little truck. Note the resemblance to a U.S. M3 Halftrack in the front area while the sloping armor of the crew compartment resembles a German SdKfz 251. |
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| Although I have not compared measurements of the kit and the real vehicle, photos show it to be very accurately shaped and detailed. The lines look dead on. |
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| I was completely finished with the kit when I realized I should have drilled out the center part of the spare tire, trimmed away the air pressure regulation parts and created lug holes. I decided to leave it this way for now. |
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| The high roof and large antennae make for an odd site, and yet very typically Russian. |
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| The decals are on a nice thin carrier with no silvering and good registration. |
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| A nice thing about "braille-scale" armor, they don't take up much shelf space. |
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| Nearly finished BTR on the workbench, an ACE ERC-90 F1 in the background. |
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| This kit was really easy to paint having no glass, no open hatches and no multicolored camouflage. |
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| Here's a photo before painting which shows how I created the headlight guards from strands of 12 gauge wire. |
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Kit: ICM # 72511 |
Scale: 1/72 |
Value:
I purchased my kit from Wild Bill's Hobbies in Irving Texas for $12.00 in year 2009. Reasonable in the current market. |
Assembly:
The kit consists of 68 plastic parts molded in white, one decal sheet and a four-page folded instruction sheet.
Detail is reasonably crisp with some flash to cleanup.
Each tire and wheel are molded as one piece with nicely detailed tire pressure regulation system. The tread pattern detail is soft but acceptable, note that the tread pattern is directional so pay attention to which tires are lefties and righties. An extra tire is provided for the spare but it should have the center cap and pressure regulator parts removed for an uninstalled wheel, this can be corrected with careful trimming and drilling.
All doors and hatches are molded shut so I didn't bother installing any of the interior parts which are not visible. This made assembly really quick.
Plastic axles were provided which was an improvement in my opinion over the Omeka-K release of the same kit which had metal axles (this kit shares 98% common parts with the ICM BTR-152V and BTR-152K kits).
The headlight guards are a bit thick so I created my own.
Overall this was a very easy and fast build with no major problems at all.
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Decals:
Decals are provided for a couple of unspecified units of the Soviet Army. Decals were in register, thin and adhered well. |
Customizations:
I used strands from 12 gauge speaker wire to fabricate the headlight brush guards. Everything else was straight from the box. I thinned down the front fenders by scraping carefully with an X-acto blade. |
Recommendation:
This is an easy kit to build and impressively accurate. Recommended highly for small scale cold war enthusiasts. |
