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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Syrian PT-76 in the 1973 Yom Kippur War


The PT-76 Soviet made Light reconnaissance tank was supplied to the Egyptian and Syrian Arab armies in the 1960s. It participated in the 1967 Six Day War with the Egyptian army in some of the battles in the Sinai desert. Israel captured hundreds of armored vehicles during this war and applied various conversions to these captured vehicles. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War it again was used in direct combat against the Israelis. This war saw it used by the Syrians as well, fighting on Golan Heights. I have only seen a few photos taken of damaged or captured Syrian PT-76 recon tanks. The photo above shows a complicated camouflage pattern in typical Syrian army colors of Grey/ Green/ Sand. I have determined that a 3 digit individual vehicle number was painted on the turrets of most of these tanks. From my research (given the very limited photo reference available) it also appears that recon vehicles (PT-76/ BTR-152/ BRDM) of the Syrian tank brigades had numbers that begin with an Arabic-Hindi "0". See photos below:
The model; Eastern Express PT-76B in 1/35th scale. Modifications were: Grab rail around turret/ Louvers in the hull engine exhaust ports/ cage guards for the headlights.
I will probably be adding to this post my new project, a Trumpeter PT-76 with Friul tracks. Since I built this one years ago, 3 new PT-76 kits were released by "Trumpeter" and I can hardly wait to start on it. I may convert it into the Israeli captured and converted version which were used in the "War of Attrition" and Yom Kippur War.

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