A Diorama: "The Valley Of Tears" / Syrian T-62 of the 1973 "Yom Kippur War" in 1/35th scale

October 6th, 1973/  1400hrs:  The combined forces of Egypt and Syria launched a massive coordinated assault against Israeli forces on two fronts, simultaneously crossing the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights.  The Syrians spearhead their attack with the 5th, 7th and 9th Infantry Divisions.  The actual number of Syrian tanks was estimated at about 1250, with hundreds more BMP-1, BTR-152, BTR-50 and PT-76 in support.  Literally thousands of vehicles participated in the battles to follow.

  Each Syrian infantry division had one infantry brigade, one mechanized infantry brigade, and one armored brigade.  The infantry and mechanized brigades each had three infantry battalions, a battalion of forty tanks, an AA artillery battalion and a field artillery battalion.  The armored brigade had three battalions of forty tanks each.  The division also had a regiment of field artillery, a divisional AA field artillery regiment, a reconnaissance regiment with a company attached to each brigade and a chemical company with a section attached to each brigade.  An incredible show of force against the Israeli static defense of mainly reserve units.  

  This tank from the Syrian army 81st armored brigade, was knocked out and abandoned by it's crew after it fell into the Israeli constructed antitank ditch. You can see in the photos how many armored vehicles had piled up on the Eastern side of the ditch waiting to cross the engineering bridges.  When the bridges were hit by Israeli tanks, artillery and aircraft the Syrian tanks were destroyed and abandoned. This particular T-62-1972 is the most unusual because of it's hand painted camouflage pattern.  To my knowledge, no other tank in the war was painted like this one and coincidentally photographed numerous times. These three photos are the ones I worked with to replicate the diorama.

Building the diorama

I'd been thinking about doing this scene as a diorama ever since I saw these wartime photos over 40 years ago....I started out by using the old Tamiya T-62 kit that had been collecting dust on a shelf for nearly as long. I didn't want to take the chance of ruining a newer and more expensive Trumpeter kit, if my hand painting didn't turn out.  As it happens, the painting did go well and I was satisfied with the result.  Here is a photo of the model, which was on a shelf for many years.  A good place to start....

   I began by removing any stowage that was on the old model.  Some additional tie downs were added to the turret.  I then took a spray can of "Rustoleum' camouflage paint and over-sprayed the previous pattern.  The fun starts now...I used "Testors" model-master light camouflage grey, which is nearly white but not quite so bright and began to replicate the Syrian hand applied camouflage.  Here is the result.

GROUNDWORK

Next part of this project is to try to replicate the terrain which appears in the photograph.  The anti-tank ditch was dug out by the IDF to create a physical obstacle to slow any sudden advance by the Syrians and to this end it worked quite well.  The assault slowed while Syrian army engineers brought up the lagging MT-55 AVLB (armored bridging vehicles), which should have been closer to the vanguard of the attack.  While the Syrians waited, the Israelis targeted all lead armored vehicles and destroyed all but two of these bridge-laying tanks.  The disastrous result created by this small miscalculation can be seen in the following photos.

You can see here the tank that is the subject of the diorama and the surrounding area

More on the groundwork....

I used layered foam board and carved out the rough shape that replicated the ditch. The Israeli M-38 jeep figures into this diorama, so I placed it there temporarily to see how it all balances out.  It worked.

 Next step is to cover the foam with "Durhams water putty".  Great stuff that mixes like plaster and hardens like cement. Now is the time to add the large boulders seen everywhere on the Golan Heights.  A trip to the local nursery where I found the small pebbles I needed to replicate the large volcanic boulders.  These need to be pushed down into the putty before it dries..some kitty litter for very small rocks also sprinkled on the surface.

 Now is the tricky part, (at least for me anyway).  I haven't built so many of these dioramas mainly because they create a large "foot-print" in my display cabinets which have loads of model vehicles and airplanes and not much room inside for 12"in. square displays.

  

   My point ..... is that my skills in finishing a diorama are not up to the level of everything else I do to the model.  On the other hand, I am like a blank slate able to attempt new techniques (because I don't have any of my own).....So, what did I learn ?  Well,  first thing I found out is that the foam board will dissolve when sprayed with a petroleum base paint (not good !), so I first needed to coat the entire foam block with a clear acrylic base-coat.  I used Johnson's "Future" clear floor polish out of a squirt bottle and soaked the hell out of it.  Now that I had a barrier coating I could move ahead with my other ideas.  I sprayed the entire upper surface with "Rustoleum" sand color, "texture paint" to blend all the groundwork together.  This worked quite well, resulting in an overall flat textured surface to start applying pastel powders. I set the models in their positions with white glue and mixed up more "water-putty", tinted with a liberal amount of brown pastel powder.  I used this material to blend the model into the base and to clod up the tracks with mud....a nice result overall.  The last thing was to add some hints of vegetation.  The Golan Heights is not lush with flora like in a forest but there is a type of tall field grass (not a Botanist, so don't expect me to tell you exactly what genus it is), that is prevalent in this volcanic area and appears in most photos.  I wanted to include some of these, to break-up the monotony of dirt and rocks and dirt and more rocks. At the local hobby store railroad department, there were all sorts of fibers in little bags which gave me some ideas.  I had some old paint brushes around my garage to provide pretty much the same material.  I went home, got one of these and some scissors and cut odd lengths of "grass".  White glue secures each clump to the base.  

FINALE

The guys in this jeep really get around, last time we saw them they were driving down the sweet-water canal road in Egypt...Well, it is a small country.

COMMISSIONS

Yes, I will build commissioned scale models for select clients.  I can be reached by email: seahors1@gate.net