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Well, emm..

This has nothing to do with the acctuall gaming experience, but quite a time ago, I decided I would start soviet LW list at some point. Few months back, I bought the red bear (even before that, I decided I would go with the guards separate heavy tank regiment, based on freeware PDF back then, as I had plans to create this army as a "budget cut army" ), and alongside it, I started looking mechanized list and ended up with rota radzveki. After all, these fellas are quite "nevaheards" for me, and they did sound rather interesting. But one transport option caught my eye - Turretless BA-10?

It did sound even more interesting and even a bit logical, so I did some googling and splashed thrue few books about red army, but all the info I found about these were either a)completely false from the internet b)something FoW related c)absolutely nothing.

Does someone has any actuall info (preferrable graphic material) about these, or is this just some invented-by-battlefront-and-not-so-historical unit, or misconstrue about some post-war vehicle like the ISU-152 recovery vehicle in Finns list?

I would appreciate your help, thx in advance.

- Antti

Hi.
I do not think it was made up by Battlefront.As i have played several WWII rule sets that had turret less BA 10 armoured cars as transport options.

I remember in the mists of time , being told the BA 10 had an effective anti tank gun in the early mid war period.

But in the same way the British took the turrets of the Stuart tanks to make them faster & lower profile for recon duties.After the Stuarts armament became less effective.
The Russians used BA 10 amoured cars without turrets as personel carriers later in the war.(The removal of the turret and ammo stowage allowed room for transporting troops, and lowered the profile of the vehicle.)

Sorry I do not have access to any photo evidence.

Here's some in German hands.

http://beute.narod.ru/Beutepanzer/su/ba/ba-10/ba10-turretless.html

I'm contemplating buying a bunch of them (and a bunch of BT-5s) to make BA-6s out of for my Spanish Republicans.

Lanrak wrote:

The Russians used BA 10 amoured cars without turrets as personel carriers later in the war.(The removal of the turret and ammo stowage allowed room for transporting troops, and lowered the profile of the vehicle.)

Thats what they say, yes, but I really havent seen any acctuall evidence about this - I have seen two or three pictures about BA-10 transferred into HQ vehicle, but this conversion was made by germans. I did, via axis history forum, track an actual source (or at least one of them) of such info (The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II, Chris Bishop, 1998), I did find the book from scribd, but again, no trace about any actual references.

It might be common misunderstanding that these vehicles would have been used as APC in large scale by soviet union, but fex. in finnish front they were deployed as a armoured cars (1944 era pictures, and we are not talking about few inviduals, in the picture there is at least ten vehicles with tank riders hanging on them) - Im not sure what was the actual role of them, but definetly they got turrets in place and got 45mm gun armament in them. The few pictures I managed to gain via other forums seem all to be presenting armored ZIS truck instead of actuall BA-10s.

 George Spiggott wrote:
Here's some in German hands.

http://beute.narod.ru/Beutepanzer/su/ba/ba-10/ba10-turretless.html

I'm contemplating buying a bunch of them (and a bunch of BT-5s) to make BA-6s out of for my Spanish Republicans.

Yup, those pictures did come up. At least the vehicle at the bottom was converted by germans.

Btw, I really suggest you to get those zvezda BA-10s - they are real beauties!

Ah, link to the axis history, thread about the same subject:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=162089