Okay, here's my Rooskie Model A pick-up done. Details:
1/35 Zvezda GAZ MM 1.5 Ton Truck - 1943 (Zvezda 3574)
Paints: Revell Aqua Color, Gunze Mr. Hobby, Vallejo Model Color
Weathering: Rustall System, Iwata Com.Art paints, Vallejo Acrylic Mediums
There are some earlier pics in this thread showing some of the build. In short, the kit was a pig that almost drove me crazy. Once pounded into submission (more or less) it did serve as an interesting experiment in weathering with all acrylic products (minus a cover layer of clear lacquer that was used to protect the base in the “hairspray” technique). Those wishing details can check a long build post I made in Armor “Zvezda Rooskie Truck with Acrylic Weathering.” Here I'd like to explain why I think this very humble offering belongs in a 1943 group build.
The GAZ MM 1.5 ton truck was a Model A produced under license in the USSR from the late 20s through the early 50s. (There were many variations on the basic theme.) The one pictured is described by Zvezda as the 1943 Model. Before Barbarossa the main factories producing this buggy were near Minsk and were some of the first to be evacuated east of the Urals. In the rush, the machinery required for options like doors, roofs and fenders were left behind. Hence for over a year Soviet Ice Road truckers were making do with a truck largely made of wood and with canvas doors/roofs. In 1943 the situation settled enough that the “new and improved” model here displayed came out. It retains a lot of wood, but it at least has doors and I'm pretty sure metal fenders. (Wonder if it had a heater?) If the kit doesn't look terribly precise, neither did the real ones judging from a number of photos I've seen. Not sure how an American Model A would look to modern eyes, but a wartime Soviet version was short on fit and finish. As the pics will show I did make an effort to dirty the thing up because I think that's one attribute virtually all AFVs in front line service had in common – even if only a few weeks old, they were all dirty. This was a utility vehicle and I doubt made for much off-road use, but as you can see, “off-road” was a relative term in the USSR.
So a humble breed no doubt. But also a small part of a very large revolution in military affairs. The reason World War II took the form that it did was largely because it was history's first war that saw the internal combustion engine in use by every combatant in numbers that still amaze.
In a sense the wars of the Mid-19th century which saw the vital employment of railroads and telegraphs, and were between nations that had the money to buy arms in staggering quantities, were the major break with the past. I think Julius Caesar would have understood Napoleon's battles – I don't think he would have really understood Lee's or Moltke's. Although advances abounded in all fields, the First World War was in many ways as close to the US Civil War as it was to World War II. Field radios and aircraft were giving commanders unprecedented means of looking “over the hill” and means to do something about it. But the log jam that limited operations in the First World War would have been immediately recognizable to Sherman: huge armies were chained to the rail head. The closer you could get to the rail head the better, but the farther you moved away from it (as during an offensive) the more your operations were put on a kind of timer: reach your objective with horses or watch the advance fizzle. (The First Battle of the Marne was the most dramatic example but the great offensives by both sides in 1918 illustrated that nothing had changed.) There were cars and trucks in WWI but in numbers so small that they were only useful for communications and shipment of very high value items. Once beyond the rail head, horses and mules supplied the armies in 1918 just as they had for Alexander the Great. And horses and mules ate huge amounts of fodder that supplying them was a huge headache. This explained why a breakthrough of twenty miles was great work in WWI.
Motorization was certainly at the top of every smart officer's wish list in the interwar period. Tanks of course had shown ominous potential. How one should use tanks was a matter of considerable dispute in this period but everybody wanted more trucks. Indeed, armor visionaries like Guderian (the most sensible of the bunch) or DeGaulle saw that motorizing much of the army was a requisite for AFVs to have any use at all. The Brits made blunders in large number in the 1930s. They also determined to field the first completely motorized army in history and did so with the BEF in 1939-40. Later the American Army expanded the theme. One reason the US Army in Europe was so dangerous was that it had no leg infantry – if you marched it was for tactical reasons. If you could ride the Army could advance 40 miles in a day. (Leg infantry did prove necessary in the Pacific because there were often no roads – at least not until US engineers built them.)
America had money and the Brits fielded a small army. Nations like Germany and the USSR which fielded huge land armies took their horses to war once again. However, with a difference. Both sides were able to support an elite portion of their land forces with mechanized supply as well as mechanized weapons. At every stage of the war in the East, scores of divisions fought a war almost identical to WWI. (It was Stalin's willingness to confront the trench warfare mentality that helped drive up casualties for both sides into the stratosphere. Heaven knows how many WWI style Soviet attacks were made simply to kill Germans. It did work in the long run.) If one looks at the Eastern Front the story there was largely the slipping ability of the Germans to support elite units (although the German armed forces increased in size through 1944, the Feldherr in the Ost never matched the numbers fielded in June 1941) and the growing ability of the Soviets to do so. It has been accurately pointed out that US Lend Lease played a huge role in mechanizing the “Guards” units when the “deuce and a half” started rolling in. (We also sent them thousands of locomotives to complete the circle.) But even humble utility vehicles like the GAZ MM were priceless. They were cheap and hence present in the tens of thousands. The man hours required to move items from one part of a factory complex to another was decreased hugely with trucks, as was keeping the trains loaded to the brim with supplies of all kinds. If the roads allowed it, even a simple and rugged buggy like the GAZ would help expand the army's reach beyond the rail head. Every job done by humble buggies allowed the blue-ticket transport vehicles to serve the Red Army's spear head.
And it was in 1943 when this fact became all too obvious. Soviet counter-offensives after Moscow and Stalingrad had both run out of steam because of logistic over-extension. (And Stalin's periodic bouts of stupidity.) When we think of 1943 we think of Kursk and for good reason. But the battles in the salient to the Soviets were a preliminary to the major action – a massive counter-attack launched both north and south of Kursk. This time the ever more skillful Soviet armies were able to sustain their advances in a way impossible a year before. In the humiliating retreat to the Dnieper the Germans were saved by the mud more than Soviet supply breakdown. In 1944 the spectacular victories over Army Group Center drove home the point more solidly.
And let's not forget that US Model As were doing the same thing in the Arsenal of Democracy – we just didn't need to take them to war. So when the Western allies got back into the war against Germany in 1943, they left their horses behind. (They did buy mules in Italy, but you can't foresee everything.)
The flip side of all of this is that if mechanization was central to economies and armies then oil became the object of war. It is no accident that both Germany and Japan were driven to desperate gambles to gain (among other things) a permanent access to oil supplies. Come to think about it, I rather doubt there would have been a war in Iraq if that area of the world was famous for growing carrots. And all to keep the GAZ MM and it's more famous cousins running.
Eric
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