BMP-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle***Finished***

[PeterB]

My second build in this GB will be rather more complicated than my Saracen I suspect.

I have only ever tried to build one other kit from this Ukrainian manufacturer - their T-59 tank  - and I abandoned it in the end. The engineering was poor, the fit worse and the white plastic would not stay glued together even with CA! Hopefully this one will be better. I will be using Zaloga and Parsons book in the Osprey Vanguard series for background.

 

During WWII, in some respects the Wehrmacht probably led the field in using armoured carriers for infantry and in particular the "Panzer Grenadiers", who used the SdKfz 250/251 tracked vehicles to accompany the tanks into action. The so called "Battlefield Taxi" concept was for troops to use armoured vehicles to keep up with the Panzers across rough terrain and provide immediate infantry support even when under fire - something normal infantry either in lorries or on foot found difficult to do. The carriers were lightly armoured and usually carried just machine guns for self defence, and the normal mode of operation was for the infantry to dismount when they needed to fight. The Allies used Universal carriers, M-3 halftracks and even stripped down "Kangeroo" tanks for the same role, and after the war they continued with the same concept in vehicles like the Saracen and FV 432 for the Brits and the M75, M49 and M113 for the Americans. The Russians initially did the same but then decided to do something a bit different and sort of merge the APC with a light tank to produce the BMP-1 Infantry Fighting/Combat Vehicle, a tracked armoured carrier with heavier armament. Unlike the earlier vehicles the infantry inside were expected to fight from inside as well as outside - inside they could benefit from protection not only from incoming fire but also be relatively immune from the effects of both biological/chemical weapons and nuclear fallout which many thought would be used on Cold War battlefields. The Allies introduced their own versions in the form of the German Marder, US Bradley and British Warrior though they do not exactly follow the same principles when it comes to fighting from inside.

 

More later.

 

Pete

 

[PeterB]

Oh dear - here we go again!

Yes - that is all the instructions. There is a lot of flash and badly placed sprue attachment points so it took a bit of cleaning up. The geometry of the floor and sides also is wrong in places so I had to do quite a lot of cutting and filing to get the parts to fit. The angled bow plate was moulded at far too shallow an angle to match the sides so I cut notches in the web that supported it and bent it up. I also had to shorten the rear of the sides to get the back plate far enough forward to meet the hull top. It is going to need a bit of filling and re-profiling at the front but it looks doable anyway and the plastic does take glue unlike the T-59.

The top is just a dry fit at the moment - you can see how much space the large turret for the heavy armament takes up but more on that later.

 

I think that one of the problems is that having produced an initial model, they then slightly re-work it so that it can be issued as several more variants - this seems to have come a year or two after their BMP-1 and the T-59 followed a T-54 and T-55. The trouble is that some of the parts that need changing are left untouched and you have to fix them yourself - for example on the T-59 I was supposed to cut off one of the axles on each side and move it 1 or maybe 2 mm as the kit placing was not correct for that particular version - all a bit "garage/cottage industry".

 

Pete

Edited March 28, 2023 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Ok, a bit more progress.

I have added the track return wheels, idlers, main wheels and sprockets. Because, as with the T-59, the locating pins for the wheels are extremely short I though a plastic to plastic joint would be strongest so I did not do my usual painting on the sprue routine - I suppose it does help that the track is not the "rubber band" type so there will be no strain on the wheels anyway. ACE tell you to dry fit the sprockets and check the alignment with the track as you may need to remove some plastic from the inner faces , and indeed that was the case. The combination of poor moulding and badly positioned sprue attachments means that the teeth are pretty poor. I have since washed and primed it so I can start painting it now. The kit offers 4 choices - Russian, East German, Czech and "Free Kuwait" all in various shades of green in spite of the box art showing the latter in "sand"!

 

Anyway, here is a bit more background.

According to Zaloga, in the early 1950's the Soviets introduced a new tracked infantry/load carrier, the BTR-50P, based on the chassis of the new PT-76 light tank. It was a simple vehicle that could carry up to 20 troops on bench seats or 2 tons of equipment but access was only by climbing in or out through the open roof so it was not entirely satisfactory. By the late 1960's they decided that it was better to build a smaller vehicle carrying only 1 squad of 10 troops with better protection and easier access, suitable for the new motor rifle divisions to use on a battlefield likely to be subject to nuclear, biological or chemical warfare. However there was problem with the cost – some thought that a cheaper wheeled vehicle would be a better solution and this would eventually lead to the BTR-60. Also the then Premier Krushchev was against spending vast sums of money on a carrier with only light armour that could be fairly easily knocked out. However, following his downfall in 1964 the new vehicle got the go-ahead, but primarily for only those units facing NATO forces in Europe – the majority would be supplied instead with the BTR-60P -bronetransportyor ie “Armoured Carrier” - one of these days I must get one of that family but definitely not the ACE kit!.

 

After looking at various proposals, the one from the newly formed Isakov Bureau in Chelyabinsk known as the Obiekt 765 was awarded a contract for what was to become the BMP from Boyevaya Mashina Pyekhoty which seems to translate as “Infantry Fighting Vehicle”. A rival design by the Gavalov design team called the Obiekt 914 was second choice and in a revised form as the Obiekt 915 went on to become the BMD Boyevaya Mashina Desanta used by their Airborne Forces. The original BMP the production of which ran from 1966 to 1969 was replaced in 1970 by the BMP-1 which was given a 25cm extension to the hull front to improve the balance/buoyancy and reduce porpoising when in water. The hull was roughly divided into 3 sections, the transmission at the front with the driver sitting on the left, the middle which contains the engine and cooling system and  the single man turret which was offset slightly to the right with commander sitting under it behind the driver on the left, and the rear compartment with 8 infantrymen. The latter sat four a side facing the outside with their backs up against a central partition which contained a fuel tank (potentially nasty), and each was provided with a rifle port complete with a periscope. There were 4 roof hatches and the twin doors at the back opened out and sideways and also contained fuel tanks which were considered in the West to be a weak point, though they were normally only used during driving into position and were meant to empty (except for fumes?) during combat. To use the rear gun ports the soldiers unclipped their AK's from alongside the port, opened the “lid” by an internal control, fitted a sleeve to their gun to make a radiation/gas tight seal, and fitted an adaptor to catch spent casings and vent the fumes via the vehicles own ventilation system, and then stuck it in the port opening and blazed away. All well and good in principle but firing an AK on the move was probably only good for suppressing fire as it would hardly be accurate. Larger ports were provided further forwards for the squad machine gunner with his PKM. mg.

 

More another day.

 

Pete

 

[PeterB]

The next stage is going to be interesting!

I have used this sort of track a few times before though I have never been entirely comfortable with it, and in those cases I had at least got a diagram showing which bits went where. This time I will have to play it by ear as the saying goes, but at least there is a fairly obvious pattern ( I think). The two longest lengths go on top, the slightly shorter ones on the bottom and the short ones run up to the sprockets and idlers from the bottom, with some if not all of the 46 individual links bridging the gaps. Normally you end up reducing or removing some teeth on the sprockets where the links make contact but the instructions for this kit say to remove the "teeth" from the bottom of the track - I rather suspect it might end up being a bit of both! 

 

So, on with the development history.

As I mentioned earlier the design was intended to have heavy armament, so the turret carried a new 2A28 Grom (Thunder) 73mm low pressure gun which was perhaps based on the RPG-7 rocket launcher, and fired a 73mm PG-15 rocket projectile which was boosted out of the barrel by a small charge extending the range to a claimed of 700m. It had a coaxial 7.62mm PKT mg, and to engage tanks out of range of the main gun it had rail launcher attached to the turret to fire the new 9M14 Malyutka (Nato name Sagger) anti tank missile with several reloads. The BMP was amphibious though a board on top of the hull front had first to be erected to stop swamping – although it was initially intended to use water jet propulsion this was dropped in favour of propulsion by the tracks.

 

When it first appeared it caused some consternation in the West – heavily armed, fast and quite capable of keeping up with tanks across rough terrain it seemed a serious threat, but all was not quite what it seemed. The rear crew compartment was cramped with little headroom and very hot due to inadequate ventilation, the armour was thinner that expected and only capable of stopping Nato 20mm rounds as Kruschev feared, and it was far more expensive than the BTR-60. Worse still, the armament was actually not very good. The 73mm round wobbled in flight, was inaccurate, and the practical range was found by the Syrians to be no more than 500m. The Malyutka was wire guided and relied on input via a small joystick, and proved hard to control accurately particularly at longer ranges. It was also difficult and slow to fit reloads which were stored in the bottom of the hull. As a result the improved BMP-2 was introduced in around 1980. To address the problems with the armament it was fitted with a larger 2 man turret which contained a seat for the commander, his seat in the hull of the BMP-1 being taken by the squad machine gunner. After considering the 73mm Zarnitsa gun which was a longer barrelled version of the Grom, it was decided to fit a 30mm 2A42 autocannon which had much longer range and could penetrate the armour of earlier Western APC such as the Marder and Bradley before their armour was strengthened. The Malyutka launch rail was replaced by a tube that could fire either the 9K111 Fagot (Nato Spigot) or 9K113 Konkurs (Spandrel) which were semi autonomous like the TOW so easier to aim and use. The larger turret meant that the rear compartment now only held 6 infantrymen and the roof access hatches were reduced from 4 to 2. 

 

Pete

[stevej60]

A lot of work here Pete but great progress too.

[PeterB]

Thanks Steve.

 

I am plodding along with the track - lot of flash and very unfortunate attachment points for the single links (right between the little "horns") but it is getting there slowly. In the meantime I have almost finished the topside.

Again plenty of flash and poor attachment points, coupled with virtually no locating points and almost non existent instructions but it has come out quite well I think. For the record I have added two hatch covers, a ventilator? and the engine exhaust cover to the hull, together with a shovel and tow chain so far. The round hatch at the front is for the driver, and the one behind was for the commander in the BMP-1 and for the squad machine gunner in this as the commander now sits permanently in the turret.

 

The turret was rather messier - 2 hatch covers,  3 lights, an aerial attachment point, 6 rather crude smoke mortars, the gun mantle and 30mm cannon, a badly mis-shaped mount and the tube for the ATM, and a "box" which, on my drawings of the BMP-1 is labelled "gunner's armoured sight". ACE provide the periscope blocks for the infantry rifle ports but not the ports themselves. I did try and cut some out of very thin card but gave up in the end as they were so small my hands just could not cope - pity but there we are. Incidentally, besides the smoke mortars, like many Soviet vehicles the BMP could also generate smoke by injecting diesel into the exhaust.

 

One interesting point that Zaloga makes is about the lack of space in the rear. Armies like to collect information and the US Army apparently has a database showing the height of its soldiers. Whereas the US Bradley was designed to take personnel up to the 95th percentile, ie the 95% who were of height 6 ft 5 inches or less, tests on a captured BMP-1 showed that in terms of height it could comfortably take only up to the 35th percentile and in terms of the seat width only the 25th percentile. Even allowing for the fact that US soldiers tend to be taller than Russians it must be very cramped unless, as in the stories I have read about Russian Tank crews, they select only shorter soldiers for the for this role.

 

 Time to put another couple of track links on I guess.😄

 

Pete

Edited March 30, 2023 by PeterB

[PeterB]

The tracks are done - not perfect but better than I expected.

I would imagine that there should be some track "droop" between the return rollers but I am not going to bother as the side trackguards/fenders will probably hide it. Now I have to fettle the front and back of the hull where I had to hack plastic away as mentioned earlier. I rather suspect that I will have to shorten the fenders as a dry fit suggests they are too long, but we will see. I have not built any "modern" Russian vehicles for the best part of 30 years I guess and the only "accurate" paint I have is WWII green, so I will be experimenting, probably with a multi colour disruptive scheme. I have painted the bottom of the hull in MiG "green khaki" which the Antics website suggest is suitable for post war Russian tanks etc. It is a bit lighter than I expected and varies between a light olive and a greenish sand depending on the light. I am not aiming for total accuracy as I have very little info on Russian armour paint schemes anyway so it will be "generic".

 

To conclude my lecture, like most military vehicles there have been numerous changes to the BMP family including new equipment fits and added armour, and both the Russians and a number of other countries have developed variants such as Command Versions, Artillery Observation vehicles, Ambulances, engineer and repair/recovery models and so one. Licence built production with local variations took place in Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany and India to name but a few, and of course the Chinese built unlicensed copies.

 

In 1990 the BMP-3 appeared but that is a somewhat different machine with only a passing resemblance to the earlier models and Zaloga is not clear exactly what its purpose is. Made of aluminium it has much heavier armament as a 100mm anti tank gun has been added alongside the 30mm cannon and 7.62mg, and the engine has been moved to the rear, as a result of which any infantry passengers now sit in the middle of the vehicle and have to climb over the engine to get out of a combination of rear doors and roof hatches which seems far from ideal. One plus is that it now has water-jet propulsion which makes it faster and easier to control once afloat. It has better armour and armament but seems more like a support vehicle than a troop transport, and it may be due for replacement by the T-15 from the “Armata” series of military vehicles, though one article I have seen suggests the replacement will be from the “Kurganetz – 25 platform” which seems to be a lighter version of the T-15.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

[PeterB]

I tidied up the front and back and fitted the set of louvres at the back that let water out of the area under the fender when it is swimming, and was pleased to find that the fenders themselves were about the right length though not that good a fit. So I got them on, added the headlights, a few cleats and the like, and the board on top of the "bow" that is raised to avoid swamping, did a little filling and sanding, and got some paint on.

This is the back end - you can see the louvres on either side of the rear exit doors.

And this is the completed build minus the whip aerial - I will now leave it for a while as I am expecting some more paint. Zaloga says the fenders were bigger than on the BMP-1 as they now included extra flotation devices to compensate for the greater weight of the turret, Not a kit I would recommend for a beginner but it seems it can be built with a bit of patience, a sharp knife, a file or two and plenty of filler!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

The paint I ordered turned up today so I have repainted in in Mig's take on "Zashchitniy Zeleno" which I believe translates as "Protective Green" and is supposedly the standard colour for post-war Russian armour. I was expecting a slightly darker and bluer green but it will do. I have stuck on the radio aerial and the two decs and varnished it, and managed to get this pic between showers. The instruction say the markings are for a Red Army vehicle during a parade in Moscow (Victory Day Parade?).

 I will get some more for the gallery when the weather permits.

 

As you will have gathered it was not an easy build but it does not look too bad in the end. ACE do quite a range of BMP family vehicles but they are  perhaps not for the faint hearted modeller - pity nobody else makes them in this scale AFAIK.

 

Pete

Edited April 1, 2023 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Ok, I will get some pics in the Gallery shortly, but here are a couple of comparison shots. The BMP-1/2 were big machines - about the same size as the T-55 and T- 62 and only slightly smaller than the T-72 and T-80 MBT.

 Much bigger and rather more impressive looking than the US M113 though the latter had much better headroom for the troops inside, but the Russians were clearly trying for a low profile to match their tanks of the day and therefore not unduly concerned about passenger comfort it seems.

You can perhaps see why the BMP-1 caused such consternation when it first appeared, with its size and rakish lines. The M113 is the Airfix ex JB Models ACV version with armament added.

 

Not an easy build and badly engineered - I have just realised that the T-90 MBT in my stash is also an ACE kit so that could be an interesting build.

 

Pete

Edited April 3, 2023 by PeterB