"BRDM-2 RKh - Marker Flag Colours?" Topic

Does anyone happen to know what colour the contamination marker flags were on the Soviet BRDM-2 RKh NBC/CBRN recce vehicle?

All the Soviet photos I can find are in black & white and none of the British and US Army Soviet Army guides in my possession go into any detail about what BRDM-2 RKh (or the tracked RKhM, which did the same job) did or how they did it.

I've found one photo of a modern Polish BRDM-2 RKh carrying a mixture of yellow, white and blue flags, all with yellow sticks, though my former British Army recce mate is adamant that the Soviets would carry red flags in one dispenser and yellow flags in the other… but doesn't know why (perhaps to mark different types of contaminant – nuclear/chemical?).

Does anyone have a clue?

Fairly sure yellow. Can't remember if there were two colours. It makes sense to have two colours for the reason that you mention above. The RKhM only carries one flag dispenser,

Tally Ho!

Normally yellow flags/markings on maps were used for bio contamination zones, while red were used for radioactive areas.
according to the link here
link
(you'll need to google translate it) the vehicle has a "mechanical unit" that will be setting these flags into the ground, located on the left side . One of the crew's tasks was to "arm" this unit before moving on a mission.
On some photos below we can see two such units, each one was armed with 20 flags.

Cheers Nick.

Cheers also, Barin. Do you think it likely that a vehicle would be loaded up with both colours and therefore hunting for nuclear and chemical contamination, simultaneously? Or do you think that it would be loaded up with one colour and therefore tasked with one mission-type at a time?

I need to dig for this info, will do when I'm back home

It's much appreciated, Barin. Nice to have a friend from the other side of the wire to help out with how they did stuff!

Cheers Barin, much appreciated!

Ok. that's what I got. Normally, when the unit was deployed, its crew had an idea what they were searching for – you can't miss nuclear explosion, if there was one nearby. If there was a residual fallout, like after Chernobyl on a huge territory, in times of war nobody will really care about it. Serious rads will call for special suits for the personnel, while the rest – chems and bio will mean L1 or OZK suits and may be a different type of gaz mask…

So I guess most likely you'll have a single colour flags outside in racks, but you might have spares of other colour inside BRDM.

Great, that makes perfect sense. Cheers Barin!

Mark

Just looking at the Trumpeter models facebook page, cover art of a BRDM-2 RKhM with a mix of white and yellow flags on each side,

Tally Ho!