"1980 Chinese Infantry painting and figure guides?" Topic

Hi

QRF and Rebel Minis have nice Ultra Modern Chinese infantry, but can someone help me with photos/pictures of Chinese Infantry in 1960-1980 period (80's are preferable, because I am now collecting 80's Cold War minis). What uniform they were and what assault rifles they had. I only saw pre digital uniforms in Battlefield 2 (I am not an expert in asian contries military :( )

Does they looked like this?

Nick

I don't think they look anything like that in 1980. You better checkout the pictures from the 1979 Sino-Vietnam war:

link

Camouflage uniform were mostly for the special forces. Check out page 4 of that thread.

More like this guy

You can get lots of pictures by using Yahoo Image search. Enter " sino Vietnam war, 1979 and you will get hundreds.
like this one

When I was in China I talked to a number of Chinese veterans from this war and all said a lot more were killed on both sides then what was published later and that it was a very vicious war Most admitted that the PLA should have performed better but had no experience the Vietnamese had been fighting Americans for years.

Historically you can compare the war to the Russo Finish war in 1940. China could have won big but they would have had to use a huge army that would be very costly in money and men. Then thy would be faced with the same type of guerrilla war the US had so much trouble with

Get the osprey on the PLA Its worth it for the uniform info and TO+E

The osprey is quite useful. Tthe battlefield 2 photo you posted is way off, as the photos above show. I believe the chinese started to use helmets in the war with vietnam in 1979.

The picture is claimed to be of PLA troops advancing into Vietnam It is from a Chinese History source.There are lots of other pictures showing troops without helmets. Often in China what is claimed and what happens are two different things. Front Line divisions could have had the helmet but local troops and local militias would have had to wait. Another factor in that in the tropics metal helmet gets pretty warm and a hat may be worn on marches The cap they are wearing was quite common A Picture in the Osprey Book mentioned above shows a PLA soldier in a Mao cap in 1988.

Maybe I can convert some figures to soldiers without helmets :)