"Soviet Early War Tank Markings" Topic

I am trying to understand the meaning of the turret stripes and dashed lines on Soviet Pre-WWII and early War tank turret's sides. These are not the broad white air identification stripes on the tops or sides of tank turrets but thin lines running horizontally on the sides of the turrets in white, red and/or blue. I need to know what these lines mean as I suspect they are markings for corps/brigade, battalion, company and perhaps even platoon designation. I have done a search on the web and gotten no where because search engines are no good if you don't know the name of the thing you are searching for. Does anyone know what such markings are called so I can look them up or have a reference where I can go to learn about these markings. I have bunches of 15mm Early War Soviet tanks which are complete but for these markings and I want to finish them off. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Rod Robertson.

I hope you get a good response. I've never had much luck finding anything that looked systematic. Here's about the best I've found online:

link

Saves me some typing – my one handy reference is the "Camouflage of the Tanks of the Red Army" book that page cites…. I have a company of Zvezda BT-5s in my "will hopefully get painted one day" pile that will definitely be getting those markings when that one day comes…. :-)

From Zaloga, Eastern Front Armor Camoufl;age and Markings 1941-45:

top band battalion, bottom (broken) band company.

Red, 1st bn or coy.

White, 2nd bn or coy

Black, 3rd bn or coy.

Platoon and vehicle marked by a numbered square.

The system fell into disuse from 1938 and was no longer in use at the start of the war, although these markings could be seen on older tanks into 1942. Units in the new 1940 mechanized corps were almost entirely devoid of markings.

There is a system – my source is an article in Military Modelling Vol.36 No. 8, 7th of July 2006 pp 58-69 "T-26 Light Tank Part 3"

There is a table on p.63 "Typical Soviet Tank Brigade Turret Markings – 1933-1938"

"The regulations changed several times before a systems was developed in 1932 in which coloured bands and rectangles were use to mark the tanks. The battalions were signified by solid colour bands around the turret or turrets:
1st battalion: Red
2nd battalion: Yellow
3rd battalion: Black
4th battalion: Blue
5th battalion: Green

(but these were modified in the field by units to meet the commander's perogatives)

Subordinate units were marked in broken bands below the solid battalion band:

first Company: Red (1st, 4th & 7th companies)
second Company: White (2nd, 5th & 8th companies)
third Company: Yellow (3rd, 6th and 9th companies)

(n.b. companies were numbered sequentially within the brigade: 1st battalion had companies 1, 2 & 3; 2nd battalion had 4, 5 & 6; 3rd battalion had 7, 8 & 9)

The platoons were signified by rectangles on the sides of the tanks, apparently using the same order of colours as the companies (e.g.1st – red, 2nd – white and 3rd – yellow) with the individual tank number inside a hollow rectangle for the platoon.

Company & battalion commanders had solid rectangles with either the battalion or company number on it.

This T-35 is the 3rd tank of the 1st platoon of the 2nd Company of the 3rd tank battalion (black 3 inside of red rectangle (platoon), white broken band (company), solid black band (battalion)

Wow! Thank you so much gents! Now I've got some painting to do!
Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.