"Soviet BA-6 Heavy Armoured Car" Topic

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Amicalement
Armand

Some nice models !

That would make a great orc battle wagon.

Glad you like it boys!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Did the Soviet armored cars have radios? (Seems like recce without radios would be rather lame.)

(I tried to start a new thread with this question, but it timed out -- seems to happen a lot.)

The smidgeon of stuff I have on Red Army recce shows a 1942 Armd Car Bn with two Armd Car Coys, each with ten cars. Coy HQ car has a radio, the three Pls each have three cars, of which one car per Pl has a radio. The T-70 Coy in the Bn has one less Pl, but the same radio issue. This was September 1942, so later war may have developed along the lines of our T-34 discussion from a while back.

Gary

Seems like recce without radios would be rather lame.

I understand that perspective, but it is very much a modern view, and even in the WW2 timeframe might well have been a mostly US/British point of view.

In most pre-WW2 armies radios were rare, and were limited in their functionality. To get range they often required laborious set-up of mast antennae, and trained operators with key-code skills. Tanks in several armies had key-operated radios (Morse code) for their command tanks.

So do you give your limited number of radios to your infantry battalion HQs (most pre-WW2 armies didn't have ANY radios at the infantry company level, and most end-of-war WW2 armies didn't have it at platoon level), to your arty battery HQs and FOs, or to you recce? Or do you give them to your tanks, or your fighter planes? And if you give it to your recce, do you give it to the infantry recce who have a 5km area of coverage, to your horse recce, or to your armored cars who have a 25-50km area of coverage?

Giving your exceedingly rare radios with 8-10km line-of-sight range to each armored car, when their role is to be 25-50km out in front or on the flanks, instead of to your arty FOs, may well have seemed a bit wasteful.

Even the Germans, who were quite dedicated to radio comms for their armored forces, had special armored cars for radio comms -- as their standard vehicle radios were quite useless at the ranges that armored cars were expected to operate.

Or so I've read. Wasn't there at the time.

May seem lame to us now, but when that's what you gots, that's what you uses.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Early soviet armored cars did not have radios. By the mid to late 30s they were being introduced in small numbers.

As Starfury mentions, the radios had short ranges. The company and platoon radio-equipped cars were designed to allow the company to coordinate with their platoons, not to radio back to HQ what the scouting revealed.

Regarding the specific armored car that started off this topic:

The BA-3 (predecessor to the BA-6 and built in 1934-1935) was not built with a radio.

The BA-6 (built 1936-1939) were mostly not built with a radio. My notes tell me "few" BA-6s had them. And if you see a photo of a BA-6 with a horseshoe antenna around the turret, that is one of the rare radios.

The BA-6M (last of the BA-6 series, and only 20 were built in 1939) all had radios (and whip antennas – the horseshoe antennas were now gone).

The BA-10 (successor to the BA-6 and built 1938-1941) was fitted standard with a radio.

The BA-3 (predecessor to the BA-6 and built in 1934-1935) …

The BA-6 (built 1936-1939) …

The BA-6M (last of the BA-6 series, and only 20 were built in 1939) …

The BA-10 (successor to the BA-6 and built 1938-1941) …

Nice summary list.

Might add one more:

The BA-32 (first described in 1975) never existed in the real world, but built in large numbers of western historical sources. As far as I can tell it was first described in Milsom's book "Russian Tanks 1900-1970" (Galahad Books, 1975). Probably came about due to a mis-translation or a min-construed caption of a photo of a BA-6 in a German intelligence report on follow-ons to the BA-3. This mis-interpretation of Russian armored car history has propagated through tertiary sources, miniatures rulesets and manufacturer's catalogues for 40+ years.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Thanks, guys!