Hi Gary,

Glad to see you working on a Syrian T-62. Syrian army vehicles have been a favorite modeling subject of mine for many years as I had the first hand experience of seeing many of these tanks on the Golan battlefield during the Yom Kippur war.

A secondary hobby of mine (as I am sure is the case with most diehard modelers) which compliments scale modeling is collecting reference material for future projects. It used to be that to own a particularly rare photo you needed to buy a complete book or magazine. Now with the internet literally thousands of photos can be collected and saved in one handy location.

I came across this series of photos on the internet a few years ago (unfortunately I was never able to locate that site again) taken in Mr. Jacques Littlefield's private armor collection shortly after his museum acquired their T-62. Contrary to the current belief that this was an Iraq war prize, it is in fact a Syrian T-62/ mod.1972 and appears to have been captured in the 1982 Lebanon war. I have not been able to find any other photos showing this vehicle in it's original scheme as it is here. Unfortunately the quality of the photos was not very good but the fact that they are in color is quite a rarity. the tank is currently painted in a dark green Russian scheme with turret number 342.







More photos to come.
Cheers !!
Ed Okun/ Frogman

Hi Ed,

WOW! i cant even begin to tell you how cool this is. a rare treat indeed! im saving to my T-62 folder and rare color war photos folder. Golan Heights and Kursk are 2 places that really interest me in tank warfare.

Thanks alot for the pics Ed. and if you have more to share ill soak'em up like a sponge!

Gary

Interesting pics indeed Ed, thanks a million for sharing

There's a color profile of an exemplar similar to that one



Gary here you can see a destroyed Egiptyan T-62 in Sinai Valley
(notice the early track links)



here a captured Syrian t-62



A destroyed T-62 (1982 Lebanon)



Another pic taken during the lebanon war


Syrian t62s





You can find other reference pics here

http://www.idf-armor.blogspot.com/

and here

http://otvaga2004.narod.ru/otvaga2004/wars0/page/1_t62_3.htm

I hope they could be useful. I can't wait to see your paint job

Cheers

Stellar work on those fuel lines Gary!

Mauro - OH YEAH! i love it. Thanks for the links man! added to my favorites. lots of cool stuff to research there.

Karl - Thanks i appreciate it. im currently adding hose clamps and fuel tank brackets. hope to have an update by tommarow.

Gary

Hi Gary,

Here are more photos of the Littlefield vehicle.

Thanks again Ed!

i think its to bad they refinished the T-62. Id much rather have it in original condition were it my private collection.
but thats just me.

Gary

Man, this is looking fun. I have both Trumpeter T-62s in my stash. Maybe I should stop working on the 10 models I have 1/2 finished and start on one of them...

Someone earlier asked about the quality of the Trumpeter kit. I can only assume it is excellent. I did one of their KV-1s from a few years ago, and to date I think it was the most fun, easiest build I've ever had. I give nothing but thumbs up for my Trumpeter experience! I think my favorite kit build of all time. Here's how she ended up:

Hello there Mr. Guerry,

Beautiful KV-1 i must say! and i just did! I agree with you. Grab one of the 10 unfinished kits and get to work man! we got things comeing up in late march.

glad you stopped by nephew!

Gary

Hi all,

i have the hose clamps and fuel tank brackets in place. next is the front area. ill update after finishing front.



Thanks for looking!

Gary

Hi Gary,

Here are more examples of Syrian T-62 paint schemes. The brown camo version i am almost sure is from after YKW, maybe Lebanon 1982. I built a Tamiya T-62 years ago which I have yet to replace with the more accurate Trumpeter version in my collection. It came out pretty much the way I remember seeing these monsters in the field.





Finally, here is an Egyptian T-62 from Yom Kippur war with a very sharp "Snakeskin" pattern on the gun tube.

Hope that I've been able to help you with your project.
Cheers :-)
Ed Okun/ Frogman13

Another one

Gary,
Great work, you work fast! I'm following closely. I built my T62 mod ' 72 largely OOB not like the MAZ it sits on!!

Ed'
These shots look quality on my phone, can't wait to get back to my pc to have a close look.

Mauro,
As ever, the font of all reference. Anything on an Iraqi type 59?

Rog.

This is an explanation of color schemes and markings from my 35+ years of observations of Syrian vehicles. I posted this on another thread about "Syrian T-54/55"s, but it applies to T-62s as well (Disregard the Six Day war as Syria did not have any 62s at that time)

Six day War 1967: Syrian vehicles were painted PRIMARILY Russian armor Green. Some T-54/55s were seen daubed by hand with Golan heights mud for camouflage. Turrets of most tanks were decorated with Arabic martyr names.

Yom Kippur War 1973: Most T-54/55s were painted with a 3 tone Grey/ Green/ Sand camouflage of random splotches or wavy band patterns. However, some did appear in plain Russian armor green. Colored geometric patterns for brigade and division ID were usually painted on front glacis and rear hull plate either in a white rectangular outline or on a white rectangle background. Sometimes this appears on the fornt left fender. Turrets of some tanks had a LARGE white 3 digit Hindi-Arabic number on the turret sometimes outlined in a white stenciled rectangle. Some tanks had LARGE geometric shapes (circle/ square or triangle) painted on the turret side. ALL tanks had a smaller 5 digit individual number stenciled on the lower edge of the glacis plate and somewhere (does not appear to be any specific location) on the rear plate of the tank. Next to this number, in Arabic is the word "Al-Gaeish" (for "Army").

Lebanon war 1982: Camo pattern colors now could include brown to substitute for the grey. YKW colors can still apply to this conflict as well as basic green. Tactical brigade and division ID markings appear to have undergone a change as they are abit more complex with segmented rectangles and additional colors not seen in the previous war 5 years earlier. Turret markings again were USUALLY a white stenciled Arabic-Hindi number within a white rectangular outline. The 3 digit numbers were now pre-fixed with a "backslash" and an additional number, totaling 4 numbers on the turrets. T-62s appeared to keep the 3 digit system. (Note: most YKW T-62s with 3 digit turret numbers are in the 5XX range, whereas in the 82 lebanon war they mostly appear to be in the 7XX range.)

Modern/ present day 2012: Appears to be an unfathomable goulash of all of the above thrown together, however alot of T-55s are painted a bright shade of green with large random splotches of yellow-ochre.

BRgds,
ED

I love it when a post like this comes up, it's got good 'in progress 'pics, a lot of ref links added by poasters, some brilliant pictures (thanks Ed,Mauro,..)
and some historical background

great stuff guys

@Gary, the tube Q, is as I can see from your progress, useless now doing great man,nice for me ,saves a lot of hours staring at pics;measuring,ect thanks!

Tha Pit

Hi Gentlemen,

Ed - Mauro - Roger - Pit,

I cant thank you guys enough for the nice comments and for the great people i meet here while i do this hobby. I couldnt agree more with Pit about the wonderful pics and historical facts and lessons we are all learning here. Its a beautiful thing man! Thanks again!

Gary

http://otvaga2004.narod.ru/otvaga2004/wars0/wars_09_3.htm

http://bbs.tiexue.net/post_4407991_1.html

http://www.armyrecognition.com/Asie/Chine/vehicules_lourds/Type_59/Type_59_Chine_description.htm

http://www.armyrecognition.com/irak_char_de_combat_principal_main_battle_tank/type_69_iraqi_irakien_picture_pictures_photo_image_main_battle_tank_char_de_combat_principal.html













To find more you should use as a keyword the Arabian nomenclature

دبابات نوع 59 العراق

Or the Chinese one

59型坦克伊拉克

Cheers

hay gary looking great what did you use for the hose clamps ???
dave

Hi Gentlemen,

Mauro - Thanks for another round of awsome pics. im lovin it!!!

David - Thanks man! for the clamps i use strips i cut from a Whiskas cat food lid. i also use that for bag straps and bed roll and tarp roll tie down straps. i can post a picture of the lid if you need.

Gary

Unfortunately chinese pics has been forbidden

here the last one

http://image24.webshots.com/25/9/53/25/40195325XRrvue_ph.jpg

these ones from my "archive"

Iraqi T-55



destroyed Iraqi Type 69



Here an odd camo scheme on an Egiptian T-62 (or is it a T55? Pic is too small) knocked out during the YKW



Anyway the strips from a Whiskas lid is an interesting tip, I'd like to know more about...even though I don't have a cat...Should I adopt one to have the strips ?

excellent work on the fuel lines and clamps Gary! I have the same kit planned to ride on my Maz.

Jeff

Great model Gary,

Looking forward to seeing more

S

I would like to see the pics Because I have trouble seeing what you mean by clamps... Sorry: the language barrier
Phil.

Hi Mauro,

Lets not confuse the thread with Iraqi stuff like type 59s and the lot, OK? There are plenty of threads with that and literally millions of photos. Syrian T-62s though are very rare beasts that takes alot of effort to gather any information on. We are going in a good direction so far...lets try to stay on topic.
ED/Frogman13

I've only answered to Roger request

Anyway, let's carry on with Syrian T-62

here a colored profiles
http://www.janmace.com/full/T62.jpg

and the actual exemplar (notice track links type 1962)
http://www.army.lv/photos/10149.jpg

Here a drawing of the tank with the strange camo scheme whhic I posted before Caption sais that it belonged to Syrian army:
http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=3573&u=11434577


Another profile. T62 mod. 72 Syrian Mechanised Division, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon 1982:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/819/t621.jpg/