Hi,All,
I need a little help as to some idea of what markings may mean,like the following.

15/33 or 1/13 inside of a square box

A white line around the bottom of the turret? Is that a early war marking?

Thanks for any help.
Cheers!
Mike

I'm no expert , but here's what I've got from picture captions in several Osprey ,Squadron and Vanguard books. The white line around the turret ,on the sides of SPGs as well as a white cross on top of vehicle is air id for battle of Berlin .
The Russians used tri-angles ,squares ,circles ,diamonds and enlongated pentagons ,as tactical symbols. Inside this would be battalion code ( the Cyrillic letter or number ) ,on upper half ,below would be the vehicle number . Some units used animal figures or arrows as their tac signs. Sorry , don't know which number was which battalion , not as easy to figure out as the German panzer divisions.
There is probably a difinative book out there on Soviet tank markings but I bet it's written in Russian.
Jim

The geometrical signs were based on tactical symbols on military maps, and the numbers corresponded to the regiments involved. However, specific meanings are mostly lost, as these insignia were coded and changed often, to prevent the Germans from developing a good understanding of the Russian order of battle. Best bet is to simply model a particular vehicle that you have good images of. Recent books have made a little headway in identifying a few specific units, but it was not a centrally organized marking system like the US used.

Jim & Gerald,
Thanks, for the in-put and info,This does clear up things a bit and I now know more then I did before.

Cheers!
Mike

In fact, now you know about as much as everyone else. When you ask a question like that, you have to include more specifics, like what year, what type of tank. Markings on a T-26 were quite a different matter than for an ISU-152.

About turret bands: for the Berlin assault, tanks were marked with a white band around the turret/superstructure, and usually with a cross on the roof, to identify them to any prowling USAF or RAF aircraft. These were painted at the last minute by hand.

Before 1940 there was a complicated identification system that used turret bands in different colours. You see T-26s and BTs with these markings. Different combinations of solid and broken bands indicated tanks within a squad and the colour indicated the platoon. These were painted on nicely, clean and neat.

As for the box / diamond / circle / triangle with numbers in it, there was no pattern. The brigade or division commander basically decided what they would use, and they did. Usually numbers were used, sometimes the top would be the tank and the lower number the unit, or vice versa. All tanks could be numbered sequentially in a division or they could be identified within a smaller unit in combination with a second number.

The bottom line is that there was no system. Some parts of the picture are known from other information, but for the most part Red Army tanks were deliberately anonymous to foil German intelligence (and modellers).

Cheers
Scott Fraser

Scott,
Your right, I should have said what type of tank the markings are for. What I was talking about was markings as seen on Matilda MkIIIs and MkIVs as seen in Russian service 1941 to 1943.
Thanks again.

Cheers!
Mike