The OT-64 was a light armored car used by the Soviets during the World War II, or more correctly The Great Patriotic War. It is used in COMMAND DECISION extensively as a command vehicle in late war mobile Soviet formations. (See figure 4) An easy way to make one of these is to start with a German Skdf 222 kit from either the Airfix kit, or one of the other plastic kits and assemble the shell. Then start with the following modifications. First, cut off the short end (front) of the Skdf 222, and seal it over with a piece of sheet plastic, cardstock, or wood (Must be thin). (See figure 2) 7his doesn't have to look that good as you are going to mount the spare fire on it. I usually glue on a ovei!size piece of sheet plastic, and trim it to size after the glue has dried.'Next you need to seal off the turret opening on top of the car. I file the deck flat, and then seal it over with a flat sheet of plastic. In some kits the top deck is a separate piece, which I discard and replace as mentioned. The next step is to make the turret. Basically the turret really resembles the Skdf 222 turret, but is smaller. I make mine by cutting the front pieces off the Skdf turret, and carefully bending the rest to the approximate shape. At this point you need to make a hole in the center of the deck for the turret. Use your new turret as a guide, and make sure that initial cut is smaller then you need to start with, as you can always make it bigger as you work on it. Finally you need to add a machine gun, and gunner to the turret out of the scrap box. As you put in the axles you need to remember that what was the back of the Skdf is now the front of the OT-64. The old rear axle stays in place, and serves as the front axle of the OT-64. The new rear axle needs to be repositioned to match the illustration, with some cutting of the car body needed so it sits square. Finally the fenders need to be added, though as a number of pictures of OT-64's show them in the field without the fenders this step can be considered as optional. If you do add them remember that what were the front fenders for the Skdf 22 are still the front fenders for the OT-64, but the position on the car body will be reversed. (See figure 3) When finished, place at the head of your Tank/Mech Brigade, and its "ON TO BERLIN!" Back to Table of Contents -- Command Post Newsletter #1 To Command Post Quarterly List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Greg Novak. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com