Category: Cold War
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Panhard EBR 90 F2
Type: Armoured Car Nation: France Period: Cold War Location: Musée de l‘Abri de Hatten, France What you see is what you get The Panhard EBR was an armoured reconnaissance vehicle and that is literally what “EBR” stood for: “engin blindé de reconnaissance”. Wheeled vehicles were generally deemed faster than tracked vehicles and – important for…
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PT-76 (Model 1954)
Type: Light Tank/Special Purpose VehicleNation: Soviet UnionPeriod: Cold WarLocation: Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Depot), Dresden, Germany Archimedes would be proud The PT-76 was developed from 1949 onwards by the renowned engineer Josef Kotin who previously had supervised the design of the KV-1, IS-2, SU-152 and ISU-152. When the Soviet Navy became interested in the new…
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Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS)
Type: Self-Propelled Artillery Nation: USA/UK/France/Italy/Germany Period: Cold War Location: Nationaal Militair Museum, Soesterberg, Netherlands Arms race at a snail‘s pace The MLRS was a joint American, British, French, Italian and West German cooperation to develop a highly mobile self-propelled artillery system for attacking a target area with large amounts of firepower. Compared to the pinpoint…
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Schützenpanzer Marder 1A3
Type: Infantry Fighting Vehicle Nation: Germany Period: Cold War Location: Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster, Germany Armoured battle taxi The Marder was developed in the 1960s as a replacement for the Bundeswehr‘s scandal-ridden Schützenpanzer (lang) HS 30. Being the first German-designed infantry fighting vehicle after World War 2, it could carry a troop of six Panzergrenadiere (=…
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Panzerhaubitze 2000
Type: Self-Propelled Artillery Nation: Germany Period: Cold War Location: Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster, Germany State of the art The Panzerhaubitze 2000 is Germany‘s most modern gun-based self-propelled artillery system. Development had started in 1987, but it took until 1998 for the first vehicles to be issued to the Bundeswehr as a replacement for the venerable M109.…
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Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer 1 Gepard B2L
Type: Anti-Aircraft Vehicle Nation: Germany Period: Cold War Location: Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster, Germany An expensive piece of kit The Gepard was Post-War Germany‘s only indigenous gun-based anti-aircraft vehicle. In 1976 the Bundeswehr received the first of about 400 units. The system was based on the lengthened chassis of the Leopard 1, but because of its…
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VT-55A
Type: Special Purpose Vehicle Nation: Soviet Union Period: Cold War Location: Panzerfahrschule Heyse, Steinhöfel, Germany The VT-55A is a Czech armoured recovery vehicle developed from the licence-built Soviet BTS-2, which itself was based on the chassis of the T-55A medium tank. It was produced from 1969 to 1983 and used by several other Warsaw Pact…
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90 mm Gun Tank M47 Patton II
Type: Medium Tank Nation: USA Period: Cold War Location: Park Vojaške Zgodovine, Pivka, Slovenia When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the US Army realised that they would need modern tanks as quickly as possible. The M46 Patton was nothing more than an upgraded (but outdated) World War 2 era M26 Pershing and the…
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T-72M
Type: Main Battle Tank Nation: Soviet Union Period: Cold War Location: Muzeum Uzbrojenia, Poznań, Poland The T-72 was a simplified version of the expensive, complex and troublesome T-64. Like its older sibling, T-72 was equipped with an auto-loader – which reduced the crew to three men. Because this arrangement made an upright-standing human loader unnecessary,…
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Leopard 1A4
Type: Main Battle Tank Nation: Germany Period: Cold War Location: Veitshöchheim, Germany 1955 was the year of West Germany’s “Wiederbewaffnung” (= re-armament). Ten years after the end of World War 2, Germany was permitted to have an army again. The new Bundeswehr initially received American M47s and M48s, but development of an indigenous tank programme…