A PTS-M platoon (and a bone to pick with Marcin)

I picked up a few of O8's PTS-M amphibious transports and tonight I've finished them off for my East Germans.

Several platoons of these would've been assigned to particular rivers, bays, estuaries, etc. to ferry across towed artillery batteries:

Production began in 1965 and the PTS-M had a top road speed of 25mph and a maximum load of 5 tons in the water and 10 tons on land. It would hold 70 fully equipped troops for beach landings and it often was seen towing the companion PKP amphibious trailer. As well as general cargo loads, any light or medium truck in the Soviet inventory would fit into the vehicle. The PTS-M was succeeded in 1973 by the PTS-2, which looked basically identical, but was slightly bigger and could handle heavier loads. Like all superseded equipment in the WarPac, the PTS-M never really retired, as production of the PTS-2 never came close to meeting demand. 

Now I come to the bone I have to pick with Marcin. The real PTS-M would hold a URAL-375D or a Star-266, as you can plainly see from the photos above. The ZIL-157 would also fit. However, Marcin's models of all three of these trucks will NOT fit into his PTS-M mini. Either his trucks are too big for scale or (as I suspect is the case) the PTS-M mini is smaller than scale. Annoying!!

In any case, here's my platoon of East German PTS-M amphibious cargo vehicles:

And by way of my bonafides that trucks won't fit, here's a shot with a URAL-375D:

It perches on top because it absolutely will not fit between the gunwales. I would much rather display the PTS-M's with a vehicle load, however....

More next time.