From Hand Rails to Eight Wheels: the BTR-60 Armoured Personnel Carrier and its Successors

If you were to casually peep through any book about the Eastern Front in World War 2, dozens of photos of Soviet soldiers clinging to the handrails of T-34 tanks racing to the front line will adorn the pages. A dangerous practice forced on the Red Army by the inability of unarmoured road bound trucks to keep pace with the tanks and assault guns that were prioritized by Soviet industry, tank riding did not last far beyond the end of the conflict. By the time the Soviet Union disaggregated in December 1991, its ground forces had completed their transformation into a fully mechanized colossus. While tanks and tracked BMP infantry fighting vehicles were the most heavily armed and threatening members of Soviet ground forces (excluding artillery and tactical ballistic missiles), the honour of most numerically prevalent combat vehicle belongs to the eight wheeled BTR-60PB (bronetransporter: armoured transporter) and its successors, the BTR-70 and BTR-80.

The development path to the BTR-60 arose from the Soviet Army’s (the Red Army rebranded in 1946) quest for a highly mobile infantry transport that may keep up with tanks and shield its troops from small arms fire and shrapnel. The Soviets had plenty of experience fighting against the SdKfz 250 and 251s of Nazi Germany’s Panzer Grenadier regiments but…