SU-12 SELF PROPELLED GUN

This self-propelled gun helped the Red Army forces deal with enemy tanks and armored cars, and there was continuous experimentation with different combinations of equipment and weaponry. In 1934-1935, the Kirov plant produced 99 units of the SU-12 with a 76mm gun mounted onto a GAZ-AAA truck chassis. By June 1941, most of these machines were badly worn and greatly in need of repair, so how many of them actually took part in the fighting is not known. The GAZ-AAA chassis/cab was used often by LOMO for fire engines and civilian trucks as well as military models.

When the German army invaded Russia and began to approach Moscow in 1941, vital industries were packed up and moved further east, some as far as the Ural Mountains. One such undertaking was the evacuation of the ZIS truck factory to the Urals, where military truck production was continued under the name of URAL-ZIS. Fuel is absolutely vital for any army, and when supplies of petrol began to become scarce for the Red Army, the military turned to the use of “wood petrol.” This is a method of extracting fuel from wood chips that is suitable for powering lightly modified petrol engines. With millions of acres covered in forests, Russia had no shortage of wood for this purpose, and ZIS manufactured wood petrol vehicles in large numbers until well after the war for industrial and agricultural use (like the farm truck pictured). The system was refined and improved over time, and the ultimate version was the URALZIS-352—the last wood petrol-powered truck to be mass-produced in Russia.