I have just finished building and painting these two trucks from Rubicon Models, a matched pair of GAZ-AAA 2-tonners, and like the armoured vehicles I showed last week, they are daubed in a hurried whitewash over their standard Soviet green. That slapdash winter camouflage was not about style; it was about survival. When the Red Army crossed into Finland in November 1939, it found itself fighting in a world of blinding snow, black forests and temperatures that could sink past –30°C. Against that backdrop, a green truck might as well have been waving a little flag that read “please shoot me.” The Finns, masters of camouflage and patient marksmanship, took brutal advantage of anything that stood out, so Soviet units did whatever they could with limewash, chalk or even mud to blur their outlines against the frozen landscape.
The GAZ-AAA itself was a workhorse of a very Soviet kind. Based on a Ford design built under licence and then steadily adapted by Soviet engineers, it was a six-wheeled, twin-rear-axle truck intended to haul around two tons of men, ammunition, fuel or food across the vast distances of the USSR. In peacetime, it was everywhere, delivering everything from grain to bricks, and in wartime, it became the backbone of Red Army logistics. During the Winter War, it was often pressed into service far beyond what its designers had imagined, rumbling along narrow forest roads that had been hacked through the snow or driving over frozen lakes that groaned ominously beneath their weight. They were not glamorous machines, but wars are not won by glamour; they are won by whoever can keep rifles fed and soldiers warm.
Those conditions, though, were merciless. On the plus side, the GAZ-AAA was mechanically simple and reasonably tough, which mattered when you were hundreds of kilometres from a proper workshop and your hands were too numb to feel a spanner. The extra rear axle gave it better traction than a simple two-wheel-drive truck, letting it claw its way through packed snow and icy ruts where lesser vehicles would just spin. On the other hand, it was still fundamentally a road truck, not a purpose-built winter vehicle. Deep, powdery snow could swallow it whole, its engines hated the cold, and the Soviet fuel and lubricants of the period were prone to thickening into something closer to porridge than petrol or oil. There are plenty of stories, many apocryphal but all evocative, of crews having to light fires under the engine block just to get the thing to start.
A lumbering convoy of GAZ-AAAs will be a tempting target for Ray’s Finns. Hit the first and last truck, and suddenly you have a frozen traffic jam full of trapped men. I may need more tanks. Maybe the T26 Model 1931 with twin MMG Turrets? Guess I’ll be perusing the Rubicon website again pretty soon.
Incidentally, these models, like many of the Rubicon kits, can be built in different variants. The box contains the parts needed to make the GAZ-AA 1.5Ton single axle truck, and the canvas canopy is optional. There are also components in the kit to convert the model into an Anti-Aircraft truck (with the gun sold separately). All the models come with a driver, and I was surprised to find the figures were almost complete (only the feet are missing) despite the fact that the driver's legs end up essentially invisible, hidden inside the cabin. And that, for me, sums up these models from Rubicon, attention to detail, even the bits that probably can’t be seen once assembled.
Scoring:2x28mm Vehicles = 40 points
2x28mm Drivers - 10 points
