Castro’s Cuban ground kit

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This thread will show the various pieces of ground equipment used from the Cuban Revolution onwards:

I will start with a refuelling truck, ex-US and used by the Revolutionary forces during their early period post revolution.



The vehicle is based on the Deuce and half truck of WW2.

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Roll on a few years and the Soviet Union are supplying the aircraft and associated equipment, so now the refullers are ZiL based:

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At the time of UK deliveries of military equipment to the Batista regime the Sea Furies were part of the deal along with 15 Comet tanks; these tanks were used by Castro’s forces until the arrival of Soviet replacements.

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The Cuban Revolutionary Forces received air defence equipment from the Soviet Union. One such piece of equipment was the ubiquitous SA-2 ‘Guideline’ missile - this is a much modified Airfix model.

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The Soviet Union, having been ‘sweet talked’ by Castro, supplied armour to replace the UK and US equipment that were obsolete. Ironically, the tanks supplied were of a similar generation BUT the vehicles could be maintained and the ammunition was readily available. One such AFV was the T-34/85, the model is the Airfix kit with a 3D printed barrel, tracks and external fuel tanks and represents an operational tank used during the ‘Bay of Pigs’ fiasco.
During subsequent parades the tanks wore hand painted numbers.

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In addition to the T-34/85, Cuba also received IS-2M tanks. This is a 1:72 PST model: