The Road to Forgotten Hope 2.66 Red Christmas - Part 4

Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

While the Soviet Army was introduced in Forgotten Hope 2.5, it has been equipped since then with lend-lease trucks. Today we introduce what would be ingame the main soviet trucks in the early stage of the war, the ZIS trucks.

The ZIS-5 was one of the central pillars and workhorse of Soviet logistics and transportation alongside the GAZ AA and MM truck series during World War Two and beyond.

In 1933, at the Moscow Automobile Plant (AMO), the production of the two-axle, three-ton AMO-5 truck started, for commercial and military purposes. Although it was a license-built copy of early 1930s American commercial trucks, it was manufactured like its predecessor, the 2.5-ton AMO-3, with Russian components and not with American truck kits. After the factory was renamed to Factory No. 2 Zavod Imeni Stalina (ZIS), the truck's designation was also changed accordingly to ZIS-5.

In parallel, a three-axle version was also produced, designated ZIS-6. This version, like the previous one, served as a base for a lot of specialized versions for different purposes like halftracks, ambulances, and fuel or water tankers among others, the most famous one being the multiple rocket platform "BM-13 Katyusha". Some of them where also equipped with the 7.62 mm anti-aircraft "ZPU M-4" mount. From 1933 to 1941, the total production of the ZIS-5 truck were produced 325,051 units, while 21,239 units of ZIS-6 were made.

The ZIS trucks had a crucial role during the "Road of Life", the transport routes that supplied with food, ammunition and other equipment the Leningrad pocket through the ice roads of the lake Ladoga during the winters of 1941-1942 and 1942-1943.

Although by July 1944, the majority of new vehicles in the Red Army service came from the Lend-Lease deliveries, like the Studebaker US6, the Red Army was still heavily dependant of the ZIS and GAZ trucks variants. Ours were made by Tedwin-Knockman666 and Matt Baker.

If you have missed any previous updates this week, you can find links to them here:

Go to Road to Forgotten Hope 2.66 Red Christmas - Part 1

Go to Road to Forgotten Hope 2.66 Red Christmas - Part 2

Go to Road to Forgotten Hope 2.66 Red Christmas - Part 3

That's all for today, but be sure to come back next time for another update. Until then, feel free to visit our Discord, our public forums, our subreddit, and/or Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.