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The copies, referred to as KS-1 or "Russkie Reno", or "Russian Renault" was made virtually by hand, each part copied from the original, which meant that the basic design was the same, at that the same time that no two vehicles were identical, i.e. it was not an industrial production in the true sense of the word, and showed the primitivity of the Soviet tank industry at its start. It differed from the original FT-17 in some respects. A different engine was employed, also after initially using the same turret type as the French original, someone in the Engineering team responsible for the work, got the seemingly bright idea of making a combined gun/MG turret. Thus, the KS-1 had both cannon and MG capability. In reality this was a very unpractical solution, making the already cramped turret almost unusable. In the early 1920, 15 Ks-1:s had been produced, equipping 5 armoured units with 3 tanks each. The KS-1 was used up until the last years of the 20-ies, when it was phased out in favour of the new T-18 (which was loosely based on the Italian Fiat 3000, but was the first original Soviet tank design). My model is the result of a kit-bash The hull is the HäT FT-17, with a new exhaust and the trench crossing skid removed, and some details added. The entire turret comes from the RPM "Russkie Reno" kit - a kit with super detail, but a pain to build. It shows a KS-1 with the 7th Tank Unit in Moscow, late 1920-ies. (That unit was more or less a propaganda unit, with less than a third of the alotted number of vehicles assigned to it.) Click on the thumbnails to see more views of this model:
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The
KS-1 or "Russkie Reno" was one of those FT-17 clones that cropped up
during the early 1920-ies. The basis was a standard French FT-17 Tank, the best
tank of the era, supplied to the Whites during the Russian Civil War, and
captured from them by the Red Army during the fighting on the southern front. A
decision was made, to copy the captured tank. The captured tank arrived in
disassembled state at the Krasnoje Sormovo factory in October 1919, and
in the december the copying work started.
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