James Kinnear discovers more about Russian Single Axle Military Tractors
’A modified version, the MAZ-529V, was accepted for series production’
Some of the most curious vehicles ever invented have been designed for military applications, and the Soviet Union during the Cold War excelled in the development and production of curious vehicles. And one of the most curious of all was the MAZ-529V, which was a specialised single-axle tractor vehicle used for civil applications such as towing engineering graders and mobile crane semi-trailers. But the MAZ-529 series, as with the MAZ- 546P that replaced it in production, were what was termed by the Soviet government as ‘dual purpose’. They were designed for both civil and military purposes, with the military application being predominant. The vehicle was designed specifically for towing the specialist semitrailers used for transporting and erecting the rapidly developing range of Soviet ballistic rockets that were emerging in the late 1950s. In later years the vehicles were also used for emplacing the next-generation of strategic rockets into their reinforced concrete launch silos. The MAZ-529 vehicle series was also used for towing the associated heavy cran…
