Leningrad Type CH-38 Body Armour

[Destroyah]

Great site,
Thanks

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Harry, not a chance: it is painted OVER the rust pitting.

Cheers, Ade.

[Destroyah]

I think you are right; maybe I will have both sides blasted with pecan shells(instead of sand),which will only affect the paint and rust and not the original metal.
Regards,
Dave

[Philippe]

Hi,
Its main goal is to stop the shrapnel grenades, or distant shots of 9 mm. The 7.92 mm caliber pierced easily with the velocity of the munition.
Normally, this armor was guaranteed to stop bullets 9 mm.
A link to a post on the open forum:
https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/headg...engineer-5976/
Regards.

[harryamb2]

eye test coming up.

[mixer]

This is not the CH-38. Correct name - PZ -ZIF - 20. (ПЗ -ЗИФ-20. Protective shell of Zavod of a name of Frunze - 20).

[Adrian Stevenson]

Interesting: I have never heard it described as that before. Do you have any more info?

Cheers, Ade.

[mixer]

Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of Russian Federation, the fund 81, inventory № 12040, the case № 110,109. This armor was developed in spring 1943 as an engineer-captain A. Solntsev and was produced at the Plant № 7 of People's Commissariat of arms (aka Zavod nmd. Frunze) -chief konstrkutor N. Antonov.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Excellent! Thank you very much!

I will amend my files.

Cheers, Ade.

[Wesley's Dad]

Mixer, did this archive entry have specifications and diagrams? I ask because another contributor in another thread used archive documents to substantiate the CH-38 designation as well. However, there were no specs or diagrams to collaborate the designation to that specific construction of armor. Possibly the real CH-38 was a prior, similar model to CH-42? Would love to see more of this archive entry you reference.

As for the set of armor presented for discussion. I was surprised to see it for sale on eBay again recently. I purchased this exact set of white painted plates from an Estonian contact in 2011 and sold them to a Russian collector at the 2012 OVMS Show of Shows in February of last year. If Dave bought these from that eBay auction, you certainly got the plates for quite a bit less than I sold them for in February.

I bought this set because it was in better condition than most offered for sale. My opinion differs a bit from Ade's. This set of plates is ripe for restoration. The plates have only moderate pitting and the edges of the plates are still in relatively good condition. The even have the foundry marks on the reverse of some of the plates if I am not mistaken.

The biggest hurdle to restoration is that no one really knows what the harness looked like for this set of plates. Possibly Mixer's archive reference could shed light on this mystery.
I spent some time as the American sales manager for Ostfront Militaria from about 2000-2004. At one time we had a museum restored set of these plates that were riveted to a M43 Gymnastiorka. While possible, I always viewed this arrangement as a bit dubious.