SU-76M — Samokhodnaya Ustanovka

The crews called her "Suchka." They cursed her. They fought in her anyway. And she won the war as much as any T-34.

The most hated vehicle in the Red Army — and the second most produced.

The SU-76M was an open-topped, thinly armored self-propelled gun built on a lengthened T-70 chassis. The crews had a long list of complaints: the open fighting compartment meant they froze in winter and caught shrapnel in summer. The thin armor stopped nothing heavier than rifle rounds. The fumes from the twin engines seeped into the crew space. They nicknamed her "Suchka" — a name we'll leave untranslated, but the troops knew exactly what it meant. Others called her "Golozhopiy Ferdinand" — the "bare-bottomed Ferdinand" — mocking its open top compared to the German Elefant.

And none of that mattered. Because the 76mm ZiS-3 gun mounted in the SU-76M could kill anything the Wehrmacht had short of a Tiger from the front. Panzer IVs, StuGs, halftracks, bunkers, infantry positions — the SU-76M put high-explosive and armor-piercing rounds on target with the same gun that was already the Red Army's best divisional field piece.

The Soviets built over 14,000 of them. After the T-34, the SU-76M was the most produced Soviet armored vehicle of the entire war. By 1944, every rifle division had a battery of SU-76Ms attached for direct fire support. They rolled from Stalingrad to Berlin, hated every mile of the way by their crews and absolutely indispensable to every commander who had them.

That's the SU-76M. Ugly. Uncomfortable. Unstoppable.

What you're building:

• 769 pieces in 1:28 scale
• 3 crew figures included
• The unmistakable SU-76M profile — open-topped fighting compartment, the long 76mm ZiS-3 gun, the low silhouette that kept her alive
• Built on the T-70 chassis — pairs perfectly alongside the T-70 in your collection
• The vehicle that proves a collection isn't just about the glamorous armor. This is the one that actually did the work