Photos Yugoslav Wars

[Connaught Ranger]

Croats - Vukovar

View attachment 180304

Thompson Sub-machine gun!!

 

[Royal]

There were still a surprising number of them floating around the Balkans. I remember coming across one idiot that had cut down the barrel with a hacksaw and also removed the stock. Made the old PPSh 41s look sophisticated.

 

[BravoZulu]

UCK soldier (Kosovo Liberation Army) 2000

 

[BravoZulu]

In memory of SGT William W. Wright and SPC Sherwood B. Brim, the 9th Engineer's Battalion holds a memorial ceremony for its fallen soldiers at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo on July 20, 1999.
Alone on the parade field stand two sets of helmets, rifles and boots a symbol of the soldier's that were. SGT Wright and SPC Brim were a part of Bravo Company, 9th Engineer's Battalion out of Schweinfurt, Germany. At the end of the ceremony Bravo Company came to the symbol of their fallen comrades. Kneeling, the soldiers mourn the loss of their friends, comrades and brothers.
On July 18, 1999, the soldier's were returning from patrol north of Gnjilane, Kosovo when their M113 Armored Personnel Carrier over turned killing them instantly. The soldiers were in Kosovo as part of the peace keeping mission Task Force Falcon.

 

[BravoZulu]

Croatian fighters during the Battle of Osijek, July 1991. The woman on the left holding a PPSh-41

 

[BravoZulu]

Spanish soldier giving food to an elderly woman in Bosnia Herzegovina (1992) as part of UNPROFOR

 

[BravoZulu]

UK:
4th Armoured Brigade passing through Ferizaj, Kosovo, on their way to the capital Pristina, receiving a jubilant welcome by the locals. June 12, 1999

 

[BravoZulu]

Ismet Bajramovic, one of the organisers of the defence of Sarajevo, poses with a M53 Sarac light machine gun.

Ismet "Ćelo" Bajramović (26 April 1966 – 17 December 2008) was a Bosnian soldier and reputed organised crime figure from Sarajevo.

During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and specifically the siege of Sarajevo, Bajramović played a key role in the defence of the city in the early days of the war.

Bajramović was born in Sarajevo. Prior to the war he was a petty criminal who was in prison from 1983 to 1989. In prison, he protected the future Bosniak president Alija Izetbegović. After his release, Ćelo rose to become the most powerful gangster in Sarajevo and was dubbed the "Godfather of Sarajevo" by The New York Times in 1993.

When the war began, criminal groups were among the first to resist the Yugoslav National Army besieging Sarajevo. After the initial offensive against the city devolved into a siege those same criminal groups turned to profiteering. Ćelo was one of them and at the same time was head of the military police of Sarajevo. In the fall of 1993 Bajramović was shot in the heart by a sniper. He was evacuated from the city and returned in 1997.

In the post war years Bajramović was often arrested on various charges; in April 2000, he was arrested for murder and spent four years in prison until his conviction was overturned. Meanwhile, Bajramović's health began to decline as a result of the bullet wound to the heart. He suffered a tachycardia and was frequently hospitalised as a result. On 17 December 2008, Bajramović committed suicide by shooting himself in the temple in his Sarajevo home. His declining health was cited as the motive for the suicide.

 

[BravoZulu]

20th January 1994 During the war in central Bosnia: a casually dressed Bosnian Muslim soldier with a Chinese Type 56 AK

 

[BravoZulu]

Bosnian muslim soldiers lean against a wall with rifles, a broom, and a pickaxe on the eastern frontline near the village of Guca Gora

 

[BravoZulu]

US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal First Lieutenant Rob McCarthy of 9th Engineers, 1st Infantry Division, and Serbian EOD personnel stand next to unexploded ordnance set up for demolition, outside the town of Zvornik, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1996

 

[BravoZulu]

A Muslim Bosnian soldier stands with his weapons on the eastern frontline near the village of Guca Gora

 

[BravoZulu]

A Bosnian girl, holding an AK-47 rifle smokes a cigarette as she waits for a funeral service at Sarajevo's Lion's cemetery on Monday, Sept. 14, 1992

 

[yankeebobb]

Serb war train, Krajina Express.

 

[yankeebobb]

Serb police/interior ministry in Kosovo.

 

[Royal]

A Bosnian girl, holding an AK-47 rifle smokes a cigarette as she waits for a funeral service at Sarajevo's Lion's cemetery on Monday, Sept. 14, 1992

Strictly speaking its a Zastava M70AB2 not an AK...

Pedantry.

 

[BravoZulu]

KLA Fighter armed with an M84 (PKM) machine gun during the Kosovo war in 1998

 

[BravoZulu]

UN Peacekeepers collecting bodies from the Ahmići massacre, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1993. The massacre was discovered by United Nations Peacekeeping troops of the 1st Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, drawn from the British Army, under the command of Colonel Bob Stewart

On Friday, 16 April 1993 at 05:30 hours, Croatian forces simultaneously attacked Vitez, Stari Vitez, Ahmići, Nadioci, Šantici, Pirići, Novaci, Putiš and Donja Večeriska. HVO General Tihomir Blaškić spoke of 20 to 22 sites of simultaneous combat all along the road linking Vitez, Travnik, and Busovača. The ICTY Trial Chamber found that this was a planned attack against the Bosniak civilian population. The attack was preceded by several political declarations announcing that a conflict between Croatian forces and Bosnian forces was imminent. On the day of the attack, telephone lines had been cut because all communication exchanges in the municipality of Vitez were under HVO control.

Croat inhabitants of those villages were warned of the attack and some of them were involved in preparing it. Croat women and children had been evacuated on the eve of the fighting. The method of attack displayed a high level of preparation. The attacks in the built-up areas, such as those carried out in the Ahmići area were operations planned in minute detail with the aim of killing or driving out the Bosniak population, resulting in a massacre. On the evening of 15 April, unusual HVO troop movements had been noticed.

On the morning of 16 April, the main roads were blocked by Croat troops. According to several international observers, the attack occurred from three sides and was designed to force the fleeing population towards the south where elite marksmen with particularly sophisticated weapons shot those escaping. Other troops, organised in small groups of about five to ten soldiers, went from house to house setting them on fire and killing the residents. Around one hundred soldiers took part in the operation. The attack resulted in the massacre of the Bosniak villagers and the destruction of the village. Among the more than 100 who died were 32 women and 11 children under the age of 18. The aim of the HVO artillery was to support the infantry and destroy structures which the infantry could not. The mosque, for example, was hit by a shot from a powerful weapon. Later the minaret was blown up.

Overall, 117 to 120 Bosniaks were killed in the massacre. Most of the men were shot at point blank range. Some men had been rounded up and then killed by Croatian soldiers. Twenty or so civilians were also killed in Donji Ahmići as they tried to flee the village. The fleeing inhabitants had to cross an open field before getting to the main road. About twenty bodies of people killed by very precise shots were found in the field. Military experts concluded that they had been shot by marksmen. Other bodies were found in the houses so badly charred they could not be identified and in positions suggesting they had been burned alive. The victims included many women and children

 

[BravoZulu]

This is the 'Krajina Ekspres' (Krajina Express) armoured train, used in Croatia between 1991 and 1995. The armoured train is Locomotive number JZ 664-013, type G26C and was delivered to Yugoslavia by the US in 1973. The Krajina Express was first created during the summer of 1991 by ethnic Serb railway workers in the city of Knin, Zagreb Region, today in Croatia’s Dalmatian coast inland east from the city of Zadar and about 13 miles west of the present Croatian-Bosnian border.

In 1991, Knin was inside the Serb statelet of Krajina (for a while it was the self-proclaimed “capital city”), and possessed a railway service depot of the former Yugoslav Railways. The “beating heart” of the Krajina Express was a JZ664 civilian locomotive. This machine was built in Yugoslavia between the early 1970s – early 1980s and was powered by a General Motors EMD 2,168hp V-16 diesel. The armoured train conversion was done in the Zagreb region during late 1991 by the 7th Motorised Brigade, but the train was transferred to several different units over it's rather considerable service life.

Initially in 1991 the 'Express' was only consisting of the engine, two passenger/crew cabin carriages long and the first flatbed was armed with 1x nose mounted 20MM Flak 38 (known as PA M38). The car behind it carried two Soviet-made, Cold War-era AT-3 “Sagger” guided anti-tank missiles and a WWII British 40mm Bofors AA gun, which was referred to by the JNA as the M12. On this first version of the train, the two combat cars were protected only by sandbags and makeshift sheet metal enclosures. The passenger cars were not intended for fighting, only for the crew to live in. They were not always towed along.

Towards the end of 1991, the train participated in the defense of the former Yugoslav airbase at Zemunik near Zadar, Croatia. It was also during this time that the train gained its nickname. The Krajina Express was officially called the “7th Armored Train” which was almost never used.

The motto seen on the front of the train on the Hellcat tank is 'Only Unity will Save the Serbs'- you can just make out the edge of one of the flags with red and blue on the front armour plate. The badge from the inside of the train. It has a flag and the winged wheel was the insignia for armoured train units.

By 1992 the train received additional armour over the locomotive engine, 25MM of steel plates, rather than it being fully exposed.

As the war went on the armament changed between 20MM and 40MM guns, a 76MM ZIS-3 gun was installed in 1992 to replace the PA M38 as the primary nose mounted gun, which while outdated by that point as an anti-tank gun was used in the infantry support role.

That same year a third armoured weapon carriage was added to the train and outfitted with a 40MM BOFORS cannon, an M2 50. calibre heavy machinegun and two anti-tank missiles.

In this configuration, the Krajina Express was used only sparingly as the war train’s crew was also standard infantry and for much of 1992 was fighting on the ground during the “Koridor” operation.

The main header picture dates to after 1993 upgrades, where the front ZIS-3 gun was replaced by an entire American M18 Hellcat tank, a post 1944 Hellcat model with muzzle break was taken from the Yugoslav People's Army and used as a direct fire weapon from the train due to it's improved gun and firing angles compared to the ZIS mount. The 50 calibre in the AA mount was also left mounted on the Hellcat.

At the same time as the tank was 'installed' in 1993, all the train's armoured skirts were upgraded in thickness with rubber reinforcements and spaced armour ballast rather than just the single 25MM thick angled metal plates, as a response to several of the crew being killed in combat in an earlier engagement when the armour was penetrated.

Armoured plates had also been added to the train wheels to protect them by that time. The train was also used on occasion for transport of infantry, but not in significant numbers. Two additional weapons were also added during the 1993 retrofit, 120MM mortars, and while a mount for an ex-German Flak 88MM on a new wagon was toyed with it was not produced or used on the Krajina Express.

Twin-linked 57MM S-5 helicopter rocket pods were also installed onto the roof of at least two of the carriage wagons, right behind the Hellcat and another further down, as one of them shows up in a photo of the train from March 11th, 1994 and the other in the main image.

A photo from March 11th 1994, shows the twin rocket pods on one of the carriages, as well as some of the uniforms of the crewmen. The men to the left are priests giving Mass.

By the summer of 1993 the train was in it's most recognisable guise, with the Hellcat as the main nose weapon. Behind the M18 Hellcat on the refit first car were two non-WWII weapons, a pair of L57-12 air-to-ground rocket launchers. The rockets were completely unguided and unable to be aimed, so were only used for rocket barrages of large targets, such as towns.

The armor on all three cars plus the locomotive was greatly improved over earlier years, both with additional steel and with “rubber armor”. This “rubber armor” was sheets of processed material, not spongy rubber but rather similar to what one might find in a supermarket check-out’s conveyor belt. Against HE, AP-sabot, or solid-core AP ammunition, it was utterly useless. However against HEAT ammunition it was marginally effective as it was rigid enough to pre-detonate a HEAT warhead so that the molten slug was already starting to dissipate by the time it reached solid armor.

At the same time, it was pliable enough that sometimes the incoming weapon would get thrown off-axis causing the molten slug to strike the main armor at an undesirable angle.

This so-called “rubber armor” was used extensively by all sides during the breakup of Yugoslavia on WWII legacy vehicles to add a bit of protection against Cold War-era HEAT weapons like the RPG-7 or “Sagger” missile. Aboard the Krajina Express, more protection came from crushed mica which was poured into the gap between the rubber and the solid steel armor, forming a crude compound effect. The mica’s additional weight was irrelevant as unlike a land vehicle such as a T-34, the train did not need to worry about ground pressure and the locomotive put out way more horsepower than would ever be needed regardless. This “rubber armor” apparently worked good enough as the Krajina Express was hit by at least three HEAT weapons (RPGs, recoilless rifles, or ATGMs) but was undamaged.

In this final iteration of the Krajina Express, the two passenger cars were carried behind the locomotive, and now in front of the first combat car (the one with the Hellcat), two or three plain unmodified flatbeds were attached.

They carried railroad supplies and tools to repair sabotaged tracks (as the Krajina Express’s fame grew, so did this issue), and also would set off tiltrod mines laid on the railroad rather than the combat car with the Hellcat and crew.

Despite its nickname, the Krajina Express spent probably as much time outside of Krajina as in it. In particular, it fought in western and north-western Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially in the Bihac area. The Krajina Express was used extensively throughout the latter part of 1993 and all of 1994, up to the start of December.

The train was so busy that in fact it had two crews, much like a modern naval ballistic missile submarine, keeping the train in action for the maximum amount of time while one crew rested. Trucks were sometimes used to ferry men and supplies to the train During the early part of 1995 battlefield setbacks resulted in greater difficulty in finding enough friendly areas connected by rail. The city of Knin, the train’s birthplace, fell to the Croatian army during the first week of August 1995.

Soon the entire ethnic-Serb Krajina statelet would be overrun. The last missions were to evacuate friendly troops and civilians from the Dalmatian interior to Republik Srpska inside Bosnia.

To prevent capture the train itself was derailed and destroyed by it's crew once the Republic of Krajina was about to fall, and the three combat cars were sabotaged in the Lika region by being blasted into a forested ravine on a steep incline during Operation Oluja (Tempest) to prevent the train and it's armaments falling into the hands of the Croatian Army.

The crew then fled into the Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) was a self-proclaimed state in continental Croatia that never received any international recognition besides Belgrade (remains of Yugoslavia).

The locomotive, the only surviving part of the train, was abandoned. It was captured intact by advancing Croatian troops. After the end of the war, it was “un-modified” back to its original civilian appearance and allocated to HZ Railroad in Croatia by 2012. As of 2020 it is still in service, as HZ # 2-062-055.

 

[berkut76]

This is the 'Krajina Ekspres' (Krajina Express) armoured train, used in Croatia between 1991 and 1995. The armoured train is Locomotive number JZ 664-013, type G26C and was delivered to Yugoslavia by the US in 1973. The Krajina Express was first created during the summer of 1991 by ethnic Serb railway workers in the city of Knin, Zagreb Region, today in Croatia’s Dalmatian coast inland east from the city of Zadar and about 13 miles west of the present Croatian-Bosnian border.

In 1991, Knin was inside the Serb statelet of Krajina (for a while it was the self-proclaimed “capital city”), and possessed a railway service depot of the former Yugoslav Railways. The “beating heart” of the Krajina Express was a JZ664 civilian locomotive. This machine was built in Yugoslavia between the early 1970s – early 1980s and was powered by a General Motors EMD 2,168hp V-16 diesel. The armoured train conversion was done in the Zagreb region during late 1991 by the 7th Motorised Brigade, but the train was transferred to several different units over it's rather considerable service life.

Initially in 1991 the 'Express' was only consisting of the engine, two passenger/crew cabin carriages long and the first flatbed was armed with 1x nose mounted 20MM Flak 38 (known as PA M38). The car behind it carried two Soviet-made, Cold War-era AT-3 “Sagger” guided anti-tank missiles and a WWII British 40mm Bofors AA gun, which was referred to by the JNA as the M12. On this first version of the train, the two combat cars were protected only by sandbags and makeshift sheet metal enclosures. The passenger cars were not intended for fighting, only for the crew to live in. They were not always towed along.

Towards the end of 1991, the train participated in the defense of the former Yugoslav airbase at Zemunik near Zadar, Croatia. It was also during this time that the train gained its nickname. The Krajina Express was officially called the “7th Armored Train” which was almost never used.

The motto seen on the front of the train on the Hellcat tank is 'Only Unity will Save the Serbs'- you can just make out the edge of one of the flags with red and blue on the front armour plate. The badge from the inside of the train. It has a flag and the winged wheel was the insignia for armoured train units.

By 1992 the train received additional armour over the locomotive engine, 25MM of steel plates, rather than it being fully exposed.

As the war went on the armament changed between 20MM and 40MM guns, a 76MM ZIS-3 gun was installed in 1992 to replace the PA M38 as the primary nose mounted gun, which while outdated by that point as an anti-tank gun was used in the infantry support role.

That same year a third armoured weapon carriage was added to the train and outfitted with a 40MM BOFORS cannon, an M2 50. calibre heavy machinegun and two anti-tank missiles.

In this configuration, the Krajina Express was used only sparingly as the war train’s crew was also standard infantry and for much of 1992 was fighting on the ground during the “Koridor” operation.

The main header picture dates to after 1993 upgrades, where the front ZIS-3 gun was replaced by an entire American M18 Hellcat tank, a post 1944 Hellcat model with muzzle break was taken from the Yugoslav People's Army and used as a direct fire weapon from the train due to it's improved gun and firing angles compared to the ZIS mount. The 50 calibre in the AA mount was also left mounted on the Hellcat.

At the same time as the tank was 'installed' in 1993, all the train's armoured skirts were upgraded in thickness with rubber reinforcements and spaced armour ballast rather than just the single 25MM thick angled metal plates, as a response to several of the crew being killed in combat in an earlier engagement when the armour was penetrated.

Armoured plates had also been added to the train wheels to protect them by that time. The train was also used on occasion for transport of infantry, but not in significant numbers. Two additional weapons were also added during the 1993 retrofit, 120MM mortars, and while a mount for an ex-German Flak 88MM on a new wagon was toyed with it was not produced or used on the Krajina Express.

Twin-linked 57MM S-5 helicopter rocket pods were also installed onto the roof of at least two of the carriage wagons, right behind the Hellcat and another further down, as one of them shows up in a photo of the train from March 11th, 1994 and the other in the main image.

A photo from March 11th 1994, shows the twin rocket pods on one of the carriages, as well as some of the uniforms of the crewmen. The men to the left are priests giving Mass.

By the summer of 1993 the train was in it's most recognisable guise, with the Hellcat as the main nose weapon. Behind the M18 Hellcat on the refit first car were two non-WWII weapons, a pair of L57-12 air-to-ground rocket launchers. The rockets were completely unguided and unable to be aimed, so were only used for rocket barrages of large targets, such as towns.

The armor on all three cars plus the locomotive was greatly improved over earlier years, both with additional steel and with “rubber armor”. This “rubber armor” was sheets of processed material, not spongy rubber but rather similar to what one might find in a supermarket check-out’s conveyor belt. Against HE, AP-sabot, or solid-core AP ammunition, it was utterly useless. However against HEAT ammunition it was marginally effective as it was rigid enough to pre-detonate a HEAT warhead so that the molten slug was already starting to dissipate by the time it reached solid armor.

At the same time, it was pliable enough that sometimes the incoming weapon would get thrown off-axis causing the molten slug to strike the main armor at an undesirable angle.

This so-called “rubber armor” was used extensively by all sides during the breakup of Yugoslavia on WWII legacy vehicles to add a bit of protection against Cold War-era HEAT weapons like the RPG-7 or “Sagger” missile. Aboard the Krajina Express, more protection came from crushed mica which was poured into the gap between the rubber and the solid steel armor, forming a crude compound effect. The mica’s additional weight was irrelevant as unlike a land vehicle such as a T-34, the train did not need to worry about ground pressure and the locomotive put out way more horsepower than would ever be needed regardless. This “rubber armor” apparently worked good enough as the Krajina Express was hit by at least three HEAT weapons (RPGs, recoilless rifles, or ATGMs) but was undamaged.

In this final iteration of the Krajina Express, the two passenger cars were carried behind the locomotive, and now in front of the first combat car (the one with the Hellcat), two or three plain unmodified flatbeds were attached.

They carried railroad supplies and tools to repair sabotaged tracks (as the Krajina Express’s fame grew, so did this issue), and also would set off tiltrod mines laid on the railroad rather than the combat car with the Hellcat and crew.

Despite its nickname, the Krajina Express spent probably as much time outside of Krajina as in it. In particular, it fought in western and north-western Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially in the Bihac area. The Krajina Express was used extensively throughout the latter part of 1993 and all of 1994, up to the start of December.

The train was so busy that in fact it had two crews, much like a modern naval ballistic missile submarine, keeping the train in action for the maximum amount of time while one crew rested. Trucks were sometimes used to ferry men and supplies to the train During the early part of 1995 battlefield setbacks resulted in greater difficulty in finding enough friendly areas connected by rail. The city of Knin, the train’s birthplace, fell to the Croatian army during the first week of August 1995.

Soon the entire ethnic-Serb Krajina statelet would be overrun. The last missions were to evacuate friendly troops and civilians from the Dalmatian interior to Republik Srpska inside Bosnia.

To prevent capture the train itself was derailed and destroyed by it's crew once the Republic of Krajina was about to fall, and the three combat cars were sabotaged in the Lika region by being blasted into a forested ravine on a steep incline during Operation Oluja (Tempest) to prevent the train and it's armaments falling into the hands of the Croatian Army.

The crew then fled into the Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) was a self-proclaimed state in continental Croatia that never received any international recognition besides Belgrade (remains of Yugoslavia).

The locomotive, the only surviving part of the train, was abandoned. It was captured intact by advancing Croatian troops. After the end of the war, it was “un-modified” back to its original civilian appearance and allocated to HZ Railroad in Croatia by 2012. As of 2020 it is still in service, as HZ # 2-062-055.

wow, what a story. To my Facebook page it goes.