"The BTR-60 is a Soviet-made armored transport vehicle. It was the first of a series of 4-axle armored personnel carriers developed for the Soviet land forces and the armies of the Warsaw Pact. The vehicle was developed in the late 1950s. In the fall of 1959, the first prototype was ready, and in 1960, series production of the BTR-60P began. It was built by the Gorky Automobile Plant (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, GAS/GAZ), among others, and the Kurgan Wheeled Tug Plant (Kurganski Zavod Kolyosnych Tyagachevei, KZKT). First shown at a parade in 1961, the wheeled armored vehicle was built in series in various versions at least until 1983.
The 7,220 mm long, 2,820 mm wide, 2,060 mm high vehicle and weighing approx. 9.5 t in the basic version was equipped with two 6-cylinder petrol engines (GAZ-49B), each with 66 kW/80 hp, after the developers could not fall back on a suitable diesel engine.
The right petrol engine drove the first and third pair of wheels, the left engine the second and fourth pairs. Each engine was preceded by a gearbox with a four-speed gearbox, both transmissions could be decoupled separately from the engine, so that the vehicle could also be operated if one engine failed. The maximum speed on the road was specified as 80 km/h. Both on the road and off-road, steering was done solely via the two front pairs of wheels. For amphibious missions, a water jet drive was installed in the rear, in which a 60 cm propeller sucked in water through an opening in the floor and ejected it from the tank at the rear. The steering was done here with two small rudders, which were aligned by the driver with the normal steering wheel. Speeds of up to 10 km/h were thus possible
