Towards the closing days of WW2 Germany was desperate for any type of functioning fighting vehicles they could get. This led to the mounting different weapons on any available chassis that they had. One of the weirder vehicles was created by mounting the infamous 88mm Flak 36 on a Panzer IV chassis. There is very little information available on this vehicle but it does appear to have at least made it to the prototype phase. The chassis was not modified with stabilizers, so there is some speculation that the 88mm’s traverse was limited to just a few degrees off front center, similar to the Ferdinand. Also the Panzer IV was not designed to handle the recoil of the 88mm so the recoil may have shattered the suspension when fired.

Dragon recently released this oddity in kit form, however, it appears that the kit may actually be just a re-boxing of an older Cyber Hobby white box kit that has become a bit of collector’s item.

The Aircraft

The Bachem Ba 349 “Natter” was another of those last-ditch attempts by the Axis powers to stave off defeat. The Japanese had the MXY7 “Okha” which was supposed to stop the US fleets off Japan. The Natter was supposed to shoot down the fleets of bombers which were reducing the cities of the Reich to rubble on a daily basis.

This is the first in a series of diorama modelling handbooks to be published by Mr. Black Publications (the second has also been released). Mr. Black is a relatively new, European-based company specializing in modeling ‘how-to’ books and modeling-related history books. On their website they also offer a small selection of vignette bases and some pro-built models.

This handbook is in the standard European A4 (roughly 8 ½” x 11”) format, and is printed on very high quality, thick matte paper. There are over 400 photos between the covers.

The contents comprise of 9 articles, each written by a different author, explaining the construction and detailing of vignette-style dioramas. The emphasis is on figure-related dioramas, and the contents are as follows: