Was the Soviet T-34 the most important tank of the Second World War? It certainly was produced in the largest numbers, 57,000 between 1941 and 1945, more even than the ubiquitous M4 Sherman series. And it was undoubtedly superior to the Sherman in many areas, including armor protection and main armament. And without doubt the most massive and arguably most important armored battles of WW2 took place on the Eastern Front, where the T-34 dominated Soviet tank strength numbers. Did in fact the T-34 “win the war” for the Allies, responsible as it was for inflicting massive damage to more Axis divisions than any other Allied military vehicle? Whatever your answer to this question it is undoubtedly true that the T-34 was an extremely important cog in the Soviet military machine that crushed the Germans and their allies on the Eastern Front.

Summary

Newly offered in injection-molded plastic by Bronco Models out of China, the Sd.Kfz.122(F) Flammpanzer is a real gem of a kit. Bronco had previously released an all-new version of the gun tank, but this is the first Flamm version since the discontinued kit from ICM/Alan in 2006. It comes with a (captured) French tracked trailer and enough jerry cans and oil drums to make any diorama-minded modeler happy. The fuel and water cans and the oil drums are straight from a separate Bronco offering reviewed by Eric Christianson.

Quickboost provides you with one set of Lavochkin La-5 exhausts. Of note is the re-sealable packaging that Quickboost uses that makes the parts easy to review and then stuff back into the package securely. There are no supplied instructions; you simply swap out the kit provided plastic parts with the new Quickboost replacements. These Quickboost parts are specific replacements for the kit parts found in the Zvezda 4803 kit and Eduard’s re-issue as a limited edition kit (1148).

Quickboost has molded the exhausts perfectly in light grey resin with no apparent bubbles. The Quickboost exhausts provide you with only minimal mold seams to sand off along with a hollowed out exhaust. Be very careful removing the parts from the resin block. I used a photo-etched saw along with a couple swipes of a sanding stick to have great looking parts. Test fitting revealed no discernable difference compared to the kit parts that should cause any problems