Nicholas Straussler, a Hungarian designer living in Britain between the world wars, designed several armoured cars for Britain. He was eventually able to come to an agreement with the Weiss Manfred factory of Csepel, Budapest to produce armored vehicles for use in his home country. The most popular design, the Csaba, named for Attila the Hun’s son, was based on the Alvis AC2 armored car.

After successful trials, the Hungarian Army ordered approximately 100 vehicles in 1940. About 20 of these were used in combat, with the remaining vehicles seeing service as command or reconnaissance vehicles.

The Csaba had a 20 mm cannon and an 8 mm machine gun fixed on a centrally mounted turret, a crew of three, and was powered by a 90hp 8 cylinder Ford engine.

Background

During World War Two, the Allies encountered German tanks with heavier armor and more powerful guns than those the Allies possessed. The US initiated development and testing of heavy tanks in 1943 as the armor on the M26 was not thick enough to stand against the latest German guns. The war ended before the US Army could deploy a heavy tank in Europe, but a need was recognized for a heavy tank to counter the deployment of the IS-3 by the USSR. The T43, mounting a 120mm main gun and a new V-12 engine was selected as the new heavy tank. The T43 became the basis for the M103, America's only operational heavy tank.

The book explores the history of both the Kubelwagen and the Schwimmwagen in photos.

The visual history series of book mixes rare and visual stunning archival imagery with pictures of restored vehicles.

The book has some extremely interesting and diverse photos of both vehicles. A number of photos that I had never seen before made this a very fascinating book. I could spend hours looking at the pictures that are worth a million words! There are some wonderful pictures showing captured versions – idea for model inspiration.

The pictures depict many versions of the vehicles and there is some very detailed walk around photos included. The close up pictures are great at showing the details of the vehicles.

I whole heartily recommend this book to everyone with an interest in these vehicles; it has great reference photos. It is a great book for modelers.

I look forward greatly to others in the series, especially if they are by David Doyle.

What's in the Huge Box

When I opened the box I was impressed with the numbers of sprues. At first glance it did not appear that this was going to be too difficult of a build. However, I later discovered that my assumption was incorrect. There are a lot of parts to put together, and you must be ready to devote some time into this model because it will take a while to complete. With that said, let's get on with the good stuff. Here is a breakdown of the items in the huge box.

Kit contents

• 20-Grey Sprues
• 4-DS Tires
• 1-Tow Cable
• Decals
• Instructions

(An interesting note. This kit has no photo etch parts. You will also have a ton of leftover parts in the kit which all look like the belong to the HEMTT. The question is why did Dragon not release the HEMMT with this kit?)

The Black Label collection from Dragon Models offers an interesting range of novel model kits. Their latest offering, a 1/35th scale MIM-104B Patriot Surface To Air Missile (PAC-1), is not the only kitted offering of this venerable anti-missile, missile system on the market; it is not even the first version of the kit produced. But, with its relatively low parts count and absence of photo etch, it is a kit clearly aimed at modelers with a focus on buildability. Dragon includes not only the complete launcher and four posable missile pods, but also the U.S. Army HEMTT prime mover – quite an undertaking in one box.