History

The British 6 Pounder Anti-Tank gun was manufactured in the US, in 1942. In early 1943, the US Army adopted it for their use and called it the 57mm Anti-Tank gun M1. The version adopted for the army was modified and supplied to the army with a modified towing hitch and “Combat” wheels. Most branches of the US Army considered the weapon as too heavy and it was also hampered by the lack of ammunition. In 1943 only simple armor piercing ammo was manufactured. It wasn’t until late 1944 before adequate AP ammunition was made available. The M1 could penetrate 75mm of armor angled at 30 degrees at a distance of 3000 meters. In spite of the shortcomings, by early 1944 the M1 had become the standard towed anti-tank gun of the US Army Divisions. The prime mover for the M1 57mm was the Dodge WC-63 and the White halftrack. Over 10,000 M1’s were built for the US Army and 4,242 for the British Army. The M1 was also used by the Free French and Russian armies.

The development of this Russian heavy machine gun started in 1944 and by 1949 it had entered service as an infantry weapon. By the 60's it was withdrawn as it was too heavy to be useful. However, it was also mounted on tanks, BTR's, BRDM-2 and other armor vehicles, even boats. It has heavy fire power and a very long range of 2-3,000m and up to 2,000m vertically as an AA weapon. This version, KPVT (tankovyi) was modified from the infantry version by shortening the receiver, providing a heavier barrel jacket and using a 50-round belt instead of the original 40-round belt. To us Americans, if you convert the 14.5mm it turns out to be .57 caliber. More than half way between the .50 caliber M2 MG and the 20mm round. With the larger bullet and case it provided approximately twice the energy of the .50 caliber round, making it a very formidable weapon.

This is indeed a one of a kind armored vehicle. I think that only a single prototype was ever built. After some successful tests of Grille artillery in the Italian Front a decision was made to test a Flak 37 on a heavily modified Panther chassis. I think it even reached the prototype stage.

When you open the box you will find more plastic than for the average model, as all the parts for the Flak 37 are provided by Dragon Models and the chassis, armored sides and running gear is provided by Bronco. There are over 60 sprues and two small photo-etch frets.

Instructions are very clear, probably CAD line drawings generated from the actual CAD design for the molds. The overall surface detail is outstanding, as the accompanying pictures show. Detail is not limited to the armored vehicle as you also get tarps, bags, helmets and rifles but not figures are provided.

Italian Artillery in WW2 is a subject long neglected in the modeling field, although it’s good to see Italeri and other companies starting to create kits of these subjects. Italy’s artillery arm during that war suffered, to a certain degree, from their successes in the Great War, where they captured or otherwise obtained large numbers of artillery pieces from the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire. This led to a certain complacency in the higher military echelons concerning further developments, so that Italy was always suffering from inadequate support in this field. That being said, when they did develop new materials they were consistently excellent with innovations such as easily replaceable inner barrels.

This is a new, very nice kit from ICM. The parts have very good detail, go together will, and end up with a highly detailed model. Care must be used due to small parts, so the kit may be difficult for beginners.

The kit comes with all the parts in one plastic bag. The five vinyl tires are separately bagged, as are the clear plastic sprue parts. The bulk of the kit is on six dark yellow sprues. The parts have extremely good detail and there are many finely cast pieces. There are lots of small pieces and the kit includes 211 parts overall. The front grill is particularly well cast with openings between the individual grill slats. There is no flash apparent on the parts and mold seams are minimal. The detail on the parts is incredible and this should make for a highly detailed model. The plastic is quite soft so care will need to be taken to avoid gouging the plastic when cleaning up the parts.