"Roco Grille" Topic

link

Modification of the Roco Grille.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Great kitbashing!

I may be wrong but didn't Rico produce this very vehicle years ago the way you have it? I seem to remember buying one because I liked the fact that it had an 88 with the vehicle having drop sides. It looked cool.

Yes, Roco did produce an 88mm Grille back in the day. I had at least one in my German forces in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

But Mike has done a good kitbash.

Jim

I have this Roco vehicle – or what is left of it in my "spare parts" box. I was looking at it the other day.

I wish someone would come out with one in 1/56 scale. I would buy it.

Nice kit bashing!

When I first saw the conversion, I thought they had mounted a 150mm on a Grille chassis.

Roco did one of two versions of the Grille. The Roco version is the early production, the Germans made three of them. Later they modified one gun when they removed the gun, and front gun-shield and replaced it with a different version of the 88mm gun and the standard towed gun gun-shield.
Only the one modified version was sent into combat. The other two seem to have disappeared from history at that point.

As I understand it the original concept was to have a heavy self-propelled anti-tank gun that could also function as an anti-aircraft gun to accompany armored formations. But fast low flying planes can't be easily tracked or hit by a large caliber AA gun. And high flying planes require an AA gun that is stationary and well mounted and prepared and a towed gun is better for that purpose.

So they gave up the A-T concept and put a different gun on it and sent it to Italy. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this information but this is what I have gathered from a variety of sources.

Bunkermeister