looks at more open-topped German artillery vehicles.Before sending the kit off to George of Warpaint, I thought I'd take my customary first peek at the components.
The 45mm Anti-Tank Gun comes in 7 pieces.
The gun proper is one piece, with the gun shield being a separate piece fitting over the front. The shield has both an opening for the gun, and a higher, smaller opening (for sighting the gun?).
The barrel is very nicely done, crisply molded. There's no flash on the gun piece, and a very slight mold line on the barrel. (The picture makes it look much worse than it really is.) You'll of course need to straighten the barrel slightly - that always happens with soft metals.
A lot of the character of the model is set by the gun shield, since it will be the most prominent part of the assembled kit. The various panel lines, handles, and bolts provide a lot of interest, and are faithful to the original.
The shield has a rough texture in spots on the inside (but frankly, who's ever going to see that!). There are also some very faint lines (mold lines?) on the shield sides, which may hopefully disappear under the first coat of primer.
The remaining five pieces make up the gun carriage - one axle piece, two wheels, and two trails (legs).
The two wheels come together and need to be snipped apart. (The spoked wheels are characteristic of the early-war 45mm gun; the '42 remake has solid wheels.) Tire tread detail is good, except of course where you'll snip them apart; one tire also has indentations at the opposite end.
The trails are well-cast and have only the slighest of seam marks. The triangular chunks (to the left in the photo) are excess metal to be trimmed off; this is the end which connects with the gun carriage.
Based on a quick check of Red Army Handbook (Zaloga & Ness, 1998) - the only source in my library for this weapon - the gun looks right. There are some minor differences in detail versus the Handbook photo - narrower gun opening in the shield, straighter outline of the shield wings - but I suspect these are differences between production models, not kit errors.
One mystery that I'll leave for George is determining the exact fit of these pieces. Obviously, the gun fits into the axle (peg into hole), and the wheels go on the end of the axle. I'm not sure how the shield fits to the gun - vertically (gun in the shield opening) or horizontally (shield on the gun barrel). I'm also mystified by the trails - they end with tiny pegs on each side, but I'm not sure if they're ornamental or supposed to fit into some indent of the axle.
It sure looks like a jewel of a kit, though. I bet it'll be a beauty on the gaming table, and a nice variation from all the "big" guns you see so often.