It’s said that an army marches on it’s stomach, and if that is the case then someone needs to feed those stomaches. Enter the humble cook and his kitchen, or in this case the humble cook, his humble horse, and his humble kitchen wagon.
This kit comes in a small tray and lid box on four dark grey sprues and consists of the field kitchen, supply limber, two horses and a driver. The mouldings are very good with no flash, needing only minor cleanup of the mould seams. Fit is good and the kit goes together quickly and easily with nice clear, easy to follow instructions.
The kitchen is made up of several parts representing the cooker with the firebox and ash pan doors at the bottom able to be posed open or closed. The limber is a simple arrangement whose doors are moulded shut. Both the cooker and the Limber have two large old style wooden cart wheels each.
The horses are moulded as two different horses which is a nice touch considering how often kits with horse will just double up the horse mould. One has “hairy” feet with what looks like long mane like hair coming from the hocks and that just doesn’t look right. Other than that they aren’t that bad with just the usual heavy looking mouldings to the manes and tails which seem to be the same in all plastic kits of horses.. The driver is a very simple figure with the detail around the pockets and skirts being a little soft but easy enough to sharpen up as are the creases. other than that he is quite pasable with quite a good face.
You also get a number of cooking accessories such as milk cans, a bucket, a ladle, several mess tins, a lantern, two large food containers and two smaller serving bins. There is also a canteen and a Kar98K rifle for the driver.
There are no decals included but you do get a sheet of very thin plastic card with instructions for using this to make the reins and harnesses for the horses. This is a nice touch giving a better result than moulded on harnesses though I still find it easier to use printer paper in place of the card as it is easier to work with.
This can be modelled either in transit or deployed and in fact Tamiya took this kit, removed the horses and added two more figures and re-released it as the “German Field Kitchen Scenery” kit.
This is an older kit but still a good one, not to mention the only version of the German Horse Drawn Field Kitchen available in 1/35 plastic kit form other than its clone by Academy ( see review HERE ) and still looks good made up straight from the box.
Click thumbnails to enlarge images.
I just published a book on German Field Kitchens! As a modeler and reenactor, I know these kits are greatly lacking in fine detail. I wrote this book to be an aid to the modeler as well as the historian, It’s available as “Gulsachkanone, The German Field Kitchen in WW2 and Reenacting” by Scott Thompson, at amazon.com. Schiffer Books. It’s a collection of historical photos as well as my own restored German WW2 field kitchen in action. With lots of details! Happy to help with any questions.
Hi Scott, if you’re interested in sending us a review copy we’d be happy to review it and provide a link though to where people can buy it. If so just drop us an email via the contact us link.