Mortars were an important element in the infantry arsenal in World War Two, being used by everyone everywhere, but still they remain a relative minority when it comes to 1/35 scale kits, with no Commonwealth kits springing to mind, and only the old Tamiya Gun and Mortar team kit providing anything American. Dragon do a few German Mortars as does Tamiya with their older German Mortar Crew set, and then there is this older one by Zvezda of the Granatwerfer 42, a German copy of the Russian M1938 120mm mortar.
This kit comes in a medium sized tray and lid style box containing four sprues moulded in light grey which between them give us four figures, a 12cm Mortar, a small wheeled trailer for the mortar and two ammunition trailers. That’s not a bad lot of gear for a relatively inexpensive kit.
The mouldings on this eighteen year old kit aren’t as good as we are used to from some of the newer kits from the bigger manufacurers. Overall they’re still pretty good but there is some flashing to be dealt with as well as a few prominent mould seams and injector pin marks to fill. The detail isn’t bad, it could be a little sharper in areas but it definitely isn’t what I would call poor. The woodgrain detail on the ammo boxes is a little heavy and odd looking but other than that most of what you get once cleaned up looks very good.
The mortar is of course the central piece to this kit and can be modelled either deployed or in transit on its trailer, with folded or spread legs being provided for use with their relevant option. The mortar is made up of seven parts with the tube moulded in two halves, with the top end being hollow right down to give the best internal look. This part is tapered at the muzzle to give it an appropiately thin look though the internal sides could use more thinning down as the taper is quite abrupt and noticeable. The rest of the mortar is made up of the elevation and traversing gear as well as the bipedal legs, and includes separate handles for the elevation and traverse screws.
There is no screw thread detail on any of these parts, so if this bothers you it will need to be added by replacing the appropriate parts with wound wire. There is also no tensioning chain across the base of the legs so this too will need to be added. Again, as with most of the other parts the mortar needs a bit of cleanup and could use a serious going over to sharpen up the details, with one of the areas that stands out being the lack of the bolts where the bipod legs pivot in the cross arm.
The mortar base plate is also seven parts, the base as one large piece together with two hooks for mounting to the wheeled trolley, and four lifting handles. The handles are a little thick but not so much that they need replacing, just a little attention with the edge of a scalpel blade to pare them down a little. The base itself is well done with the weld beads included on the top, though there should also be some around the the joins on the bottom as well, though those ones aren’t there.
The mortar trailer is a simple affair, being made up of sixteen parts, three of which are the tools and another four the wheels. The rest makes up the frame which needs a fair bit of flash removed but otherwise looks good once completed. The wheels are a little confusing as the sprue with the mortar provides two spoked wheels while the instructions indicate two pressed steel wheels that match those of the ammunition trailers. If you use the spoked type they are moulded in two halves with part on the spokes on each half which looks quite good when complete, though as with most moulded spoke wheels they could use some serious thinning down. These wheels also have no tread pattern where the pressed steel type used on the ammo trailers do.
The ammunition trailers are a bit of a bonus, mainly as no indication is given anyhwere that two trailers are included, but you do indeed get two complete trailers. Construction of these is also very simple, being made up of twenty one pieces each which assemble into a basic box arrangement with a towbar and two pressed steel wheels. The wheels have good detail and the trailers include the internal shell rack with the option to have the lids positioned open or closed, though if open each trailer only comes with five shells to fill the twenty holes.
Twelve mortar shells are included in total, five with each trailer and another two with the mortar along with two wooden ammo boxes with the internal frames for holding two shells each. The woodgrain pattern on these is a bit heavy and only included on the outside of the lower box, but the inside of the lid as well, though all the internal faces have large injector pin marks. The hinges though are very well done.
The figures are on a par with similar vintage Dragon figure sets, and better than the older Tamiya ones. The mouldings are a bit thick and heavy with the folds and creases in the clothing being rather heavy and needing undercut detail added to the tunic skirts. Some of the finer detail around areas like the harness fittings as also in need of sharpening up. The faces are okay but again could use sharpening up to be better defined, though the hands for the most part are well done. All four have moulded on helmet chin straps and gas mask container straps. I’m not a fan of having these moulded on as I prefer to do my own but if they have to be moulded on then these are at least well done, being delicate and to scale.
Personal equipment for the figures is standard across all four with each getting a gas mask container, mess tin, canteen, breadbag, short shovel in its carrier with attached bayonet, and a helmet. Three also get Kar 98K rifles with two Kar 98K triple ammo pouches each, while the fourth gets a holstered P08 Luger and a pair of binoculas. Most of the equipment again could benefit greatly from a little time spent with a sharp scalpel blade to sharpen up the detail which is a little heavy around the finer parts like the fittings and straps.
As I said earlier, this is an older kit, almost twenty years old now, and it does show in the heaviness of the moulds, but it is still a kit with a great deal of potential. Mainly it just needs cleaning up of the heaviness of the moulds which can be done with a healthy application of good old fashioned modelling skill. A full compliment of fourty-four mortar shells to fill the available shell storage, instead of the twelve provided, would also have been nice.
Zvezda has been re-issuing some of their older kits that have been cleaned up so here’s hoping they do it with this one, because if they took this, sharpened up the detail and managed to bring it up to par with more contemporary kits then it would be a real winner. For now the Dragon version has the better mortar, the crews are about the same, and the Dragon set includes six ammo boxes with ten shells, but this kit for around the same price adds the mortar trailer, the two ammo trailers and two more shells. So definitely worth the effort to tidy it up.
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