Bronco 35070 – 15cm Panzerwerfer 42 (Zehnling) auf sWS
Most people with a more than passing interest in World War Two will easily recognise the German Sd.Kfz.251 halftrack, but despite the fact that over 800 were made the Schwere Wehrmachtschlepper (sWS) remains relatively unknown, possibly as it bears a more than passing resemblance to the Sd.Kfz.251 so is probably often mistaken for one of those. It does however deserve a bit more of the historical limelight as it was this and the larger armourder DB10 Sd.Kfz.8 that first bought us the fully enclosed armoured troop carrier that would so dominate the battlefields post WWII.
Italeri first bought us an sWS kit in 1/35 and then a few years ago Great Wall Hobby ( aka Lion Roar ) bought us a much more state of the art version. Now Bronco throws their hat in the ring in a manner of speaking by using the GWH sWS kit as the basis to make this 15cm Panzerwerfer version mounting the rockets better recognised in the Nebelwerfer launchers. This kit takes the Great Wall Hobby sWS kit, adds an engine and the 15cm Nebelwerfer 42 rocket launcher.
This kit comes in a large tray and lid style box ( with a lid so tight it takes you half an hour to get into the damn thing ) on twelve dark yellow sprues, together with the lower hull tub, a small sheet of photo-etch, a small sheet of decals and a large glossy paper instruction booklet. Several of the sprues are doubles, two the same for the running gear, two the same for the tracks, two the same for the rockets. All up including the tracks and the photo-etch there are just over 800 parts in this kit, so not one for the novice.
The mould quality is excellent with almost completely clean parts and almost non existant mould seams, very sharp detail and some particularly fine and delicate detailing. I did say almost, as you will still need to remove the mould seams even though they are very faint. Bronco have managed to provide a lot of detail in this kit and a lot of those parts are very small and very delicate so care needs to be taken to avoid over feeding the carpet monster.
The instructions are easy to follow being the clear line diagram style with well thought out breakdowns of the assembly sequences. Despite the high number of parts construction is very simple and easy to follow. One thing I do like about the Bronco kits is the instructions being printed on high quality gloss paper with adds to the sense that this is a quality kit. It may be just a perceptional thing but it’s nice none the less.
The chassis is a single piece tub and quite sturdy at that. It has a hole in the underside for the engine which shouldn’t be there so needs to be covered over. Bronco got the engine wrong ( more on that shortly ) and this hole is for the engine oil sump that shouldn’t be where it is. Likewise there is a very nice winch assembly that is a leftover from the original GWH unarmoured sWS so you can consign that to the spares bin. Into the chassis go the torsion bar outer casings as well as the gas tank, air cylinders, and of course the front suspention set-up. All of this is beautifully cast and a pleasure to work with.
The engine as mentioned is essentially wrong. The base engine is the correct Maybach engine but the set-up is incorrect, being the style used in the Sd.Kfz.251 with the oil sump on the bottom rather than off to the sides. There’s also a few other things that would need changing to make it fully correct so if you really want to show the engine I’d get the SKP one and stick this into an Sd.Kfz.251. If you’re not planning to show the engine then it’s all rather moot as you don’t really need to include it at all if the access hoods are closed as it will never be seen.
The running gear is very well done and even includes a very lightly done cast texturing on the axle swing arms. The road wheels are all designed to sit flat but as the swing arms are only held in position by a small pin it is an easy job to articulate them by cutting this pin off and filling the corresponding hole. There are two options for the drive sprockets, large and small, and it’s the large one you want to go with. These include PE step rings around the hubs which has become pretty much the norm with any decent german halftrack kit these days.
The front wheels can be posed at any angle and if you really want to with a little bit of work and a bit of scratchbuilding skill you can make the steering workable, though personally I’m not a big fan of moving parts on finished models. The front tyres are each made up of six separate slices which sandwich around the wheel which gives a very good looking tread result. The finished front suspension and wheels looks really good which is important on a vehicle such as this where it is all so easily seen.
The tracks are individual link tracks made up of alternating tread and joiner with the guide horn on the tread. These aren’t workable ( unless you don’t have a life and feel like drilling through both sides of all 250 or so links so you can add wire pins ) so need to be treated as such by using a slow setting glue to assemble them leaving you enough time to form them around the running gear before the glue fully hardens off. Each link has two sprue attachment points so you’ll need good side cutters to minimise the ammount of time you’ll spend on clean-up.
The interior is broken down into two halves, the driver’s compartment and the rear compartment. The driver’s compartment is very well done with a lot of detail, so much so that you really can’t do this kit justice without having the hatches and vision slot covers open. Likewise the rear compartment is fully detailed and the kit includes enough rockets to fill ten of the twenty four spare rocket racks. other internal detail includes the radios, folding map table, MP40 and the firing position for the Nebelwerfer with the gunner’s seat and controls. Obviously all this can just go into the spares box if you do your vehicle buttoned up.
The hull is a multi-part assembly and includes seperate hatches for the rear doors, engine hoods, driver’s compartment roof and the roof of the rear compartment through which rockets are passed for reloading. These hatches all have good internal detail including latches etc to allow them to be posed open. The side storage boxes also all include seperate doors with good hinge detail and the internal box as well. Under the left front fender is the exhaust which has a hollowed out pipe ( it could be thinned more if you’re fussy ), and the whole thing is topped off by a very nice MG42 complete with seperate top cover. This also gets optional open and closed bipods, an ammo belt, ammo tin, three ammo drums and a twin drum cradle.
The Nebelwerfer rocket launcher is, like the rest, very nicely detailed and very well made. If you try to assemble it as shown as a full piece that then goes into the top it’s a real pig to get in place. It’s much easier to attach it to the roof first and then add the gunner’s seat and controls from underneath. The launcher holds ten of the twenty rockets that come with this kit ( so if you want to fill out the inside you’re going to need spare rockets from somewhere ).
The tubes seem a little thick to me but as they are slide moulded and could have easily been done a little thinner I’m going to assume Bronco got their measurements right ( they do include a reinforcing band that would add thickness which you don’t see on the Nebelwerfer 41 ). But if it bothers you a little thinning would help, just be careful of the internal rail detail. As mentioned you get a total of twenty rockets and you can fit ten of these into these tubes to show it loaded and ready to fire.
The decals aren’t overly comprehensive consisting of just the name THOR, a pair of balkenkreusse, organisational markings and numbers allowing you to make your own licence plate number on the licence plate decal which just has the WH prefix. I do feel that when you’re getting into this level of detail on a kit it would be nice to have decals also for things such as the dashboard instruments, radio dials and rocket markings.
Conclusion. This is a beautiful kit, no two ways about it. The old Italeri kit isn’t in the same picture when it comes to the detail and the quality. Certainly there are still areas which can use a little fine tuning and super detailing ( another ten or twenty rockets would have been nice ) but you’re almost there with just what comes in the box. The sWS is probably the ugly duckling of the German halftracks but if you’re a fan of German armour then this is a kit that is a joy to build and the end result is well worth all those individual links.
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