Dragon Models 6123 – 7.5cm PaK 97/38
At the start of the Second World War the German Army had a lot of small calibre anti-tank guns which quickly proved to be inadequate for the job required of them. One of those guns was the 3.7cm PaK 36 which was then replaced by the 5cm PaK 38. After capturing a lot of French equipment the German army took the PaK 38 carriage and married it to the gun from the French Canon de 75 modèle 1897 to create the PaK 97/38. This provided much better anti-tank performance than the PAK 36 and provided a short term solution until the 7.5cm PaK 40 was more widely available.
This kit comes in a medium sized tray and lid style box containing two sprues – one large, one small, The box size is a little deceptive as it could easily have been half the size, and don’t let the boxart fool you, no crew are included ( this kit was later re-released by DML as a premium kit – number 6445 - together with a crew, some photo etch, a few extra parts such as the rear dolly wheels, and some metal ammo but the base gun is the same kit ). This is one of DML’s older kits so it’s a little simpler than you may be used to with their kits.
The quality is still very good despite this kits age with good clean moulds, sharp detail, and quite a good degree of detail at that, even if it is just a small kit. There’s no flashing, minimal mould lines, and just a few shallow ejector pin marks to deal with. The instructions are a simple single sheet folded in thirds to give six pages of plain line digrams using light blue colour to differentiate between the parts being added in each step and the existing sub-assembly.
The level of detail is not as great as current kits though it’s still pretty good and better than the Italeri version of the same gun. The breech assembly in particular is very nice and although the barrel and muzzle brake are moulded as two halves integrally with the gun cradle it still looks quite good if care is taken in joining the two halves. Some of the detail is a bit heavier than it should be, notably the shields which are over-thick scalewise, though they aren’t massively noticeable and still present well out of the box.
This is an easy kit to tart up for those who want a little bit finer detail as RB Models makes a very nice replacement barrel with an exceptional brass muzzle brake, and Eduard make a photo etch set that replaces many of the parts including the gun shields ( though to be honest if you wanted to do that you’re better off getting the premium version with the PE shields to start with ).
There is no ammo included with this which is what I consider this kits only really failing. It is always nice with artillery and anti-tank guns to get at least a few shells and ammo boxes to go with them. The Itaerli version includes a few shells ( not that great though to be honest ) and the DML Premium Edition includes metal shells but other than those if you want shells you can get away with using M3 Sherman’s 75mm shells as that gun was derived from the same French gun.
There are no decals included with this kit which isn’t really surprising, there wasn’t really that much in the way of markings on these and if it really bothers you there’s always Archer.
All in all despite it’s age this is still a very nice kit that doesn’t cost much ( you should be able to get one for well under $20 NZD ) that makes up into a great little piece of hardware, and one that can easily be improved for minimal cost if you really want to.
Click images to enlarge ( opens in new window )
