Bronco 35056 – German 7.62cm PaK36(r) Anti-Tank Gun
I’m sure that when many people think of armoured warfare in World War II they think of big tank on tank battles, something akin to the battles around Kursk. But the reality is that as much, if not more, armour was lost to anti-tank guns and the likes of the Sturmgeschutz than at the sharp end of a tank. Anti-tank guns started the war quite small and had to quickly grow to be able to take on increasingly better armour. After Germany invaded Russia in 1941 they captured large ammounts of Russian equipment, including over a thousand M1936 (F22) 76 mm divisional gun which they then re-chambered for their own much better round and redesignated as the PaK36(r).
This kit from Bronco comes in a large tray and lid style box on six dark yellow sprues, three of which are quite small. There is also two sprueless injection moulded tyres, also in dark yellow, as well as a small brass photo-etch fret, a small sheet of decals and the instruction booklet printed on high quality gloss paper. This is of course the same gun used in Bronco’s Sd.Kfz.6 “Diana” ( and with their recent Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf.D I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it appear in a new Marder II ). The instructions are easy to follow, being the clear line diagram style with well thought out breakdowns of the assembly sequence.
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 sprue attachments and clean them up. For what is essentially a simple piece of equipment there is definitely plenty of parts to this one even though on first impression the box doesn’t seem that full ( keep in mind I said simple, not small, when complete this is similar in length to your average sized tank ).
The gun barrel is very well done with a single piece slide moulded barrel and a three piece muzzle brake that includes a seperate internal locking collar, which makes it one of the best injection moulded muzzle brakes I’ve come across. As the kit is based on Bronco’s original M1936 F22 gun in it’s original russian configuration you get a few spare parts including the original barrel if you feel inclined to do one of the few that had no muzzle brake.
The gun mechanism and breech is also extremely well done and well detailed with a lot of small and delicate parts so care will be need when working with these. The German direct fire telescopic sight is also included along with the new parts to permit the gun to be set up as the Germans modified it, with the controls on the left. The control wheels are very finely moulded and should need no further thinning down. Actually all the control levers etc are very finely done and are excellent as is.
The gun shield is likewise very thin and looks very good with no real clean-up needed other than the sprue attachment points, which is a good thing as you wouldn’t want to damage the delicate surface details on these. The gunner’s sighting hole can be done with the armoured cover either open or closed and the finer details are included as some very tiny pieces of photo etch.
The carriage, like everything else is extremely well done. This kit comes with new parts to make this with the german rubber tyred pressed steel wheels but the original F22 wheels are also included to help pad out the spare parts box. The trails also include a number of small and delicate parts, including some more of the tiny photo etched parts to trouble those of us with sausage fingers. The trails can be displayed open in the firing position or closed in the travel position and one nice touch is that you can have the sighting poles in place on the trails or missing as if they were out where they should be when set up to fire.
As far as ammunition goes it’s nice to see that once again Bronco has got that covered with this kit coming with six shells, half panzergranate armour piercing shells and half sprenggranate high explosive shells. There are also two ammunition boxes that can be assembled either opened of closed, both of which have the correct internal detailing and to allow you to do this, not to mention delicate wood grain effects on all sides.
The decals that are included are all intended for use with the ammunition with no less than three on each of the three sprenggranate and one on the three panzergranates. There are also decals for the ammunition box lids.
All in all this is one very nice kit and Bronco is fast making me an ardent supporter. I’d love to see them repeat this level of quality and detail in their own version of the 7.5cm PaK 40. Very highly recommended.
Click images to enlarge ( opens in new window )
