Great Wall Hobby L3514 – German WWII 20l Jerry Cans
The Jerrycan, one of the Wehrmacht’s better contributions to society that’s now used by pretty much every civilised nation in the world. Likewise it seems that every manufacturer of injection moulded kits has their own set of jerry cans for the modeller to choose from. So is this the one for you ?
This kit comes in a medium sized open ended type box containing two matching dark yellow sprues which give you a total of twenty individual jerry cans and four “blocks” of five cans moulded as one lot. The moulding is excellent with sharp, clean detail, no flash, and close to non-existant mould seams. In fact the only real clean-up needed is the sprue attachment points. Also included is a largish fret of brass photo etch and a small sheet of decals
The instructions are printed on the rear of the box in simple line diagram style together with a very simple painting guide advising you to paint them either German Grey ( dunkelgrau ) or Dark Yellow ( dunkelgelb ). No rocket science there. Likewise the decal placement is shown but is rather pretty obvious as the decals consist only of twelve large white crosses to be used to designate which cans are for water.
Assembly is pretty straight forward as long as you are going with the straight forward option. By that I mean the straight forward option involves joining two halves with a PE frame sandwiched in the middle which provides the thin join seam found around the outside of these where the two pressed halves joined and had the lips rolled over. You then add the carry handles and the caps. And there’s where you can deviate from straight forward if you choose to.
The filler caps come in two options, one is the standard two part injection moulded plastic version which we should all be familiar with. The other option is to build each cap from one small plastic part and three small photo etched parts. And let me emphasise SMALL. To top it off, and I kid you not, do these right and they are workable. Strike me pink if I know why on earth you would do that to yourself but if you are so inclined there they are.
The markings on the cans break them down into four types. Two are the early style with the straight stamped cross and these are marked “Kraftstoff” ( fuel ), “20L”, “Feuergefährlich” ( flammable ), “1939″ and with a “71″ ( factory code ) under the maker’s logo. The others all have the more familiar square-centered cross stamp, with six marked “Wasser” ( water ) “20L”, “1942″, “414″ and “Wehrmacht” ( Armed Forces ) denoting them as water cans. Another six are marked “Kraftstoff”, “Feuergefährlich”, “20L”, “1221″, and “1939″ and “Wehrmacht” denoting them as fuel cans, and the final six are marked “Kraftstoff”, “Feuergefährlich”, “20L” and “Sandrik” ( manufacturer of SS jerry cans ) with the SS runes symbol in the centre.
The jerry cans moulded in blocks of five have no surface markings, rather they are intended to be used with one of the single cans at either end to create a row-of-cans look. They still use the same seperate carry handles and caps as the single cans though so they will all look alike and the effect is good.
Conclusion. Are these the best injection moulded jerry cans available ? In my opinion yes they are, simply because of the photo-etch filler caps. Those aside these are as good as Tasca’s and I consider those to be damn good. Very highly recommended.
NB : On a side note these are the same jerry cans included with Bronco’s Sd.Ah.52 ammunition trailer kit, though you only get one sprue so half the cans, no decals, and no photo etched filler cap option there.
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