This ‘Mittlere FLAK’ / medium AA Gun of 37 mm caliber was a standard weapon on most German warships during the early years of war and sometimes was kept on board throughout.
As many German artillery systems, it was a mechanically rather complex build with focus on accuracy vs. rate of fire. During the course of the war this concept proved wrong, and less complicated, less accurate systems with higher rates of fire were much more effective.
Anyway, as many other guns like this, it was a very interesting looking system and is rather complex to build, if you strive for an accurate model. Most representations in 1/350 are very simplified.
However, with various aftermarket companies offering individual sets for various guns, some very interesting versions of it can be build.
Here I am going to show four different builds: a version from Dragon (as a part of e.g. the 1/350 Scharnhorst kit), a version from Flyhawk, Veteran Models and finally VeryFire (Thank you very much once again, David (RollTide) for sending my this kit that I still can’t obtain in Germany!).
So here’s the four of them, from left to right Flyhawk, VeryFire, Veteran Models, Dragon.
Early on in my Gneisenau build log I briefly presented the Dragon, Flyhawk and Veteran offering. I’ll come back to them here later on in more detail, but will start with the latest addition, the VeryFire one. There are eight guns in the small box.
The gun mounts
and the breeches, already with small holes to accept the brass barrels.
Resin casting is fine and highly detailed.
The PE for eight sets. It is rather thick but very finely etched, that makes it easy to handle.
Ground plate, gun layers’ seats and gun mount.
I decided to attach the seats and a structural part before I attached the ground plate to the gun mount, which proofed practical.
The brass barrels fit snuggly into the breech, they just need to be cut a little as the holes in the breeches are not deep enough.
Breech block with barrels and training mechanism.
I disconnected the quarter geared wheel that resembles the training mechanism again and attached it to the gun mount, that proofed much more practical for the build.
And completed.
This is a fine offering, highly detailed and accurate, and it is engineered in a way that building it is comparatively easy, straight forward and fun. I like this one very much!
To complete the comparison, over the next weeks I will add similar step-by-step builds from the other three kits.
I hope you enjoy,
Cheers
Jan
