One more for the Alpine front: The Italian 102/35 9000 SPG on truck chassis. As with all other WW1 participants the Italians were too in need of heavy artillery when the trench war begun. Mobile heavy artillery. One kind of the guns at hand were older destroyer guns that were no longer needed by the Italian Navy because they got replaced with 102/45 or even 120 mm guns. So they mated these surplus naval guns to trucks, which resulted in the successful design of this SPG. You can find a lot more about this one at Wikipedia and Google.
Well cast resin parts. No bubbles or blemishes. No warpage. Only one part was broken - the long driveshaft protruding from the rear transmission. Looking very good in the box, indeed!
Chassis is one large part. Did not add the drivetrain first as per instructions, but the truckbed. So it was easy to clamp it down in position nice and flat until the glue had cured. Alignment of the engine hood is a bit so-so. It aligned well to the firewall, or the chassis, but not to both. Done. To fix the firewall sitting more to the right I’ve added a small sheet of styrene at the lower part to balance the look. Good enough. I’ll leave the drivers seatbench off until I’ve finished painting of the whole car. So it will be much more easy to reach into the drivers compartment and to paint the switches, handles and gauges.
You can see a lot of details. Check also small differences between the shown SPGs. Some of them have a step(?) at the rear of the pivot, the reinforcement ribs around the pivot base are of different height and other small changes. Also nice photos of the large outriggers stabilizing the gun in firing position.
Well, I thought this would be a quickbuild, sort of. But after a closer look at the photos mentioned above I’ve realised that I have to rework some details (boltheads around the pivot, supports below the firing platform f. e.) as well as to add a number of rivets and some chains and shackles here and there.
OK, I shall do so, but this may take some time until I am able to show new results.
Replaced the cast-on blobs around the gun socket with hexnuts, added more bolts here and there and got the steering built up.
Advice: The steering crossbar has to be buttjoined to the axle. Not working very well. Add small strips of styrene at the inside of the mounting points. This helps a lot to get the crossbar aligned and glued in place. When the glue has settled simply carve off the visible surplus of the styrene. Done!
The last one. A gun (“cannone” in Italian) on a truck ("auto"mobil).
They had a recoil mechanism and a semi-automatic breech. For firing the truck monted guns were supportet by two long outriggers bolted to the rear (where you see the large eyelets).
