The Kettenkrad looks like a joke that got built: a motorcycle at the front, a tracked tractor at the back, and a driver sitting where a saddle should be.
It was not a joke. It was a specification, and the specification came from an aircraft.
It had to fit inside a Junkers
German airborne troops in 1939 had a problem: once on the ground they had nothing to tow guns or move supplies with, because nothing with an engine would fit inside a Junkers Ju 52.
NSU was asked to build something that would. The result, the Sd.Kfz. 2, is small enough to go through the transport's cargo door and light enough that a few men can push it out of a ditch — and it uses a half-track layout because tracks give grip that wheels of that size never could.
The front wheel does almost no steering. Turn the handlebars a little and only the wheel moves; turn further and the track brakes engage, and the machine pivots like a tracked vehicle. For the worst ground the front wheel could be removed entirely.
The job it actually did
The airborne role barely materialised. What the Kettenkrad did in numbers was work airfields, towing aircraft between dispersal points and the runway.
Late in the war that stopped being a convenience and became a necessity. Jet engines burn fuel at a rate that made taxiing under their own power genuinely wasteful, and they were fragile at low speed. Towing became standard, and the Kettenkrad was what did the towing.
The part most people do not know
Production did not stop in 1945. NSU restarted it in 1946 and kept going until 1948, building several hundred more for farmers and forestry workers who needed something that could climb a wet slope with a trailer behind it.
For a few years after the war, a vehicle designed to be parachuted into battle was pulling logs out of German woods.
Around 8,000 were built in total.
The model
COBI's Kettenkrad, set 2681, is a 1:28 model built from 239 blocks, with its trailer and a Luftwaffe ground crew figure. The trailer comes loaded with backpacks, shovels, barrels and rifles. Markings are printed onto the blocks rather than applied as stickers.
It is available to pre-order. The expected shipping month is shown on the product page, and you can cancel any time before it ships.
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