COBI Afrika Korps Set 2034

COBI's Afrika Korps set is built from 26 blocks and contains three figures of German soldiers in North Africa: two with the edelweiss emblem of a mountain rifle unit — one in an olive tropical uniform and field cap with a new head printed with dust goggles and an MP 40, one with a sand-coloured helmet and an MG 34 — and a Wehrmacht infantryman with removable rubber goggles, a rubber carrying strap, a Mauser Kar98k and a sand Stahlhelm. Three stands and sandbags are included.

What you will not find in this box

There is no pith helmet, and that is historically right.

The Tropenhelm — the cork sun helmet — was issued to the Afrika Korps on the assumption that colonial warfare required colonial headgear. Photographs of troops arriving in Tripoli in 1941 show them wearing it.

Almost nobody wore it after that. It was bulky, it caught the wind, it was impossible to wear in a vehicle or under a headset, and it offered no protection from anything but sun. Soldiers replaced it with the field cap or the steel helmet within weeks, and the pith helmets ended up in storage.

It survives mainly in propaganda photographs and in films, which is why people picture the Afrika Korps wearing something its soldiers took off as soon as they could.

What they did keep are the goggles on these figures. Blown sand in the Western Desert was continuous and abrasive enough to stop engines and blind men, and goggles were not optional.

In the COBI range

Set 2050 is a second Afrika Korps figure set with different poses and a plate mine. Sets 2256, 3131, 3141 and 3143 are the DAK vehicles and guns, and 2546 the Panzer IV with two DAK figures.

Specifications

Pieces: 26 · Figures: 3 with accessories · Stands and sandbags included
Box dimensions: 13 × 3.7 × 10.5 cm (5.1 × 1.5 × 4.1 in)