COBI Afrika Korps Set 2050

COBI's Afrika Korps set is built from 30 blocks and contains three figures of German soldiers of the Deutsches Afrikakorps. Equipment includes two helmets, a printed field cap, an MG 34 with ammunition belt, binoculars, an MP 40, a stick grenade, a rubber shoulder strap, a Mauser Kar98k, rubber goggles and a plate mine. Dark brown stands are included, and all uniforms are pad-printed.

The mine in the box is still being cleared

Among the accessories is a Tellermine — a plate mine, the standard German anti-tank mine. It is a small detail and it represents the largest single legacy of the desert war.

The North African campaign was fought across open ground with no natural obstacles, so both sides created them. Around 17 million mines were laid in Egypt and Libya, much of it in belts stretching for tens of kilometres — the El Alamein defences alone accounted for roughly half a million.

Nobody mapped it reliably, and the desert moved. Sand shifts, markers disappear, and a mine buried in 1942 remains functional for decades. Egypt is still clearing minefields today, more than eighty years later, and the country has declared large areas of its north-western desert unusable. Casualties continue.

It is the sort of fact that does not appear in books about tank battles, and it is why this set has a mine in it at all.

The goggles

The other accessory worth noticing. Blown sand in the Western Desert was constant and abrasive enough to stop engines and blind men, and goggles were not optional equipment. The DAK's tropical uniform was designed in haste in early 1941 and issued incomplete; crews improvised the rest from captured British kit.

In the COBI range

One of the Historical Collection figure sets, all at the same scale and designed to combine. Sets 3131, 3141 and 3143 are the Afrika Korps vehicles and guns.

Specifications

Pieces: 30 · Figures: 3 with accessories · Stands included
Box dimensions: 13 × 3.7 × 10.5 cm (5.1 × 1.5 × 4.1 in)