COBI Blitz 3,6-36S - Nebelwerfer 41 - Limited Edition Set 2258

COBI's Blitz 3,6-36S with Nebelwerfer 41 Limited Edition is a 1:35 set built from 327 blocks and contains two models: the Opel Blitz truck and a Nebelwerfer 41 rocket launcher that hitches to it or stands alone. The wheels move, the doors open and the cargo sides drop. Two figures are included, an artilleryman with printed cap and detachable boots and a mechanic with tall boots and a grease-marked face, plus a canister and shells. A numbered laser-engraved plate and a matching certificate signed by COBI's president complete it.

Everyone who heard it named it

Nebelwerfer means fog thrower — a cover name from the 1930s, when the weapon was officially for laying smoke. By 1941 it was firing high-explosive rockets, six barrels in a few seconds, and nobody was pretending otherwise.

What made it memorable was the noise. A rocket motor screams for its whole flight, and six of them arriving together produced a sound that people on the receiving end never forgot and always described.

The Poles in Warsaw called it the szafa — the wardrobe — for the groaning, rattling noise, and also krowa, the cow. American soldiers called it Screaming Mimi, and sometimes the Moaning Minnie. The Soviet equivalent got the same treatment in reverse: German troops named the Katyusha the Stalinorgel, Stalin's organ.

Rocket artillery is imprecise and cannot be corrected mid-salvo. Its value is putting a great deal of explosive onto an area at once — and the noise did work of its own, which every army involved understood perfectly well.

The truck

The Opel Blitz was the closest thing the German army had to a standard lorry, and around 130,000 were built. In an army that moved mainly by horse, it did an unglamorous share of the actual work.

In the COBI range

Set 2259 is the Blitz on its own, and 2291 the Nebelwerfer. Set 2057 is the Warsaw Uprising figure set.

Specifications

Pieces: 327 · Figures: 2 with accessories · Scale: 1:35 · Two models · Numbered plate and signed certificate
Model dimensions: 29.5 × 6.5 cm as a combination (11.6 × 2.6 in)