COBI 10,5 cm Flak 39 Set 3142

COBI's 10.5 cm Flak 39 is a 1:35 model built from 339 blocks, 21.5 cm long, with a rotating mount and an adjustable barrel. Two Luftwaffe artillerymen are included — one in grey uniform with a helmet, one stripped to his shirt with a mug in his hand — armed with a Kar98k and a Gewehr 43, along with a weapons crate, ammunition and a printed plaque. No stickers.

The crew did not aim it

A heavy anti-aircraft gun in 1940 was not pointed by eye. It was pointed by arithmetic done somewhere else.

A battery's predictor — a mechanical computer the size of a desk, fed by an optical rangefinder or radar — tracked the target, worked out where the aircraft would be by the time the shell got there, and transmitted the answer electrically to every gun. At the gun, dials showed a pointer to match. The layers turned their handwheels until the pointers lined up, and the gun was aimed. The fuse setting arrived the same way.

The Flak 39's improvement over the earlier Flak 38 was exactly this: better electric traverse and elevation, and better data transmission from the central station. It made the gun more accurate without making the crew more skilled, which is what industrial warfare tends to look like.

At 10.5 cm it was too heavy for field use with the army; these guns stood in fixed emplacements, on railway mountings and around cities. Around 1,850 were still in service at the end of the war.

In the COBI range

Sets 3140 and 3141 are the lighter 8.8 cm Flak 18, and set 3143 pairs a Flak 36 with its tractor.

Specifications

Pieces: 339 · Figures: 2 · Scale: 1:35 · No stickers
Model dimensions: 21.5 × 17 × 8.5 cm (8.5 × 6.7 × 3.3 in)