COBI 38 cm Sturmmörser Sturmtiger Set 2585

COBI's 38 cm Sturmmörser Sturmtiger is a 1:28 model built from 1,100 blocks, 23 cm long, with a removable brick engine, working tracks, a movable mortar barrel, interior detail, four mortar shells and the loading crane mounted on the hull roof. A mechanic figure and a nameplate are included. A new part was designed specifically for the barrel.

The gun was built for submarines

The 38 cm weapon on this vehicle started life as a Kriegsmarine depth-charge launcher — a rocket projector meant to be fired from an escort ship at a submarine below it. Production of those was cancelled, and the army took the design.

What it fired was not a shell in any ordinary sense. The rocket weighed around 350 kilograms and the vehicle carried fourteen of them, which is why there is a crane on the roof: no crew could lift one by hand, and reloading from the ground took several men and several minutes. Exhaust gases from the rocket motor vented through a ring of holes around the barrel, because firing that much propellant in a sealed tube would have burst it.

It was designed for street fighting — one round through the ground floor of a building brought the whole thing down. Eighteen were built between 1943 and 1945, and a Sturmtiger crew might fire fewer rounds in its entire service than an ordinary artillery piece fired in a morning.

Specifications

Pieces: 1,100 · Figures: 1 mechanic · Scale: 1:28 · Also included: four mortar shells, removable engine
Model dimensions: 23 × 13 × 13.5 cm (9.1 × 5.1 × 5.3 in)