COBI Kubuś Set 3114

COBI's Kubuś is a 1:35 model built from 302 blocks, 17.5 cm long, made with the Polish Army Museum for the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. It carries a DP-28 machine gun, the top hatch opens for a figure, and two insurgent figures are included — one of the Wydra Motor Column of the Krybar Group in grey overalls with a white-and-red armband, an Otter patch and a blue cap, the other of the "Rafałki" platoon with a white R on the helmet. Accessories include a Sten, a Bren, a grenade, a mine, a bottle and barbed wire. Even the Otter Motor Column emblem on the bumper is reproduced.

You got in through a hole in the floor

Kubuś has no door, and COBI has modelled the reason: the crew entered from underneath, through an opening cut in the floor.

That is what improvisation actually looks like. The vehicle was built in a workshop on ul. Tamka in August 1944, in a matter of days, on the chassis of a Chevrolet 157 lorry, from steel plate scavenged and bent by hand. Cutting and hanging armoured doors takes time, tooling and hinges nobody had. Cutting a hole in the floor takes an hour.

So the crew parked over a manhole or a trench, dropped in, and closed the hatch behind them.

What it did, and did not do

Kubuś took part in several actions, including the attack on Warsaw University, which failed. It was not a weapon that could change anything — sheet steel on a lorry chassis against a regular army.

What it did was exist, in a city where the insurgents had rifles and bottles. A homemade armoured car driving down a street in Warsaw in 1944 was worth something that does not appear in a casualty return.

It survived the uprising and the war, which almost nothing in Warsaw did, and it is in the Polish Army Museum today.

In the COBI range

Set 2670 is the Jagdpanzer "Chwat" and 2655 the Panther "Pudel", both captured by the insurgents. Set 2057 is the Warsaw Uprising figure set.

Specifications

Pieces: 302 · Figures: 2 with accessories · Scale: 1:35 · With the Polish Army Museum
Model dimensions: 17.5 × 9 cm (6.9 × 3.5 in)