COBI M18 Hellcat Set 2679

COBI's M18 Hellcat is a 1:28 model of the American tank destroyer built from 1,026 blocks, with one figure. The turret turns, the gun elevates, the hatches open and the tracks run. All markings are printed onto the blocks rather than applied as stickers, and a plaque with the vehicle name and scale is included.

Built by the company that made Buicks

The M18 was designed and assembled by Buick, General Motors' car division. Not a shipyard, not an arsenal — the people who built sedans in Flint, Michigan.

What they produced was the fastest tracked armored vehicle of the war, and it held that title for decades afterwards: 55 mph flat out, roughly 89 km/h, from a radial aircraft engine in a hull weighing under twenty tons.

The speed was not a bonus, it was the whole design. American tank destroyer doctrine held that tanks should not fight tanks — a separate branch would race to wherever an enemy breakthrough appeared, shoot, and withdraw before the return fire arrived. Everything was traded for that. The armor is 25 mm at its thickest, the turret has no roof, and a heavy machine gun could hurt it.

It worked better than the doctrine deserved. Hellcat crews finished the war with one of the best exchange ratios of any American armored vehicle, in a machine that could not afford to be hit once.

In the COBI range

Set 2686 is the Tiger II, the kind of target an M18 was sent to outrun rather than outshoot. Set 2676 is the StuG III Ausf. G and 2672 the Panzer III Ausf. H, both at the same scale.

Specifications

Pieces: 1,026 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:28 · No stickers