COBI Sd.Kfz.139 Marder III Set 3131

COBI's Sd.Kfz. 139 Marder III is a 1:35 model built from 486 blocks, 18 cm long, in Afrika Korps desert paint with the palm-and-swastika theatre marking and turret number 114. The tracks work, the wheels rotate, the gun moves and there is space for a figure in the fighting compartment.

The set contains two guns. The long 7.62 cm gun is mounted on the vehicle; a separate towed 5 cm PaK 38 on its own wheeled carriage, with shield and split trail, is included as a second model. Also in the box: two figures — a mechanic and an artilleryman in tropical uniform — crates, a fuel drum and a road sign reading El Alamein. All markings are printed; there are no stickers.

A Czech chassis and a Russian gun

The Marder III is what an army builds when it is losing and improvising.

The chassis is a Panzer 38(t), designed in Czechoslovakia and taken over when Germany occupied the country. The gun is Soviet: the 76.2 mm divisional gun, captured in enormous numbers in 1941, rebored and re-chambered for German ammunition and redesignated 7.62 cm PaK 36(r) — the r standing for russisch.

Neither part was chosen. Germany needed something that could stop a T-34, had no suitable mounting for one, and found itself holding thousands of captured Soviet guns and a production line for an obsolete Czech tank. Bolting them together took weeks rather than years. The result was tall, thinly armoured and open at the top and rear — and it worked, because the gun was good and the vehicle could get it somewhere.

El Alamein

The road sign and the desert paint place the set in North Africa, where Marder IIIs served with the Afrika Korps. The two battles fought near that railway halt in 1942 ended Axis hopes of reaching the Suez Canal, and the second of them is where the Afrika Korps began the retreat it never reversed.

Specifications

Pieces: 486 · Figures: 2 · Scale: 1:35 · No stickers
Also included: separate towed 5 cm PaK 38, crates, fuel drum, El Alamein road sign
Model dimensions: 18 × 7 × 9 cm (7.1 × 2.8 × 3.5 in)