COBI T-34/76 Set 3088

COBI's T-34/76 is a 1:72 model built from 101 blocks, 9 cm long, with rolling wheels and a turret that rotates. The markings are those of the Polish 1st Army in the East, turret number 102, printed onto the blocks.

Armour that was thicker than it was

The T-34's front plate is 45 mm thick and sits at an angle of about 60 degrees from vertical. A shell arriving horizontally has to travel through roughly 90 mm of steel to get through it — twice the thickness, for the same weight of plate.

That is the whole idea, and it is why the tank looks the way it does. Sloping armour costs nothing but internal space, and in 1941 almost nobody else was doing it: German tanks of the period had flat vertical plates bolted or welded at right angles. The T-34 arrived on the Eastern Front and German crews found their standard anti-tank rounds glancing off it.

Everything since has copied the principle. The reason modern tanks have wedge-shaped fronts rather than box-shaped ones starts here.

In the COBI range

Part of the 1:72 mini series — compact enough for a desk or a bookshelf. Set 3092 is the T-34-85, the later version with a bigger gun and turret.

Specifications

Pieces: 101 · Scale: 1:72
Model dimensions: 9 × 4 × 3.5 cm (3.5 × 1.6 × 1.4 in)