COBI T-34/76 Mod. 1941/42 Set 2595

COBI's T-34/76 Mod. 1941/42 is a 1:28 model built from 852 blocks, 26 cm long, with working tracks, a movable turret and barrel, a removable turret over a modelled interior and a brick engine that fits under the service hatch. A figure and a nameplate are included, and markings for either Soviet or Polish service are supplied. All details are printed.

It was built badly on purpose

Look at photographs of a wartime T-34 and the welds are unground, the castings are rough, the plates do not quite line up. That was not incompetence. It was policy.

In late 1941 the Soviet tank industry was dismantled and moved east — whole factories loaded onto trains and rebuilt in the Urals, sometimes producing tanks before the roof was on. The workforce that assembled them was largely women and teenagers with weeks of training, because the men were at the front.

So the design was simplified relentlessly: fewer parts, looser tolerances, cruder finish, and anything that could be left out was left out. A T-34 had an expected service life of around six months, because six months was the realistic life expectancy of a tank at the front anyway. Building it to last longer would have been waste.

The result was around 57,000 of them — against 1,347 Tigers. Germany built better tanks and lost to arithmetic.

The Polish markings

T-34s equipped the 1st Warsaw Tank Regiment of the Polish forces raised in the Soviet Union, with a white eagle painted on the turret. They fought at Lenino and at the Warka-Magnuszów bridgehead.

In the COBI range

Set 3088 is the T-34/76 at 1:72 and 3092 the later T-34-85 — the version with a three-man turret that fixed the design's worst flaw.

Specifications

Pieces: 852 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:28 · Soviet or Polish markings · Removable engine and turret
Model dimensions: 26 × 11 × 9 cm (10.2 × 4.3 × 3.5 in)