COBI Tankette TK-3 Set 2658

COBI's Tankette TK-3 is a 1:28 model built from 323 blocks, 11 cm long, with working tracks, opening hatches sized for the included Polish crew figure, and interchangeable Polish and German markings.

An idea the whole world got wrong

In 1925 the British firm Carden-Loyd built a tiny tracked machine carrying two men and a machine gun, and armies everywhere decided it was the future. It was cheap, it was small, and on paper it put armour into the hands of every infantry division. Poland, France, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union and half a dozen others bought the design or copied it.

It was wrong. A tankette had armour of two or three millimetres, which stopped rifle bullets and nothing else; no turret, so the gun pointed where the vehicle pointed; and no radio. Against infantry in the open it worked. Against anything with an anti-tank rifle — a weapon that cost almost nothing — it did not.

Poland built around 300 TK-3s and the improved TKS, and in September 1939 they were the most numerous armoured vehicles in the Polish army. They fought, they were lost in large numbers, and the surviving machines were taken over by German and Hungarian units, who used them for reconnaissance and towing until the end of the war because they were there.

Specifications

Pieces: 323 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:28 · Two marking options
Model dimensions: 11 × 6 × 8.5 cm (4.3 × 2.4 × 3.3 in)