COBI Jeep Willys MB Set 24092

COBI's Jeep Willys MB is built from 90 blocks, 14.5 cm long, in American military markings. The wheels rotate, the engine hatch opens, the windscreen folds down, and a Browning M2 heavy machine gun traverses with an attachable ammunition belt. A US soldier figure is included, with a military crate, a radio set, a shovel, a pickaxe and a Browning M1918A2 automatic rifle.

The gun on the back is older than the jeep and still in service

The M2 Browning — the fifty cal — was designed by John Browning at the end of the First World War, in response to a request from General Pershing for a heavier machine gun after seeing what German armour-piercing rounds did to Allied equipment.

It entered service in 1933. It is still a front-line weapon in the armies of more than a hundred countries today, mounted on vehicles, ships, helicopters and aircraft, and the current version differs from the 1933 gun in details rather than in principle.

That is over ninety years of continuous service for an unchanged design, and there is no serious plan to replace it. Very few pieces of machinery of any kind — military or civilian — have a record like it. Browning died in 1926 and never saw it enter production.

The other weapon in the box, the BAR, is also his.

Which range this is from

This set is part of COBI's Small Army line rather than the Historical Collection, so it is simpler and less finely detailed and has no fixed modelling scale. If you want a Willys that stands correctly beside COBI's 1:35 vehicles, sets 3132 and 3133 are those, and 2805 is the 1:12 version.

Specifications

Pieces: 90 · Figures: 1 with accessories · Series: Small Army · Folding windscreen, opening engine hatch, traversing M2
Model dimensions: 14.5 × 6 × 8.7 cm (5.7 × 2.4 × 3.4 in)