COBI Sd.Kfz 10 - Field Kitchen - Executive Edition Set 2272

COBI's Sd.Kfz. 10 Field Kitchen Executive Edition is a 1:35 set built from 367 blocks and contains two models: the DEMAG D7 half-track artillery tractor at 14.5 cm, and a German field kitchen at 8 cm that is sold in no other set. Two figures are included — an Afrika Korps soldier and a cook — with a canister, a spade, a knife, a fish, a cup, boxes and a bucket. A black plate names both models.

Two boilers, and one of them was only for coffee

The Kleine Feldküche Hf. 14 had a main cauldron of 125 litres and a second, smaller one of 60 litres. The small one was for coffee, and nothing else.

That is a design decision worth pausing on. Boiler capacity on a horse-drawn vehicle is weight, and weight is the one thing a field kitchen cannot spare. Somebody sat down, looked at the trade-off, and concluded that a separate vessel for coffee was worth carrying across Europe.

They were right, and every army of the period reached the same conclusion. Coffee — or the roasted-grain substitute that was usually what soldiers actually got — was hot, it was a ritual, and it was the thing men asked for first. A stew boiler that had also made coffee would have produced both tasting of the other.

The Hf. 14 was an improvement on a 1935 design, which was itself a refinement of the kitchens that had proved themselves in the First World War. Nobody was experimenting by 1939; this was settled engineering.

The tractor

The Sd.Kfz. 10 DEMAG D7 was the lightest of the German half-tracks: two crew and six passengers, normally a gun crew. Around 17,000 were built between 1937 and 1945, which makes it one of the most numerous German military vehicles of any kind.

In the COBI range

Set 2290 is the horse-drawn field kitchen Hf. 14 on its own. Set 2275 is the much larger Sd.Kfz. 7 half-track.

Specifications

Pieces: 367 · Figures: 2 with accessories · Scale: 1:35 · Two models, field kitchen exclusive to this set
Model dimensions: vehicle 14.5 × 6.5 × 6 cm, kitchen 8 × 5 × 7.5 cm