MGM's 1/72 3.7cm TAK Rheinmetall in starrer Räder­lafette

In hindsight, the German High Command took the treat from the new Tank weapon with surprising complacency, in effect trusting that their ordinary weaponery could, with improved tactics, still be able to hold its own. (Only one really dedicated AT weapon was introduced early, and that was the 13mm T-Gewehre, which by the way was not very effective nor popular among the troop.) In the summer of 1918 all this proved to be wrong, as the allies used tanks in masses for real effect for the first time. This experience finally unnerved the German High Command, and several crash programmes were started to quickly find a new AT weapon for use in ranged defence against tanks.

The two firms of Krupp and Rheinmetall were both asked to produce designs of light AT guns using the tubes of the 3.7cm revolving guns and the carriage of the 7.7cm leichte Minenwerfer. Out of this came, among other designs, the 3.7cm TAK Rheinmetall in starrer Räder­lafette.

It was a gun on a fixed wheel carriage, with the 809mm long tube fixed to the carriage, without any recoil system. The gun had mechanisms for elevation (-6 degrees to +9 degrees) and traverse (21 degrees). The fixed iron sights allowed for firing up to 2,600m. The muzzle velocity was 506 m/sec. Emplaced, the gun itself weighed 175kg. The gun fired solid armour-piercing 0.46kg shells (with or without a tracer). These shells could penetrate 15mm of armour plating at a distance of 500 meters. The gun could be pulled by one horse, and on the battle­field by four men dragging it in harnesses. The design was simple enough to mass produce, and orders were given for 300 of this gun, soon raised to 1.020. The plan was to issue 32 guns to each Minenwerfer Batallion. When the war ended some 600 guns had been issued to the troops, where it had proved its worth on the front: it was stable in firing, and it proved accurate.

Click on the picture for an enlarged version! 

The German firm of MGM, headed by Michael Gohres, have given us a lot of new and unexpected WW1 kits, and this is another one of them. 

The 3.7cm Rheinmetall TAK is a small kit, that comes packed in a zip-lock bag, with a small picture of the assembled kit as a guide for the modeller. The kit contains just 10 parts, of which two are crew members. The casting is nice, although there was pretty much flash on the wheels, which is hard to avoid, I guess, due to the smallness of the parts.

The kit is simple, and looks fine to me, although the barrel is a bit simplified: it is too short and the breech area doesn't really look the part. Also, one of the two sights are a bit off: it should not be a ring in both. The best thing is probably to replace it all together. 

The kits of MGM can can be bought through through Smallscale.de, 7th Company or Blitzkrieg Models.

This is no fancy kit, neither in execution nor in subject - it would not be too difficult to scratch it. But it is also welcome with a new and accurate kit of a WW1 gun. As this one. Michael Gohres is keeping up the good work. Recommended.