MGM:s 1/72 30.5cm Mörser M.11
by Peter Kempf and Grzegorz Mazurowski 

The Austro-Hungarian 30.5cm Mörser M.11 was one of the most famous and feared artillery pieces of WW1. Coming as a complete surprise to the enemies of Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1914, it was responsible for a number of seemingly impregnable fortresses falling; it was so good that the German Army loaned some pieces to use themselves. (More on the history of and background material on this gun can be found here.) 

There has long been no 1/72 scale kit of this famous gun. (There has been some White Metal kits in larger scales around, but these are rare and hard to get. And the quality of some is so-so. And also one made by the Austrian firm of The Modeller Productions, which appears to be an excellent kit, but in the somewhat odd scale of 1/200.) 

Until now, that is. Now Michael Gohres Modelbau (M.G.M.) in Germany has issued a kit of this gun. And one cannot but applaude this venture, for not only do we finally get a small-scale version of the 30.5cm M.11, the gun comes as a part of a series of totally five kits, enabling the modeller not only to portray the gun emplaced, but also in a dismantled condition, with tractor, munition wagons and all. 

And it's impossible not to be impressed by this undertaking, one of the most ambitious that we have seen in small-scale Military modelling in many years. (You rest for sure, that you will see the full combo in many Modelling contests in the future.) I mean, M.G.M. could have settled just for the emplaced gun, and no one would have complained. Instead they have gone for the full hog. The get full marks for this! 

Here I am only concerned over the kit of the emplaced gun - reviews of the other kits in the series will hopefully follow, when I get to see them.

The kit comes in a zip-lock bag, and contains no instructions, beside a simple sketch of the completed model, and a reproduction of two - admittedly very good - contemporary plans of the gun, evidently taken from an Army manual. I deplore this, as the kit comes with many parts, and could well have used a set of full instructions. (Click here to see this plan.) And there are no painting instructions, something that I will try to help somewhat, as I plan to post a small article on this site, on the painting of WW1 Austro-Hungarian Gun - an esoteric subject, indeed!

As you can see on the photo above, this is a very ambitious kit, containing some 30+ parts, the largest ones being the gun carriage, the gun cradle, the bedding plate and the gun platform. It is done in a light yellow resin, that is hard but not brittle, and easy to work with. 

The moulding is fine, the details are sharp. (For instance, the individual links on the chain of the shell crane are fully articulated.) And some of the parts are very delicate indeed. The barrel is sharp and completely symmetrical - a thing that you cannot take for granted when it comes to artillery kits in this scale. My specimen came without any major flaws or air holes. 

There is only some moulding flash, and also the parts are still attached to their "sprues", which means that there is a not small amount of sawing and filing waiting for anyone who wants to build this kit - and some of them are, as I mentioned, very delicate, and it will require care to extract them. But still, that is no real problem. See the photo below for a close-up of some of the parts.

But I perceive some problems. One is the crane: all photos I have seen, shows the crane firmly attached to one of the wagons in the transport train, and not, as here, standing free with a small base. (And that of course makes sense: how else could you expect to get a stable platform for hoisting these big brutes of grenades up and down?) But still: the crane is a separate item, that you of course can leave out.

Grzegorz Mazurowski has taken a closer look: "I compared the kit with photos I have, and I found many inaccuracies. Most important IMO is the placement of the top recoil "tubes" - they should almost touch each other, and in the kit there is a lot of space between them. This also affects that flat part attached to the barrel, which connects barrel with the recoil system (no.3 on the attached photo) it is much wider in the kit than on the photos. Also there are many smaller inaccuracies, like shape and placement of almost all details on that "tube" in which you slide the barrel (detail 2 on the photo), shape of the holes in the gun support (detail 3), and many many others. Please compare attached photos. Also this (no. 4) area looks strange. Andrzej Zareba also noticed simplification of the front area of the barrel: original one isn't "straight", but a bit more complex, similarly to 42cm - look at the drawing: Also the recoil "drums" should be connected on the tops in two
places, and the "hole" used to load the shell into gun is much too small."

All in all, this is an impressive kit. It has some detail problems, though. But anyone either interested in smallscale artillery or WW1 Military modelling in general should get it. Earlier releases from  Michael Gohres have been a mixed bag, but both the the pure ambitiousness of this kit - together with the other kits in the set - puts M.G.M. among the top Resin Kit producers. Despite it's problems I really recommend it.

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