1/100th 172.5mm K18 (Battlefield 3D)

 The main reason for my recent order from Battlefield 3D is that apparently they are the only makers of 15mm WW2 German heavy artillery! I can find 150mm howitzers, but I wanted something for Corps level. Ideally a 210, but a 170 would do. 

And here we go, a resin Battlefield 3D 17cm K18 (although it is actually 172.5mm). This weapon used the same chassis as the 210mm moerser but had a much longer range and strangely, more explosive power despite the shell being lighter. 

This is a beast of a gun! It makes my US 175mm look like a tiddler. It is partly due to the carriage which shares the recoil between the recuperator and springs on the carriage itself, so the entire gun assembly slides back on the carriage. As a result the carriage is very long to accommodate the recoil grooves. 

When deployed, the gun sits on a turntable, and in theory just two men can traverse it. Looking at the size of the thing, they must be very strong men...

And what a stunning model it is. It is vast, as you can see from the crew. It comes in five parts - carriage, barrel, limber, turntable and the trail support, but essentially the main parts are just the carriage and barrel. It has lots of exquisite detail with springs, panel  lines, rivets etc and didn't need any cleaning up at all. 

The only part I struggled with was the trail traverse support which has a sort of angled flange on one side. I just couldn't get it to fit despite looking at lots of photos, and in the end trimmed it down. It is largely hidden under the trail anyway and the missing g flange isn't obvious.

You can see the crisp detail on the breech, and the grooves the gun runs back into on the trail. The crew have these little platforms to stand on, which are moulded on each side of the trail, as I don't imagine it is very healthy putting your foot into the recoil groove.

I'm not sure who the crew figures are, possibly QRF, Forged in Battle? They are out of my bag of German gunners, and tbh they look a bit nice to be QRF, I'm sure they aren't Peter Pig although they are metal so probably FiB. I particularly like the guy on the left in his shirtsleeves. We need more gunners in shirtsleeves! It is hard work lugging 170mm shells around.

Although it is a large model, it is also very narrow, so I managed to fit it on a standard 30mm wide base, even if it is 90mm long. My 5.5" guns are on much wider bases as the trails are so far apart. I didn't bother with the limber, it can go in the spares box to be made into a cart or something in future.

I was just going to paint the gun in plain dunkelgelb, but it seems to have been pretty common to camo huge artillery pieces so in the end I did in three colour. I painted the bases on two of the crew to match the trails as they are standing on the platforms either side.

One of the nice things about it being a 3D print with a bit of flex is....

The barrel elevates! The trunnions and trunnion locating holes were so well printed that I could just clip the gun into them and they fitted well enough that there is enough resistance to hold it in place. The only kit I've ever managed that with before was the old Airfix 88mm.

What a great model. Now I just need a write a scenario to use it, although traditionally something like this usually serves as Arko 104 with DAK. My 6mm one does anyway.