1:48 scale
Review by Graham Thompson
The half track is one of those iconic German AFVs from WWII. The Sd.Kfz 250 and its many variants served in just about every campaign in the war and were often seen in contemporary films of the Blitzkrieg in action ferrying Panzer Grenadiers to the front. In reality of course, there were never enough of these amazing vehicles and much of the transport was still horse drawn.
In this superb Tamiya 1:48 kit, the Sd.Kfz 250/3 Radio/command variant is reproduced in superb detail for any scale. To make this variant even more interesting, the model is based on the famous vehicle chosen by Rommel as his personal command vehicle in North Africa with ‘Greif’ stencilled on the side.
As with most of the Tamiya 1:48 kits, this one comes with a metal part for the chassis. Not a full chassis as with tanks but a plate that sandwiches between the lower hull part and the interior floor. This plate has the stub axels for the tracks road wheels, the drive sprocket attaches to the hull side and has a ‘poly cap’ to enable it to be rotating which helps later with track fitting but as the tracks are not workable, the rotation of the drive sprocket serves no later purpose.
These metal parts in the 1:48 series from Tamiya seem to split the modelling fraternity into ‘love it/hate it’ camps. I personally love them (and so do I and many others on the SMN Review Team – Geoff). It gives a weight to the kit which puts them about the same feel as a die cast model. OK, you don’t have to like that but I do.