Caesar Miniatures SdKfz 10/4 build Part 1

I have had this kit for a while, I ordered it from a Taiwanese model shop on eBay called AlwaysModel. (At the time of writing they are off celebrating the Chinese new year, so their web-shop is empty!)

Beautiful Box art...

The SdKfz 10 was originally designed to be a light tractor, sharing much of the construction and components with their big brother SdKfz 11; the chassis being a bit shorter on the smaller vehicle. They were essentially trucks with the rear wheels replaced by a track assembly, able to tow infantry- and anti-aircraft guns while also transporting their crews. Both vehicles were also the basis for the more famous armoured personell carriers SdKfz 250 and SdKfz 251, which fitted the chassis with an armoured fighting compartment. The SdKfz 10 is often called the Demag since it was manufactured at the Deutsche Maschinenfabrik in Duisburg which originally constructed cranes, excavators and locomotives before the war.

Quite early on during the war someone figured out that if you mounted the gun ON the truck instead of towing it behind, you could start shooting much faster. The trade-off being that the vehicles got bigger and harder to hide and a bit more vulnerable. This variant sports the very common 20mm FlaK 38 anti-aircraft gun.

But enough talk, let's see what's inside!
The first thing you notice upon opening the box are the sprues. There are lots of them, and the pieces are tiny! This is definitely not a wargames model!

The chassis sprue.

Upon further inspection of the sprues, you realise that the version in the illustration is not the version in the kit; namely it lacks the extra armour plates protecting the driver cabin and engine. As I mentioned these vehicles were quite vulnerable even to small arms fire so some armour plates were added, as can be seen on the box art. While not enough to make it a proper armoured fighting vehicle it at least protected the crew from rifle fire! This kit lacks any extra armour, which is unfortunate.

Various details as well as some bigger parts, including a canopy which is not used.

It is a nice kit anyway. Lots of little details. All the parts are finely molded and there were no flash anywhere. The barrel of the 20mm gun had broken off though, but I think it's fixable as both pieces were still attached to the sprue.

Parts for the FlaK gun, notice the broken barrel and the complete wheel assemblies also included.

A nice surprise was the complete wheel and track assemblies included on the gun sprue. Very good, I hate glueing all those interleaved wheels on german halftracks. All the extra wheels and track can go onto my PSC Hanomags as extra armour and spare parts. Excellent!

The track and wheel sprue, there are two of them in the box.

Three figures are included in the kit. According to the box they are meant to be crew, but they are not designed to fit into the vehicle at all. The first figure is a kneeling grenadier with a rifle, the next is also a grenadier, sitting with a Sturmgewehr in his lap. The third figure is also sitting but sports the uniform of a panzer crewman and would look much better sitting on the turret of a tiger tank. Well, they are nice figures and will go into my painting queue.

The figures included, clearly NOT manning a Flak gun. Each square on the cutting mat is one cm BTW.

I started building right after taking the pictures, and forgot to take new pictures of the process. After about two hours in I had managed the first three steps of construction. Mostly because the instructions were as tiny as the parts, which meant spending a lot of time bent over first the instructions, and then the sprues trying to find each piece. I then decided to call it a night and continue some other day to preserve my sanity...

Well... it's a start. At least I remembered to take a picture of how far I got.

Despite all the fiddly bits I enjoyed building this, at least so far. All pieces fit together well so it's really a good kit, if that's your thing. Caesar also has a version with the 50mm PaK38 anti-tank gun which I'm tempted to get when I have finished this one.