1/35 3,7cm KPUV vz.37)

Special Armour - 1/35 Kanon 3,7 cm KPUV vz.37 (3,7 cm PAK 37(t)) The Skoda Works in Pilsen had been a traditional gun manufacturer and supplier already since the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and after the independent Czechoslovak Republic was established in 1918, the company continued in this tradition and became one of the major armament suppliers for the new Czechoslovak Army and also exported large numbers of weapons world wide. In the 1930s, the Skoda development department came up with a design for a modern 37mm A3 anti-tank gun, which was later accepted by the Army and used under designation 3,7cm KPUV vz.34, (KPUV standing for Kanon Proti Utocne Vozbe, or Anti-Tank Gun). The Skoda design team did not lie back on their laurels and developed a modernised type known as the A4 which gained excellent results while it was being tested and surpassed considerably the original 3,7cm KPUV gun. However, the new type used a different type of ammunition and therefore its breech had to be redesigned to be capable of using the earlier ammo as well. After that, nothing stood against the A4 gun being accepted by the Czechoslovak Army, which used it under 3,7cm KPUV vz.37 designation. At that time, this weapon was the world's best in its category. The production guns were supplied in several varieties, as Type P for infantry units (P=p?chota, or Infantry) with spoked wheels, for cavalry units as Type J (J for jezdectvo, Cavalry) with pneumatic wheels with standard discs and as Type M which could have been transported behind a motorised vehicles. The A4 guns were also exported to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Hungary, besides others. In 1938, nearly one thousand KPUV guns of both types were ready to defend Czechoslovakia, 390 of them were of vz.37 Type P and 300 of vz.37 Type M. The 3,7cm KPUV Gun vz.37 was capable to shoot through the armour of all Wehrmacht's tanks. However, in the end, these guns were first used in combat by the German Wehrmacht, which, having realised the Czechoslovak guns were superior to German ones, put them into service under 3,7cm PAK 37(t) designation. And, how effective these guns were, soldiers of Poland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands found out to their detriment. In the end, only the attack against the Soviet Union made the 37mm guns obsolete as they were no longer effective against the new Soviet mid and heavy tank armours. Nevertheless, the guns remained on strenght almost until the end of the war. Amongst their users were also the army of the Slovak State, which had been built on the ruins of former Czechoslovakia, the Slovak Army deployed the 3,7cm guns also against the USSR, but with similar trouble as the Wehrmacht. Parts of the model were designed in 3D and they're pressed in a steel mold. They are distributed into two frames made of grey plastic. Full colour manual offers three different kinds of cannons - one in tricolor camouflage of the Czechoslovak army and two cannons used by Wehrmacht. One of the captured cannons is in the original Czechoslovak army colouring, the second one - called Bertha - is in german panzer grau colouring.