PAK 40

The Gun:

The PAK 40 75mm anti-tank gun was a successful german weapon of WW2. It required a three man crew and was considerably more compact than the dreaded 88mm. It was not as devastating as it's bigger cousin but was still able to deal with the majority of allied tanks until late in the war.

The Model:

I got into war games at the age of 12. By 14 or so I had decided that I'd rather like to get into model building as well. I figured I had developed most of the skills required while working on my war games army, and I was rather taken by the pictures of various tanks in my brother's Tamiya catalogue.

My brother agreed to help me with my first kit, and we chose something cheap and relatively simple, the Tamiya PAK-40 anti tank gun. This was the first kit I ever built, and although Nik did much of the construction and painting, I learned a lot about cleaning parts - something which I wouldn't have bothered with if I was left to my own devices!

Building the PAK-40 was a lot of fun, so we also made a display base for it and it sat in pride of place on my shelf for many a year. It's still around somewhere, and I am still fond of it.

This is the only co-operative model my brother and I ever finished. We did start to build a diorama featuring a german half-track, but by then Nik was in VCE and getting much busier with school. There was also the ill-fated Warpstorm IX UpArmor Custom, an anime inspired Warpstorm Refit when we were both in University, but it didn't get far beyond demolishing the original WSIV...