Dragon Models Limited 1/35 Scale ‘39-‘45 series Kit No. 6275; Flak Artillery Crew 1943-45

by Cookie Sewell

99 parts (87 in grey styrene, 12 etched brass); price between US $8.95-10.95

Advantages: permits use with any other Flak gun or gun mount; extra arms and heads give figures a "multipose" capability

Disadvantages: use of winter camouflage smocks and coveralls limits usefulness of figures by season or location

Rating: Highly Recommended

Recommendation: for all German Flak artillery fans

DML has fulfilled my prediction that they would release the gun crew from their new 88 kit separately, and here it is.

In order to make it a bit more useful, DML has included an extra snippet of a sprue with seven extra arms, a pair of seated legs, and two extra heads for modifying the kit's figures to different poses or functions. The directions with artwork by Ron Volstad show how to use them to make loaders, fuse setters, pointers, or other functions from the figures in the set.

The set also includes the styrene ammunition sprues from the 88 kit – four ammo carriers, six loaded and six expended rounds, and the etched brass case base/rim sections with data scribed onto them.

The one drawback to the kit is that the figures are wearing the bulky snow smocks and while the colors may be changed, they limit applicability of the kit to winter months only. Hopefully DML will release a companion summer or tropical set later on, but I suppose in the interim one could use their "Leopold" gun crew to fill in.

Overall the figures are nice and look like, well, Germans. For anyone having the old Tamiya kit this set will immediately give it a boost and correct the one major problem it has had since it came out in 1973 – dwarf-like figures.

Thanks to Freddie Leung for the review sample.