Wiking, the company best known to railway-modellers as a manufacturer of HO vehicles, and now owned by Siku, began life before the Second World War, as a maker of a larger range of small-scale (1:1250) ships and vessels in a lead-based Zamac, these ships were used as recognition and training models by the German Army, and were joined by 1:200th aircraft models, a range to which, AFV models known as the Wehrmachtsmodelle line, were added, and that's what we are looking at here.
Sadly not in my collection, I shot these on
Mercator Trading's table about six years ago, and the group shot is taken with a
Britains limber (#1726) for scale. The sample would appear to a complete air-defence unit.
Heavy trucks, a command/control 'office body' vehicle and GS troop-carrier/ammo-truck, both variants of the
Mercedes G3A I think, but that's off a quick Google, not personal depth of knowledge! The nearer one may be a
Krupp L3H?
Opel 'Blitz' and a command car/utility vehicle.
Staff car and two of the guns, which I think are the WWI forerunner of the famous eighty-eight, the
8.8 cm Flak 16, also known as an
"Acht-acht" by the Germans, which became anglicised as
"Ack Ack".
Two
Krupp Protze medium trucks in the passenger configuration, one towing the searchlight and the other a generator needed for the power to the searchlight, and the equipment in the command vehicles, lights in the tentage/shelters &etc. Not the best shots, but they are very, very small, and shots at shows are always hurried!
By 1936, these were being made in plastic (probably the same grey plastic as the WHW's we've seen here several times, I've suggested Siku as a source for them, maybe it was Wiking?), so these metal ones are quite early, and quite rare. Ironically, they would fit-in perfectly with the Skytrex range of my childhood!
