History

The Sd.Kfz. 11 light half-track was originally designed for towing mid-sized howitzers, and was widely adopted in all fronts throughout Europe and North Africa during WWII.

Due to the lack of materials at the later stages of the war, its production procedure had gone through considerable simplification. Besides the chassis, which remained unchanged, the later model adopted many parts to the Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track, rendering a significantly different look.

Because of the crucial need for steel for other war supplies, the upper hull of the late-war Sd.Kfz.11s were assembled largely with wooden material. Following the lengthening of its engine compartment, the driving cabin was modified into a tightly enclosed wooden structure. Similar to the Sd.Kfz. 251, its steering wheel was also changed to a downward tilting angle.

Other than its original towing duty for artillery units, the usage of the late-war Sd.Kfz. 11 became widely diversified, serving the Third Reich throughout the last days of the war.

What's in the box?:

Back in the April 2002 issue of Internet Modeler (still on line) I did an in-box review of AFV Club's 1/35th scale kit of the early (metal-cab) version of the Sd.Kfz. 11, kit no. 35040. I also mentioned the forthcoming release of a late version (wood-cab) kit by AFV and included some pre-production photos of this model built up. Here is the new kit review.

The new kit comes in a tray and lid type box. The box art is similar to how Tamiya does their box arts, with a painting of the vehicle against an all white background. A side panel of the box has a 3-view painting of the vehicle. Inside the edges of the box lid are color reproductions of the box arts of other armor kits produced by AFV Club. The bottom tray of the box repeats these same box arts in black and white. So, the inside of the box is a virtual catalog of AFV kits. Nice touch!

The kit contains five cello bags of six light tan trees of parts. There is also a clear parts tree and a dark green tree of personal weapons in its own cello bag. Black vinyl rubber-band type treads fill a further bag. The small decal sheet and PE fret are in a final zip-lock type cello bag. The instruction booklet completes the contents.

The instructions are an 8.5"x11" format booklet. It is 12 pages long.

Page 1 begins with an illustration of the box art in black and white, followed by the history of the vehicle in English and Chinese.

Page 2 continues with the Chinese language history, followed by assembly symbol translations, decaling instructions, and a color listing.

Pages 3 through 11 gives us 19 assembly steps.

The bottom of page 11 gives us only one lonely marking and painting 2 view drawing. This is for an Sd.Kfz. 11 serving with the 2nd Panzer Division, France 1944.

Page 12 begins with the parts tree drawings, followed by parts replacement forms. These are to mail in to AFV if your kit is missing a part or if a part is broken. These forms are printed in English and Chinese.

There are two identical letter "A" parts trees. These are the exact same as in the early-version kit of the Sd.Kfz. 11 by AFV. They hold the road wheels, front tires and rims, road wheel axles etc. (33 parts per tree)

Letter "B" tree is also identical to AFV's earlier version kit. It holds the drive sprockets, notek lamp, leaf spring, control levers, and undercarraige parts etc. (27 parts here)

Letter "C" tree is the last tree in this new kit that is common with the earlier version kit. It holds the vehicle's frame parts, steering wheel, exhaust, dashboard, transmission, floor sections, seat cushions etc. (31 parts here)

Lettering now jumps to a letter "M" tree. This is a BRAND NEW tree. It holds the vehicle's wood cab parts, the hood's top frontal section, radiator, and two of the rear bed's wooden wall sections etc. (21 parts here)

Lettering again jumps to a letter "W" tree. This is also BRAND NEW. It holds the vehicles front fender/engine support piece, its louvered hood side-panels, the rear hood top panel, black-out slitted headlights, seat cushions, two more of the rear bed wooden wall sections, the cargo bed canvas tarp support pieces (there is no canvas top however) etc. (32 parts here)

A NEW dark green, letter "X" tree holds four Mauser 98K rifles, one each MG34 and MG42 machine guns with their ammo-belts or ammo-drums and ground tripods. (11 parts here)

Letter "N" tree is the clear parts. It holds the cab windows (3 parts here). This is a NEW parts tree too.

Then there are the black vinyl rubber-band type treads (two parts). These are identical to the early version kit too. I have just also received AFV Club's 1/35th scale kit of individual tread links for this vehicle and intend to use them on this kit, instead of the vinyl ones.

Finally, is the small decal sheet and a letter "G" fret of PE that holds the radiator screen on it. I did not bother to scan the decal sheet, because it is mostly white markings on white paper and the scanner would not pick out the marks, no matter what I did. But it has several tactical marks all in white and the license plate numbers in black.

Conclusion

The parts in the kit are all cleanly molded with no flash or injector pin/push out marks that I can readily detect. The detail is excellent.

Highly recommended to armor modelers who have a few other armor kits under their belts due to the kits complexity.

I purchased my kit from Greatmodels. Be advised that they list the kit as no. AV3547 and leave the zero out of the number that is between the 5 and the 4. (the kit box says it is AV35047).