1:35 Sd.Kfz. 251 - Corrected Road Wheels (Late Type Cap 1) (for ICM Kits)

The Hanomag as a universal chassis

Few machines of the Second World War carried so many different bodies. On the hull of the medium half-track the German army carried anti-tank guns, mortars, searchlights for night fighting, a telephone exchange and frames of launching rockets, which the soldiers nicknamed Stuka zu Fuss. Over twenty officially listed renderings came into being, and in addition a number of field modifications of the kind that never made their way into any regulation. The basis remained the same, however: a long angled box, a pair of steerable wheels at the front and at the rear a tracked running gear, which gave the machine its cross-country mobility over soaked ground.

The cap of the older cut

Late production used two different front caps for the hub. The castings here correspond to the older of the two, that is to the rendering appearing on machines from the time when the simplified box was already coming in but the small parts were still running in their original form. On the real vehicle it is a difference of the order of millimeters, but on a model it decides whether the build will stand comparison with a period photograph.

What to prepare for the work

The set is reckoned for the chassis of the kit from ICM and is fitted to its arms without a change of spacing. A saw with a fine blade, sandpaper of around eight hundred grit and a moment to level all the disks into one plane will suffice. Fitting them dry will save a great deal of annoyance, because super glue does not give one moment for second thoughts. Anyone building a vehicle in winter camouflage will appreciate that the deep recesses between the spokes hold a shadow even under a layer of white finish, which on plastic parts usually floods all the design.