1:100 35M Hungarian Tankette

A purchase from Italy

In the middle of the 1930s Hungary was looking for a way to build an armored arm quickly, and it chose the option that cost least: it bought finished tankettes in Italy. In service they received a home designation referring to the year of introduction, that is model thirty-five. These were small two-seat tracked vehicles with thin armor, which were to make up for the tanks that were missing.

Rearmament at home

The original Italian weapons did not last long in the vehicles. The Hungarians replaced them with a machine-gun system of their own design, which worked on the unusual principle of an externally driven mechanism and was able to keep up a high rate of fire. It is precisely the armament that is the main difference from the Italian siblings and that justifies a separate type designation.

The Rapid Corps and what came afterward

The vehicles made up the equipment of the Hungarian Rapid Corps, which in 1941 advanced through Yugoslavia and further east. The encounter with modern equipment showed their limits within a few weeks, and the surviving examples ended up in training and on security duties in the rear.

In modeling terms it is a rewarding subject. At this size a whole row of vehicles can be built without taking up a shelf, and the Hungarian home scheme with patches in three colors reads well on a small shape as long as the outlines of the patches are left soft and the edges are lightened. An interesting contrast arises when you stand a Hungarian and an Italian vehicle of the same origin side by side: they differ only in small details of armament and marking, and yet they belonged to two different armies.