sWS 60cm Infrared Searchlight Carrier "UHU"

[Mike]

This kit is a new release from the relatively new (to me at least) Great Wall Hobby company, which is a division of the more well known Lion Roar, who are respected for their Photo Etched updates and specialist sets for the discerning armour modeller. The Airbrush Company are the UK importers of both companies, and with their proactive approach to marketing, we're going to see more from Great Wall Hobby (GWH) in the future.

The basic kit shares some sprues with their Schwere Wermachtschleper (thankfully abbreviated to sWS), upon which this unusual piece of military hardware is based. For those that are unaware of the innovative designs of the late stages of WWII, the German scientists were experimenting with Infrared sights, to allow both their armoured vehicles and troops to gain an advantage over the advancing allies, and permit them to wage accurately targeted attacks on them during the hours of darkness.

The 60cm searchlight mounted sWS was to stand off the edge of the battlefield providing illumination for the infrared equipped battle tanks and troops with rudimentary night sights on their personal weapons. The design was simple to conserve resources, and there was a lot of commonality between the various versions, which explains the common sprues between the two kits.

The Kit

The kit is contained in a top opening glossy box, reminiscent of a Dragon AFV box, and has an excellent painting on the front, which is replicated on the backside of the painting instructions, in case you want to collect the artwork, or frame it... some do! There are 7 full sprues of sand colored styrene, plus one amalgamation of sub-sprues containing various detail parts that are used in the build.

There is also a small sprue of clear parts, including two different lenses for the searchlight, and all the vehicle lights. Two small sheets of photo-etched brass conclude the model parts, with a postage-stamp sized decal sheet providing the national insignia, number plates, instrument dials and a few data plates. The instruction booklet gives a few paragraphs of background to the vehicle and comprises 18 stages of line drawn diagrams with part numbers and icons representing special instructions.

Two of the sand colored sprues consist completely of the individual track links, which assemble from two distinct parts into a realistic looking track. This might have you groaning initially, but the sprue attachment points are small and on the interlinking parts, and there are no sink marks evident. The detail is impressive, showing the small ridges along the contact patchs, and there is only one raised ejector pin mark, which can be sanded off with a stroke of a sanding stick, so shouldn't slow you down by much at all.

There is only one option for the markings, which is a dark yellow machine with green and brown freehand camouflage pattern. It's this option that I intend to model, as it really looks the part. As it's almost a Whermacht'46 subject though, you'd be at liberty to paint it in any scheme you fancied, so you could let your imagination run free.

Conclusion

This unusual subject appeals to my sense of the odd immensely, and I just had to begin building it immediately here. At time of writing, I'm impressed with the quality and detail of the parts, although a few diagrams leave you scratching your head over positioning some of the parts. Overall it has an air of a recent Dragon kit - very good, but with a few gotchas that might trip up the unwary. hopefully I'll point them all out during my build, so you can learn from my mistakes.

Availability

The kit is available directly from The Airbrush Company, or any of the many companies that they supply with a retail price of £43.99.

Review sample courtesy of:

[Dads203]

Just saw your build thread Mike, looks a really nice kit.

Worth keeping an eye out at the new kid on the block for future releases.

Dan

[Mike]

Just saw your build thread Mike, looks a really nice kit.

Worth keeping an eye out at the new kid on the block for future releases.

Dan

Oooh yes... particularly if they keep up the esoteric subjects like this one

[keefr22]

That's a neat looking kit Mike! I like the box top painting too, but knowing verrrry little about WW2 German army stuff am intriqued by the infantry who look more like modern US troops than what I always invision the geeermans to look like! Are those weapons they are carrying genuine, or is it a 'what if' 1946 type painting?

Looking forward to seeing this go together!

Keef

Edit;

I just read your post again & saw this "As it's almost a Whermacht'46 subject though....". Teach me to read things properly first time!!

Edited November 2, 2009 by keefr22

[Mike]

Don't worry about it Keef... I'm not too far ahead of you on that score

The weapons are MP44s, which seem to have some kind of infrared scopes attached (which to me looks like the inspiration for the AK47), and they're dressed in late war camo kit. The German helmet was pretty good, so it's no surprise it looks like the US hemmit... although the guy on the right seems to have the old skool WWII US helmet the way I view it

The only real issue I have with the painting is that it's awful bright , although I'm guessing that as the searchlight is out and we can see a lot, it's not yet dark... wouldn't make a very good painting if all we could see was the silhouettes of the vehicle & soldiers against the burning tank though

[Tigerausfb]

Keef,

The sight is genuine and called a Zielgerat 1229 more commonly known as 'Vampir', it consisted of a light, a sight and two batteries (one for light, one for the IR tube) one carried in a large wooden box the other fitted into the standard issue gas mask case. We, the British, tested it and other German infra-red devices post war and the resulting report is titled 'Technical Report on German Infra Red Driving and Fire Control Equipment at Fallingbostel, Germany'. We recovered a lot of infra red equipment when Kampfgruppe Uhu surrendered to us at Fallingbostel. Though the sWS mounted 60cm searchlight vehicle above is fantasy, the Germans did have the same light mounted on their Sd.Kfz.251 half track. It's an absolutely fascinating area of study.

Here's a photo from the above mentioned report

Andy

Edited November 3, 2009 by Tigerausfb

[Mike]

Keef,

The sight is genuine and called a Zielgerat 1229 more commonly known as 'Vampir', it consisted of a light, a sight and two batteries (one for light, one for the IR tube) one carried in a large wooden box the other fitted into the standard issue gas mask case. We, the British, tested it and other German infra-red devices post war and the resulting report is titled 'Technical Report on German Infra Red Driving and Fire Control Equipment at Fallingbostel, Germany'. We recovered a lot of infra red equipment when Kampfgruppe Uhu surrendered to us at Fallingbostel. Though the sWS mounted 60cm searchlight vehicle above is fantasy, the Germans did have the same light mounted on their Sd.Kfz.251 half track. It's an absolutely fascinating area of study.

Andy

Wowzer... sounds it! One of those stories that makes you grateful that there was such bad tactical use of their scientists' minds, or we'd have been in some serious trouble if that had turned up (amongst other things) say in 1943

Can you point us to any articles on the subject Andy?

[Tigerausfb]

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately there's no real on-line articles that I know of, at least ones that tackle the subject properly and are backed up by sources. There's a bunch of documents and photos connected with our war-time and post war testing that are available from Kew and/or Bovington. Actually it's not so much science fiction (at least for that period of history) as you'd think. Our very own Professor R.V.Jones was already working on infra-red detection when he was at Oxford in the late 1930's before being moved over to the radar?? side of scientific research. In fact we had our own device called 'Tabby' which was more of a moggy compared to the technical superiority of the German kit.

I'm much more familiar with the ground use of infra red especially in the 'Panther' tank but in the dark recess of my mind didn't the German night fighters have infra red fitted and the Lancasters fitted with I/R warning devices?? Time for a question in the WW" forum!

Anyway, as with all infra red stuff if you have a receiver and the other side go 'active' you can spot them straight away, hence why it was never used on the western front ground. We knew they had the stuff and they knew we had the receivers.

Regards _ Andy

[keefr22]

Excellent! Great info, thanks Andy!

And as you say Mike, those MP44's on the box art do look a lot like Kalashnikov's - I wondered what they reminded me of!

Keef

[Mike]

Excellent! Great info, thanks Andy!

And as you say Mike, those MP44's on the box art do look a lot like Kalashnikov's - I wondered what they reminded me of!

Keef

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the AK doesn't owe a little something to the study of the MP44 - afterall, the AK first made an appearance in 1947, only 2 years after WWII ended. I wonder if there's any evidence out there?

[Dads203]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the AK doesn't owe a little something to the study of the MP44 - afterall, the AK first made an appearance in 1947, only 2 years after WWII ended. I wonder if there's any evidence out there?

Hi Mike

The AK47 was designed around the MP44, its almost a direct copy when you compare the working parts.

Dan

[daz greenwood]

Mike these might be useful.

MP 44/ StG 44

AK-47

[TonyT]

Does the kit contain any of the MP 44's with the sights on to use with any figures you may have?

[Mike]

Does the kit contain any of the MP 44's with the sights on to use with any figures you may have?

Sadly no, but they are available in some of Dragon's figure sets, and fabricating the sight wouldn't be too hard

Daz - thanks for the links

[daz greenwood]

You're very welcome Mike.

Glad I could help.