2,0 cm Infantry Support Weapon

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I have been working intermittently on a project that involves kit bashing a pair of 1/35th scale Tamiya kits.  One of these is the FlaK 38 2cm in the single mount and the other is the 3.7cm PaK.  Both kits have their good points as well as bad but for my purposes they are quite adequate. 

The idea was to create a towed or vehicle mounted 20mm infantry support weapon that was similar in function and purpose to the Wiesel Airborne Weapons Carrier or the Kraka (also known as the Lkw 0,75 t gl Typ 640 Kraftkarren) both of which were armed with the Mk 20 (Rheinmetall Rh202) 20mm cannon. 

My goal or objective is to bash the two Tamiya kits and come up with a towed 20mm cannon that will use the mount and carriage of the 3.7cm PaK 36 and the 2cm FlaK 38.  My prototype attempts have so far succeeded in modifying the PaK 36 mount to remove the 37mm cannon parts and modifying a 20mm cannon to fit this mount.  The carriage has been constructed without the wheels as they are not necessary at this point and the mount with cannon has been test fitted to determine if there are any movement issues with traverse and elevation. 

The PaK 36 splinter shield has been modified by cutting it down in height and removing the rivet details.  The Tamiya PaK kit also includes a vehicle mount for the PaK 36 to mount it on the SdKfz 251 series which I find appealing as this could be used to mount my creation on an M113 or HMMWV when I get a little further along in the project. 

Using the FlaK 38 2cm cannon with the magazine feed system was deemed practical as this would keep the rates of fire down and prevent overheating the weapon.  Anyway, that is my story and I am sticking to it :^)

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I had put this aside for a while to work on other projects and decided last night that I should take another look at the project and see if I could continue on with it.  While sorting through the tray that held the work in progress and trying to multi-task with both hands doing two different things I managed to cock things up real good by spilling the majority of a liquid cement bottle into the tray.  Aside from the stench, it managed to coat one of the sprues and a few of the parts with Testor's Liquid Cement.  After pulling the parts out of the tray as fast as I could and getting the tray evacuated to somewhere out of the house I set it all aside to dry and will see what parts can be salvaged later on today or this evening.  I was tired at the time and should have known better but I was stubborn and I have suffered for it.  It is depressing to see all of that work and effort has come to nothing. 

[Brian da Basher]

Ouch! Mr Fontaine, that's some serious pain I can truly relate too.

Take heart that if the parts are even marginally salvageable, you can build again. Maybe there'll be a silver lining in all this (battle damage?) that takes your project in a new direction!

Feel free to share an inventory of the damage. It may help and at least it would be cathartic.

Good luck!

Brian da Basher

[Doom!]

Ouch indeed! 

[Jeffry Fontaine]

The damned glue smell was still reeking from the black polypropylene plastic tray after being left outside all night.  I need to check, but I think I still have a spare PaK and FlAK kit to work with that had been earmarked for the project as the models to build after I had messed up the first set but now I may need to go forth and seek out another spare set so that I can be prepared for the next catastrophe :)

I suppose the second time around on this can see faster progress since I had been tackling this from a hit/miss approach in trying things out to see if they would work or not.  The one thing I am grateful for is that I did not cock up one of the better detailed 20mm cannons that I had been saving for the final build.  My goal was to create a towed version and a vehicle mounted version perched on the roof of the HMMWV weapons carrier. 

[Weaver]

Ouch - oh that is bad luck! 

I'm always terrified of doing something like that: caps of thinner bottles/glue bottles etc go straight back on in true OCD fashion!

[Jeffry Fontaine]

This project has been sitting for a while now (a bit over two years) since my last installment describing my mishap.  Since then, I have managed to acquire several additional 3,7 cm PaK 36 anti-tank gun kits, along with several more 2,0 cm Flak 38 kits to cover any further cock ups on my part.  In addition to the replacement kits I decided to expand the effort a bit further by picking up a number of the Bronco and DML/Dragon 2.8 cm sPzB 41 "squeez-bore" kits  to see how they will work with the whole 2,0 cm infantry support weapon idea.  This was prompted by the fact that the sPzB 41 has a unique spade grip at the rear of the weapon that is off set to one side of the breech which makes this appealing from the aspect of controlling the weapon during firing. 

I pulled out the zip-lock bag that contains the remains of my previous attempt to see where I had left off.  Most all of the parts damaged by the liquid cement spill have been disposed of and what was left were some extra wheels and a few odds and ends from the 3,7 cm Pak 36 carriage.  Certainly not much to work with but the spare parts can be put to use on something else possible.  So I am pretty much starting all over again and now with the addition of the 2,8 cm sPzB 41 kits to the mix I have expanded the original idea to include variations of the original 2,0 cm infantry support weapon/anti-material weapon/high-value target engagement system idea to now include a vehicle mount and small carriage mount since this is going to be a bit larger and bulkier than a heavy machine gun in size and weight the little sPzB 41 mount might be ideal for this project. 

I must also say thank you to Frank3K for sending me that Heller 1:35th scale Hotchkiss 25mm anti-tank gun kit.  Turns out that the U.S. Army acquired some of these for testing in 1935. 

Wikipedia reference links:

2,0 cm Flak 30/38 anti-aircraft gun

2,8 cm sPzB 41 anti-tank heavy anti-tank rifle

3,7 cm PaK anti-tank gun

Hotchkiss M1934 25 mm anti-tank gun (canon de 25 mm semi-automatique modèle 1934)

[Buzzbomb]

wow this is a blast from the past.

Cobble together good Sir.. be interesting to see how it comes together

[Jeffry Fontaine]

wow this is a blast from the past.

Cobble together good Sir.. be interesting to see how it comes together

Thanks, taking a break from it did help as it got me away from the focus on just the 3,7 cm Pak and the 2,0 cm Flak.  I was kind of stumped on what to use for fire controls as I did not want to use the training and elevation mechanism from the 3,7 cm Pak as that would be restrictive in engaging a fleeting target.  Then I had this brilliant albeit expensive idea to try and use the 2,0 cm mount from the Italeri Berg Panther ARV.  It has merit but the mount is better off on top of a vehicle instead of a towed gun carriage.  I think the brilliant idea moment to use the sPzb 41 in conjunction with the 2,0 cm Flak 38 will be the best combination of parts that can then be mounted on the 3,7 cm Pak carriage with the hand grips from the sPzb 41 and it should also work on a vehicle mount too. 

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Back from the bowels of the forum again.  From my last post until now, the prototype has been sort of finished albeit without any paint applied to it and it has been collecting dust for quite some time now, maybe more than a year now.  So see attached images of what has been created.  For better or worse, I think I am done with this project. 





***Edit to add images via my Mobile Phone. OP was from my laptop -- jjf

[raafif]

  A German weapon on a British carriage ..... sounds Swedish to me 

[Jeffry Fontaine]

A German weapon on a British carriage ..... sounds Swedish to me 

Not quite.  The main components are:
3.7cm PaK36 carriage
2.0cm FlaK38/KWK38
Gun mount and shield from Italeri BergePanther TRV/ARV
2.8cm PzB41 gun barrel that is now a heavy barrel 2.0cm
Tyres from Tamiya 6pdr AT Gun. 

[Kerick]

I had this happen once and it inspired me to make a glue bottle holder from PVC pipe cap and an electrical box cover. I glued the pipe cap to the box cover which provided the weight to make it stable.

[Frank3k]

The gun looks great. Are you going to give it a coat of paint?

If you're using Tamiya square bottles, let me know and I'll print you a no-tip bottle holder. You'll get any choice of color, as long as it's the same as whatever filament is loaded up in the printer (except ABS...)

[Dr. YoKai]

 Thought I recognized the muzzle brake. The 2.8cm PzB41 is one of my favorites. This came out pretty neat, and reminds me of the field mount of the Solothurn 20mm.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Thought I recognized the muzzle brake. The 2.8cm PzB41 is one of my favorites. This came out pretty neat, and reminds me of the field mount of the Solothurn 20mm.

The Solothurn S-18/1000 is my all time favourite varmit rifle.  I have several flavours of the Solothrun S-18/1000 and the smaller S-18/100 in resin from Eduard and some other companies.  I did have for a time a 1/32nd scale lead metal S-18/1000 that came from another modeler.  It was bereft of the bipod and was in pretty bad shape.  I sent that one to another modeler quite a number of years back after I upgraded to the resin S-18/1000s from Eduard. 

If I attempt this again it will be refined a bit further as the mount for the carriage is a bit crude and looks a bit "off" to me (with me being my own worst critic).