German Flak Gun Commander and Handler 1/30 Figure Set

Features

• Approximately 2.5" tall
• All metal construction
• Hand painted and ready for display

The full crew for a Flak 36/37 was eleven men: 2 gunners, 1 loader, 1 fuze setter, 5 ammunition handlers, 1 commander and a driver. A trained crew could deploy a gun in 2 1/2 minutes and fire at a ground target up to nine miles away - a distance that exceeded almost every Allied tank's main armament range. Although originally designed as an anti-aircraft gun it proved to be a superb anti-tank gun as well. The standard anti-aircraft platform allowed gunners to depress the muzzle below the horizontal, unlike most of its contemporaries. The simple-to-operate "semi-automatic" loading system ejected fired shells, allowing it to be reloaded by simply inserting a new shell into a tray. The gun would then fire and recoil; during the return stroke, the empty case would be thrown backward by levers, after which a cam would engage and recock the gun. This resulted in firing rates of 15 to 20 rounds a minute.