Thar be Monsters!

I had nice surprise this morning, one of my belated Christmas presents arrived, a Deagostini 1/72 Combat Tank Collection Schwerer Zugkraftwagen 18 t Sd.Kfz. 9 'FAMO'!

This amazing vehicle was the heaviest half-track produced by the Germans during WW2. It was a prime mover, principally dragging around their larger artillery but it later found a new role as a recovery vehicle for another monster - the Tiger I.

It is as a recovery vehicle that this model interests me, as the Finns purchased a couple of examples from the Germans late in the war as they were desperately short of this sort of extreme pulling power. The Finns relied heavily on captured heavy tanks, as they had no tank manufacture of their own, so being able to recover damaged or abandoned tanks off the field was of major importance to them.

But the sheer size of these astonishing vehicles isn't obvious until you see them compared to a 'normal' sized truck...

The giant FAMO compared to a Ford V3000 medium truck of the same period!

The size difference between the Famo and conventional medium trucks of the time is astounding. When you look at the above picture you do find yourself wondering if both vehicles are of the same scale. They are, 1/72.

Sadly, one of the only photos of the Famo in Finnish service during the Continuation War (1941-44) is this half-caught 'photo bomb'...

It does show an interesting 'tiger stripe' camo pattern, though. But does leave me wondering what the two colours are. It's very likely that one of the colours is the colour that the Famo was painted when it left it's German factory (either Field Gray or 'Dunkelgelb'), but what the second colour might be is anyone's' guess (possibly Finnish Brown or Moss Green).

Incidentally, the back end of the other truck you can see in the photo is very likely the other German purchase the Finns made for their recovery operations, a Bussing NAG 4500A w/ Bilstein 3T crane...

This was another Teutonic monster, a 4.5 tone 4x4 truck which - like the Famo - dwarfed other vehicles. I actually bought a die cast model of this as well and here are the models compared...

I had it in mind to convert the Bussing NAG into the recovery version with crane (the real version of which was capable of lifting 3 tons).

These stunning vehicles would make a smashing addition to my Finnish collection (although they aren't actually needed to fulfil the Rapid Fire wargame rules that I'm using as a guide to my collection). And I can't resist adding this last photo (source unknown) just to illustrate the sheer unbelievable size of these mighty beasts...