Product Features and Details
Artitec 1870024 Highlights:
Model: Artitec's 1870024 1/87 scale German Wehrmacht (WWII) 88mm FLAK 18 is a resin kit and is unpainted.
Prototype: The 88 mm Flak 18 was a high muzzle velocity Flugzeugabwehrkanone (antiaircraft gun) developed in the late 1920s for the German Reichswehr. Designed by Rheinmetall it went into mass production during the German military build-up of the late 1930s. The “Eighty-Eight” was the primary German heavy antiaircraft during the war, having a maximum range of 9,900 meters. While in use with German forces in the Spanish Civil War, the Flak 18 proved it could be used as a highly effective antitank gun as well as a field artillery piece. The Flak 18 became essential as an antitank gun against heavily protected French Char B1, British Matilda, and Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks, none of which early versions of the Panzer III and IV could counter. The Flak 18 could operate in the antitank in a limited fashion while mounted on its bogies but it was better suited when dismounted and secured, a process that took 2.5 minutes. The Flak 18 gun was updated and improved throughout the war and later 88 mm guns were purpose-designed as antitank guns and to be mounted in heavy tanks such as the Tiger I and II. 20,754 Flak 18s and its later versions were produced during the war.
