Takom 1:35 scale Krupp 420mm Big Bertha • Kit No. 2035
The 420mm Big Bertha Artillery gun was created by Imperial Germany to smash the heavy fortifications of their adversaries. After developing two prototypes just before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, the Germans eventually made twelve 42cm M-Gerät howitzers (the official designation of the Big Bertha) by the end of the war. This weapon combined fire-power and mobility, and was responsible for destroying the Belgian fortresses at Liege, forcing the defenders to surrender. Used behind the lines, the gun could reach targets 9.3km distant. More important early in the war, their use dwindled as a siege weapon in the later years as tactics changed. The Germans named the weapon after Bertha Krupp, the wife of munitions manufacturer Gustav Krupp.
When I saw that my local hobby shop had the Takom 1:35 scale Big Bertha kit in stock, I clicked on “add to cart”, having been told that the model company had discontinued their WWI line of kits recently. Not knowing much about the large artillery piece, I also ordered the Osprey publication New Vanguard 205 “42cm “Big Bertha” and German Siege Artillery of World War I”. The Osprey book provided some detail, but a lot of my references for modifying the kit came from Internet searches, and photos of the production M-Gerät howitzers were scarce.
Digging around online, I was able to see from a few builds that a few modifications had to be made to the kit to have it represent how I saw it in wartime photos. There are no surviving examples of this weapon, and the kit seemed to be based on a model in The Musée de l'Armée in Paris. Although the Paris museum model has a lot of accurate features, there are some parts of it that were copied in error during the Takom kit design which need rectifying. Several other details in the kit also appeared to be over-simplified.
I wanted to depict this massive gun with a number of figures to give it some life and sizeperspective. Because these guns were mostly in use early in WWI, I chose that time period to model the uniforms of the figures that would populate the eventual diorama.
GUN BREECH
A major flaw in the kit is the solid rear of the gun which needs a gap on the left of the breech. For this I added some layers of sheet styrene discs, cutting through with a razor saw. I later modified the breechblock to incorporate a hollowed-out right side, and a strange looking part on the left that was possibly a stop. The gun’s cradle had a few rivets added where noted in references.
The gun’s elevation wheel to the left of the breech was solid as opposed to the kit-supplied spoked type. To fabricate a new one I trimmed down a spare front wheel from a 1:35 DML Sd.Kfz. 250 halftrack, and added a styrene rod crank-handle. The size was perfect for the job.
MAIN CHASSIS
The gun chassis is quite simplified, and the location of the cable spool for the ammunition hoist is in the wrong location. The spool was moved to a position more forward and to the left of its locating point, and that point was filled with styrene and smoothed with putty. The cranking handles for the spool were also shortened so as to not interfere with the ladders sitting just behind them.
The top of the cable spool itself was re-shaped with a file, since it was more round than square. Ratchet detail for the handle was fashioned from styrene, and thin cable was wrapped around the diameter of the spool for a better representation.
Rivet detail is sorely lacking on the chassis, so I added what I could determine was missing. Photos indicate some extra rivets present around the middle of the chassis, so I took some large rivets from the extras provided in the kit, and also Takom’s extra rivets in their WW1 British Mk.IV tank kits.
The rear part of the chassis including the hatch lid detail on top is drastically over-simplified. Instead of two big hatches on the kit, there were actually four, each hinged in the middle of the chassis. There was also a gap in the frame at the rear. I chose to overlook these details since they are covered by the upper platform, and it was too late for me to get at it by the time I found this out.