Johan Augustsson employs a truck-load of accessories on Revell’s 1/35 Henschel Typ 33 D1
INTERMEDIATE BUILD HENSCHEL TYP 33 D1
Henschel’s 33 or Typ 33 was a German medium three-axle, 6x4 cross-country truck, manufactured from 1928 to 1942, which served in the Reichswehr/ Wehrmacht. It could be powered by gasoline or diesel engines, dependent on the variant, and they were used on almost all fronts during World War Two. These trucks could also be equipped with auxiliary tracks over the rear wheels for driving in heavy terrain. Several versions were built, such as radio, workshop and staff trucks, with many manufactured under licence by Magirus. Henschel’s design would serve throughout the war, despite more capable 3-tonne machines becoming available (notably from Mercedes-Benz and Opel Blitz).
Close examination
This Revell kit was a re-boxing of ICM’s open flat-bed offering, and included seven styrene runners (including one with clear parts).
Detail and moulding was fair — crisp in some areas and below average in others, and flash was noted in places, but nothing a few swipes of a sanding stick couldn’t cure. On the plus side, the parts numbering followed the instruction sequence almost from start to finish, making them easy to locate.
There were 89 construction stages in total, but several had just a small number of components, or merely brought together sub-assemblies. A note of caution with the styrene; it was both soft and brittle — almost the consistency of hard candy, which meant the parts were fragile, even if joins were sound. Some items were less than 1mm thick, occasionally with extremely small contact surfaces and with ejector pin marks in awkward places, all of which demanded care. Even if warnings had been given beforehand, various bars and shafts were still broken, along with wheel hubs and even a footstep, just from basic handling.…
