Introduction

Militär Fahrzeug is the in-house magazine from Tankograd Publishing, offering articles and photos of all manner of modern and historic military vehicles - but with a definite bias towards German subjects. Issue 3/2012 is the latest.

Contents

Printed on glossy A4-size (210mmx297mm) paper, this issue has 56 pages of articles written in German, plus numerous photos with captions in both German and English. Summaries of the articles in English are printed at the back, but these do not count as full translations. However, from a modelling standpoint there is more than enough English info for non-German readers to make this worthwhile if any of the subject articles appeal.

Speaking of articles, this issue features:
• Bergepanzer 3A1 Büffel (Buffalo) – a new up-armoured version of the recovery vehicle based on the Leopard 2 hull. There are shots of a very clean demonstrator model from all sides, but none from above, and of course no close-up details, for obvious reasons!

• Treibstoff – a 2-page photo essay of German fuel-transport trucks in WWII loading up from conspicuously-marked Esso railroad tank cars,

• Terrier MSV – the new British armoured engineering tank designed to provide front-line trenching and dozer facilities,

• Kübelwagen Werkstattwagen – an article on the “field workshop” version of the famous bucket-car featuring lots of photos and tech drawings to inspire conversions in any scale!

• Russian T-95 project – a Soviet concept for a heavy tank with 152mm auto-loaded gun to replace the T-72 & T-80 that was cut short by the fall of the Union. There are a number of proposal drawings and photos of the new turret on existing T-72 and T-80 hulls, but obviously no pictures of the completed beast.

• K38 and K39 German 21cm artillery – some big guns from WWII.

• Exercise Lippische Rose II/96 – an article with photos of a variety of vehicles on exercise.

• M578 Light Recovery Vehicle – several pages of text and pictures (general shots, detail shots, and a few drawings) of the vehicle in US service that may inspire kitbashes on the old Italeri chassis.

• Wiesel 2 Mortar Carrier – photos of the little beast from all sides, as well as text about its use. Look out for the ammo support truck at the end – a skip-hire truck with armour plate!

• Tatrapan AMB – a 6-wheeled APC (or command post, ambulance, etc) developed by Tatra for the Slovak army. The odd wheel spacing is interesting – it looks like an 8-wheeler with the third axle removed.

• Stammheim Museum vehicle meeting report – subtitled 2The German Beltring?”, this is a photo-report on a museum running weekend on 31 March-1 April 2012, featuring beasts like the M48 bridge-layer and M88A1G.

Conclusion

Another interesting book for the reference collection! I’m sorely tempted by the Kübelwagen conversion – possibly on the excellent 1:24 scale Hasegawa kit?...