I have bought Dragon's new kit, based on the praise in the review page, but I was wondering about the gun itself. I chekced on Wikipedia as well, and got the impression the gun was never very impressive, even if it was common. How good was the actual gun, and how was it actually used? I was thinking how it would have worked on either the Eastern front or in Africa. Thank you.

All depends really...it was a light Flak gun, high rate of fire, effective against ground targets as well as low flying aircraft...relatively light weight and mounted on a wide variety of vehicles and platforms. Served all the way through to the end of the war. By itself it couldn't put up enough fire to fend off an air attack but grouped in batteries and deployed effectively, it could do the mission it was designed for.

"How good was it?" I guess I'd ask relative to what? The Panzerwaffe needed a light Flak gun and the Flak 30 and 38 were made in abundance. Their doctrine asked for something light.

Funny thing is that the US .50cal Browning HB was almost the equivalent to the 2cm Flak. And you know they were mounted on everything!

The Germans admired it and its availability. They were terrified of the .50 because any hits would mean loss of limb,decapitation or internal organ ruptures (i.e. death) depending on where the shot hit.