Introduction

Great Wall Hobby (Lion Roar) has produced a nicely detailed set of eight 200-liter oil drums. These oil drums represent barrels for Wehrmacht and Heer units.

Invariably, there has and always will be a need for POL (Petroleum, Oil, & Lubricants) products to be transported, one way or another, to a nation's Armed Forces. Whether in a combat or training environment, the motorized equipment will need these fluids.

The German army traditionally used either 200-liter drums or 20-liter "Jerry Cans" to get the requisite fluids to the various units. Great Wall Hobby gives the builder another option.

Contents

The kit contents are shipped in a simple card-stock box with two sprues sealed in a cellophane bag. The top of the box shows the artwork for four German Gray barrels and the reverse side shows the simple-to-follow assembly instructions along with the painting guide (German Gray or Dark Yellow).

Each gray colored sprue consists of eight barrel halves, eight "lids" (tops and bottoms of the barrels), four retaining rings/barrel stiffeners (six with the rolled stiffeners and two with the welded-on stiffeners), eight caps, and one hand pump assembly (pump body and handle).

in Detail

Moldings are quite crisp with next to no flash marks. All of the ejector marks are on the inner surfaces and will not be seen once assembled. The only negative to the set is that each pump "actuator" has a small sink mark which should not be too difficult to fill.

Some of the "lid" text should be considered a very close rendition to an actual photograph (see photo). It should be noted that based on manufacturer, the text was similar, however there were variations in the font style and sizes.

There are two identical sprues included in the kit. Each sprue will make four different barrels (but only one barrel per sprue can be built "in use" with the pump).

Each sprue will allow you to build three Wehrmacht drums and one Heer drum.

Assembly and Painting

The instructions are easy to follow and there is no confusion whatsoever. These instructions also call for the barrels to either be painted in German Gray or Dark Yellow. However, the one main reference I have indicates that the barrels, at least unpainted, were Zinc in color {my thanks to Andy Renshaw for the link to the article by Dan Mouritzsen on missing-lynx}. However, my thoughts are that they were more than likely painted to fit the theater of operations.

Assembly is straight forward; for the most part each drum consists of two halves, two lids/ends, and two caps/plugs/bungs. The two drum halves are aligned by pins and holes; the alignment is good, but it may be better to remove the pins and align the halves by "sight." Once the halves are set, the lids/ends and caps/plugs/bungs simply drop in place. When completely assembled, there is a discernable seam where the halves of the drum come together. For the initial sample build, I used a round file to file the seam down a bit. It's not perfect utilizing the file. The follow-on drums that I'll build will have the edges of the halves tapered (by sanding stick) leaving a small indented channel, or "V-groove," to allow for some filler. That should make for a seamless seam once sanded.

Additionally, although the barrels are considered OIL drums, I see no reason that they could not replicate fuel drums.

Conclusion

Great Wall Hobby has recreated a very nice set of German WWII 200-liter "oil" drums. Whether these are used as a form of cargo, the basis of a vignette, or as war "cast offs," these "oil" drums will add a nice bit of detail to your build/diorama.