Let me start this review with a statement: I love DML and the quality of its kits. I believe that they have really raised the bar on plastic injection-molded kits. I was anxious to get over to the local hobby shop and buy the DML Fallschirmjager team with 80mm mortar in Italy, 1944. Italy is my passion, so I got over there and bought it right away. I even told Mike, the owner, that I intended on reviewing it. Now, with that said...

I got home and determined that I would do this methodically. I wanted to do a thorough, objective review, so I gave each sprue tree a complete examination. From the moment I opened it, I began to feel a wave of disappointment in the kit.

The figures

The kit includes four (4) figures in the typical DML style; legs, torsos, arms, heads and helmets are all separately molded. The figures are wearing the typical jump smocks and coats.

The poses are life-like, and are posed in the motion of kneeling with a round, kneeling while loading a round and bracing a mortar leg, kneeling while holding a mortar leg and bracing for shock, and the last, standing up and covering his ears and yelling “Feuer!”

The problem is the molding on each item of this sprue is soft. The molding itself is well-done, but too subtle.

The heads aren’t crisply molded either. While one head is expressive, the other three are expressionless and two of the three are identical. The same problem pervades the personal gear. There is an ample supply of gear, but all softly molded.

Personal weapons

The weapons are adequate and have some details. There are two rifles, two machine pistols and a panzerfaust. I would rate them as sufficient.

The mortar kit

The mortar, a German 8cm Granatwerfer 34, comes in eight separate pieces. It’s really unfortunate that the barrel wasn’t in one piece. A multi-piece barrel means the modeler is going to have to contend with many seams on a piece of plastic half the width of a pencil.

The end of the tube is not to scale either, and will have to be drilled out and corrected with a ring added around the bore. I do believe that a chain will have to be added between the legs. The saving grace is that the pieces, while small, are crisply detailed. An additional plus is two ammo boxes that can be modeled open or closed, and eight rounds.

Overall impression

I am always happy to see the Italian theater represented in plastic and any addition is welcome. I can’t help but feel short-changed, though. I feel that DML didn’t really put the effort into this kit that they would have lavished on a typical ETO subject.

I will build this and I’m sure it will look nice, but I was hoping for exceptional. Recommended.