Introduction

If there is a more thoroughly exhaustive study of German WWII vehicles than the current Nuts and Bolts series, published by Heiner Duske, Tony Greenland, and Detlev Terlisten, I honestly don’t know what it is. What started out as a nice reference material that ran in the neighborhood of 50 pages or so has grown into a publication that now with the newest issue features over 200 pages of what is more or less a single wartime subject. This latest issue, #30, focuses the metaphorical microscope on the Nebelwerfer family of tactical use rocket weapons.

Contents and review

This new release, soft cover and printed on very nice glossy paper, specifically covers the Nebelwerfer, the Panzerwerfer, and the Vielfachwerfer vehicles and weapons and is written by the Joachim Baselin, M. Bl.ock, J. Nelson, and H. Tippmann. The issue is not broken down into standard chapters per se, but instead just jumps in with a short introduction followed by 45 pages or so of historical background. This is broken down into two columns, one in German and the other in English. This section is also liberally filled with photos, charts, graphs, and TO&Es of rocket units. Some of the writing here gets a bit technical, okay, it gets a lot technical and may provide a bit more information than most modelers are looking for but if you are interested you can jump right in. Truthfully, it is an easy skim and I found myself stopping and reading more in depth several times as I ran into something that caught my interest; so much so that by the time I finished the section I probably had read closely about 75% of the text.

Following this there is a short section of a couple of pages that runs down the models of these weapons that are available in 1/35 scale. This is followed up at the end of the publication with another section on the finished models but more about that later. After this you get 80 pages of wartime photographs of this equipment in various guises. Some of the photos are ordnance prototype photos but the vast majority are all pictures from in the field. The photos show units in action, at rest, the equipment, the rockets, loaded, packaged, firing, pretty much in every conceivable configuration. According to the publisher there are 250 historical photos of the equipment.

Next you get the line drawings presented over 24 pages. Each of the drawings is done in 1/35 scale making them extremely useful for the modeling public. Following this are my favorite 9 pages of the whole issue, color plates, two to a page, of various examples of the Nebelwerfer, Panzerwerfer, and Vielfachwerfer. What I really like is that they have included a small inset photo of the historical vehicle from which the color plate was developed. I wish more publishers would pick up on this and include it in their work.

One of the problems with historical photographs is that they were rarely ever shot with the modeler in mind! I guess that is what they mean when they say the devil is in the details. For modelers it often means we are shooting in the dark with certain aspects of a model or trying to run down other photos to help clarify fine points. With that in mind the next 35 pages or so are well detailed color photos of preserved museum pieces with all the close-ups you could want to get everything just right.

Finally, the issue concludes with 8 pages of color inspiration of 1/35 scale models of the Panzerwerfer 42 and Vielfachwerfer by Tony Greenland and the 21cm Nebelwerfer 42 by Vinnie Brannigan. Most are of the finished models, but Vinnie’s section includes some gorgeous in progress photo candy for the modeler.

Conclusion

Really, this is quite simply the best single publication that you could spend your money on if you are planning to ever build one of these models. Besides that, even if you don’t have plans to build a Nebelwerfer the depth of information presented here can’t be beat; I would recommend you get a copy before they disappear.