Here we have the modified howitzer being pulled by the Jeep. As I said in yesterday's post, in real life this would have been an unlikely pairing but Payton's other vehicles weren't designed to haul the howitzer (or anything else for that matter) leaving only the Jeep to get the job done.
Ed
It's funny, but when I first got into vintage toy collecting some 34 years ago, it was the Payton Little Green Army Men from my childhood that I remembered most vividly as an adult, and they were the ones I wanted to acquire first. But then I got distracted and it took me forever to finally get a decent representation. This was one of my favorite lash-ups as a kid: the Jeep pulling the cannon. I know now though, that in real life this was an unlikely pairing as the cannon would have been too heavy for a Jeep. It probably would have been towed by a halftrack, but Payton never made a halftrack and neither their Centurion tank, M42 Duster, or troop transport truck had provisions for hauling the cannon. So we're stuck with the Jeep!
Ed
Marx called this piece a 'field gun' and after repeated attempts by the 'experts' on Meta to identify a real life counterpart, no one has yet to come up with a satisfactory match. The closest anyone came was the claim that it resembled the big Long Tom cannon, only much smaller and missing a set of wheels. Ummmm, yeah, okay fine. Whatever. My sample is a bit of a hybrid wreck. The carriage appears dark green, while the chewed-up barrel looks like a dark olive green, however, when all is said-and-done it is a complete unit.
Ed
I meant to post this just after posting the American artillery, but guess I got in a rush to move on to other things. I'm not going to go into the history of the German Flak 88mm because there's far too much to cover. Needless to say it gained a formidable reputation as one of the premier artillery pieces of WWII. The gun itself could either be towed, mounted within a tank turret, or placed in stationary defense positions. The Marx version is a pretty faithful representation for a toy and was made originally as a firing piece as shown in the photos below. Non-firing repos are currently available. The gun was also accompanied by a camouflage netting which I sorta have. I have three of the four uprights, but only a cheap replacement net material. My sample cannon was 'customized' by a previous owner with a camo paint job - it would normally be an all-silver hard plastic. The overall dimensions are: 6" (15.24cm) L x 4.75" (12.06cm) W x 3.75" (9.52cm) H. Be Blessed and Relish Life! Ed
