Da.Ga.Model:s Cannone Da 149/35 A

The Terni Factory in Italy - operated by Sir William Armstrong - had originally been set up to provide the Italian Navy with naval guns, but around the turn of the century they turned towards producing artillery pieces for the army as well. One of their first designs was the Cannone Da 149/35 A. (149 was the calibre in millimeters, 35 was the length of the barrel in calibres.)

The 149/35 A can hardly be called a modern design: it had no recoil system, but simply an old-fashioned gun mount. Instead it relied - like many other similar designs - on wedges placed behind the wheels, on which the gun rolled up when fired, and rolled down again when the recoil had been spent. Also, the gun had so called wheels belts, whose prime function, as often is supposed, was NOT to improve movement over soggy ground, but to make it easier to get the gun back to its original position. (The lack of modern recoil system meant that the gun had to be relaid after each single shot.) Also, it was pretty slow in setting up, requiring about two hours of work. 

But beside the slow rate of fire (one shot per minute, at best, often slower) the gun had some things going for it: a high muzzle velocity (651 meters/second) resulted in quite a good range (16.500 meters), and the grenades it could deliver were not to be ignored at 42 kilos (HE) and 43.4 kilos (Shrapnel). The weight of the gun in battery was some 8.2 tons, but it was still pretty versatile, and could be used both as siege artillery and heavy field artillery. (There were all in all 7 different types of grenades used by this piece.)

For more info on the Cannone Da149A, visit this site. Or this one. Or click here to see a detailed walk-around of this gun!

Contents of the kit:

To see it built, click here!

The kit comes packed in a small sturdy card-board box. The individual parts are carefully packaged in several small plastic bags, minimizing the risk for damage. 

The kit itself consists of some 50+ parts, moulded in two types of resin: one hard, dark-grey, like the one used by, for instance Ostmodels, and one a bit softer, yellow-ish, like the one used by, say, Al.By. The mouldings are quite good, with almost no air-holes or no warping, although small amounts of moulding flash can be found on most parts - but it is easily cleaned off. The mouldings are sharp, and the level of detail is very fine (for instance: on some parts you can see wood structure).

The assembly is pretty straight-forward, being guided by an excellent plan. Not all parts are used, as you can build the gun either in firing position, or in movement mode. The fit is very good, and the kit can be build straight out of the box, as it contains all details that make a real gun, including a dial sight. It also comes with the recoil wedges that was  almost standard equipment with the real gun. 

You can get this kit from Tracks & Troops!

This is the first kit from a new 1/72 scale Military kit producer, Da.Ga.Model, and it is a very impressive achivement indeed! Most Artillery kits in this scale are a bit caricature-ish in style, often lacking important detail, but this is NOT the case with this excellent kit. This is actually the best WW1 Artillery kit I have seen besides Al.By:s 155mm GPF. Well done, Davide Bogani and Gabriele Zenoni! (Will you please do the FIAT 2000 Tank next!) Very highly recommended!