Retrokit's 1/72 194mm GPF S:t Chamond SP Gun
 & Ammo Vehicle

When moving, the gun was retracted and pulled back. When firing, a pair of doors in the middle of the vehicle was opened, allowing for the gun tubes recoil down. The gun was first rate: it had a muzzle velocity of some 725 m/sec, and could throw a 80kg shell some 20,8km. It could fire 2-4 shots per minute, and up to 100 shots per hour. It was heavy: the gun vehicle weighed some 32,6tons, and thus had a slow speed: 8km/hr road speed max, and only 3km/hr off-road speed.

Some 50 SP Guns were produced, but it is unsure how many of these that saw action during WW1. They stayed in service, and were used again in WW2. Only a few were completed and used before the end of the war, but stayed in service, and saw action again in 1940. The German Army took some as booty, and employed them on the Eastern Front, for instance on the Leningrad front. Some were taken over by the Italians, and used by them.

For more info on the real SP Gun, click here!
 

Contents of the kit:

Below and to the right are pics of the built kits

The kit comes well packed in a bubble-plastic box. Notice that it contains TWO vehicles: one gun vehicle plus one ammo vehicle. (It is not optional parts to build either, but parts for two complete kits.) The kit comes with an excellent history of the vehicle - in french, though - and an assembly instruction of sorts, in the form of illustrated lists of parts plus pictures of the completed vehicles. You will need to look carefully on these, and on all the photos you can lay your hans on (quite a number of these can, BTW, be found on this site). But it will be a tricky proposition. (It has no decals or painting instructions, but as this is not common among resin kits, I can't see it as a fault, really.)

The kit is moulded in a semi-hard grey-green resin. The moulding is first rate, with only minimal amounts of flash, and only tiny moulding plugs. The SP gun kit contains some 88 parts, the ammo vehicle some 65, all in all some 150+ parts. This makes this one of the most ambitious and well-detailed 1/72 Military kits that can be found today! (And I'm are not counting those kits with a huge number of parts, where most of them are simply individual track links.) The number of parts and their detail is very impressive, showing that this is VERY well researched kit. For instance, the S:t Chamond Makers plate can be found on the lower chassis, all the intricate railings are here, and the breech can be made in either opened or closed position. A sign of the well-thought through process behind the kit can be found in the fact that the gun comes in several parts, which avoids a common enough problem with resin gun barrels, namely them being slightly warped. Etc.

I will limit my review to this first, very favourable impression, and I will expand on it when I've actually started building the kit, which I hope will happen in the near future, as soon as I've build the Gun Carrier from the same firm! Stay tuned.

You can buy this kit from 7th Company in Portugal or at Retrokit's own webpage.

So how should you finish this fine kit? There are plans out there showing 194mm GPF's in a multi-colour pattern camo, but I have yet to see a PHOTO of such a vehicle. All photos I've seen show them in a uniform, one-colour finish. This is probably Dark Green ("Army Green") or possibly the Darkish Blue-Grey (but not the early war light-grey seen on so many 75's) that was a pretty common colour scheme used on French heavy artillery during WW1. Markings seems to have been, at most, serial numbers in white on the sides and back, for instance "200 064" (see the photos above).
 

The 194mm S:t Chamond was a very complicated gun and vehicle, but Retrokit has really risen to the challenge, and made a really SUPER kit. Excellent research, first rate mouldings, super detail. A labour of love if there ever was one! I really recommend this kit. Get it while you can!