Product Features and Details
HANDMADE AND HANDPAINTED MILITARY HO MODEL:
Prototype: Raupenschlepper Ost, literally "Crawling Tractor - East", is more commonly abbreviated to RSO. This fully tracked, lightweight vehicle was conceived in response to the poor performance of wheeled or half-tracked vehicles in the mud and snow during the Wehrmacht's first winter on the Eastern Front. The RSO eventually served in a wide variety of roles. The original version had a pressed steel cab with a truck-like configuration. This was used for general transport duties. A drop-sided wooden-cab tractor designated the RSO/03 was also produced. Germany's desperation for mobile artillery led to the RSO being fitted with a 7.5cm PaK 40/1 anti-tank gun. The result was a lightweight, mobile but highly exposed anti-tank weapon. The RSO/PaK 40 combination was manufactured during 1943/44 and was primarily used to support anti-tank infantry units on the Eastern Front. Approximately 23,000 of all versions were produced.
Model: Each REI Military model is professionally hand-painted and thus unique. You'll find such features as carefully painted roadwheels, wood decks, metalized tracks and MG barrels, and real wooden chocks, along with hand-tied ropes on the smaller vehicles. These vehicles carry authentic camouflage patterns, and each one is disassembled, masked, and airbrushed before being reassembled for the final touches.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Our artist is a professional model builder and one of the world's premier commission scale model artists in North America. He is also former US Army paratrooper and has garnered over 300 awards for his work. He has published dozens of articles in numerous scale modeling magazines and has painted box art buildups for most of the world's leading scale model companies, his work is found in private collections around the globe. This is a great opportunity to own a true piece of art by a master modeller.
