Zoukei-Mura Inc. 1/32 Sd.Kfz.2 Kettenkrad Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The Sd.Kfz.2 Kettenkrad was designed as an easily transportable gun tractor and was essentially the first lightweight off-road utility vehicle. The vehicle is an oversized motorcycle with its rear wheel replaced by a pair of tracks. For most of the war, the Sd.Kfz.2 was used on the Eastern Front in a variety of support missions while dealing with Russian snow or mud terrain. Later in the war, the Sd.Kfz.2 used its prime mover capability in towing aircraft like the Me 262 from their covered positions to the end of the runway to help preserve fuel and engine life of the early jets.

Zoukei-Mura Inc. has been producing some exquisite models and offering a variety of figures and details to help modelers create an eye-catching vignette or diorama with their kit as the centerpiece. It only stands to reason that one of these essential add-ons would be a kit of the Kettenkrad given the Luftwaffe's use of the type for airfield transport as well as a tow tug. There have been a variety of Kettenkrad kits produced in 1/35 scale to support Eastern Front projects, but to my knowledge, this is the first kit of this vehicle in 1/32 scale. While there isn't that much difference in scale, the modeler that is going to all of the trouble to get the rest of their model or vignette correct won't want to compromise on the Kettenkrad.

This kit is a simple build, consisting of two trees of styrene parts molded in tan and containing 51 parts. You can see in these images that the wheels and tracks are molded into halves to make that portion of the built quick and easy. Depending on your subject, most of these vehicles late in the war were Desert Yellow which leaves only the front tire and tracks to paint and weather.

If you want a nice Luftwaffe utility vehicle for your 1/32 Me 262, Ta 152, Ho 229, or whatever, this kit provides the easy solution that will still look awesome with some careful painting and weathering. Give one a try!