A Morsel of History for the Modeler
This field howitzer was actually developed by the Skoda company of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Czechoslovakia. The Wz.14/19 is an improved version of the howitzer and produced in Poland. In addition to Poland this weapon was used by Hungary, Greece, Yugoslavia and Germany. The Germans used these captured howitzers in fortifications and defense positions as the 10cm leFH 14/19(p) or 10cm leFH 14/19(t), etc. Steven Zaloga’s excellent book The Devil’s Garden shows one of these howitzers in German service in Normandy (page 87). The Czech howitzers were used by the Italians before and during WW2 as the Obice da 100/17 Mod. 14.

The boxart portrays an accurate Wz. 14/19 howitzer with a Polish crew and with ammunition. On the front on each side of the howitzer barrel are two crew seats and footrests. The weapon is portrayed in an olive green color with no camouflage pattern nor markings obvious. FtF also offers an early Skoda model kit PL1939-52 and a rubber-tired version kit PL1939-60.

The back of the box shows a 4-view color drawing and miniscule exploded-view assembly instructions. If you are fortunate to get this model with the history booklet you will have a larger printing of these assembly instructions.

Kit Parts
This FtF kit 052 comes with 28 olive green injection-molded styrene plastic parts on two sprues. No figures, limber nor ammunition caisson, no cast resin and no photoetched brass parts are included. The part’s detail is very good with no molding defects obvious. This is not a short-run molding that may suffer soft detail and sinkholes. The gun barrel muzzle (part-10) is slide-molded open. The model kit includes two crates of ammunition (parts 8 & 15) and two loose 100-mm rounds (parts 3 & 4).

References

Skoda houfnice vz 14 (Wikipedia)

10 cm M. 14 Feldhaubitze (Wikipedia)

I purchased my First To Fight Model products at