TAKOM

FLAK TOWER I BERLINER ZOO G TOWER

You know, the folks at TAKOM really deserve a lot of credit for being fearless and pushing boundaries with their recent releases. Naval guns, ship anchors, zeppelins, and now WWII German Flak towers! They are doing kits of all sorts of interesting military subjects.

The subject of this kit is a flak tower / bunker that was employed by the Germans in WWII, possibly the most well known one of all, the Berliner Zoo Flak tower. Completed by 1941, this massive 13 story tall tower stood near the Berlin Zoo, hence the name. One of three completed bunkers (more were planned, but not built), they were designed to protect the government quarter of Berlin from increasingly heavy Allied bombing raids. These towers worked in tandem with a separate command and control tower located nearby

This flak tower was bristling with weapons, with the eight huge 128mm AA guns in twin mounts on the roof, and numerous 20mm and 37mm AA guns on the gallery level below the roof level. Initially, the roof top guns were 105mm, until the 128mm guns were available in 1943. The tower had 7 levels including a cellar. It had an 85 bed hospital complete with operating rooms within it, and this tower housed treasures from many Berlin museums throughout the war as well. As many as 30,000 Berlin citizens were reported to have jammed themselves into this tower during air raids.

At war’s end, as the Soviets battered their way across Berlin, this tower depressed it’s guns to fire on the approaching Russians. Return fire from the Red Army tanks and artillery at point blank range barely dented this hugely strong structure. Great post war photos can be found on the internet showing impact marks on the tower walls. Post war, the Zoo tower was in the British zone of occupation, and they decided to blow up the structure. It took the Brits a total of four attempts to finally level the tower ( great images of these attempts can be found on line as well ) and even then, their efforts weren’t very effective. The Zoo tower was eventually reduced to rubble in the 1950’s, with nothing remaining of it today.

What’s in the Box?

The kit parts are well molded in a medium gray styrene. Parts quality is excellent, with good detail on even the smallest parts. There was some damage to the hair thin 20mm gun tubes on Sprue N (see image below). One sheet of photoetch accompanies the kit. As this is a 1/350 scale kit, some of the styrene and photoetched parts are indeed quite TINY. The kit box says that one marking (decal?) is included, but I found none in the box, nor was it referred to in the instructions.

Sprue A - tower top section

Sprue E (x2) - side wall parts, 4 identical 

Sprue C - the gallery level between the tower walls and top level.

Sprue K - top level parts 

Sprue J (x2) - more tower top level parts 

Above - Sprue N (x2) 20/37mm gun barrels and mount parts. Note broken gun tubes, TAKOM already has replacement sprues on the way to me. GREAT customer service! 

Above - sprue N detail - gun mount parts, great detail for such tiny parts.

Above - sprue N detail, gun barrels. No, I won’t be drilling out the muzzles! 

M Sprue (x2) - 128mm gun parts

Above - sprue M detail view, very nice looking guns.

Above - very well done, intricate sheet of photoetch. Some parts are QUITE tiny.

Instruction booklet

Above - painting / weathering instruction done in conjunction with AMMO by Mig.

Conclusions

Every now and then, it’s nice to take a break from your usual model building subject matter, regardless of what it usually is. I am genuinely looking forward to the building of this kit, and have already done much enjoyable and interesting research on these massive Flak towers.

Parts quality looks to be quite good in this kit, and the instructions are clearly and cleanly done. I find the subject matter of this kit extremely interesting, and applaud TAKOM for being so willing to bring modelers kits of unusual subjects!

As this kit is in a scale more suitable for ship modelers than armor builders, some of the smaller parts, the photoetch in particular look a bit tricky to assemble cleanly. I will have to fire up my electron microscope and get to work!

Highly Recommended (pending impending Full Build)

Thanks to TAKOM for the review kit

Reviewed by Chuck Aleshire, AMPS Chicagoland

AMPS 2nd Vice President, Midwest Region

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