The 88's genius lived partly in its ammunition. By 1944 German ordnance listed nineteen different rounds for the gun — eight high-explosive types, seven armor-piercing, and more — and the crew's skill lay in feeding it the right one. A time-fuzed high-explosive shell burst among aircraft; a capped armor-piercing round punched through a tank's flank. Colored markings told them apart at a glance, the yellow tips here flagging the HE loads. Each was a fixed cartridge weighing over thirty pounds, and a crew firing fifteen to twenty rounds a minute needed a steady chain of hands moving shells from crate to breech.

Both crewmen wear the first-pattern reversible winter uniform issued in 1942-43 — mouse-grey on this side, white on the other for snow — and each cradles a yellow-tipped HE round beside an open transport crate. Feed them to the 88mm Flak 36/37 and pair them with the ammunition haulers of Preparing for Action, No.2 to build the working supply chain behind a gun in action. In a winter diorama the open crate and scattered rounds read instantly: this position has been fighting.

W. Britain model 25135. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Two-figure set — a German Flak crew in first-pattern reversible winter uniform with 8.8cm HE shells and an open wooden transport crate. Boxed.