Paratroopers jumped with what they could carry, which meant rifles and little else — so how did a jeep and an anti-tank gun reach a battlefield behind enemy lines? By glider. Airborne divisions were built around great engineless gliders like the Horsa and the huge Hamilcar, towed across the Channel and cast loose to swoop silently down onto fields near the objective. Out of them rolled the jeeps, the guns, the ammunition and even light tanks that turned lightly armed paratroopers into something that could stand and fight. At Arnhem this mattered enormously: the British airborne came down among SS panzer divisions nobody had expected, and it was glider-borne guns like this 6-pounder that gave them any answer to German tanks at all.

The set is a brand-new Willys Jeep crewed by three British paras — two up front, one riding alongside — piled with ammunition crates, spare Lee-Enfield rifles and field packs in the improvised, overloaded way of real airborne troops, towing the Ordnance QF 6-Pounder that was their main answer to enemy armor. First blooded in North Africa in 1942 and deadly against German tanks once APDS ammunition arrived, the little 57mm gun was exactly what the airborne needed. It pairs with the rest of the Arnhem group, Bloody Radio is Useless and Bombs Away, under the architect of Market Garden, Monty. As the mobile centerpiece of an Arnhem diorama — the gun unlimbering at a crossroads — it is hard to top.

Model: MG095 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / jeep, 6-pounder gun and three crew figures