The MG34 was a machine gun built like a fine watch — and that was its weakness. Introduced in 1934, it was the world's first true general-purpose machine gun: a single weapon that could serve as a portable light gun on a bipod or a sustained-fire gun on a tripod, firing a blistering 800 to 900 rounds a minute. It was superbly made — and superbly expensive, machined from solid steel to tolerances so fine that dirt, sand or the mud and frost of the Eastern Front could jam it. Germany could never build enough. The lesson produced the cheaper, stamped-out MG42, but the MG34 soldiered on to the end, and in trained hands it was one of the deadliest weapons on any battlefield.

The three-figure set is a Waffen-SS machine-gun team in action: an SS-Rottenführer directing with binoculars and an MP40, the gunner firing the MG34 from the shoulder, and his number two feeding the belt, all in SS camouflage smocks and helmet covers. It forms the fire team of a Waffen-SS squad — group it with the SS Squad Leader and the riflemen of Advancing Under Fire and Open Fire!. Dug in along a treeline or firing from a ruin, the MG34 team is the heart of the position — the weapon a whole squad's tactics were built to serve and protect.

Model: WS393 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 3 piece set