Darren Baker takes a look at the Turan 1 Hungarian Medium Tank from Bronco Models in 1/35th scale.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Funny how, in the absence of anything else, the Hungarians fielded this clanking obsolescence and expected something besides disaster for all involved. An interesting early-war subject matter, nonetheless.

Sadly for the Hungarians they had to build the heavy industry necessary for producing tanks from the ground up. If fielded in 1941-2 as intended it would have fine but with all the delays in creating everything from scratch it took until 1944 when they should have been building the proposed Turan 3 with the long 75mm gun.

The Germans valued the Hungarians as a most effective ally, so much they even lent them Tigers.

I'd say the Tas would have been the only suitable tank for Hungary by 1944. This chassis was fundamentaly obselete even with the decent 75mm gun.

Gents, this tank may have been a clunker historically, but it's great for folks who want to have Axis allies armor. For example, Georg Eyerman! And even I have a Pz, 38(t) in Hungarian service in my stash, so I'm glad to see this sort of thing coming out.

Frank,

I think you forgot that these tanks were never intended to be used against the "big" armies. They were only intended to fight the countries surrounding Hungary, which were similarly armed and armored. In this context they were kind of OK. When it comes to T-34s they were hopelessly outclassed.


Stephen

Fortunately Hungary was never valued as a dependable ally by the Germans, and were not allowed to purchase even PnzIVs. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hungary-Unwilling-John-Flournoy-Montgomery/dp/1931313571) In fact they did not like their Hungarian allies one bit... which is a strange source of satisfaction. (If your country had to be a German ally at least it was a crappy one.)

Is that so? Then how come those "crappy ones" remained faithful to the the Nazi Germany till the bitter end...?

I'm afraid that is so. I would also not describe the alliance as "faithful"... There's a lot of sources you can use if you are interested in the era -start with Wikipedia, and move to books (libraries should have them)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hungary-Unwilling-John-Flournoy-Montgomery/dp/1931313571

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Concise-History-Hungary-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521667364

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Will-Survive-History-Hungary-Bryan-Cartledge/1849041121


If you read Hungarian I can direct you to several historical works as well.

I'm glad to see this finally released, I am kind of partial to the MK II myself, so I'll have to be patient.