The Americans had their “C” rations – the Empire soldiers their “bully beef on cans, the Germans had their own much loved – and much maligned rations as well - J’s work from China has sent us some of these small model cardboard containers which were the most common to ship food in during the second world war – complete with markings this set comes on a cardboard sheet - let’s look closer.
Kit no: PPA3016 +PPA3023
Subject: 1/35WWII German Supplies Carton + 1/48 US Medical Boxes
Kit Type: Card - one sheet each
Product Link: J's Work
1/35 WWII German Supplies - These cardboard cartons were the containers for most of the German army/Airforce and navy during WWII – Sometimes the Germans issued something looking like these in sack for as in the picture below – but the most well-known are these boxes. You can see from the picture below the “Reichsadler” or German eagle on the bag along with the German food supply symbol “H.Verpfl “1943
The actual pattern printed on a ration case from WWII
A close up of the pre-cut boxes as they come
The boxes are quite strong, enough to be clamped pretty tightly
These cartons are constructed of some laser cut shapes which easily separate from the rectangle of card. With this sheet you get ten cardboard boxes that only require to be separated from the card they come on, trimming the few tab connections away and doing some pre folds to make the boxes bend nice and squarely these go together with a little help in my case with some paper glue to hold them together – though you can use wood glue or any other glues you would have found in your pencil case at school.
The American ration boxes in 1/48th
Having some clamps and paper or wood glue helps
These boxes are available in a few different scales and guises – the two I have are the affore-mentioned Ration cartons in 1/35 and the US medical supplies boxes in 1/48th scale. You get a two more on the sheet with the 1/48 scale sets due to their smaller size. As well as these there are other boxes in this range with the same ease of construction – they are US menu & ration boxes – all as easy to construct and the handy thing about getting these not constructed is the way you can construct the boxes in different ways and show interleaved or overlapped construction and show them folded dead flat or damaged.
These are a very cheap and easy way to populate diorama and their relative obscurity a this time make them a great addition to your diorama – hurry though – I reckon that very soon indeed these will be everywhere!! A great idea well done.
10 minutes of easy work and this is the result
My thanks to J's Work for the review sample. Currently these are available at LuckyModel.com