ICM DS3507 1:35 Wehrmacht 3t Trucks (V3000S, KHD S3000, L3000S)

The Mercedes-Benz L 3000 is a German WWII heavy truck / tractor unit that was first presented to the public in 1938. Serial production took place in 1938-1944. A single diesel engine OM65 / 4 with a capacity of 75 HP served as the drive.

The Mercedes-Benz L 3000 was theoretically designed as a heavy truck tractor and had the ability to tow a semi-trailer, but very often the rear of the car was built with a body, which had a relatively low floor to facilitate access to it. The Mercedes-Benz L 3000 was one of the basic two-axle trucks of the German armed forces during the Second World War and was in many respects a vehicle similar to the famous Opel Blitz, but with slightly better off-road performance. In the course of mass production, three versions of this car appeared: L 3000, L 3000 A and L 3000 S. Trucks of this type were used on all fronts of World War II, especially intensively by the Afrika Korps units fighting in North Africa in 1941-1943 . It is estimated that about 30-33 thousand people were created during the war. trucks of this type.

Sd.Kfz. 3 (nim. Sonderkraftfahrzeug 3) or Maultier is the general name for a series of German half-track trucks (transporters) from the World War II period. The first prototypes of these cars were built in 1941, and serial production continued in 1941-1945. The drive was provided by various power units - in the case of the Opel Blitz truck conversion it was a single 6-cylinder engine with a capacity of 3.6 liters.

Vehicle series Sd.Kfz. 3 Maultier was created as a result of the disastrous experiences of the German army in the first months of operations on the Eastern Front in 1941. In the course of these struggles, it turned out that standard Wehrmacht trucks cannot cope with Soviet roads, and especially they are not suitable for use during the autumn thaw. This led to the modernization of standard trucks manufactured e.g. by Opel or Mercedes-Benz, which consisted in adding, instead of the rear axles, tracked traction, most often based on the solutions used in Panzer I and Panzer II tanks. A large part of the modernized vehicles was based on the Opel Blitz car. In 1943, some of the Maultier vehicles were converted into armored half-tracked armored personnel carriers with the designation Sd.Kfz. 4.