“To this day, I am convinced that substantial deployment of Wasserfall from the spring of 1944 onward, together with an uncompromising use of the jet fighters as air defense interceptors, would have essentially stalled the Allied strategic bombing offensive against our industry. We would have well been able to do that – after all, we managed to manufacture 900 V-2 rockets per month at a later time when resources were already much more limited.”
– Albert Speer, Reichsminister fur Bewaffnung und Munition (Reich’s Minister for Armamants and Munitions), from his memoir “Inside the Third Reich”
With the advent of PMA’s V-2 long-range guided missile, and the imminent arrival of Modelcollect’s V-1 “Flying Bomb”, we naturally presume that there are additional scale reproductions of weapons of mass destruction waiting in the wings. Towards the end of the War in Europe, the Germans, in particular, were testing a number of advanced weaponry, among them the Wasserfall (“Waterfall”), which was a guided missile based upon the V-2, the Backebo Rocket, a V-2 rocket using Wasserfall radio guidance, piloted V-2s, and, of course, the rest of the Aggregat series of ballistic missiles, all of which were in varying stages of development.
So, the question we had, in light of this recent trend, is what place do these types of advanced weaponry have in a typical diecast collection? Should they garner the same respect and admiration from collectors as a tank or aircraft would cast from the crucible of battle, or, should they be held in a different regard since they are, at best, impersonal means of destruction, that were, in large part, aimed at civilian population centers, designed to bring about the moral collapse of the enemy when other means were no longer deemed possible? What say you?