USMC Artillery 105mm Howitzer & Crew

Much of the ground war in Vietnam was fought within range of a firebase — a cleared hilltop ringed with wire and sandbags, built around a battery of 105mm howitzers that could put shells anywhere a patrol might get into trouble. The 105mm M101, a design that had carried U.S. artillery through the Pacific and Korea, was the heart of it: reliable, quick to lay, and able to fire high explosive, white phosphorus, or illumination through the night. When a patrol was pinned or a base was probed in the dark, the call went back to the guns, and crews like this one fired "danger close," sometimes almost onto their own perimeter.

K&C builds the set as a full gun detachment in action — four Marine artillerymen working the piece: one on binoculars spotting, one at the breech, one ramming a round home, and one heaving on the trail to re-lay the gun. They wear flak jackets, T-shirts, and M1 helmets in the heat, the howitzer sculpted on its split-trail carriage. As the centerpiece of a firebase it sits inside the Firebase Sand Bag Emplacement with the Vietnam Guard Post covering the wire, and shares the fire-support mission with the lighter Marines mortar team.

King & Country model VN075. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Five-piece set — one 105mm howitzer and four Marine crew figures — on sculpted groundwork bases. Boxed.