Quadruple mounted 20mm flak guns were used on all fronts, and there are a few pictures of these beasts scattered about my references.  They are seen on ground mounts (as in this kit), mounted on half tracks (Sdkfz. 7/1), and on Panzer IV chassis in various configurations (the Wirbelwind and Mobelwagen).  And all of these versions have been marketed by Tamiya in the past.  The recent rerelease of the Wirbelwind tempted me, although only the chassis of the kit is new.

I saw the flakvierling kit on sale for  6 bucks at a local hobby shop, and wanting a quick build (fix?) and for nostalgia I bought it.  I built a version of this kit with a winter clad crew when I was a teenager, winning a ribbon at an IPMS show with the completed diorama.

The kit is composed of three sprues of dark grey plastic, and when built according to the instructions it depicts the gun on a firing base and includes a trailer.  The kit can be built with the gun mounted on the trailer, or separated as if deployed for firing.  There are a several spare magazines provided, and some boxes of various sizes that should prove useful.  The kit can be assembled so that the guns can tilt and swivel, and the wheels on the trailer rotate.  Despite the temptation to wheel the trailer around on the floor, I've glued the wheels in place.  The option to pivot the guns after assembly should aid in painting.  Two colour schemes are provided, either panzer grey or with a winter whitewash.  I have one photo of a quad flak from "Patton: Operation Cobra and Beyond" where it is painted a light colour overall (dunkelgelb I presume) with some camouflage bands over the barrels.  I'm aiming for this look.

I have almost finished the kit, and in some sense I'm happiest with the trailer!  The trailer is composed of about a dozen parts.  It falls together, and looks pretty good.  I have built the gun as deployed for firing.

The gun mount is fairly easy to assemble, but the detail is rather heavy overall, which is to be expected from an old kit. I followed the instructions in order, and the problems with the kit are mostly to do with the thickness of the parts.  I hollowed out the ends of the gun barrels using my number 11 knife (avoiding drilling any holes in my fingers thus far), and they look nice. The biggest problem I have encountered is that the gun shield is way too thick (more than a millimetre thick, which scales out to more than 3.5cm in real life!!), and there are a half-dozen large ejection pin marks on the inner surface of each shield right in the midst of the moulded on bolt heads.  I filled in the ejection pin marks, but then decided to omit the gun shields, because the pictures I have show it without them as do the videos I've seen of the quad flak.  I was also feeling lazy, and fixing the shield would have been way too much work (note that I wanted a quick fix with this kit).  The ring and bead sight is also very heavy looking, and the reference shots I've seen all show some sort of tube-shaped sight in place.  I've modified that part, and I have something that looks right now according to my few references.

The most annoying problem with the kit is that the gun base has injection pin marks all over the top surface, where the detail is, and what you can see, whereas the bottom is smooth and even (and invisible).  I have no idea why Tamiya did this!  The marks aren't too much trouble to clean up, but this seems unnecessary given some thought to the moulding process.

Overall this is an OK quick build kit, and it looks fine given a bit of care in construction.  The drawbacks all appear to stem from the kit's age.  It's too bad Tamiya didn't update the guns on the new Wirbelwind to match the new PzIV chassis, because it would be a must buy in my book had they gone to that trouble.  As it is, this kit can be made to look OK, but it is not up to current standards, and it must look quite odd mounted on the new PzIV chassis.