ASU-57 air portable assault gun

As part of my quest to find suitable models for Little Cold Wars, I picked up this tiny terror on eBay.  For those of you unsure about what an ASU-57 looks like, here are a couple of photos of the real thing.

 

It was designed not long after the Great Patriotic War as a means of giving paratroops some armour support.  It thus forms part of a Soviet tradition of experimenting with airborne armour - they've been at it since the 1930s.  The tiny ASU was used as an assault gun and improvised APC by the pre-BMD Soviet paras.  It must have been rather cramped in the latter role - the length including the gun barrel is under 3.5 metres and  it is only 1.18 metres tall.

Here is the model - sent all the way from Bulgaria.  It is a real Soviet-era diecast which had at some point (and quite understandably) lost part of it's gun barrel.  Despite it's small size it scales out at around 1/43 - which is bang on for my LCW toys.

It even has little wheels so I can push it around the table.

And so to the missing gun barrel.  After a bit of measuring I discovered that a bamboo skewer was just the right 'calibre' and a sleeve of plastic tube was cut to join it to the existing barrel.

More photos when the glue is dry and it's had a lick of paint.