No, there aren’t any bundles of fluffy pink or blue blankets. For the team at Armourgeddon, this week has been far more exciting than that; the new guns that they have bought have arrived!

The two new additions to the museum at Armourgeddon are a 7.5cm IG18 Infantry Gun and a Flak 38. Read more about these historic guns and how they served the armies of WWII.

The 7.5cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18 was an infantry gun of the German Wehrmacht used during World War II. Initially designed and manufactured by Rheinmetall in 1927, the IG18 was in active service between 1932 and 1945. Over 12,000 units were built and although a couple of re-developments were tested over the years, they were not seen as significant improvements on the initial presentation and so not introduced.

The IG18 weighs in at 400kg or 880 lbs. One of the most notable features of the gun was its ability to be broken into 4 to 6 loads meaning that transportation was not limited to flat ground. The structure of the gun meant that an armoured shield protected the crew. Although the gun at Armourgeddon is the IG18, there was also a mountain gun variant designed and brought to active duty in 1937. This was capable of being broken down into 6 to 10 packs, with each pack weighing an average of 70kg. Two of these guns were assigned to each of the German Mountain Battalions.

The second delivery of the week was the Flak 38. Various German forces throughout WWII used this gun, a development of the original Flugabwehrkanone 30 20mm anti-aircraft gun. Produced in the largest volumes of any of the German artillery options, the Flak 38 was the primary German light anti-aircraft gun throughout the war.

The Flak 38 or Flakvierling 38 to give its proper title combined four Flak 38 autocannons onto a single carriage. The development of the Flak 38 from its predecessors saw an increase in fire rate to 220 rounds per minute which improved the one issue the army had found with the previous model- that it was considered too slow to fire. The weight was also reduced to 420kg from 450kg. From 1938 the Flak 38 was accepted as the standard Army gun in 1938 and by the Kriegsmarine as the C/38. This model was further developed to provide airborne and mountain troops with anti-aircraft capabilities. A different production company, Mauser, was contracted to develop a lighter version and they did just that with the creation of the 2cm Gebirgsflak 38 with a simplified mount which raised the gun entirely off the ground. This development allowed set up on the most uneven of surfaces and ensured control and precision for the most mountainous of terrains. Again, this development resulted in a weight reduction, this time to a mere 276kg. Production began in 1941 and the gun entered service in 1942.

If those two deliveries aren’t enough to talk about, and with the memory of the flying banana cake mystery only just starting to fade in the Armourgeddon office, yet another bizarre package arrived with us this week. This time, it wasn’t baked goods (not that anyone ended up being brave enough to try the rogue flying banana cake a few months back), but this time, we received a consignment of SiS carrier bags. Is anyone short of a delivery of carrier bags? Well, we know where they are! Not a business to often have a need for a carrier bag… unless of course we could consider complementary welly-carriers for the return journey after particularly wet weekends out on the track, we don’t really have a requirement for this box. Please do get in touch if it’s yours! Otherwise we really will start to wonder… ‘Whatever next??!’

See more in our Military Vehicle Museum