Here we have the modified howitzer being pulled by the Jeep. As I said in yesterday's post, in real life this would have been an unlikely pairing but Payton's other vehicles weren't designed to haul the howitzer (or anything else for that matter) leaving only the Jeep to get the job done.
Ed
It's funny, but when I first got into vintage toy collecting some 34 years ago, it was the Payton Little Green Army Men from my childhood that I remembered most vividly as an adult, and they were the ones I wanted to acquire first. But then I got distracted and it took me forever to finally get a decent representation. This was one of my favorite lash-ups as a kid: the Jeep pulling the cannon. I know now though, that in real life this was an unlikely pairing as the cannon would have been too heavy for a Jeep. It probably would have been towed by a halftrack, but Payton never made a halftrack and neither their Centurion tank, M42 Duster, or troop transport truck had provisions for hauling the cannon. So we're stuck with the Jeep!
Ed
This version of the Payton howitzer has truncated hydraulic pistons. I've seen this mostly in Miner Industries boxed sets but I do have one original header bag set of Payton Army men which includes this piece with the shortened pistons. That tells me that the tooling was changed before Miner Industries got a hold of it.
Ed
Sooo, why am I calling this an 'anti-aircraft gun'? Because on the only boxed set of Payton Army men I know of, Payton themselves referred to it as such, however, would probably be better classified as a howitzer or cannon. It measures 5" (12,7cm) L x 1.75" (4,44cm) W x 1.5" (3,81cm) H (when barrel is parallel to ground). At some point during the life of the tooling, the hydraulic dampening pistons that stick way up on the original were shortened. Perhaps there were problems with releasing the part from the mold and they decided to modify the tooling and it's this shorter version that always appears in sets from Miner Industries. Don't take that as gospel, it's just a guess.
Ed