Tamiya continues to update its long line of military vehicles with an all-new Jadgtiger. The tan-plastic molding shows excellent detail; the upper hull is molded with the sides in place and separate panels for the front, rear, and top of the fighting compartment.
In addition to your choice of one-piece vinyl tracks or plastic-injection molded link-and-length tracks, a small sheet of photoetched-metal parts provides screens for the engine deck. Typical Tamiya instructions include good clear diagrams, and many of the parts are named as well. Besides the standard instruction book, a color 6-page painting and markings guide shows all sides of each vehicle. Also included is a sheet of photos of the Jadgtiger displayed by the U.S. Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Decals are provided for five vehicles, all from the 653rd Heavy Anti-Tank Battalion with "ambush" camouflage schemes.
A commander and a driver are represented as half figures.
Assembly of the lower hull is quite simple. Pins are provided on the hull to lock the suspension arms in alignment, but if you wanted to show some of them deflected it would be easy to do. The idler arm also locks into place to ensure that the tracks fit correctly. I left off the running gear and some of the rear-panel details until painting was complete.
Assembly of the gun is straightforward. The vehicle at Aberdeen had its gun jammed in the recoil position before it was abandoned, leading to some confusion over the actual length of the gun. If you want, you can build the gun in the recoiled position.
Assembly of the hull also is fairly simple. Fit of the front and rear panels is excellent, but Tamiya has the lower weld lines for the front panel level with the deck; they should slope slightly below deck level as in the photos of the Aberdeen vehicle. You'll need to apply a little filler where the rear panel interlocking plates are split by the molding. Although the rear doors to the fighting compartment can be made to open, the lack of any interior detail other than the gun suggests leaving them shut.
While I left off some of the detail parts, I did add the fenders to the upper hull to ease painting and had no problems attaching the upper hull over the tracks later on. Sadly, the fenders are molded as one piece; Jadgtigers quickly shed fender panels once in the field, and it would have been nice to show this.
The most time-consuming part of the build is reproducing the intricate ambush scheme. I painted my vehicle as though it were almost fresh off the assembly line, with only a little road grime added to the lower hull.
The decals went on very well with only a little Solvaset added. The running gear was then installed on the lower hull. While I used the link-and-length tracks on my model, I did test-fit the vinyl tracks and found they fit perfectly; by gluing them to the tops of the fourth and fifth road wheels, you should be able to induce an accurate track sag. Once the tracks were on, I installed the gun and upper hull.
It only took me 18 hours to build my Jadgtiger, much of which was devoted to painting the complex camouflage. The finished model matched exactly the dimensions in David Doyle's
Standard Catalog of German Military Vehicles (Krause). Another useful reference is Jim Hensley's
The Modeler's Guide to Jagdpanzer, Part One (Ampersand).
Tamiya has produced an excellent kit of the Jadgtiger - it's easy enough for intermediate modelers to build, very accurate, and would accept additional detail by any modelers keen for the challenges of adding an interior.
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