1:35 Hetzer

A small machine with a big gun

The Hetzer grew out of the chassis of a Czechoslovak tank that the Germans took over under the designation Panzer 38(t), and it turned into a low, steeply sloped tank destroyer with a 75 mm antitank gun. It was manufactured in Prague and in Pilsen from the spring of 1944 and its main advantage was precisely its size: a silhouette barely two meters tall was lost in the terrain and in defense it could be hidden behind a bank or a heap of rubble. The disadvantages were the cramped fighting compartment and the limited traverse of the gun, which forced the whole machine to be turned.

Camouflage sprayed at the factory

From the end of 1944 the vehicles were given a pattern known as the ambush pattern. On a dark yellow base lay irregular blotches of olive green and red brown, and into them were sprayed small dots of the opposite color, so that from a distance they merged and broke up the outline. It was applied without a stencil, with a hose and a coarse nozzle, and so two examples from the same series did not match. That is exactly why it pays to separate two things on this machine: the irregular camouflage, which the builder is to spray freehand, and the national insignia, which on the contrary calls for complete regularity.

An insignia on a sloped side

There is one sheet of insignia masks. On the Hetzer the cross was painted on the sloping sides of the superstructure, occasionally supplemented with a three-figure number, and it is precisely the slope of the surface that makes painting by hand treacherous: what is symmetrical seen from above appears skewed from the side. A stencil settles it by having the shape given in advance, leaving the builder only to watch that it lies parallel with the lower edge of the armor. The result then fits even when you look at the model from below or from a sharp angle, which on such a low vehicle is the usual view.