1:35 Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer

A small tank destroyer from a Prague factory

The Jagdpanzer 38(t) grew out of the chassis of a Czechoslovak light tank and from 1944 was built in Prague. Its sloped armor plates, a silhouette barely as tall as a standing soldier's shoulders and a 75 mm gun made it an unpleasant opponent for anyone who did not know where it stood. The price was a cramped fighting compartment in which the four-man crew could barely turn around, and a small horizontal traverse for the gun. After the war the vehicle stayed in production for the home army and for a Swiss order, and the last examples served on into the 1960s.

What the sheet offers

The photo-etch replaces the areas that cannot go into an injection mold at a matching thickness: the grilles over the engine compartment, the fenders, the tool clamps, the buckles and the small fittings. Metal can be brought down to tenths of a millimeter, plastic cannot, and that is the whole point of it.

Working the material

The parts are cut out with a blade on glass or on hardwood. The bends hold cleanly if the sheet is first scored lightly on the inner side. Before painting you have to degrease the surface with alcohol and use a primer made for metal, otherwise the paint cracks exactly on the edges.

What to watch out for

Try the fenders dry, because every kit has the hull a shade differently wide. A bent and scuffed edge in fact looks more convincing than a perfectly straight line, so a small irregularity here is not a fault but an advantage.

Recommended tools

Without tweezers with a fine tip and without proper lighting the work drags on needlessly. A photo-etch bender is useful too, but two razor blades pressed together will do the job.