The third German tank hunter I am going to build is one of the earlier ones, a Marder II. This vehicle is more a self propelled anti-tank gun, based on the carriage of the Panzer II and either a Russian 7.62mm gun (Sd Kfz 132) or the German 75mm Pak 40. As such, it has an open fighting compartment, with a lot of details to be shown, and only limited protection for the crew. Despite this and the very high silhouette that made hiding and/or camouflaging difficult, it was a successful interim solution, until “real” tank hunter like the Jagdpanzer 38 (Hetzer) became available.

The build is based on a Dragon kit (6423), with PE parts from Voyager (base set and fenders) and Friul tracks. The quality of the Dragon kit is mixed, with some very detailed parts (e. g. the Pak itself), but a lot of detail lacking inside the vehicle. Also the usual upper/lower hull part split really makes no sense for this vehicle, so the first step consists of cutting the upper hull into pieces, and cutting of the fenders.

I also bought a Nuts&Bolts volume on this vehicle, which is very helpful as it contains a lot of reference photos from museum vehicles, that help a lot to understand the build of the original vehicle, and which details have to be added. Together with some more pictures available on the Internet, I was pretty confident in having enough references available. So I started to build the first stage of the interior, that then will be painted and weathered, before the remaining parts will be built and added later. And as said above, I needed some time to really understand and being able to replicate the original build.

The pictures then show the state right before the first round of painting:

As can be seen, the engine housing is more or less the original kit part, but the fuel tank has to be build from scratch, as the original part has way too thick sides. The gearbox also can be used without a lot of modifications, but around it and on the sides of the interior, a lot of detail has to be added. I also started to rebuild the upper part of the drivers’ compartment from sheet styrene, as the original part is also way too thick and completely misses the internal structure that will be at least partly visible from outside. I also plan to open the drivers’ viewing hatch, which will be also much easier using scratch built parts.