The next tank hunter I have finished is the ultimate heavy weight, the Jagdtiger. A small number of those had a Porsche design suspension (all other a Henschel drive like the Tiger II tank), and I like the look of it. So I decided to build one of those vehicles, also featuring Zimmerit. The vehicle is tank number 314, which belonged to the heavy tank hunter unit 653, and was originally abandoned on March 17, 1945, near Strassbourg. I also depicted an abandoned vehicle, inspected by American soldiers, but in a slightly different setting.

The kit is from Dragon, and comes with Zimmerit. I also bought a complete detail set from Aber, containing PE parts and a new barrel. The figures are from Alpine and were built out of the box. I decided to sand of the original Zimmerit and to do it own my own, using Magic Sculp. This is a very tedious excercise, and I would presumably use something different now. The great advantage of home made Zimmerit is that you are in complete control of the application, but there seem to be some very high quality resin offerings around. I would not use PE Zimmerit, as it presumably does not feature the coarseness and irregularities of the original material. One problem with the Magic Sculp I used is that the edges look to “soft”, so perhaps it makes more sense to use some other putty next time.

As there is no interior to be built, construction went quite fast. Below are the pictures of the finished tank, put on a base. Actually the figures help to illustrate the enormous size of the vehicle, and the impressive size main gun as well.