COBI Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer Set 2558

COBI's Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer is built from 555 blocks, 20.5 cm long, with working tracks, opening hatches and access to the service hatches. Two figures are included — a crew member and a gunner with a heavy machine gun — plus a brick with the vehicle name. All markings are pad-printed.

Cheap, low, and extremely uncomfortable

The Hetzer's virtues are usually listed as cheap production, a low silhouette and well-sloped armour. All true. What that description leaves out is what it was like inside.

The gun was mounted to the right of centre in a hull originally designed for a light tank, and there was no turret — so the 7.5 cm PaK 39 could traverse only about 5 degrees to the left and 11 to the right. Anything outside that narrow wedge meant turning the whole vehicle on its tracks, which takes time and makes noise.

Inside, four men shared a compartment sized for two. The loader worked in a space so tight that loading was slow and awkward, and the commander had almost no vision to his right because the gun was in the way. The machine gun was mounted on the roof and fired from inside through a periscope arrangement that nobody liked.

None of that was an oversight. Germany in 1944 needed a lot of anti-tank vehicles very quickly, from a chassis that was already in production, and every one of those compromises bought speed and cost. Over 2,500 were built in about a year — more than the entire Tiger and Tiger II production combined.

It kept going afterwards

The Czechoslovak factory carried on building them after the war, for its own army and for Switzerland, which operated them as the G-13 into the 1970s.

In the COBI range

Set 2670 is the Hetzer "Chwat", captured by insurgents in the Warsaw Uprising. Set 2666 is the Panzer 38(t) this chassis came from.

Specifications

Pieces: 555 · Figures: 2 with accessories
Model dimensions: 20.5 × 9 cm (8.1 × 3.5 in)