Sdkfz 173: Jagdpanther

Hey Everyone!

I must apologize for being away for quite awhile, as I have just started my final year in college and the beginning was hectic with club responsibilities and classes. But to me, busyness is seldom a good excuse, and boy trying to start on new pics w/o JQ is indeed difficult...working alone for now does take some time.

So...any WWII fans out there? As a kid, I was a big fan of WWII (one of those natural and hard to explain passions), read a lot about it (along with my elder brother), and I was particularly interested in the Germans. Winners are too easy to like, and somehow I am drawn to a side that fought against unenviable odds and served a dictatorship that perhaps a number of soldiers may have questioned...they were more interesting and harder to study about. I was kind of into the "bad guys"/"losing sides" of my childhood, like the Soviets, the Empire of Star Wars, Clan Wolf of Battletech, and even the footsoldiers of TMNT.

Without further ado, allow me to present to you pictures of the famed Jagdpanther tank destroyer, it served from 1944 to 1945, with only about 300+ being produced during the duration of the war. Mounted with 88mm PaK 43 cannon of the fearsome King Tiger, and running on a Panther chassis, it proved to be an effective tank destroyer. Its first deployment in Normandy demonstrated its effectiveness, as 3 Jagdpanthers ambushed and KO-ed 10-11 British Churchill tanks, before the British immobilized 2, leaving the last to retreat.

Top, side and front views of the Jagdpanther.

Jagdpanthers were deployed in independent "heavy anti-tank" battalions (schwere Panzerjager Abteilungens), 3 companies of 14 vehicles each, with 3 in the battalion HQ (total 42 tanks). Most were deployed in the Eastern Front, while the Ardennes saw the largest concentration of Jagdpanthers in a single front, with 51 taking part in the German offensive.

Top view of the Jagdpanther model (w/o touch-ups).

The Jagdpanther's combination of a powerful cannon, low profile and good power-to-weight-ratio (much weight's reduced in having no turrets) made it a formidable foe to face in the battlefield. However, due to Allied bombing raids on Germany's tank factories, production was severely hampered and the Jagdpanther's lethal introduction into the battlefield was perhaps too late for it to fully exhibit its capabilities.

Well, the model you see here was one of those Japanese "random toys" collections that come in a box, that were aimed at kids for some reason (it came with a piece of candy lol). It was a series of 1/72 scale WWII tanks, the T-34/76, the Tiger and the Jagdpanther, and for a toy, the details were great and it was even motorized to boot (with rubber tracks)! Even though it was made in China, it is probable that quality standards put down by the Japanese are quite high, and I don't think it was very expensive too.

And I'll end this entry with my take of a WWII-esque pic of my Jagdpanther model, thanks to the powerful capabilities of Adobe Lightroom 2 :)

(At the time of writing, I can't find the box to provide more details about the model series)

PS: For more detailed info on the tank, go to Achtung Panzer, which happens to be an awesome site on the vehicles used by the Wermacht. Man, I am absolutely in love with German WWII tanks.