Dragon 1/35 Military - Panzerjager Ib Mit 7.5Cm Stuk 40 L/48 With Gun Crew - D6781

The Panzerjäger I was Germany's earliest series-produced tank destroyer, built by mating the obsolete Panzer I Ausf.B light tank chassis with a captured Czech 4.7cm PaK(t) anti-tank gun. Around 202 were completed and rushed into service in time for the 1940 campaign in France, later serving on into the North African desert. This kit depicts a hard-hitting interim conversion of that same compact Panzer I hull, this time fitted with the far more powerful 7.5cm StuK 40 L/48 — the long-barrelled gun that turned late-war StuG III assault guns and Panzer IV Ausf.F2/G tanks into genuine tank killers — illustrating the kind of stop-gap up-gunning German ordnance workshops pursued as ever-heavier Allied and Soviet armour appeared on the battlefield.

Dragon's engineering reproduces the small, riveted Panzer I hull and running gear with slide-mould precision, while the oversized StuK 40 barrel is rendered as a crisp, hollow-tipped single-piece casting so the gun's true scale impact is not lost. Individual workable track links let the finished model's tracks sag naturally over the road wheels, matching Dragon's approach on its larger AFV kits.

The box includes a set of German gun crew figures in service poses — loader, gunner and commander — along with personal weapons, a decal sheet for period unit markings, and clear instructions for building the vehicle with the fighting compartment open to display the breech and crew detail.

This unusual, lesser-seen chassis-and-gun pairing appeals to modellers who want something beyond the usual mainstream Panzer IV or StuG releases, and it makes a compelling small-vehicle-plus-figures vignette for an early-to-mid war German armour display.