Tamiya’s original StuG III Ausf. G kit was intended as a remote control kit and was a little lacking in accuracy and detail. That certainly is not the case with this, their much more recent offering of the ubiquitous StuG III G.
I’ll admit straight off that I am a StuG fan and I own around a dozen versions of it, mostly Dragon kits, and the fact that this one manages to make it’s way in with those speaks to the level of quality we find within the midsized tray and lid style box.
Inside are five sprues and the hull tub moulded in dark yellow plastic. An additional four sprues hold the individual link tracks which is an unusual departure for Tamiya as they usually supply their kits with single piece vinyl tracks, or of late with both a vinyl set and a moulded set of link and length tracks. Also included is a length of string for making the tow cables.
The mouldings are the usual Tamiya quality with minimal cleanup required, no flash, minimal mould seams and discrete knockout marks. The instructions are, as usual for Tamiya, clear and easy to follow. At the stage of installing the gun barrel you get the option to use either a 7.5cm gun for a standard StuG III or a 10.5cm gun for a Sturmhaubitze 42 assault gun. Fit and finish is flawless and it builds up quickly and easily.
The body is overall well detailed, lacking only in a few areas like the underside of the sponsons. There are some very nice weld beads ( even on the roadwheels ) and the kit is depicted with the welded mantlet correct for the early version Ausf. G. It has a very nice MG34 for the gunner’s hatch, the shield for which has been thinned at the edges to give it the right look, though it still could do with replacing with a PE one that has scale thickness throughout. There is also a nice little gunner’s periscope poking up through the roof.
There is no interior other than a basic gun breech, which doesn’t really matter if you close the hatches but the way the gunner sits leaves quite a bit of room to see inside and all the hatches could easily be posed open but for the lack of inner detail. So a little more interior detail would have been nice, but now I’m just being fussy.
There is no zimmerit moulded on which dates it to the later half of 1943 as zimmerit was added from the factory from September 1943 and in the field as they were serviced. Which isn’t to say it wouldn’t be possible to find one in 1944 without it.
Schurzen ( armoured side skirts ) are provided as an option though wartime photos seldom show it in use on the StuGs. To be honest these are overscale in thickness but as the real skirts were only 5mm thick meaning in 1/35 they would need to be 0.15mm roughly this is a common problem with injection plastic moulded skirts and really can only be addressed using PE or thin evergreen sheet plastic. The rails are also a little thick for true scale but that is easily addressed with a file or the edge of a sharp blade.
The suspension is made up of multiple parts with the suspension arms being able to be posed how you wish which allows for the tracks and suspension to be articulated to portray passing over uneven surfaces if desired. As mentioned the tracks are individual link tracks, these are the Italeri tracks from their Pz.Kpfw IV and StuG III series vehicles and are actually quite good tracks, representing the correct 40cm tracks of the StuG III Ausf. G. There is also a few lengths of moulded tracks intended to be mounted on the vehicle as additional armour protection.
Two figures are included with this kit, one a commander figure posed standing in the commander’s cupola, the other a crewman posed sitting in the gunner’s hatch holding a puppy or small dog. The mouldings are very good with nice facial detail and the puppy is a nice twist that adds an interesting feature.
Decals and a paint and marking guide are provided for three vehicles – 237th StuG Brigade, Heer ( Tamiya erroniously refers to it as Wehrmacht ) Russia 1943 ; 303rd StuG Brigade, Heer, Norway 1943 ; StuH 42, unit unknown, Italy 1944.
Whilst I still think the newer Dragon StuG III Ausf. G kits offer a much greater level of detail this kit is still not to be overlooked, especially at half the price of the dragon kits. It builds up into a very nice kit straight from the box, and with the time taken to updetail it with a good PE set it wil be the equal of most others out there.
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