I building a Hetzer for the tank destroyer campaign and planned on making it an example of an early model that fought near the end of the campaign in France and was wondering where can I find photos of camo schemes and orders of battle for units that used the Hetzer in France in late 44?

Im not posotive on this, but I think majority of the early war stuff (especially as early as the invasion of france) would be feld grau. So there wouldnt be very many camo tanks. But if i remember correctly, I saw on a video of a camoflaged panther in the streets of france fighting the french resistence. But that went on all throughout the war.

Andrew
I did a search on yahoo for hetzer and clicked on pictures Quite a lot of pics Google would work just as well for a search Not sure about unit #'s that used them

The early production Hetzers rarely had any camo they were just Dunklegelb - Dark Yellow. The later Hetzers had all kinds of camo from 3 tone, Ambush and red primer.

Harrison Hetzers were produced after the Germans changed to Dunkelgelb. No grey Hetzers should have been produced early on. Later when paint was running out is another story.

The first combat units to recieve Hetzers in July '44 were the Panzer Jager Abteilungen 731, 743, and 741 in September. Other Pz. Jg.'s to recieve Hezers were 510, 561, 708, and 744. Divisions to recieve Hetzers were 15, 76, 335, 79, and 257 infantry div. SS Div. 20th Gren. Div (1st Estonian), and 8th Kav (Florian Geyer) also recieved Hetzers around August '44. My resources don't say much more than that except for a vague remark that many Volksgrenadier units used Hetzers instead of Stug lll's, especially during the Battle of the Bulge.

Have a look for the Osprey Publications volume on the Hetzer in their New Vanguard series. I was looking at mine at the weekend and it seems that during autumn 1944 the Hetzer left the factory in the 'ambush' scheme. Before that, it was in the standard 3-colour scheme of random brown and green sprayed over a dunkelgelb base.