History
The Stug IV was introduced on December of 1943, esentially a modified StugIII superstructure on a pzIV chasis. Production ran from December of 1943 until March of 1945 with approximately 1400 produced by Krupp-Gruson. The Stug IV was armed with a 75mm Stuk 40 L/48 gun with the cast "saukopf" mantlet. It had a speed of 40km/h with a range of 160km and had a four man crew.
The Kit
What you get- 123 parts in Dragon's grey plastic, 1set of tracks in Dragon's DS plastic, and 1sheet of Cartograph decals.
Quality
The detail of the small parts is very well done with Dragon utilizing the latest technology in molding. Of note is the main gun which is one piece with muzzle break hollowed out to a respectable depth. Thanks to Dragon's slide mold technology, many of the parts have been cast in one piece to not only save the modeler time in construction but bring the level of detail to the next level.
Sprues
As stated before there are 123 parts to this 1/72nd scale kit, and while they are all very well done I would like to touch on just a few that stand out. The main gun which I already covered The road wheels which are cast as two pieces, the center rim has excellent detail, but what really stands out is the seperate one piece rubber tire. This is really a novel idea for Dragon, the instructions call out to paint the center portion of the wheel (the rim) in the appropriate camo color and then the rubber part can be painted black then the two parts a glued together. No more masking or using a cirlce template to paint, if only this was available for all kits!
The upper and lower hulls are very well done with my only gripe that the tools are molded on. I prefer to paint them seperate, but some might actually find this useful. There really are too many nice features of this kit to list, so hopefully the pictures will suffice.
Instructions
Printed in color, there are only six steps to the instructions and everything seems staightforward.The painting instructions show two paint schemes including an overall yellow and a three tone pattern. Markings are scarce with only 4 national crosses on the decal sheet.
Conclusion
Overall a very well done 1/72 Stug IV, that will certainly build into a respectable model. In my opinion the only shortcomings are the molded on tools and the lack of schurzen and engine screens, but for the low price you can't have everything.
