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This is a conversion for Hasegawa's Jagdpanzer IV to make a pre-production version of this vehicle, also referred as A-0 or 0-Serie, and it is composed
of only three pieces: the two side schurtzen (skirts) and a modified resin copy of the Japanese kit's plastic upper hull.
The resin upper hull has the frontal armor's rounded corners that are the main feature of this version. This rounding is not very well done, from the upper
view of the hull you can tell the right side is slightly longer and thinner than the left side. The other modifications against their parent plastic part
are the deletion of the small triangular stoppers for the mg ports covers on the front wall, the weld beads on the sides of the superstructure (poorly done,
if you ask me), a pistol port on the left side wall, an additional periscope on the roof and a circular opening also on the roof, which was for either a ball
mount periscope or a gebogene Lauf (bent barrel) for the Sturmgewehr 44.
In my example, this upper hull piece is badly bent and broken on the right fender, I guess this happened due to poor molding procedures. Being a copy of the
part it is mean to replace, it must fit without problem to the lower hull, once I got it straightened.
The inclusion of the side skirts is a nice touch, having in mind that strangely Hasegawa doesn't include them in their kits, even when they do include the
mounting brackets for them. These resin schurtzen are fairly thin but, again, a bit bent, so they also will need to be straightened. In the pictures, I show
the front of one and the back of the other, so you can see the reinforcements on their inner side that you will have to remove.
Based on the few pictures of this version that were found on internet, some of these vehicles were covered with zimmerit, but despite what the box label says
(if that's what they tried to mean), this conversion has no zimmerit. Another observation about this label is that it mentions Hasegawa kits MT49
(Sd.Kfz 162 Jagdpanzer IV L/48 'Early Version') or MT50 (Sd.Kfz 162/1 Panzer IV/70(V) Lang) as suitable for this conversion, but be aware that only
the early version has the larger mantle base plate with square corners, the extra conical mg port cover and the muzzle break that you need for this variant.
There are no instructions or decals.
Conclusion
It looks like a pretty simple conversion, so simple that, keeping in mind its quality, it might be easier to just modify the plastic base kit directly, and
save yourself a few bucks.
References
[1] warthunder.com (based on the below references)
[2] Panzer Tracts No. 9-2 - Jagdpanzer - Jagdpanzer IV, Panzer IV/70 (V), and Panzer IV/70 (A), Thomas Jentz & Hilary Doyle
[3] Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two, Peter Chamberlain & Hilary Doyle
Preview sample purchased by the author.
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