Eastern Suburbs Scale Modelling Club

.: Leon Putnins 1/72 Dragon Elefant

The Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Elefant (Sd.Kfz. 184) was a Panzerjäger (tank hunter) of the German Wehrmacht in World War II. They were originally built under the name Ferdinand, after their designer, Ferdinand Porsche.

The design evolved from cruder, improvised designs of 1941-42, as well as the later, but still defective, Marder designs. The chassis was created from the 90 Porsche Tiger I models already built with new tracks and an all-steel wheel arrangement: three twin bogies on side sprung torsion bars driven from the rear breast. The engines were placed in the middle of the hull to give room for the armament at the rear in a simple box structure on top of this chassis.

The driver and radio operator were in a separate compartment at the front. An 88 mm PaK 43/2 L/71 gun was fitted. This gun was not the same famous 88 mm gun that had found fame as an anti-aircraft gun and improvised anti-tank gun in the Western Desert, but an improved version developed by Krupp as a possible replacement--and did not enter production as a flak. This new gun had a much longer barrel (giving higher muzzle velocity) and fired a different, longer cartridge than the Flak 18 or 36 guns. This gave the 88mm L/71 significantly improved armor penetration abitlity. As fitted the gun was capable of only 25° traverse and a similarly limited elevation.

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