Roco Minitanks model 171 the Jagdtiger in HO scale plastic.
This is an old model, Roco made them in the early 1960s until just recently.
Like many of the old Roco Minitanks it has good and bad characteristics.
It's reasonably accurate and very sturdy with only a few parts to put it together. Very good for a wargame model.
In World War Two the Germans were always trying to keep ahead of Allied armor developments and so there was a suggestion to increase the main armament gun length from 55 to 66 calibers. This made the gun so long that they anticipated putting an armored box on the rear hull to allow the recoil to fit inside the casemate or to withdraw the gun into the box to make traveling easier.
It's about the easiest vehicle conversion ever, just lengthen the gun barrel and add a rectangular box to the rear hull. None of these were made in real life but it was a real proposal so while it was only a paper panzer, it was not a post war fantasy vehicle.
I used a piece of Roco Tiger II barrel from a surplus Tiger II for my conversion. This conversion was done about twenty years ago and it could be time for a make over. As you can see the gun barrel is a lot longer!
It seems the plan was for the casemate to be lower than on the original vehicle. Another reason for me to try again with this model. I think just sanding down the bottom of the casement about two or three millimeters might be enough.
The added barrel does not align properly and I don't think it was supposed to have the muzzle break.
Another Jagdtiger conversion is to cut the muzzle break off. Apparently they did not use them. However there is evidence or speculation that as many as eight Jagdtigers were fitted with an 88mm gun due to a shortage of 128mm guns. Those 88mm versions likely would have had a muzzle break.
Regular Roco Jagdtiger, no muzzle break, and extended length gun. Somewhere between 77 and 95 of these seem to have been completed by the end of the war, but it seems the exact number of them in unclear. They typically operated in platoons of four vehicles but sometimes even individually.
Mike Bunkermeister Creek