The Panzerfaust was a weapon of nerve as much as firepower. A single-shot, throwaway tube firing a shaped-charge warhead, it could punch through almost any Allied tank — but only at close range, thirty to sixty meters, and only once. That arithmetic turned tank-hunting into a test of held breath: the soldier had to stay hidden, let the tank grind to within a stone's throw, fire his one shot, and then kill it or run. In the close country of late-war Europe — hedgerows, forests, rubbled towns — a single infantryman could stalk and destroy a machine worth a hundred times his tube.

The figure advances in an autumn oak-leaf smock and camouflaged helmet, a slung 98k on his back and the Panzerfaust carried ready in one hand — a rifleman doubling as a tank-hunter. Pair him with the army's Grenadier Armed with Panzerfaust, fall him in beside his SS squad-mate Advancing with MP 40, and point him at his prey — the American M4A3 Sherman he was built to kill at knife-fighting range. A diorama of a tank ambush in close country writes itself.

W. Britain model 25099. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Single figure — a Waffen-SS soldier in autumn camouflage advancing with a Panzerfaust. Boxed.