It missed the war by weeks. Then it rolled through Berlin and changed what every army thought a tank should look like.

The IS-3 was born from damage reports. After Kursk, Soviet engineers studied knocked-out tanks and found that most hits landed on the front hull and turret. In April 1944 the State Defense Committee ordered a heavy tank built around one goal: protection.

Two design teams answered. At Plant No. 100, designers built a hull front from two 110mm plates angled sharply to meet in a point. They called it a “nose with a hump” at first. The name that stuck was shchuchiy nos, the “pike nose.” At Chelyabinsk, the other team designed a low, rounded cast turret with enormous frontal armor. The production tank, Object 703, combined the two over the proven IS-2 gun, engine, and running gear.

It came too late. The first eight were built in February 1945, and only 25 existed by May 1. All of them were still at the factory when Germany surrendered.

Then, on September 7, 1945, the IS-3s of the 71st Guards Heavy Tank Regiment drove through Berlin in the Allied Victory Parade. Western officers watched a tank with a pointed prow and a turret like an upturned bowl roll past, and it looked like nothing they had. Britain and the United States both went on to build heavy tanks of their own in answer to it.

Its real combat came later: the streets of Budapest in 1956, and with Egypt in the Sinai during the Six-Day War of 1967. Russia didn’t formally retire the IS-3 until 1997.

Shchuka means “pike,” named for the nose that made it famous.

What you’re building:

• 1,421 pieces in 1:25 scale
• The IS-3 silhouette: the double-sloped “pike nose,” the low hemispherical turret, and the 122mm D-25T
• Working suspension
• Full interior detail
• Opening hatches
• Elevating main gun
• Rotating turret
• 100% pad-printed markings, zero stickers
• No figures included
• Same gun and running gear as the IS-2. Display them side by side to see the wartime design and the one it inspired.