[24], The command variant of the Tiger II was designated Panzerbefehlswagen Tiger Ausf. [30], Apart from research, training, and a five-tank attachment to the Panzer Lehr, the Tiger II was only issued to heavy tank battalions (schwere Panzer-Abteilungen) of the German Army (Heer), or Waffen-SS. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Germans may have had to leave them behind after destroying them. American forces with a captured Tiger I tank in North Africa, 1943. Fighting the T-34 and KV-1, German armor found that their weapons were unable to penetrate the Soviet tanks in most circumstances. . The Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank was a German heavy tank that served on the Eastern Front, Western Front, and in North Africa during World War II. probably due to the fact that the tanks used so much gas the However, these also never got beyond the proposal stage or did not enter production before the war ended. The ZF AK-7-200 gearbox was also explored as an alternative to the Maybach Olvar-B semi-automatic gearbox, but Waffenamt research and development department Wa Prf 6 found that it offered inferior driving characteristics and so the Maybach Olvar-B was retained. This gun was aimed using Zeiss Turmzielfernrohr TZF 9b/9c sights and was renowned for its accuracy at long range. These up-gunned T-34s were supported in the war's final year by SU-100s mounting 100 mm guns and IS-2 tanks with 122 mm guns. In these battles the Tiger II Ausf B has performed remarkably well regarding armour, armament and mechanical reliability. Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the German armed forces were not aware of two newly developed Soviet tanks, the T-34 and the KV. Despite their stunning victory in France in 1940, the German Army quickly learned that its tanks were weaker and more vulnerable than the French S35 Souma or the British Matilda series. These reports were classified and there is therefore no reason to believe that the reports were modified for propaganda reasons. Get time period newsletters, special offers and weekly programme release emails. Panther & its variants by Walter J. Spielberger p. 276. (Image Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-064-61 / CC). Grouping information naturally results in a loss of detail and nuance. This makes the capture of Tiger 131 as significant as it was enigmatic. The fate of Tiger 124 in August 1944 is reasonably well known. The transmission was the Maybach OLVAR OG 40 12 16 Model B, giving eight forward gears and four reverse, which drove the steering gear. Built with combat performance in mind, although superior on the battlefield, the Tigers complex design and a lack of thought to repairing individual components made it tricky and expensive for mechanics to maintain. [18] This turret had a rounded front and steeply sloped sides, with a difficult-to-manufacture curved bulge on the turret's left side to accommodate the commander's cupola. Tigers in the Mud: The Combat Career of German Panzer Commander Otto Carius, by Otto Carious, Stackpole Books, 2003, Combat report 'Experiences with Panzerkampfwagen "Tiger" B', by s.H.Pz.Abt 506. Its heavy armour was also so thick that a crew (usually of 5) could mostly park in front of an enemy anti-tank gun without fear of harm. It now rests on the seabed at a depth of around 3,300 ft (1,000 meters). This proved a particular problem in the cold weather on the Eastern Front. This was the Henschel L 801, a double radius design which proved susceptible to failure. The numbers do indicate that without proper maintenance and recovery services, the Tiger tanks became vulnerable. All tanks, everything, Panthers, Panzer IV, Tigers. List of military vehicles of World War II, List of World War II military vehicles of Germany, "Was the Tiger really King? All it took was a German adversary like the awe-inspiring Tiger tank with its 88-millimeter gun. As a result, they were surprised when they met them in combat for the first time in June 1941. Such fraud would have required the involvement of several people, and there are no indications this was widespread. Work progressed as World War II began with the design morphing into the VK4501 project. Rather than incorporate the Soviet tank's sloping armor, the Tiger sought to compensate by mounting thicker and heavier armor. B Heavy Tank - Restored Preserved Panzers", Tiger 213, December 44 Museum (accessed 2021-10-23), "The Real Story of Tiger 332: How Americans Captured a German King Tiger, Mark VI Tank on Christmas Eve, 1944", "Swiss museum restores German 1944 'King Tiger' tank to working order", Information about the Pz.Kpfw.Tiger Ausf.B "Tiger II" at Panzerworld, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiger_II&oldid=1142306284, 5 (commander, gunner, loader, radio operator, driver), Maybach OLVAR OG 40 12 16 B (8 forward and 4 reverse), Gearbox: Maybach OLVAR OG 40 12 16 B (eight forward and four reverse). 20 July 1950. Due to slow production rates at the factories, incorporation of these modifications could take several months, meaning it took about twice as long to build a Tiger I as other German tanks. Pioneering the overlapping and interleaved main road wheel concept for tanks, Henschel received permission from WaA on September 9, 1938, to continue development. Due to the Tiger I's weight, it was not capable of using most bridges. After the war had ended, the remaining Tigers Tanks were scrapped and now very few remain. Knowing these commanders would be operating their most vital and expensive piece of hardware, Panzer general Heinz Guderian allowed engineers to fill the Tigers manual the Tigerfibel with humour and a playful tone, as well as racy pictures of scantily-clad women to hold soldiers interest. [4] A Tank Destroyer engaged a Tiger near Foy. Both the Henschel and Porsche companies displayed designs to Hitler at his base in Rastenburg for him to inspect. Many crews had a mere fortnight to familiarise themselves with the Tiger before using it in combat. During the transfer, the two tanks suffered from various mechanical breakdowns; the cooling system was insufficient for the excessively hot weather, where the engine tended to overheat and cause a consequential failure of the gearbox. Extremely time-consuming to build, only 25 rolled off the production line in the first month. ThoughtCo, Aug. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/world-war-ii-tiger-i-tank-2361331. It was salvaged by the French Army in September 1944 and then stored in a factory in Satory before being transferred to the museum in 1975. The monthly ratios provide data to determine this effect: While there is some noise in these monthly numbers, the Tiger II generally performed comparable to the Tiger I when it was first introduces. Production of Tiger I began in July 1942, and the Tiger first saw service against the Red Army in September 1942 near the town of Mga (about 43 miles southeast of Leningrad), and then against the Allies in Tunisia in December later that year. [20], The turrets were designed to mount the 8.8 cm KwK 43 L/71 gun. The thing that made this tank so feared and respected was the huge 88mm gun which could destroy a Sherman tank at ranges up to 3600 yards. 182. The Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger tank was a German heavy tank that served on the Eastern Front, Western Front, and in North Africa during World War II. Then figure out what the total cost of the trip would be.? On the Western Front in 19441945, 4,477 British Commonwealth tanks were destroyed, including 2,712 M4 Sherman tanks, 656 Churchill tanks, 609 Cromwell tanks, 433 M3 Stuart light tanks, 39 Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger tanks, 26 Comet tanks, 2 M24 Chaffee light tanks.[8]. The tank was first used as a battlefield weapon on 15 September 1916 at Flers-Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme), ushering in a new era of mechanised warfare. The Tigerfibels success resulted in more unorthodox manuals emulating its style. The M1917, the United States' first mass-produced tank, was based on the French Renault. German tanks boasted better armor protection and more firepower. At least 1,741 tanks destroyed in 1939-1940, 549 light and medium tanks destroyed in 1944-1945 and 134 combat cars. The Tiger (II) was the heaviest tank used during World War Two, weighing 57 tons, and its engine was so powerful that it could keep pace with tanks less than half its weight, at 40 kph. Then figure out what the total cost of the trip would be.? Prokhorovka has always been notorious, but British historian Ben Wheatley has challenged the traditional myths surrounding the battle by fine-combing through the evidence. The Tiger II was under-powered, like many other heavy tanks of World War II [citation needed] . Like all German tanks, the Tiger II had a petrol engine; in this case the same 700 PS (690hp, 515kW) V-12 Maybach HL 230 P30 which powered the much lighter Panther and Tiger I tanks. Full production ran from mid-1944 to the end of the war. Inadequate for the tank's massive 56.9 tonne weight, it was replaced after the 250th production model with a 690 hp HL 230 P45 engine. Each Tiger cost over 250,000 marks to manufacture. Young tank commanders had little interest in studying pages of instructions and schematic diagrams about their vehicles. Another way to measure effectiveness, as the channel explains, is to examine how much of a threat the Allies considered the Tiger battalions. 267 was to have used FuG 8 and FuG 5 radio sets, with the most notable external changes being a two-metre-long (6.6ft) rod antenna mounted on the turret roof and a Sternantenne D ("Star antenna D"), mounted on an insulated base (the 105mm Antennenfu Nr. It is often claimed that more Tiger tanks were lost to various non-combat reasons than were lost in combat. Tiger II tanks in France. Recorded combat performance was lower, but still over 80 percent at 1,000m, in the 60s at 1,500m and the 40s at 2,000m. Penetration of armoured plate inclined at 30 degrees was 202 and 132mm (8.0 and 5.2in) at 100m (110yd) and 2,000m (2,200yd) respectively for the Panzergranate 39/43 projectile (PzGr armour-piercing shell), and 238 and 153mm (9.4 and 6.0in) for the PzGr. . [58] An R.A.C 3.d. The Comparative Performance of German Anti-Tank Weapons During World War II . One major problem with the Tiger: it was very expensive, both in terms of money and resources. Production on the Tiger began in August 1942 in order to rush the new tank to the front. It is estimated that this caused the loss in production of some 657 Tiger IIs. "[38] Lack of crew training could amplify this problem; drivers originally given only limited training on other tanks were often sent directly to operational units already on their way to the front. One Porsche version had a gasoline-electric drive (fundamentally identical to a Diesel-electric transmission, only using a gasoline-fueled engine as the prime mover), similar to a gasoline-electric hybrid but without a storage battery; two separate drivetrains in parallel, one per side of the tank, each consisting of a hybrid drive train; gasoline engineelectric generatorelectric motordrive sprocket. Allied tank destroyed by Axis during Second Mondial War: American Sherman, Soviet T-34, T-26, T-28, Brithish Matilda, French Char B1 and KV-2, KV-1, IS-2, Pe. Answer (1 of 14): Not as many as Fury, or Wehrmacht enthusiasts, would like you to believe. 503) during the Battle of Normandy, opposing Operation Atlantic between Troarn and Demouville on 18 July 1944. Also, German equipment was so finely engineered that they were too Image Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-310-0899-15 / Vack / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons. Only a handful can be seen in museums and even fewer survive outside as monuments. Soviet claims according to Grigori F. Krivosheev: 42,700 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns, 379,400 guns and mortars and 75,700 combat aircraft. Another addition to the vehicle was the inclusion of a semi-automatic transmission. Doing so requires a comparison with similar numbers on other armored vehicles in the same combat conditions. The tiger was not near as. Powered turret traverse was provided by the variable speed Boehringer-Sturm L4S hydraulic motor, which was driven from the main engine by a secondary drive shaft. The Porsche suspension components were later used on a few of the later Jagdtiger tank destroyers. Answer (1 of 14): There were many tactics to stop a tiger tank. For example, if a Tiger was hit by artillery or ran over a mine and was immobilized, this was clearly combat damage. . Stackpole Books, May 14, 2014. 9. 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