Hello and welcome to the Musée des Blindes,
the French tank museum here in Saumur.
It's the only museum in the world with a running example
of the biggest, perhaps most formidable operational tank of World War II:
The King Tiger.
To really appreciate this beast, we need to have a quick look back at history.
As early as 1941, Germany realized it was losing the production battle.
They were outnumbered on the battlefield.
To overcome this, they decided to opt for two things: firepower and protection,
meaning less tanks but with better guns and better armor.
In August 1942 the German Army weapons agency submitted its requirements
for a heavy tank that would replace the Tiger I,
whose production had been launched shortly before.
The new vehicle was to have an 88-mm gun developed by Krupp in 1941.
It was one of those rare cases when the tank was designed for a specific gun,
and not the gun for the tank.
In autumn 1942 Henschel and Ferdinand Porsche's Design Bureau
started development on the tanks design.
Just as with Tiger I, this turned into a contest between Porsche and Henschel.
The key disadvantages of Porsche's project were:
low reliability of the electric transmission, high price, and low production efficiency.
Henschel's project, named VK 4503 (H),
could meet the military's requirements a lot better.
The new heavy tank was designated Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf.B,
and then renamed to Tiger Ausf.B or Tiger II.
The informal name Königstiger, meaning “King Tiger”,
was used very rarely by the Wehrmacht.
However, it was the most commonly used name amongst the Allies.
Tiger II had a front transmission, so its layout was very similar
to all German tanks of World War II.
However, unlike the square hull of Tiger I,
it borrowed its shape and proportions more from the "Panther".
It was made of rolled armor plates, connected with mortise and tenon joints,
and welded using austenite electrodes.
There were six types of plates, from 25 to 150 mm thick.
The 150 mm frontal armor was placed at a vertical angle of 50 degrees,
and the 80-mm side armor at 25 degrees.
The new Tiger featured thicker armor, however, Soviet experts noticed
that its quality reduced sharply as compared to the Panther and the Tiger I.
This was due to a drop in steel quality. The upper frontal armor was solid,
with just a porthole for the barrel machine gun bore mount.
Observation devices for the driver and radio operator/bow gunner
were mounted on the front part of the hull roof and protected by U-shaped brackets.
In addition, the front part of the hull roof had hatches for the driver and radio operator.
The hull's rear part had three compartments divided by watertight walls.
The external two could be filled with water when the tank was deep wading.
The central compartment contained the engine and was waterproof.
Outside, the hull and turret were covered in anti-magnetic Zimmerit coating
and camouflaged. The interior of the tank was painted yellow.
Tiger II featured two types of turret: One designed by Porsche, and one by Henschel.
Porsche was so confident that he would win the design,
that he went ahead and manufactured 50 turrets in advance.
These turrets were put to good use, however, on the 51st tank,
his design was dropped in favor of Henschel's.
This particular turret is of the Henschel design.
The turret was turned by a hydraulic mechanism
borrowed from the Tiger Ausf.E.
In the manual mode, to make a full rotation of the turret,
the gunner had to make 700 turns of the handwheel.
The tank's primary armament was the 88 mm KwK 43 gun.
The barrel length was 71 calibers, or 6,298 mm.
The muzzle velocity of an armor-piercing shell was 1,000 meters per second.
It was one of the best tank guns of World War II.
A shell fired from this gun could penetrate 250 mm of armor at a range of 1.5 km.
For Central Europe, the point-blank range is considered to be limited to 1,800 meters.
At this distance, the Tiger II can penetrate the gun mantlet of the IS-2,
and this powerful Soviet tank could do nothing in response.
In fact, the same gun had also been fitted to a pair of tank destroyers:
The Ferdinand and the Nashorn.
The Tiger II fired an 88-mm caliber shell, the same as the Tiger I,
but the ammunition was very different. It was much longer and wider.
Let's now jump inside and have a 360° look!
Here we are inside the turret. There were actually five people in total on the crew,
however, only three were in the turret.
The first position... I'm standing in the commander's position.
There is a seat here, but I'm standing on the turret floor.
Above me we've got seven episcopes in total all the way around,
which gave the commander a very good, unobstructed view of 360 degrees.
Just to the left of the commander we've got a little handwheel
which closes the commander's cupola.
Directly in front of the commander we've got the gunner's position.
An optical sight in front of him, and between his legs he's got a traverse handwheel,
and just to the right an elevation handwheel.
Tiger II could be traversed and elevated manually.
There was power traverse on Tiger II, but the engine had to be running for it,
but it was pretty good. It could do a 360 degree traverse in about 19 seconds.
However, the majority of the turret is taken up by the massive breech of the 88.
Let's pop across and have a look at the loader's position.
I've moved across to the loader's position, always my favorite position, in any tank.
It actually means you've got a bit more room than any other of the crew positions.
However, with the 88 mm gun the rounds were big:
Almost a meter in length and weighing up to around 18 kilos,
they were not easy to manhandle within the turrets.
While we're talking about ammunition: Directly behind the loader
we've got ready-round ammunition racks. 22 rounds can actually be stored in here,
and the tank could carry in total 86 rounds.
If we look past those racks, you can also see the escape hatch.
As the name suggests, it was a means where the crew could, in an emergency,
get out from the vehicle rather than going up and exposing themselves to enemy fire.
Among other things on the loader's side we've got a traverse handwheel,
so the loader can actually manually help the gunner traverse the turret left and right.
As far as vision is concerned, like most armored vehicles,
there's not a lot of vision ability for the loader.
He's just got one episcope, directly in front of him.
That's it for the loader's side. Now we will drop down into the front
and have a look more closely at the driver's compartment.
We've moved to the front of the vehicle, and we're sat in the driver's compartment,
the last two crew positions on the vehicle.
To the right of the driver we would find the bow gunner/radio operator.
But back to the driver's compartment! Let's have a closer look around.
The seat I'm sat on has two positions. I'm sat in the fully closed down position,
which means that the poor old driver would have to drive
using the vision block in front of him. Not a great field of view.
In the higher position he can have his head outside.
A much better field of view, making it easier to drive, even on today's main battle tanks.
Because of the seat positions there are two accelerator pedals.
A lower accelerator pedal directly in front of the driver when he was fully closed down,
And also when he's fully closed up, he's got higher accelerator pedal as well.
Taking pride of place here in front of me is this quadrant steering wheel.
Fully adjustable, much like today's modern cars, for comfort and ease of handling.
Tiger II had power-assisted steering, however, if this did fail,
we also had two tillers, like on more conventional tanks, to aid in steering.
We've also got a handbrake to the left.
Across to the right we can see a very simple instrument panel,
not a lot to be found on there, and we've also got a gear selector.
Tiger II had eight forward gears and four reverse gears.
That's about it for the driver's compartment.
What we've all been waiting for is to see how the old girl actually performs.
So let's start it up and take her for a run.
Tiger II was powered by the Maybach HL 230P30 four-stroke B12 engine,
and this produced 700 horsepower. The same engine was installed on the "Panther".
It consumed gasoline with an octane rating of 74 or higher.
The Tiger II's seven fuel tanks had a capacity of 860 liters.
The manual stated that this was enough to travel a 120 km.
However, in reality it could only cover 90.
This massive fuel consumption is around 20 times more than the average car.
The tank's running gear on each side
consisted of nine solid metal double road wheels with internal shock absorbers.
These were arranged in two interleaved rows:
Five wheels in the external row, and four in the internal one.
The Tiger II had an independent single-shaft torsion bar suspension.
The suspension provided smooth and even movement.
It was an excellent solution for a tank whose trump card was sniper fire at long ranges.
But maintenance and repair was so difficult,
that the Tiger II became the last tank to feature this type of suspension.
"Royal Tigers" were fielded to heavy tank battalions, as a replacement for the Tiger I.
So how did they perform in battle?
On the Western Front, the first combat unit equipped with King Tigers
was the 503rd heavy tank battalion.
Because of production delays, the battalion received only 12 Tiger IIs,
while the rest of its 33 tanks were Tiger Is.
On June 27, 1944, the battalion moved to the front line.
On July 7, it arrived in Dreux.
In the very first battle, the battalion managed to destroy 12 Sherman tanks.
On the Eastern Front, the Tiger II was first used in combat on August 13, 1944.
During the attack on the Sandomierz bridgehead near Staszów, Poland,
the "Royal Tigers" from the 501st heavy tank battalion
were ambushed by the Soviet 53rd Guards Tank Brigade.
This was augmented with some artillery and tank units.
On August 13th and 14th, 12 Tiger II tanks were knocked out, burnt or abandoned.
Three tanks were captured by the Soviet troops in perfect condition.
As the situation got worse for Germany, the Tiger IIs were often used in small numbers,
or even individually, as crisis followed crisis.
That said, the King Tiger regularly achieved a kill-to-loss ratio above 10 to 1,
and sometimes way higher in individual actions.
The fact was, there just weren't enough of them.
By the end of the war, only around 475 had made it onto the battlefield.
The last major battle fought by the "King Tigers"
in the German offensive in the Ardennes near Lake Balaton.
May 2, 1945 saw the last Tiger II destroyed in battle near the Spandau Bridge in Berlin.
And so the story of the King Tiger ends. And what a story it was!
There could be no doubt at all that this vehicle will go down in the annals of history
as a true beast of war.
The Tiger II is clearly a powerful machine.
To help you get behind the wheel, I've got an exclusive code for you
that will reveal three German vehicles in the store.
Each with XP boosters to accelerate your journey.
To reveal these offers, go to the World of Tanks Premium shop,
click "Redeem Wargaming Code" and simply type in "CHALLENGER".