this enormous tank next to me is the King Tiger tank the Tiger II Konigstiger
sometimes called for the Allies sometimes a royal tiger and as you can
see it is an enormous beast for many people they consider this the ultimate
development of German tanks in World War two now the tiger we've already
discussed the tiger program with our tiger one tank chat with the tiger II
what we're looking at here is a vehicle that obviously comes after the tiger one
but it's done with a desire from Hitler and a desire of Hitler's is a really an
order that has to be carried out his desire in early 1943 is to see the
massive l71 Rhine Mattel gun it's an 88 millimeter gun put onto a
tank and what happens about that is that he goes as ever to the Panzer Commission
there's discussions about this they go out and they look at the two companies
that have built the tiger one and asked them if they can find a way of putting
this new 88 millimeter gun onto a tiger chassis of some sort so it's all part of
this what's called overall the tiger program in the German military so
Porsche and Hinkle are the two people who competed for the tiger one they
compete again in essence for the tiger - initially Porsches design he's coming up
with the same petrol electric drive that he's been thinking about for his early
submission for the tiger one that then goes into the elephant vehicle he thinks
that's a way to go he looks at that he puts out a prototype he actually does
two variations of prototypes VK 4502 brackets p that means basically the
porsche variant now those vehicles are demonstrated in October of 1943 the
prototypes the design work is shown to Hitler then at the same time in the
background Henkel are looking at their designs fir
of all they suggest why don't we just add some extra armor on the front of the
tiger one will that help do that's not good enough that won't actually meet the
bill so Porsha's design its exhibited he has two variants of it one with the
turret at the front of the vehicle one with the turret at the rear of the
vehicle one of the versions has the engine in the middle one of the versions
has the engine in the rear so different ways of putting the combination of his
petrol electric drive together the Henschel version after they've suggested
this initial extra bit of armour they then come up with the idea of stretching
the tiger one hull they used an angled front they actually put the armor plate
at about fifty degree angle and they actually angle the rear in a similar
manner to what's going on with the Panther design at that particular time
they make interleaved road wheels these now actually are a slightly different to
what was done on the tiger they overlap but they're not interleaved in between
so that it was easier to actually get access to some of the inner road wheels
they need to do that because again the weight of this vehicle is increasing all
the time you need that level of suspension to spread the way over the
wide tracks they look at the track issue again they're going to do what they've
done with Tiger one we have 80 centimeter wide tracks for cross country
work we have 66 wide centimeter tracks for transportation so again the side
skirts will come off smaller tracks put on if we're going to transport that
vehicle by rail which is a usual way of moving big vehicles like this behind the
lines and they're taken as close as they can to rail heads behind the
battlefields before off-loaded the transportation tracks taken off and the
wider tracks put back on now henckles design winds that they're both are
exhibited in October of 43 Henkel gets the contract for the hulls the porsche
design it's considered still when he's trying to push his petrol electric
design at this stage of the wards as earlier on the German military are
very very nervous about the use of too much copper which his electric engines
in essence are going to be needing on the motors there so the copper is not
going to be available and they're worried about that so they go for the
Henschel design it goes into production in December of 1943 and order is put in
for 1500 Tiger twos a couple of built just before Christmas of 1943 three
prototypes of the first vehicles to come out of the Hinkle works and we're very
lucky here at the Tank Museum because we've actually got the second prototype
vehicle that's v2 so we've got v1 v2 and v3 are the vehicles that are actually
put as test vehicles v2 was used as a test vehicle at house and back
throughout the entire rest of the war it was captured by the British it was still
being used for trials by the Germans and we're lucky enough to have that vehicle
here now in December of 1943 crap have been asked could they redesign the
turret that they've originally come up with with this new gun on now crap
first of all they don't like the idea of fitting a rival gun to their turret so
the RAI metal 88 millimeter l/71 gun Krupp decides to redesign it so they
have a go at it themselves it looks very similar its performances is exactly the
same as a Rui Mattel gun and that's the gun they fit actually to their turrets
again it's very important now to emphasise crop designs that German tank
turrets poor Hensel are designing for this competition the hulls very
different things to think about because the turret that is put on that Porsche
design initially is often called by people the pork
turret Porsche had nothing to do with the design of that tire and that's
something that we've in our Tiger display here we've been trying to get
across to people so we perhaps because it's erroneous really to call it a
Porsche turret he has nothing whatsoever to do with it
crup has a design process and as the contracts for
designing the turrets for the tiger to program the German military arsim to
redesign the turret because they don't like the shape of it and also its
production costs and the time it takes to make it it's very complex now when we
look at that early version of the turret it's got a curved front to it that was
considered a potential shot trap rounds coming in could actually be glossed
underneath that curved frontage and the other issue as well is the side of the
turret has a bulge in it where the commander's cupola is and that again
cause much more trouble in its production process so crap redesigns the
turret to make it simpler to manufacture and to eliminate that shot trap and that
we often all here at the tank museum we're calling that the production turret
they've already built over 50 of the earlier model turrets so they decide to
use those first they were thinking it might have gone on the porsche design
they changed one or two small elements of it and they thickened the roof armour
and then they're actually issued to the first 50 Tiger twos that Henschel
actually makes so they're those that early type of turret you can see in some
of the shots where the tiger is used for the very first time in July of 1944 in
the battles in Normandy the production turret narrower front the gun is
slightly offset to allow the optic scope to be fitted it starts with a binocular
optic scope but then it goes on to a monocular optic scope the gun we've
mentioned very powerful gun basically the difference between the l71 88
millimeter and the tiger 1 gun the L 56 gun is the cartridge case is doubled in
size there's double the amount of propellant and that means a very similar
sized round comes out the end of that barrel with an enormous amount of force
behind it and it's actual velocity goes about to speed wise you're looking at
about a thousand meters a second and that gun can take out most known allied
tanks at a range up to three kilometers so that's a very very impressive
advantage this tanks going to have being - if you've got that sort of distance to
fire from that's going to give you a huge advantage before any of the Allied
tanks can start getting in range so very powerful gun the armor that Henschel
puts on it you've got 15 centimeters of armor at
the front they're angled at 50 degrees that is very very thick for World War
two terms thinner armor on the sides and on the rear turret front mantlet again
very thick and they built this enormous cast man clip round the gun to help
protect it that narrower frontage also means you've
got much more less of a target area to hit from frontal strikes and there's a
general consensus that pretty much no Tiger - was penetrated on its front
armor during the course of the war statistically we think probably a
discarding sabot round with a tungsten core from a 17 pounder could penetrate
the front armor but that engagement that never took place
so that thick armor that again was one of the things Hitler is influencing the
design he's insisting thicker armor on his tanks Hitler's the general view is
every year he wants to see another generation of German tanks coming out
that he's going to leapfrog a head and not allow the Russian or the Western
Allies tanks to either catch up or overtake his own tanks in service so
very thick armor very powerful gun they still use the Maybach HL 230 engine the
engine that's gone in the later tiger ones and into the panther those engines
there when you're looking at it with a tiger - basically it's powering a
vehicle that is 20 tons heavier so again that sense of the available power to get
what becomes about a 68 ton vehicle around the battlefield again you you
there's that general sensors consensus that really this is not a powerful
enough engine transmission very again similar to Tiger one the Tigers as I say
they go into action of July 44 for the first time they're issued two heavy tank
battalion Shred pounds wrapped islands normally about 45 tanks per battalion
the first engagement takes place in Normandy with a 503
heavy tank battalion this particular vehicle is serving with an SS battalion
heavy tank battalion in Normandy it's being used by the 501st they are in
retreat we think this particular vehicle the crew member drives it into a field
near Beauvais were not too sure whether or not that's when the final drive was
damaged by the crew member who may be inexperienced in it we know there's an
account that it's claimed by a sergeant Roberts of the 23rd has ours there in
the field they fire at the vehicle we can have a look at the battle damage in
a moment that vehicle when it was firing at this vehicle we think it's already
abandoned by the Germans and again we're doing a little bit of research because
we can't quite work out why the 23rd has ours or in that part of Normandy at the
time according to their battle their war Diaries so these things again peeling
away the layers about why certain vehicles get certain stories associated
with them sometimes we just make you have to make sure that they're not
confused with something else so more research to be done there the vehicle is
photographed in the field where it's captured so we have those photographs in
the collection and ultimately it's recovered and brought back to the UK as
part of a number of German tanks that have bring ball back for analysis and
this particular tiger with its 104 on it ends up at the teaching account in the
Academy it's shriven 'im where it was there for many many years sadly various
components engine etc was stripped from it over the years it's good outside
condition that's got a reproduction zimmerit coat on not a bad-looking paint
job but again it's not quite as it was when it wouldn't in service and about a
decade or so ago it came down here it's now part of the tank museum's collection
down here at Bovington so an amazing beast one thing we just like to round up
on we're here at bobbington this is a teaching base a teaching collection for
the serving military you can probably hear in the background there's military
vehicles driving around here all the time now the issue for us is we use this
vehicle as an example to teach to the modern military because this is an
example of where technology has gone in a certain direction the skill set needed
not just to make this vehicle but to also crew it a very high now that issue
modern militaries are going to face again if you look at it the stats show
that this vehicle would take about three hundred thousand man-hours to make three
hundred thousand that is an awful lot of man-hours it cost obey about eight
hundred thousand Reich marks to build and again that's about the price of two
tiger ones a hugely expensive vehicle now to give a bit of a comparison eight
hundred thousand right marks is about three hundred and thirty thousand US
dollars in World War two a Sherman tank cost about thirty to thirty three
thousand dollars to make so again economics behind this you could
have made nine Sherman tanks for the price of one King tiger and that again
as I come back to the modern military these are lessons are they're having to
pick up on
you