you
this is the famous German tank of World
War two the tiger this is we now know it
is Tiger one because there was a
subsequent model the king or the Royal
Tiger after it the Tigers
one of those vehicles that has an awful
lot of myths that built up around it but
factually remember this is a product of
Hitler influencing German tank design
what happens is he reads the reports of
the German tanks going into France in
1940 where they meet bigger tanks like
the Shah be their armored firepower is
just not enough to penetrate some of
those tanks the French tanks and mainly
as well the British Matilda to Hitler
reads reports of the German 37
millimeter anti-tank gun bouncing off
the thick armor of the mil tilde - so he
starts the tiger project and he starts
it with a competition between Porsche
and Henschel Porsche comes along they
come up with a petrol electric drive
system they're given a year to try and
put a prototype vehicle together
Henschel goes back to one of its earlier
designs for a breakthrough tank that
first started back in 1937 they upgrade
that and they come forward both of these
vehicles are paraded for Hitler in the
April of 1942 poor starts the production
of a hundred hulls thinking he's going
to win but actually after a series of
tests it's Henschel that actually gets
the contract don't forget as well in
Germany the vehicles competitions are
put out to different companies the
turret for those vehicles they're
actually made by an independent third
party and in this case its crop who puts
the turrets together now the Henschel
vehicle is rushed into production they
have as so many times have teething
troubles some engine issues some
transmission issues there and the very
first tigers are pushed out to the
Eastern Front late in 1942
now what happens then of course you've
got a tank here that is changing German
tank philosophy Prix
see they had a very good balance between
mobility firepower and armor protection
here the Germans have gone much more
towards firepower and armor over the the
third component mobility now the
mobility on this tank is still actually
good we have a tendency to always say
about the tiger always too big too heavy
actually it was only a couple of miles
an hour slower than the Sherman going at
about 28 miles an hour and the ground
pressure beneath its tracks was actually
less than the ground pressure beneath
the Sherman because they had such wide
tracks so again we have to be careful
when we look at the tank that we don't
fall into the traps of all these sort of
myths that have grown up around it one
of the problems the Germans have because
it's so big mobility in the tense of
strategic mobility how do you get it
around the various places or operational
mobility to the areas of the battlefield
they need to put it on trains and for
that they change the size of the tracks
and you take one each of the outer road
wheels off the torsion bar suspension
now this is a very complex of suspension
system they put on the tiger it's got 16
torsion bars 8 on each side and they
interleave road wheels and the problem
of course there you've got is if one of
those inner road wheels gets broken it
could mean that you actually have to
take up to nine other road wheels off to
get to that inner one and that's a bit
of a maintenance issue of course in
wartime the other problem of that
interleaving system of course is mud I
certainly on the Russian front can pack
in and cause trouble but overall
mobility of the tank is fairly good the
engine the famous hey chill Maybach HL
210 after 251 models they they changed
it to the HL 230
it's about 650 horsepower that is
struggling because the original design
weight is about 45 tons it's now crept
over 50 tons so they do have a bit of an
issue there in terms of horsepower so
with Armour protection you've got ten
centimeters of armor on the front eight
centimeters on the side even that's the
very thick for something like a 75
millimeter gun Sherman to penetrate very
thick on the
man clear and of course you've got this
amazingly powerful 88 millimeter gun the
kwk 36 it's a 56 caliber length of gun
that's tremendously accurate and very
very good armor penetration qualities
it's also got a very good high-explosive
round which means that was again very
good for attacking armored burb or
infantry positions or artillery
positions in the open and and overall
the tank is a very very impressive bit
of kit but of course what we must
remember in the Second World War the
Germans just cannot build enough of them
they are hugely expensive and they take
a lot of time and production facilities
and parts you can actually build for
sturmgeschütz ease for the price of one
tiger tank like this so again that
balance only making about 1,300 of them
the chances of you as an allied tank
crewman bumping into the tiger in world
war ii are going to be very slim but if
you do bump into one you're going to
remember it
you