The Tiger II was a German heavy tank of the Second World War. The final official German designation was Tiger , often shortened to Tiger B.Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 16. The ordnance inventory designation was 182 ( 267 and 268 for command vehicles). It was also known informally as the (Bengal tiger, )Buckley 2004, p. 119.Tank Spotter's Guide, Bovington 2011 p. 63 Allied soldiers often called it the King Tiger or Royal Tiger.
The Tiger II was the successor to the Tiger I, combining the latter's thick armour with the armour sloping used on the Panther medium tank. It was the costliest German tank to produce at the time. The tank weighed almost and was protected by of armour to the front. It was armed with the long barrelled (71 calibre) 8.8 cm KwK 43 anti-tank cannon. The chassis was also the basis for the Jagdtiger turretless Jagdpanzer anti-tank vehicle.Schneider 1990, p. 18.
The Tiger II was issued to heavy tank battalions of the Army and the Waffen-SS. It was first used in combat by 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion during the Allied invasion of Normandy on 11 July 1944;Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 37. on the Eastern Front, the first unit to be outfitted with the Tiger II was the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion.Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 40. Due to heavy Allied bombing, only 492 were produced.
Development
Development started in 1937 with a design contract awarded to Henschel. Another design contract followed in 1939, given to Porsche.Jentz & Doyle 1993, p. 3. Both prototypes used the same turret design from Krupp. The main differences were in the hull, transmission, suspension and automotive features.
The Henschel version used a conventional hull design with sloped armour resembling the layout of the Panther tank. It had a rear-mounted engine and used nine steel-tired, overlapping road wheels per side with internal springing, mounted on transverse torsion bars, in a similar manner to the original Henschel-designed Tiger I. To simplify maintenance, however, the wheels were only overlapping without being interleaved—the full rubber-rimmed road-wheel system that had been in use on nearly all German half-tracks used the interleaved design, later inherited by the Tiger IJentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 10–12. and Panther.
The Porsche hull designs included a rear-mounted turret and a mid-mounted engine. The suspension was the same as on the tank destroyer. This had six road wheels per side mounted in paired bogies sprung with short longitudinal torsion bars that were integral to the wheel pair; this saved internal space and facilitated repairs. 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 engine–electric generator–electric motor–drive sprocket. This method of propulsion had been used on the rejected Tiger (P) design, which had been rebuilt as , and in some US designs and was put into production in the French World War I era Saint-Chamond tank and post-World War I Char 2C. The Porsche suspension components were later used on a few of the later tank destroyers. Another proposal was to use hydraulic drives; Dr Porsche's unorthodox designs gathered little favour.Jentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 8–10.
Design
Henschel won the design contract, and all Tiger IIs were produced by the firm.Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 17 Two turret designs were used in production vehicles. The initial design is often misleadingly called the "Porsche" turret due to the misbelief that it was designed by Porsche for their Tiger II prototype; in fact it was the initial Krupp design for both prototypes. 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. Fifty early turrets were mounted to Henschel hulls and used in action. In December 1943 the more common "production" turret, sometimes erroneously called the "Henschel" turret, was simplified with a significantly thicker flat face (which eliminated the shot trap caused by the curved face of the earlier turret), and less-steeply sloped sides, which avoided the need for a bulge for the commander's cupola, and added additional room for ammunition storage.Jentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 13–16.
The turrets were designed to mount the KwK 43 L/71 gun. Combined with the 9d () monocular sight by Leitz, which all but a few early Tiger IIs used, it was a very accurate and deadly weapon. During practice, the estimated probability of a first-round hit on a high, wide target was 100 percent at , 95–97 percent at and 85–87 percent at , depending on ammunition type. Recorded combat performance was lower, but still over 80 percent at 1,000 m, in the 60s at 1,500 m and the 40s at 2,000 m. Penetration of armoured plate inclined at 30 degrees was at and respectively for the projectile (, ), and for the projectile between the same ranges. The 43 (SpGr) high-explosive round was available for soft targets, or the or 39 (, ) round, which had penetration at any range, could be used as a dual-purpose munition against soft or armoured targets.Jentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 23–24
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. A high and a low speed setting was available to the gunner via a lever on his right. The turret could be rotated 360 degrees at 6°/s in low gear independent of engine rpm, at 19°/s – the same as with the Tiger I – with the high speed setting and engine at 2000 rpm, and over 36°/s at the maximum allowable engine speed of 3,000 rpm. The direction and speed of traverse was controlled by the gunner through foot pedals, whilst a high torque low speed (useful when on slopes) or low torque high speed final gearing could be selected via a control lever near his left arm. This system allowed for very precise control of powered traverse, a light touch on the pedal resulting in a minimum traverse speed of 0.1°/s (360°/h), unlike in most other tanks of the time (e.g. US M4 Sherman or Soviet T-34 medium tanks) this allowed for fine laying of the gun without the gunner needing to use his traverse handwheel.Tigers in the Mud: The Combat Career of German Panzer Commander Otto Carius, by Otto Carious, Stackpole Books, 2003, , p. 23 If power was lost, such as when the tank ran out of fuel, the turret could be slowly traversed by hand, assisted by the loader who had an additional wheel, which could manually rotate the turret at a rate of 0.5° per revolution of the hand crank; a 20° turret rotation required 40 full cranks of the handwheel, and to turn the turret a full 360° the gunner would be required to crank the handwheel 720 full revolutions.
Like all German tanks, the Tiger II had a petrol engine; in this case the same V-12 Maybach HL 230 P30 which powered the much lighter Panther and Tiger I tanks. The Tiger II was under-powered, like many other heavy tanks of World War II, and consumed a lot of fuel, which was in short supply for the Germans. The transmission was the Maybach OLVAR OG 40 12 16 Model B, giving eight forward gears and four reverse, which drove the steering gear. This was the Henschel L 801, a double radius design which initially proved susceptible to failure. Transverse torsion bar suspension supported the hull on nine axles per side. Overlapped diameter road wheels with rubber cushions and steel tyres rode inside the tracks.Jentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 11–12. Late production Tiger Is received the same wheels, which were one of the few interchangeable parts between the two tanks.
Like the Tiger I, each tank was issued with two sets of tracks: a normal "battle track" and a narrower "transport" version used during rail movement. The transport tracks reduced the overall width of the load and could be used to drive the tank short distances on firm ground. The crew were expected to change to normal battle tracks as soon as the tank was unloaded. Ground pressure was Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 13.
Command variant The command variant of the Tiger II was designated . It had two versions, 267 and 268. These had reduced ammunition capacity (only 63 rounds of 8.8 cm ammunition) to provide room for the extra radios and equipment, and had additional armour on the engine compartment. The 267 was to have used 8 and 5 radio sets, with the most notable external changes being a rod antenna mounted on the turret roof and a Sternantenne D ("Star antenna D"), mounted on an insulated base (the ), which was protected by a large armoured cylinder. This equipment was located on the rear decking in a position originally used for deep-wading equipment. The 268 used 7 and 5 radios with a rod antenna mounted on the turret roof and a rod antenna mounted on the rear deck.Jentz and Doyle 1993, pp. 16–17.
Production The Tiger II was developed late in the war and built in relatively small numbers. Orders were placed for 1,500 Tiger IIs—slightly more than the 1,347 Tiger I tanks produced—but production was heavily disrupted by Allied bombing raids.Manchester 1968, p. 498. Among others, five raids between 22 September and 7 October 1944 destroyed 95 percent of the floor area of the Henschel plant. It is estimated that this caused the loss in production of 657 Tiger IIs.Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 17. Only 492 units were produced: one in 1943, 379 in 1944, and 112 in 1945. Full production ran from mid-1944 to the end of the war.Jentz 1996, p. 288. Each Tiger II cost .PAWLAS, Karl R. Waffen-Revue W 127 - Datenblätter für Heeres-Waffen, -Fahrzeuge und Gerät. Nurnberg : Publizistisches Archiv für Militär- und Waffenwessen, 1976. 248 p. The vehicle was the costliest German tank to produce at the time.
The Tiger II served as the basis for one production variant, the casemated tank destroyer, and a proposed 17/21/30/42 self-propelled mount for heavy guns which never reached production.
Proposed upgrades The Maybach HL234, an engine born from attempting to convert the Maybach HL230 to fuel injection, would have increased the power from 700 to at least . In January 1945 the unanimously decided that HL234 be immediately included in the engine design and procurement program. The ZF AK-7-200 gearbox was also explored as an alternative to the Maybach Olvar-B semi-automatic gearbox, but research and development department found that it offered inferior driving characteristics and so the Maybach Olvar-B was retained. There was also a program using the Simmering-Graz-Pauker Sla.16-cylinder diesel engine, but the war's constraint on supplies and Germany's capitulation resulted in the cancellation of this program. Krupp proposed mounting a new main weapon, the 10.5 cm KwK L/68. did not support this as the had not accepted the cannon. Other suggested improvements included stabilised sights, a stabilised main gun, an automatic ammunition feed, a Carl Zeiss AG stereoscopic rangefinder, heated crew compartment, stowage for an additional 12 rounds, and an overpressure and air filtration system to protect against poison gas. However, these also never got beyond the proposal stage or did not enter production before the war ended.
Specifications
Gearbox Maybach OLVAR OG 40 12 16 B (eight forward and four reverse) Radio 5, () version: 8 ( 267), 7 ( 268) Ammunition 8.8 cm – 80 rounds (early turret), 86 rounds (main production turret), usually 50% PzGr 39/43 and 50% SprGr 43, sometimes with a limited number of 40/43, or with the replaced by 7.92mm – up to 5,850 rounds Gun Sight 9b/1 (TZF 9b/1) binocular to May 1944, then the 9d (TZF 9d) monocular.Jentz and Doyle 1993, p. 19.