Tiger, Tiger, In My Sight

Tiger, Tiger, by R. E. Rogge The most fearful sight picture ever seen by an Allied tank gunner in Western Europe in 1944-1945 was undoubtedly that of the 56-ton armored box of a PzKpw VI Tiger I tank as its gun traversed toward him. The sure and certain knowledge that the Tiger’s KwK 43 L/71 88-mm main gun could punch through any Allied tank in Europe, coupled with the equally sure and certain knowledge that his own 75-mm shot would bounce off the Tiger’s frontal armor, must have frozen many a gunner to his sight in that instant before the 88 arrived.

Despite its massive armor and its tank-killing 88-mm gun, the Tiger was not invincible. The Tiger I of Hauptsturmfuehrer (Captain) Michael Wittman, who was credited with the destruction of 138 tanks and assault guns and 132 AT guns in less than two years of combat in Russia and France, was blown to bits by the concentrated fire of five Shermans, several of which were “Fireflys” armed with 76-mm high-velocity guns.

Even so, the Tiger I was a formidable opponent and earned the awed respect of all tankers who faced it in battle.

The Tiger’s massive frontal armor enabled it to deflect Allied AP shot without harm and its main gun could kill Allied tanks out to 2,000 yards. The Tiger’s 88 sent its tungsten-cored, 20-pound A€’ shot on its way at 3,340 ft/sec and that shot could penetrate 130-mm of armor at a 30-degree slope at 2,400 yards. The Shermans and Cromwells of the US. and British armored forces had 75-mm guns and 75-mm frontal armor.

The Tiger was a formidable opponent matched only by its companion, the PzKpw V Panther, whose high-velocity 75-mm gun could butter knife through a Sherman’s armor at 1,000 yards or more.

What made the Tiger such a fearsome opponent was that Shermans and Cromwells had to get within 700 yards to get a shot through the Tiger’s side or rear armor. Attacking from the front was suicidal. In tests fired against a captured Tiger I by various British and US. tank and AT guns, “In no instance was the frontal armor penetrated.”’ The Tiger I fought with distinction in Russia, Tunisia, Normandy, and in Germany. Its success in battle was enhanced by excellent construction and equipment. The Tiger’s greatest disadvantages lay in its low operating range; it consumed fuel at the rate of 2% gallons per mile and had only 125-gallons on board. Its great width required the fitting of special, narrower, tracks for rail shipment, and the Tiger’s weight and size were drawbacks to its strategic mobility. The Germans called it the “furniture van.”

(Note. The technical data herein on the Tiger I comes from two publications, except where noted. These publications originated from the detailed technical examinations of a Tiger I Model H captured in Tunisia by the British: “Preliminary Report No. 19 PzKw VI (Tiger)” and “Report on PzKw VI (Tiger) Model H.” Both were produced by the Military College of Science, School of Tank Technology, Chobham Lane, Chertsey, England, and were official publications of the British War Department. These reports are not complete (i.e., Part I1 of the main report is missing as are Parts V, VI, VII, and VIII). They are, however, the most extensive technical reports in English extant at this time. (See BOOKS section, this issue.)

The Tiger I in battle order weighed 56 tons. By comparison, the US. Sherman (M4A3E8) weighed 35 tons, and the British Cromwell, 28 tons. (The Tiger’s battle companion, the Panther, weighed 45 tons.) Most of the Tiger’s weight was in its immensely thick armor plating, which varied from 26 mm on the turret top to 110 mm on the gun mantlet and 102 mm on the front vertical and nose plates. The hull sides were cased in 63-mm armor and the top rear hull plates and engine cover plates were 26-mm thick. The Tiger was a boxy tank with little sloped armor, although the front glacis plate was sloped at 80 degrees, the front nose plate at 24 degrees, and the front vertical plate at 10 degrees. The degree of slope translates into the angle of impact for horizontal fire. All armor plating was welded. The turret traversed on a very large 70Y2-inch ring and was armored with 82-mm armor on its sides and back and 100-mm armor in front. The hull belly plate was 26-mm thick. Power to move this 56-ton behemoth and to operate its systems came from a Maybach water-cooled V-12 gasoline engine rated at 642 British HP at 3,000 rpm. The 20-ton turret drive was hydraulic, but could be operated by hand, although hand operation required 720 turns of the gunner’s traverse wheel and 595 turns of the commander’s wheel.

The Tiger’s suspension was unique in that it employed torsion bars and interleaved road wheels, 24 on each side. This wheel arrangement was the Tiger’s visual distinguishing recognition feature. To meet European standards for rail transport, the outer four wheels on each side had to be removed and narrow, 20%-inch wide tracks fitted. The battle tracks were 28%-inches wide, giving a ground pressure on the order of 14.7 pounds per square inch.

The first 495 Tigers, produced by Henschel u. Sohn GmbH, Kassel, were fitted for total submersion to a depth of 15 feet. Inflatable rubber rings and fittings sealed the hull openings, and a 13-foot snorkel air intake was fitted. Succeeding Tigers were m t equipped for total submersion but could wade 4%-foot deep streams. In all, Henschel produced 1,350 Tigers in two years.2 The Tiger had a five-man crew: commander, gunner, loader, driver and hull machine-gunnerhadio-man. The huge main gun required a lot of room inside the turret for its. 24-inch recoil and this gave turret crew members rather more room than British or American tankers. This superb fighting vehicle was both time-consuming and expensive to produce. Estimates say that 300,000 man hours and 800,000 reichsmarks (about $200,000 US. dollars at the time) were spent on each Tiger 1.3.

Organization

Tiger 1’s were valuable assets to the German armored force, but there was never enough of them to fill panzer unit TOES. Original planning had called for entire panzer divisions equipped with Tigers, but the actual numbers available required more realistic thinking. Tigers were allocated to special “heavy” battalions within selected elite (SS) panzer divisions. Theoretically, each such heavy battalion consisted of a battalion headquarters equipped with three Tigers, and four companies, each with three, four-Tiger platoons for a total of 51 Tigers. In actuality, the heavy battalions considered themselves lucky if they had enough Tigers to form the headquarters and three tank companies, or 39 tiger.^ Because of the chronic shortage of Tigers, the tanks were allocated only to elite panzer divisions. Such units as the 1st SS (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler) and 2d Panzer Grenadier Division (Das Reich), were the principal recipients of the awesome vehicles. Later, the SS divisions formed three independent heavy battalions of Tigers. They served where needed with the SS Panzer Korps in a roving-commission r0le.5 The Tiger units were purely volunteer units and there was never a lack of men. Rewards were plentiful, and at least 50 Tiger commanders wore the Knight‘s Cross to the Iron Cross. Seven of them added the Oak Leaves, a further distinction, and Wittman was one of 71 officers in the entire German armed forces to add the highly-coveted Swords and Diamonds to his Ritterkreuz.6 The honorarium “tank ace” became almost passe in Tiger units and was the cause of some resentment in the less spectacular branches of the Panzerwaffe. The Allies viewed the ‘ace’ system with some aspersion, holding that tank kills by Allied tanks (and especially Tiger kills) were the result of crew teamwork rather than the result of one crew member’s efforts. The term, however, served a useful prop aganda purpose for the Germans.

Operations

In WWI, the British made the tactical error of sending the first tanks into battle dispersed in ‘penny packets’ at Flers in 1916. The Germans followed suit in WWII in 1942 in its first employment of Tigers on the Russian Front. The 11502 Tank Company had only four Tigers and went into action on the Leningrad Front, at Hitler’s insistence, on 29 August 1942. Not only did the company suffer because too few Tigers were employed, but the four tanks were committed to battle dong a narrow forest path that denied them the chance to deploy. The Russian AT gunners stood their ground, shot off the Tigers’ treads and then pounded them with AP shot up to 122mm in caliber. The Tiger crews escaped, but returned that night to recover three of the four vehicles, blowing up the fourth to prevent its falling into Russian hands. None ofthe AP shot had penetrated the Tigers’ hulls.7 The Tiger and Panther tanks were built to defeat the Russian T-34. The first time the Tigers met that formidable enemy tank, they destroyed 12 of the 24 attacking T-34s in weather of 28 degrees below zero. From 12 January to 6 April 1943, the seven Tigers of 1/502 Tank Company destroyed no fewer than 40 Russian tanks, including T-26s, T-34s, KV-Is, KV-IIs, and SU-122s. On 11 February, this same company destroyed 32 of the 46 Russian tanks lost on the Leningrad Front that day.8 The few Tigers available in North Africa were equally impressive. In their initial engagement, they defeated the British Crusaders and the U.S. Lees of the 17/21 Lancers and the U.S. 2/13 Armored Regiment at Tebourba, near Tunis, on 1-3 December 1942. On 18 January 1943, Tigers defeated the French XIX Corps at Hamra (or Robaa). However, the French had only obsolete WWI 75-mm field guns, hardly a suitable weapon for fighting Tigers. At Kasserine Pass, a U.S. Sherman was destroyed at a recorded range of 2,700 meters.9 The Tiger proved its superiority in slugging, tank-on-tank battles, but when it could be lured into a prepared ‘killing ground,’ it could be defeated. Such a trap was set up at Hunt’s Gap in the British sector in Tunisia. There, the British had emplaced Churchill tanks (6-pounder main guns), 17-pounder AT guns, field artillery (25-pounders), and I ”The Tiger burst into view on a track and its first shot destroyed halftrack.. . # I para I le1 he lead medium artillery (5.5-inch), and employed Hurri-bombers, converted Hurricane fighters with two 40-mm cannon and two 500-pound bombs. Seven of the 14 Tigers that attacked Hunt’s Gap were destroyed, and the Germans called the place the Tiger Graveyard.

The battle at Kursk, on the Russian front, proved that Tigers could be defeated if AT gunners and tank gunners could hold their fire until the Tigers were within point-blank range. More than one hundred Tigers were destroyed, some by ramming.

Tigers fought throughout the campaign in France and North-west Europe, and it is well to single out one battle and study the Tiger’s use and tactics.

One Tiger in Action The British 7th Armored Division (the “Desert Rats” of North African fame) were tasked to take Villers-Bocage on D-Day and advance south to occupy Mt. Picon.10 Villers-Bocage lay some 19 air miles south from the beaches at Arromanches and was an important road center. Bayeaux lay to the north, Caen to the northeast, Flers to the south, and St. Lo to the west. Mt. Picon was several miles south, but Pt. 213, an important terrain feature, lay only a mile east on the Caen road from Villers-Bocage. The D-Day objective was not taken, and it was not until 0800 on 13 June that the British were in the village. The lead formation was the 22d Armored Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Robert Hindes. The 22d was the main fighting element of the 7th Armored Division and consisted of the 4th County of London Yeomanry (the Sharpshooters), two tank battalions of the Royal Tank Regiment, and the motorized 1st Infantry Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. Altogether, the brigade fielded some 190 medium tanks (Cromwells and Shermans) and 33 light tanks, mainly de-turreted Stuarts used for reconnaissance. Brigadier Hindes believed in leading from the front and had little regard for staff and administrative work - a la Rommel.’l Hindes saw the importance of Pt. 213 and ordered A Squadron, 4 CLY, and the motorized A Company of the Rifle Brigade to occupy the terrain feature and secure the east flank of Villers-Bocage. (Pt. 213 was not 213 meters above the surrounding terrain, but above sea level. Pt. 213 was perhaps 10-12 meters higher than the surrounding terrain.)

Two troops (eight tanks) of A Squadron, and a portion of the infantry deployed on the high ground and the remaining motorized infantry and tanks were parked on the road between Villers-Bocage and Pt. 213, awaiting further orders.

Lieutenant Colonel (Viscount) Arthur Cranley, commander of 4 CLY, wanted a reconnaissance beyond Pt. 213 before committing his entire brigade. He left four Cromwells of his regimental HQ in Villers-Bocage and went forward in a scout car to check his unit’s deployment on the high ground.12 The British move to occupy Pt. 213 was observed by a German tank crew whose gunner complained to his commander, “They’re acting as if they’ve won the war already.” The commander replied, “We’re going to prove them wrong.”13 The British had dismounted along the road as they awaited further orders. They knew the Germans were nearby and had tanks, but their intelligence reports had “aso-lutely no suggestion that these (German armor) included Tiger or Panther tanks.”14 Four Tiger 1’s and one PzKpw IV, armed with a high-velocity 75-mm gun, of 2 Company, 501st Heavy Tank Battalion, Captain Michael Wittman commanding, were on their way to occupy Pt. 213 when the British were sighted and the gunner’s caustic comment passed, and the commander’s equally terse reply returned.

Without waiting for his four accompanying tanks, Wittman -who had noted that the main road was too narrow for tank maneuvering

- went into action.

The Tiger burst into view on a parallel track and its first shot destroyed the lead halftrack in the British column, effectively preventing any vehicle movement. Half-tracks, carriers, and tanks were methodically destroyed by the lone Tiger as it prowled parallel to the road. The Tiger’s 88 and its two 7.92-mm machine guns blew the column to bits. Then Wittman lunged up onto the road and thundered into Villers-Bocage. He arrived unannounced, and with three 88 rounds blasted three of the Cromwells parked there. The fourth escaped by reversing down a side street and watched helplessly

- its gunner was not on board -as Wittman’s Tiger passed by within yards, exposing its flank. The savaging Tiger was unopposed as it passed through the village, but met B Squadron 4 CLY head-on at the western crossroads. After a quick exchange of shots, Wittman retired into the village, where he destroyed the fourth Cromwell. “Within the space of five minutes, a single Tiger had devastated Cranley’s force,”15 the leading element of the 22d Armored Brigade.

There was more to come. That afternoon, Wittman with all four of his Tigers and the PzKpw IV, with infantry, overwhelmed A Squadron on Pt. 213. Only one man escaped death or capture. Colonel Cranley was captured.

From Pt. 213, the German force returned to Villers-Bocage, but by now the British AT gunners (6-pounders) were ready. The PzKpw IV and three Tigers, including Wittman’s, were destroyed. The crews escaped.

The materiel damage done to the British was staggering: “at least 20 Cromwell tanks, 4 Fireflys (Shermans), 3 light tanks, 3 scout cars, 1 halftrack and many soft-skinned vehicles were destroyed. There were more than 80 infantry casualties. A Company, 1st Battalion, Rifle Brigade, and A Squadron, 4 CLY, had ceased to exist as fighting nnits.”l6 “The Germans were greatly relieved by Wittman’s stunning ac- ornplishment.” He was awarded the Swords to his Knight’s Cross. On 8 August, while attacking seven Shermans of the 4th Canadian Armored Division, and after having shot up two of them, Wittman and his crew were killed by the point-blank fire of the five surviving Shermans.

The Tiger I was so formidable that it was de rigueur to send five Shermans and expect to lose three of them when Tiger hunting. Following the German defeat at the Falaise Gap and the subsequent retreat to the Seine River which forced the abandonment of hundreds of armored vehicles -Tiger tanks were in even shorter supply than before. .By December, 1944, however, production at the Henschel plant had given the heavy tank battalions sufficient Tiger 1’s for them to take a role in the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). A cursory count gives a total of 52 Tiger 1’s in addition to a smaller number of Tiger 11’s (King Tigers).

The small number of Tiger 1’s and their dispersal among the attacking units, prevented their use en masse in any phase of the Bulge. They were, however, highly respected and whenever possible were engaged by multiple Shermans and with artillery assistance when available.

Conclusion The Tiger I was regarded as the best tank to face the Western Allies, and the few extant examples show why when it is compared with British and U.S. tanks. Despite its disadvantages, noted above, the Tiger I prompted the Americans to accelerate the development of the M26 Pershing with its 90-mm main gun to counter the Tiger’s armor and armament.

Footnotes

‘The Tiger Tanks, p. 10.

2PzKpfw VI Tiger & Tiger ZZ(King Tiger), p. 3Ibid, p. 4.

‘Ibid, p. 18.

SIbid, p. 19.

6Ibid, p. 19.

7The Tiger Tanks, pp. 21-22. 8Ibid, p. 24. gIbid, p. 26. ’“Decision in Normandy, p. 175. Hereafter “Ibid, pp. 175176.

‘ZIbid, p. 178.

13Znuasion, They’re Coming!, p. 159. “Decision, p. 178.

‘SIbid, pp. 180-181.

‘SIbid, pp. 182.

‘TIbid, p. 183.

‘8Battle of the M g e : Then & Now, pp. 17.

“Decision. ” 39-45.

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ROBERT E. ROGGE, ARMORS assistant editor, is a WW II veteran and retired after 27 years service. He served with the Canadian Army and the USAF. His articles haveappeared invarious military journals here and abroad.