In reading a recent acquisition to my collection of books I brought another tiger book and found out some info which was new to me.
Originally they were looking at the KwK42/7.5cm gun for the Tiger which had pretty good all round ballistics the gun barrel being 70 calibers in length.
Its Pzgr39 7.5cm 15lb (6.8kg) round could penetrate 4.4" (110mm) armour at 30 degree slope at 1000m, the Pzgr.40 7.5cm 4.75kg (10.5lb) Tungsten cored could penetrate 5.9" (150mm) at a 1000m. The KwK36 8.8cm could penetrate 4" (100mm) and 5.45"(138mm) respectively at a 1000m.
The difference being in the MV the 7.5cm were 3035fps for the Pzgr.39 and the Pzgr.40 4265fps the KwK 36 8.8cm was slower at 2536fps for the 8.8cm Pzgr.39 and 3015fps for the Pzgr.40 rounds.
If the 7.5cm had been installed instead of the 8.8cm the Tiger may have been nearly 20 tonne +- lighter in the vicinity of 40-45 tonnes making it a bit more maneuverable and faster which was an issue for the heavy tank. Here we had Herr H*tler intervene wanting the 8.8cm which cast the die for the size of the turret and subsequent beefing up of the whole tank.
Another fact the tanks armour was all welded yep that's ok but it was not until 1944 the Germans started to use oxy acetalyne to cut the plates all previous construction was milling the armoured plate with tungsten bits so intensive labour made the cost of each tank 250,000RM.
As an example the belly plate made of homogeneous armour was milled from a single plate of steel 16ft (5m) x 6ft (1.6m) x 1in (25.4mm).
In the end the Tiger was best suited to entrenched positions on a battle field as allot of the doctrine by the engineers clearing mine fields was not followed and allot of Tigers were disabled by A/T mines and being stationary a swarm of T-34's could eliminate the threat.
Right to the end of the war the Tiger presented a problem anytime it was encountered and a Tiger under Michael Wittman at Villiers Bocage proved beyond a doubt what a well handled Tiger tank could do.
And there were Fireflys in there as well which were taken out in fact the author mentions Pat Dyas's encounter with Wittmanns Tiger the former in a M-4 with its 75mm popgun.
Pat reversed into a building when he saw Wittmanns Tiger coming and waited till Wittmann tracked by which then Pat would come out from hiding and stove pipe the Tiger in the flank.
Plan was well conceived & executed Pat came out to attack the Tiger only to find Wittmann had seen the ruse and turned his Tiger around as soon as he past Pats hiding spot.
In Pats words we came out and turned left expecting to see the rear of the Tiger "We did not see its flank, we came head to head with the Tiger at 200yds which was not nice for ones constitution."
"We fired twice and the shots just bounced of his armour."
"He fired once which did not bounce off it penetrated the hull killing 3 of my crew and blowing me out of the turret....."
Thats the way it was send 4 Shermans to get a Tiger and maybe lose 3 it was that simple or call the Tiffies.
In fact Woll Wittmanns long time gunner had earned the knights cross not a bad feat for a private Woll had command of his own Tiger but rejoined Wittmann for some reason which is history now as not long afterwards they were all dead after being stove piped by a hidden Sherman Firefly.
There were only approximately 1300 Tigers made all told, in Russiathe Tigers kill ratio was sometimes up to 36/1, also 35 times more Shermans were made than the Tigers.
What would the result have been if they did not have a few idiots leading the lot and 30,000 Tiger tanks............
As a footnote in WWII A trained gunner in a Tiger was expected to hit on the first round a stationary target at 1200m, at 2000m he was expected to hit it on the 4th round, against a target doing 20mph across his front at a range of 800-1200m the gunner was expected to hit on the 3rd round, and within 30 seconds for each round no ballistic computers for these guys he would be either in manual tracking the target or firing off the stadia in the sight.
My books on the Tiger there is one I did not picture and that was Tigers in the mud By Otto Carius.Information
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