Tiger II

Fixing the Tiger

Tiger II in France, 1944 (Photo: Bundesarchiv)

The Tiger II stands as the stereotypical example of German tank engineering during World War II: heavily armed and clad in almost impenetrable armor, a beast built to take on a far larger force. The stereotype also extends to the dark side of World War II German tank engineering: slow, lumbering and constantly breaking down. Or is it? This article aims to provide a fair view of the Third Reich’s biggest and heaviest tank and the successor of the already iconic Tiger I (Tiger I), the good and the bad.

A new Tiger
First a note about the name. The final official name of the vehicle was Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B, literally “Armored Fighting Vehicle Tiger, Execution (Model) B.” It was also unofficially known as Königstiger in German. Now, “König” literally means “king,” so the tank is often described as the “King Tiger,” or (especially in contemporary sources) “Royal Tiger.” However, “Königstiger” is actually the German name for a specific tiger species, the Bengal Tiger, so that’s what the English nickname really ought to be.

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Closeup of a Tiger II’s turret. Hungary, October 1944
(Photo: Bundesarchiv)

Why was the Tiger II needed? After all, its predecessor was already extremely heavily armed and armored. The answer is that the Tiger I had two main problems. One, it was rushed into production and service against the Soviet T-34 medium and KV-1 heavy tanks, which proved better than the Germans anticipated. As a consequence, the Tiger I suffered from many teething problems and was not very reliable. Two, the Tiger I was not suited for further upgrades. Its turret was too small to accommodate newer and larger guns, and its boxy design (all surfaces being horizontal or vertical) meant that making armor plates thicker would have increased its weight far beyond the capacity of its engine and already stressed suspension system.

Armed and armored
The Tiger II had a larger turret that could hold the new KwK 43 gun, a descendant of the Tiger I’s KwK 36, and, ultimately the famous 8.8 cm flak gun. The KwK 43 had the same caliber as the KwK 36, but had a longer barrel to accelerate shells to a higher velocity, and had a larger breach that allowed the use of larger canisters with more propellant for even more power. (The main gun was supplemented by a secondary armament of two MG 34 or 42 machine guns.)

A Tiger II captured by American troops
(Photo: U.S. Army)

The boxy armor layout was abandoned in favor of sloped plates that already proved their worth on the Panther and various Allied tanks. Sloped armor increases the effective thickness without an increase in actual thickness, since the incoming shot hits the plate at something other than right angle, and therefore has to penetrate more steel. Having said that, the Tiger II also increased actual thickness, with 7.1 in (180 mm) of steel on the front of the production turret, and 5.9 in (150 mm) on the upper part of the front hull.

Design changes
The tank was born from the same initially convoluted design process for a German heavy tank that began in 1937 and begat the Tiger I. The selection of the final design echoed the selection process of the Tiger I in many ways. Like before, there were two companies vying for the contract: Henschel and Porsche. Like before, Ferdinand Porsche lost out on the contract because of his obsession with ostensibly powerful but horribly overengineered solutions which required too much high-grade copper: one of his designs called for two separate drivetrains, one for each side, both using a complex gasoline-electric system. And, like before, Henschel won the contract with a more traditional entry.

Wooden mockup of a Tiger II
(Photo: Bundesarchiv)

Two different turret designs existed for the Tiger II. These are sometimes misleadingly called the “Porsche” and “Henschel” turrets, even though both were designed and manufactured by the Krupp corporation. Initially, 50 “Porsche” turrets were made, but they were used on both the Porsche and Henschel prototypes, and ended up on early Henschel hulls. These turrets had a distinctive curved front and a difficult-to-manufacture curved bulge on the left side to accommodate the commander’s cupola. The curved front was actually very good at deflecting incoming shells; the problem was that if the shell hit it below the centerline, it was deflected downwards into the turret ring, immobilizing the turret.

The very first “Porsche type” turret ever produced. You can see the curve in the front and the bulge of the commander’s cupola. The circular porthole under the cupola allowed the commander to fire a submachinegun.
(Photo: Jentz and Doyle)

The “Henschel” turret did away with the curved front in favor of a thick flat plate. It was also bulkier, but that meant it no longer needed a bulge for the cupola, and it could hold more ammunition. (Even though storing ammo in the turret was eventually forbidden due to safety concerns.) Like in the Tiger I’s turret, the gun and its barrel were slightly offset to the right to better accommodate interior equipment.

Tiger II with the “Henschel” production turret at the Munster Tank Museum in Germany (Photo: Author’s own)

Another big change (other than the previously mentioned sloped armor) was the simplification of the Tiger I’s notorious interleaved roadwheel system. The new arrangement only had two layers of overlapping wheels on each side. This way, the crew only had to remove two wheels to get to an inner one, rather than up to nine.

General Eisenhower inspecting an upturned Tiger II in the Falaise pocket. You can see the relatively simplified roadwheel layout. (Photo: Acme News Photos)

Some notable features remained the same. Like the older version, the Tiger II had two tracks: a narrow one which could fit on a train during transport, and a wider “battle track” which distributed the tank’s weight over a larger surface area.

Another thing the Tiger II inherited from its predecessor was the hydraulic turret motor that allowed the turret to traverse at various speeds. At low gear, the turret could rotate a full 360° in one minute regardless of engine rpm; at high speed, it could rotate around in 19 seconds at 2,000 engine rpm, or, theoretically, in 10 seconds when the engine was at 3,000 rpm. Highly accurate gun laying could be accomplished by depressing the controlling foot pedal less, allowing the turret to traverse as slowly as 0.1° per second, making it unnecessary to use a manually operated handwheel when lining up a target.

Tiger II prototype at the Bovington Tank Museum in England, with a “Porsche turret” (Photo: Author’s own)

Another inheritance, this one of dubious quality, was the 690 horsepower Maybach HL 230 P30 gasoline engine. Now, the engine itself was actually rather good; the problem was that it was fitted first into 57-ton Tiger I, then the 77-ton Tiger II, which was far heavier than anything it was designed to propel. As a result, the Tiger II was very underpowered. It had a top road speed of 25.8 mph, a sustained road speed of 24 mph, and an underwhelming cross-country speed of around 9.3 to 12.4 mph. It was a gas guzzler, but still had an operational range comparable to its lighter predecessor thanks to larger fuel tanks: 110 miles (170 km) on good roads and 75 miles (120 km) cross country. A more powerful engine was proposed but rejected.

The same happened to the 10.5 cm KwKL/68 gun, even more powerful than the Tiger II’s default KwK 43, but a weapon the army decided not to adopt at all. Other rejected proposals for improvement included stabilized sights and main gun, an autoloader, a heated crew compartment, and an overpressure and filter system to keep poison gas outside.

The Tiger II also had a command vehicle version which mounted additional radio equipment at the cost of lower ammunition capacity.

Rear view of a command Tiger II with antennas at the back
(Photo: W. Trojca)

Another departure from the standard Tiger II was the Jagdtiger heavy tank destroyer. Built on a slightly lengthened Tiger II chassis, the Jagdtiger did away with the turret in favor of a fixed casemate mounting a 12.8 cm Pak 44 anti-tank gun. It was the heaviest armored fighting vehicle to see operational service in World War II and could easily outrange and defeat any Allied opponent, but only 70 to 88 were built, and was plagued with mobility and mechanical problems.

The Tiger II in combat
In combat, the Tiger II’s gun could knock out any Allied tank from the front at an impressive range of 1.6 miles (2.5 km), well beyond the effective range of Allied guns. The exceptions were “Jumbo” version of the Sherman (The M4 Sherman), some late versions of the Churchill (The Tortoise in the Race), and the M26 Pershing, which only arrived late in the war and in small numbers. Likewise, its armor was all but invulnerable, and no Tiger II had its front armor penetrated during the war. A British study showed that their 17-pounder gun, the type mounted on the Sherman Firefly, might be theoretically capable of penetrating parts of the Tiger II’s front armor from a range of 1,100 to 1,200 yards (1,000 to 1,100 m), but no such event occurred in practice.

An American soldier examining a hole in the side of a Tiger II’s turret. You can see the massive shell for the tank’s main gun leaning against the turret.
(Photo: U.S. Army)

In order to simplify manufacture and maintenance, the Tiger II was designed to many components with the Panther medium tank and the planned but never-built Panther II.

While the Tiger II was a terror in battle, getting there wasn’t so easy. Early production tanks suffered from numerous leaking seals and gaskets, an overburdened drive train and a breakdown-prone steering system, but most of these were eventually fixed. The new tracks, which had different links than those of the Tiger I, were vulnerable to sideway stresses when driving on slopes, and only every second tooth of the wheel sprockets engaged with the tracks, causing a constant yanking that led to rapid wear and damage to the drive system. Early on, the problem was amplified by poorly trained drivers who didn’t know how to reduce wear and tear by careful driving. Nevertheless, the Tiger II was remarkable agile for its weight, and both German and Allied sources claimed its tactical mobility was as good as or better than most other German or Allied tanks’. It was notably less likely to sink into soft ground than lighter American tanks.

A Tiger II used for training in Switzerland after the war
(Photo: koenigtiger.ch)

An even bigger problem, however, was the lack of gasoline late in the war and the inability to fix wear-and-tear. Like the Tiger I, the Tiger II was a “breakthrough tank,” designed to act as the spearhead of an offensive. It was only supposed to advance and fight for a short time, just until it punched a gap in the enemy lines. Once that happened, lighter, longer ranged, more mobile vehicles would take over and exploit the gap, while the Tiger would sit back and get repaired. By the second half of the war, however, Germany was on the defensive on all fronts. Instead of quick bursts of action, Tigers (and other German tanks) were constantly rushed from one section of the frontline to another to meet Allied attacks, giving them no respite. As a result, many Tiger IIs were either blown up or simply abandoned by their crews once they ran out of gas or broke down with no opportunity to refuel or get spare parts. It’s hard to get reliable numbers on just how many of the 492 Tiger IIs built were destroyed or otherwise lost during the war (certainly “most”), but one estimate claims that only 43% of the casualties were combat losses.

The Tiger II first saw combat on July 18, 1944, in Normandy during the British-Canadian attempts to capture the city of Caen. (Capturing Caen – Part I) Two of the company’s tanks were lost, and the commander’s tank was irretrievably trapped in a bomb crater. The type was first used on the Eastern Front a month later, on August 12, when three were ambushed and destroyed by a few T-34s. Despite the inauspicious beginnings, the Tiger II soon proved itself to be a fearsome adversary. In October, during the Battle of Debrecen in Hungary, the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion took out at least 121 Soviet tanks, 244 anti-tank guns, three aircraft and five trains, at the cost of 25 Tiger IIs (13 of which were blown up by their own crews to prevent capture).

Untersturmführer Karl Bromann posing with his Tiger II. Each painted ring on the barrel represents a kill. (Photo: W. Schneider)

Tiger IIs were also present at the Battle of the Bulge (some 150 tanks, a third of all produced, most were lost), and various major battles on the Easter Front including Operation Spring Awakening, Hitler’s final major counteroffensive. (Spring Awakening)

The Tiger II today
Several Tiger IIs are still around today. Only one is in working condition, at the Musée des Blindés in Saumur, France, which can be seen sometimes during D-Day anniversaries and other commemorative events. Two Tiger IIs, one of them a prototype, are on display at the Bovington Tank Museum, a location we visit on our Britain at War Tour or the London to Channel Islands Tour. A production model is at the Deutsches Panzermuseum in Munster, a site on our Third Reich Tour. Several other specimens remain, including one in the Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia and one at Fort Benning in the States, plus one at the Belgian La Gleize which you can see on our Battle of the Bulge Anniversary Tour.