But experience showed that young tankers had little interest in poring over pages of dry instructions and boring schematics. The Wehrmacht was adamant that crews actually read the Tiger’s manual before charging into battle with one of the Third Reich’s most vital (and expensive) pieces of hardware. Each Tiger came with an owner’s manual Sex Sells - An example of one of the illustrations in the Tiger manual.
Mixed in with the technical schematics and maintenance info were hilarious doodles and bawdy illustrations. Its engine was so powerful that the 54-ton hulk was able to keep pace with tanks less than half its weight.Īnd in the hands of an expert commander like Otto Carius, Michael Wittmann, or Kurt Knispel, a lone Tiger could knock out dozens of enemy machines in a single engagement.Īlong with its successor, the King Tiger, it’s frequently ranked among the finest tanks of the war. Here are six little-known facts about what is probably the most written-about armoured fighting vehicle in history: German tank crews couldn’t get enough of the instruction manual for the Tiger. Its armour was so thick a crew could more or less park in front of an enemy anti-tank gun with little fear of harm. Its 88-mm main gun was so formidable that shells often blasted straight through enemy tanks and came out the other side. Any other fighting machine that was produced in such limited numbers would be quickly forgotten, but the Tiger’s impressive combat performance has left a mark on history that far outweighs the tank’s strategic significance.Įverything about the Tiger was over-engineered (to an almost absurd degree). THE PANZERKAMPFWAGEN VI or Tiger tank was never a common sight on the battlefields of World War Two.ĭuring the roughly two years that the vehicle was in production, only 1,347 were built – a number that is lower than the monthly production figures for the M4 Sherman and Soviet T-34 at the height of the war. (Image source: ) “Everything about it was over-engineered (to an almost absurd degree)… but in the hands of an expert commander a lone Tiger could knock out dozens of enemy machines in a single engagement.”
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