@@aleksazunjic9672 I am not against upstanding companies supporting a very good yt channel , i am just against giving fraudulent companies airtime when they should rather be held accountable for their fraudulent actions.
Question: Isn't that, with Tiger 2, that it simple wasn't as big of a shock to allied forces as Tiger 1 was? Tiger 1 was, for its time, a massive , heavily armored tank with very good gun - a potent opponent. But when they start using Tiger 2 then allied forces has already develop tactics and ways to deal with with such tank, so its impact on the battlefield was way lower?
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I find the King Tiger with the production turret a much nicer tank to look at than the Tiger I. When I was young I only knew about the first Tiger (the one you see throughout pop culture productions). Since I found out about the King Tiger, I've always been baffled by the comparative lack of interest in it. Yes, it probably did not produce results that justified the costs made to produce it, but that hasn't stopped all sorts of even goofier late war German AFVs getting inordinate amounts of attention.
I stood in front of several tanks. A T34, the King Tiger you see in the video, a Panther, a Tiger, and some others. These things are intimidating. There's nothing nice about them in real life. They were designed and built to kill and destroy. I get what you intend to say, the design is appealing to the eye, but I find it disturbing to refer to tanks as nice.
Thing is, King Tiger did not impress enemy nearly as much as Tiger I . When Tiger I appeared on the battlefield, Soviets had 76.2mm and US 75 mm guns that could not penetrate Tiger in most combat situations. When King Tiger arrived, there were tons of things flying at him (Soviet 122mm, 85mm, later 100mm , US 90mm, British 17pdr , US 76 mm with APCBC ...)
I totally agree with Military History Visualized as to the lack of training effecting the breakdown rates of vehicles, be they tanks or otherwise. I was in a unit that when we first received out new FMTV transport vehicles we never received the proper training or complete volumes of the operators or maintenance manuals. This led to numerous problems with improper maintenance and breakdowns when improperly towing the vehicles. Much damage to transmissions was done to some vehicles because of ignorance of the proper procedures. Bear in mind that these were mere transport vehicles, not complex AFVs.
@@squashbanana2926 I am from the U.S.I was in a National Guard Aviation Squadron at the time, which units like ours were usually the last to get new vehicles and technical manuals. As we had to turn in our older, but familiar 2 1/2 ton and 5 ton cargo trucks right before our annual training event, the time for familiarization and driver training was short. We learned the hard way through on the job (OJT) training.
Or better yet, from the lack of time or spare moments for these heavy Panzer units constantly given enormous tasks and missions. Rarely Tigers could be pulled from the frontlines even for a brief period of maintenance, since already so few was available at the front, either they had to stood fast the whole time, or immediately pack up and head to other threatened places. Moreover, some procedures were willfully skipped or substituted (poorly) as a result of lacking time and resources. The King Tigers were like the really overburdened worker in a really understaffed place, even the most experienced and hard-working workers would break down eventually.
The Tiger 2 isn't THAT big for the reputation it has, but in general, even stuff like Panzer IIs are a lot bigger than you'd expect them to be. This information isn't very well known, but tanks are quite big :)
Except that US army never actually operated like that. The smallest unit of Shermans were 5 of them. And late war a bunch of Shermans shot a pair of King Tigers to shit even if their guns could not go through. They just slammed round after round into them untill they got turret rings blocked ( one of the Tigers got the cannot shot up ) and the crew bailed out ( one of which after they reversed into a house and got stuck ). So forget about those mythical 1 vs 1 duels on a plane field.
@@bigwezz Except that Shermans never fought 1 vs 1 and that it legit happened that two king tigers saw a bunch of shermans long range, they fired and missed and the Sherman return fire knocked out BOTH king tigers. Happened in late war, with one of those king tigers is displayed outside with the cannon barrel cut off by the gun fire. You can forget your mythical 1 vs 1 long rage duels, that germany army fanboys love bragging about.
@@Absaalookemensch The smallest tactical unit was a platoon. 5 Shermans. Again you can imagine any wehraboo fantasy story of nazi glory in 1 vs 1 tank duels over 2km. It did not happen.
The armor quality of late-war tanks is a nearly insignificant issue that has been blown way out of proportion by anime profile WT sponsored "tank experts" in the last ~8 years. The infamous Tiger II Kubinka test is often brought up as proof of bad German steel, the main culprit of this myth is our favorite buffoon "expert" TankieArchives, who released a seemingly thoroughly researched article based on Soviet documents. In reality however, he skipped past half the documentation and took phrases and pictures out of context to create the illusion of "terrible" German steel. Very common behavior that we've come to expect of him. According to TankieArchives, the Tiger II is ripped apart by a single 122mm HE shell to the UFP and then finished off by a 122mm AP and two APBC shells. Sophisticated commentary such as "blown apart!" and "torn to pieces!" is added by Tankie. What our expert fails to mention, is that the first HE shell failed to defeat the armor and only the new BR-471R shell managed to actually penetrate the (weakened from the previous two AP hits) UFP plate, at a range of 600m, and that same shell failed failed to penetrate this weakened plate from 700m. The Soviets shoot the LFP twice with no results, Tankie is disappointed and has little to say. After this, the tank is shot at 29 times by various calibers including 100mm, 152mm and even captured 88mm guns. Tankie skips past all of them. Instead he presents shot #34 as being shot #8. The AP shell hits the severely weakened turret face and causes a piece to break off. Tankie crows about the "vicious" result and lectures us about the perils of terrible overhardened German steel. The final shot is taken at a range of 3400 meters against the broken turret face. It causes a crack but fails to penetrate. Tankie clearly wished for more, so he is disappointed by the result and has little to say. Tankie also does not appear to understand how the construction of a shell influences the way it penetrates armor. Uncaped Soviet shells tend to defeat plating through shear failure, while German capped shells defeat armor through ductile hole growth. The large caliber and uncapped nature of 122mm+ guns, tend to cause cracks to welds and plate, as is to be expected. The caveat is that they have worse penetration and decreased stability during flight. Tankie does not know any of this, because his expertise comes from WoT and WT. Finally, Tankie forgot to tell the readers that these tests were done in -10c ambient temperature, which further decreased the ductility of the armor. I could write another 5k words about his disaster of an article, but I think I've made my case. Anyone looking for more can make their own research.
And yet not a single KT was frontally penetrated during the war. Its honestly the copers who bring up post war tests under ideal conditions who are the WT simulation bros like yourself. Reality is different from the game however.
@@off6848 i'm not sure i understood your comment properly, but the original comment basically said that yeah there was a slight degree of degradation in the quality of the armor, but it's not a significant amount, and absolutely not as bad as people say today, and expecially for the people who believe the kubinka tests which are extremely biased and very badly interpreted like the first comment explained, and even worse the soviets said that they were not impressed by the tiger 2 armor because when they hit a spot that had already been hit the armor didn't resist the shot.... which doesn't make any sense, but the general internet doesn't think, it just takes what it likes and tries to demolish what it dislikes
@@willghezzi There is more to it. Other nations including the US also had trouble with variations in steel quality of plates and castings, this was not just a german Problem. Futhermore the test by the US showed that the late war Panther Gs (without face hardening and substitudes), showed better results against capped rounds than a Panther D.
We usually focus on the worst of performances when discussing late war german tanks. Which is good for the total picture and putting something up against those legendary myths of German super weopons. But what is messing for me, is reports about what happened when the stars aligne and experienced crews meet good production vehicles and good maintenance. Militär und Geschichte recently published a after action report of A Tiger II battalion which operated on the Easter front late 1944. They drove their Tiger IIs around 240 km in unfavorable wether conditions with very soft ground into and behind enemies lines with only limited technical issues and great results. They hold the Tiger II in high regards and blamed most of the issues which happened while fielding those tanks, to the lack of understanding of the higher ranking leader ship, which do not understand the limits and needs of a heavy tank in combat. They blamed the higher level leadership, which had wrong expectations and not the tank itself. Only a few complained about the weight and acceleration of the tank.
Interesting. Well to be fair early German tanks were rather underpowered as well. And what many forget is the fantastic ability to traverse rough terrain and obstacles or loose ground that the Tigers and Panthers had thanks to their suspension and wide tracks.
Tests in Sweden also proved it was a tank with good mobility. And yeah, the main point of your comment is what people can't understand the most. The main problem was a collapse of economy, production and logistics of Germany. This is what caused lack of spare parts, fuel, maintenance, damage of parts from sabotage from forced labor etc. every other tank would have the same problems because it was not matter of design but outside issues. If Germans fielded IS-2 or Churchill or Pershing instead of Tiger II the outcome would be the same. And people here would be writing essays on how horrible these vehicles were instead of understanding where the problems came from...
@@czwarty7878 the is 2 for example was only garantueed for 1000km by the manufacturer in summer 1944. Thats even lower than the expected servicelife of a Panther in spring 1944 which was rated at 1000 to 1500kms at this point. There are a lot of double standards applied in those discussions.
Fragment from the after action report OP mentions: "The two combat groups [equipped with Tiger IIs] operated with great success: from 19/10/1944 until 23/10/1944 they destroyed 120 anti tank guns and 20 field pieces. The tenacious and steadfast enemy (a penal battalion) was shocked by our determined advance; the enormous confusion created in their rearguard by the destruction of several convoys and transport units finally caused the 6th. army to retreat from the Debrecen. The distance travelled during these operations, aprox. 250 km, was reached without any mechanical complications of note. During these operations the Tiger II fulfilled perfectly what was expected of it in terms of armor protection and mechanical reliability. Tanks hit by up to 20 impacts without suffering loss were no exception." "When a Tiger unit is employed in a concentrated manner and under the correct tactical principles _it will always achieve decisive results_ "
Like to add that the report also was from the Eastern Front of the war, which was the arena they were designed with. - Many superficial WW2 commenters tend to take an overly Western Allied-centric perspective when viewing German late war equipment and scoring them exclusively with battles in Normandy and such rather than the Eastern Front accounting 70-80% of German forces. Giving arguments like the German heavies being difficult to navigate in narrow European town streets or unable to cross small European bridges, and not to mention being vulnerable to fighter bombers, somehow very fatal flaws for these tanks - when most of the Tigers and Panzers sent to the Eastern Front rarely encountered and performed as expected in large open fields against hordes of T34. For some reason, once the war got to 1944, some ppl only remember Normandy and France and forgot about the Soviets, only to suddenly remember them back when they enter Berlin.
Do it. The building is not perfect for the collection (they Plan to change that soon) but the collection is really great. Not only WW2 but also a lot of sowet (ex NVA) army vehicles and quite modern stuff
The Panzermusuem in Munster is a must for all tank nerds. I spent two 6 hour days there when I went. I spent a lot of cash at the gift shop too on reference books and the like. The cafe across the street had good burgers and some really choice beers. Thanks for the video!
Material sciences was not yet advanced enough at the time. Look at current modern tanks most of them are at the same weight class as the maus yet are more heavily armoured and are much faster than ww2 light tanks.
If you are not compromised somewhere,it means you are not trying hard enough somewhere else.You could make it more reliable if you accepted a smaller gun or thinner armour or delayed delivery until you have ironed out all the snags and the war is over .It’s always like this.
20:18 this is very important aspect to realise when reading critical reports of military equipment tested by another nation, and to always take it with grain of salt. I can recall multiple equipment reports that were devastating to otherwise proper or even very good equipment. First example can be tests of Shermans, Bazooka and Thompson SMGs by Soviets. All extremely critical, yet we know that first two were absolutely great pieces of technology, and the last one while not the best, was really an okay weapon. Despite this, reports were very critical. Other examples can be also tests of allied tanks by Germans, also very critical of them, but again mostly because they didn't understand their applications and evaluated them according to their own tactical needs. The final and most jarring example I can give is evaluation of StG44 by US ordnance experts in 1945, where they called it "weapon combining flaws of rifle and SMG and having no advantages of either", and the intermediate cartridge itself "a dead end in field of firearm development". Obviously we now know that both these statements were ridiculously wrong, and the last one was finally proven wrong very brutally 20 years later by employment of Soviet intermediate cartridge weapons in Vietnam, but if you knew nothing about this and had no way to test it yourself - you'd believe these experts, right? Well this is basically what we're forced to do with reports of German tanks by allied nations. Not much ways to test their veracity, but I think they should really be treated with big grain of salt exactly because of that. Reports of other nations can be taken as one of many sources to create final evaluation, but should absolutely never be used as the only one. They should always be taken critically and compared to reports of crews that were trained for these vehicles, whose reports are more likely to be closer to truth.
@FaceFish9 How can you say this? What more could you want? It objectively kicks the shit out of anything comparable, with greater frontal armor and similar penetration to anything in its class. Meanwhile compared to the behemoths, it was far more tactically viable and had no significant issues dealing with them most of the time. And of course as infantry support it was phenomenal.
@@coaxill4059 But that is the point- US doctrine of Tank Destroyers and Infrantry support tanks pretty much failed- thus modifications to shermans to be more viable fighting other tanks, and making them, well, tanks. For the US- this was somewhat ok, because in 1944 they were leaps ahead of germans in terms of logistics, air support, and economy, shermans were already produced en masse, and Germany was in deep defensive, with USSR closing in from the East. However creation of t29 and rushed pershing(and later improved patton) clearly shows, that US faced with reality of Europe tank warfare needed tanks more in line with russian or german counterparts. They were fielded too late however. Shermans weren't a bad vehicle, just a bad tank(excluding ok-ish, i nterms of firepower,variant with long guns), that already were in mass production, and US joining the war as late as it did- wasn't able do develop and field a tank that suited their needs- though they almost made it with pershing.
@WielkaDraka And yet when they had access to both, many us tankers in Korea actually preferred the Sherman because against T34 tanks it was pretty much perfect. Plus you can see how over time, the standard set by the Sherman would stand the test of time unlike any contemporaries. The Leopard with its thin armor and stabilizer became very popular among western powers, and still today we prioritize frontal armor, stabilization, repairability and mobility above extreme thorough armor protection and maximum caliber. In order to believe the Sherman had the wrong idea, you'd have to believe that all western militaries are full of idiots who based their development on bad doctrine and bad vehicles and somehow succeed anyway. Instead, it's obvious to me that however impressive the IS and Tiger II were, they represented a hard dead end.
I would say that it is both. People overhype it's battle ability but don't pay enough attention to the engineering that it pioneered and developed for later tanks
@@IvanTre When exactly did US tankers fight Tiger 2s in Normandy? The earliest reference I could find of T2s in France was s.SS.Pz.Abt. 101 on August 20th. First combat was an attack on Guitrancourt on August 23rd, well after Normandy and not attacking US troops.
@@iamsnakemasterthe first was the tank company 316 under the Panzer Lehr Division. They had 5 examples. The first full combat unit was the heavy tank brigade 503 which used them since 11th of july
Regarding the turret discussion; I think calling the preproduction turret Porscheturm as a colloquial shorthand is fine, because ultimately that turret was only ever put into production because of Porsche, so even while he did not design it, he is a causal actor in having it ever be built; but calling the production turret Henschelturm is complete bunk.
Thank you so much for this informative video. Whenever I want to know about German equipment from any war, I almost always will look for content produced by Germans (Or German speakers). Why? Because they can read German war documents. And that is why I always turn to this channel for great videos on German tanks of WWII, the research is always good.
I'm so glad to finally hear an explanation for the naming of the turrets for Porsche and Henschel! And funnily enough, like many conceptions about second world war armour, it's been the standard for years, then people start to point out why that's wrong, and finally the reasonable middle ground between the misconception and the overreaction is found. If we're honest, it's pretty reasonable to call the early turrets 'Porsche turret', since they were ordered by Porsche, for the Porsche contender. At the same time, it's not actually a Porsche design. I'm still on board with calling them pre-production and production turrets, but some of the hot takes exclaiming "they had nothing to do with Porsche" are clearly wrong
@@optionalcoast7478I think he's making fun of the guys misstatement of mm instead of m. Traveling 1000 mm a second would make it slower than running speed.
I am in the camp which thinks the King Tiger is a beautiful machine to look at. I also agree with those who claim the major Tiger failings are caused by Germany being on the losing side. The exigencies of the war call upon Tigers to be plugged into situations they don't belong. Nor can German logistics support them in those roles. Why? Because they are losing the war.
indeed. Had they had more time to properly develop the thing to work out the kinks you always have in a new design, properly train their people and set up a good logistics system to support them, they could be a lot more effective. And also by the time these machines arrived on the front, the allies had air supremacy meaning they couldn't drive during the day or they were attacked by rocket-armed Typhoons or similar aircraft.
Munster, the town of my birth, although it was in the British Military Hospital Munster (BMH), my dad was serving at Gutersloh, not far from Munster, but I was nearly born in the back of a military ambulance as the Autobahn was being severely hampered by a blizzard and, according to mum, it was a close run thing. I have wondered from time to time 🕰️ if I was born in the ambulance would that have made me, in any way, a German, obviously being born in a BMH I am British 🇬🇧 as it is legally British 🇬🇧 soil, but not so sure about a British military vehicle. Another funny thing (to me anyway) my dad was an Armourer and during his tour at Gutersloh he worked in the ejection seat bay and 3Sqn, many years later I was posted to Gutersloh and when my mum and dad came out for a visit we discovered to our amazement that the bay (workshop) I was working in was the same one he did during his time in the ejection seat bay, and after I picked my chin up of the floor he just very dryly said “I thought they might have changed the Lino (linoleum/floor covering) by now) and he was being serious, but I couldn’t stop laughing and giggling for ages. One last bit of useless information, RAF Gutersloh was originally Flugplatz Gutersloh during WWII, and when the aircraft hangers were built they built in a round block of concrete (I presume) that sat in a niche cut into the supporting walls, the main structural beams were then laid on top of the round block and the rest of the structure was built on top, the purpose of the block was so that in the event the Nazis (as opposed to the German people) were going to be overrun/defeated a small charge could be detonated and destroy the blocks and some of the rest of the main structure that would ensure the whole roof collapsed into the rest of the building, now I don’t know how true that was, it could have been just an urban myth, however I can’t think of any other plausible reason why the architects/builders would have built the building the way it was, perhaps someone with more knowledge of the military architecture before,during and after WWII could enlighten me. I know very little about Tanks/AFVs and what little I do know has been gleaned from RUclips, and from what little I know about the king Tiger I would say that it was overrated for multiple reasons, the overall weight, the Transmission issues and the complexity of in the field repairs/maintenance work made it unreliable, I even saw one video that stated that King Tiger crews had to abandon their tanks to the enemy just because of broken tracks or transmission failure, whether that is true or not I can’t say but it sounds like a feasible issue to me. I think that on the positive side of things (again from what little I know) the armaments were excellent and the “squeaky bum factor” (fear it might engender” would be palpable, I can imagine an allied tank commander on the R/T Saying “oh crap 💩, King Tiger/Tiger directly to the front of my position” or words to that effect but not quite so calmly and in a high pitched scream, closely followed by “reverse,reverse………..get this bloody thing going…..reverse” to the driver, but probably said in Russian as I believe (again through RUclips) most King Tigers were sent to the Eastern Front, and many of the reported contacts with them on the Western Front being early Tigers or Panthers, not as bad as a fully functional King Tiger but still a very formidable tank that was not easily destroyed by many allied tanks/anti tank artillery shells, with the exception being the up-gunned allied tanks like the “Firefly” Most, if not all, of my comment is from watching RUclips videos, and for all I know I could be absolutely wrong, but nonetheless I found this video really interesting and informative, thanks very much for your excellent work, effort and time 🕰️ you put into this and the other videos you have uploaded, thanks again. P.S Sorry for my very long and probably not very interesting comment, I have a mental health issue that I take some pretty powerful medication for, and one of the side effects is that I loose track of how much I have written and what it is about, so please forgive me, I promise I have put my soapbox away, vented my spleen and finished telling everyone my very uninteresting life events about my RAF service. Per Ardua Ad Astra. Lest We Forget, I Salute the Greatest Generation.
I found myself grabbing an old book of mine, "Epic Land Battles of History" that contains a double-page cutaway drawing of a King Tiger showing the final drive
I remember hearing that around half of the tanks were actually disabled or their nearly complete production ruined by a series of airstrikes in 1944. I’d be interested to know if the extra 200 tanks being in the field would change our understanding or evaluation of them.
Probably as they were only deployed on the Western Front in extremely limited (that always corresponded with a major operation) so having more would mean more chance encounters, thus more rumors spreading of Allied Tanks getting destroyed by a Super Tiger
Oh most certainly. Of course, if you look at the way we've come to measure their effectiveness vs the way it was done at the time, our way is ridiculous. If I'm driving in a Sherman, bumbling into a King Tiger is a death sentence. I don't care if they "technically didn't always get extreme kill ratios" because most were taken out from the air or by infrastructure (fuel, replacements, repairs) not being available. It's like how every genius out there calls the Jagdtiger a big dumb waste that was awful. Those people are kidding themselves. Have you seen one rolling? They're as big as a house. Seeing one rolling down a street is terrifying. More importantly, when they actually saw combat they had like a 32:1 k/d ratio. That's absolutely worth building for a country that is massively outnumbered. I often wonder what the numbers for German armored vehicles would be if we didn't insist on marking "surrendered, broke down, abandoned, etc" as combat losses.
@@gratefulguy4130 Love it when people like you come and get that " MuH Kd " comment. Invalidates your entire comment. Plus, late war, a bunch of Shermans literally walked into the sights of 2 king tigers at range and the Shermans won with no losses. One of those king tigers is in an open air museum.
@@Vlad_-_-_ The question isn't whether it would have made a difference in the war, the question is whether the presence of a few hundred extra units would have made a difference to the psyches of allied forces. Would it have better been able to earn a reputation if there were more to use?
I just went to the Tank Museum in Munster a couple weeks ago and I was standing in front of that exact tank. Personally, I was very impressed with the German WW2 Big Three: the Tiger 1, the King Tiger and the Panther. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip there, BUT if you are planning to go there, you should note it is in Munster and NOT Münster (that’s over a three hour drive difference if you make a mistake). A very fun place to go-thank you, DPM!!!
Tempering is strictly a heat treatment process. If you want to add molybdenum, any other material to the steel, it has to be done in the steel melt furnace. Face hardening is the last thing done, and it requires the plate to be heated to between 800 and 900 degrees C and then quenched, carefully ensuring the at the steel under the hardened surface remains tough enough not to crack. Of the Tiger IIs lost in combat, most were not penetrated, but the armor welds tended to crack. Most of the Tiger II losses were due to mechanical failures, either on the way to the fight or during, which led the crew to destroy and abandon their tank. In their intended role, if they could get to the battle, these tanks were formidable, but overall they were not a strategic win for the Germans.
You know, one of my favourite videos of yours is that about Kurland Kessel. It was just perfect, down to each and every detail. That was in essence military history visualized. I wish you made one about Africa in the similar manner. Just something to consider when you have time and will to do it. About the video above - a friend of mine from a reenactment group rubbed his feldmutze against the tracks of that exact Tiger. Kind of funny. Some people's fascination with history takes weird turn sometimes.
Could you/ have you done a video on how a tank that has been hit by a cannon shell is repaired? Like when a tank has a bunch of gashes on its front plate from non penetrations, do they ever fix the damaged plate (even though it wasn’t penetrated) and if so how?
In doing research for a video I'm going to do, I believe I read that the Germans were surface hardening armor in the 16-30mm, 35-50mm and 50-80mm range to a brinell hardness of 450-600 or so. That would contribute greatly to surface cracking and it makes me course if the plates would then crack all the way through as the steel is "softer" the further through the plate you go.
@@Rugmunchersauce3 In fact "kanone" only designates the weapon, kanone is the German word for 'cannon'. And 'Kampfwagen' is a (very old fashioned) way of saying 'combat vehicle'.
I want a King Tiger as my everyday vehicle = instant street cred💪rush hour won't be an issue, finding a parking lot won't be an issue etc., maybe with a few upgrades like a cup holder and a solid sound system so I can hear 'TNT' by ACDC for full blast👍
They were trying to get a more powerful engine, power to weight normally improves reliabilty tiger 1 is 13ph/ton as like you say this is 10. This they were ever trying a diesel engine and a gas turbine based off the BMW jet engine think this was fitted to the jagd tiger. Not much information on the gas turbine would be interesting to know they were looking at like 1200hp but ofcourse with high fuel consumption but J2 instead of high grade petrol.
The gas turbine sounds like a terrible idea. With the mineral shortage, high temperature alloying elements were short and thus turbine blades had to be replaced a lot in jet engines. On a positive note, it could have been run on grain alcohol gained from letting populations starve.
Having seen the cross section plans vs the turboshaft arrangement in the M1 Abrams (i.e. without the recouperator that makes it all work), I'd conclude that the late war plans were more of an exercise in keeping the drawing office staff out of the army more than anything else...
Thank you Bernhard. In regard to the Porsche/Henschel turret myth, Mr Doyle said, in a recent video, that the confusion arose because of an error in translating a tank book from German to English. If I recall correctly, the error occurred in the 1970s. I suggest that you get in touch with Mr Doyle to get the exact details from him. Cheers from NZ🇳🇿.
Tiger 2 has a place in my heart. I wonder how good of a tank it would have been if it's armor was cut back across the board to get it's weight down. Say 90-100mm sloped frontal armor and since the turret front is a small target 100-120mm. Side armor leave the same but with 50-60mm rear armor. I wonder how many tons that would shave off. Even cutting armor thickness behind the road wheels to 50-60 like the Tiger I would have likely helped. Tiger II was just too darn heavy.
80mm upper front slope of Panther was vulnerable to late war guns, 100mm on a KT would be obsolete with just an ammo upgrade. If anything the turret front should have received an -add-on plate like late Pz4 variants had. Rather than thickness, it was the size that amplified the weight. Nobody except Russians tolerate cramped interiors though.
Thanks for the discussion. Despite adequate mobility and speed, I would still suggest that Tiger II, at some 70 tonnes, was usually effectively a mobile pillbox, although aspects like the terrain in which they were employed would be important. Perhaps a good English word to describe it is "cumbersome" . One can see quite a lot of photos of the beast bogged down, or that have collapsed roadways. It was too heavy for most European bridges. There were complaints from German commanders in the Ardennes that it was too cumbersome and held up the advance, although that could have been an excuse provided for their failure. They had to be railed on special railway wagons. They were next to impossible to recover due to their weight, difficult to maintain and demanding of all kinds of resources to keep battleworthy, resources the Germans couldn't afford by that stage of the war. They achieved some successes as a long ranged anti-tank gun, especially in the East, and in places like Hungary, but those successes were really relatively few. Panthers probably would have sufficed. It wasnt the best design for the Germans to go with at the time. JS 2 wasn't much heavier than a Panther, so not sure it should bear comparison with the Tiger II. And, although JS 2, had lots of problems like little ammunition stowage, it was pretty successful in its role (mainly a fortifications cracker). So, I may be inclined to think Tiger II a failed design, but hey that's just an opinion.
The Tiger II a bad tank? Please! The Allies were deathly afraid of it and in terms of combat performance it could match or overpower anything they were able to field. That being said: it certainly wasn't cost effective, using up a lot of scarce resources. It also had a very high maintenance reliance which held it down. Shot for shot, there wasn't anything better, though.
Think I read that KIng Tiger faced Shermans only 5 times in WWII. Shermans won 3-2, one of them being some abandoned tanks on a rail car. The problem for the KT was that you didn't face one tiger with one Sherman, but many of them. Or they would bypass you can leave you in the dust.
@@christophersmith8316 It's possible, but combat doctrine for the KT was to engage the enemy at range to make full use of its superior cannon. It could knock out almost any allied tank up to a distance of 2 km. Standard procedure for american tank crews was to either call in air support or engage at an advantage of 5 to 1 when encountering German heavy tanks. That's not to say that Shermans couldn't score victories, but they had to get pretty close to penetrate the thick armor of a KT.
What a great machine, most impressive. I like it. I'm glad that some examples still exist in such great condition. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for examples of aircraft, both Allied and Axis. So much has been lost. Great video, by the way. 👍🏽👍🏽🐯⚔️
That's one of the benefits of giant steel hulks: they tend to last, aren't exactly easy to move or scrap, and are fairly easy to restore. Aircraft... less so.
Russia lost over 64,000 T-34s destroyed in combat, the few available tiger tanks Germany had speaks volume about their effectiveness n quality against overwhelming odds !!!
@@raducristea4116 - No Sources because your too LAZY TO DO SOME RESEARCH N so you only can babble nonsense, 64,000 T 34S is CONFIRMED DESTROYED OFFICIALLY BY RUSSIA, IM WILLI G TO BET YOU LACK BRAIN MATTER to make unfounded remarks LOL
@@raducristea4116 - No Sources because your too LAZY TO DO SOME RESEARCH N so you only can babble nonsense, 64,000 T 34S is CONFIRMED DESTROYED OFFICIALLY BY RUSSIA, IM WILLING TO BET YOU LACK BRAIN MATTER to make unfounded remarks, my source is your comment here LOL
For those just wanting a quick answer from the comments, here's a summary. Short answer for if it is under or overrated: Yes, but actually no. Long answer for if it is under or overrated: Neither; with tank manufacturing, steel used in tank production has to go through various processes that take precious time and resources that the Germans didn't have in the late stages of the war. Because of this, tank armor on various units has various quality on its armor. One example is that one Tiger 2 could have a well made frontal armor plate take a hit from a Firefly at the opposite end of a small town in France and survive, but in this exact same scenario, if it was a different Tiger 2, it might not since this one's frontal armor plate could have been made from a lower quality batch of tank steel. This had actually been a problem Soviet tanks faced during the war because of the initial invasion had some processes had to be dropped during T-34 production to hasten production during their desperate attempts to halt the rapid German advances which is why there are so many different stories of a single German tank picking off T-34s like flies one by one and others about T-34s picking off German tanks one by one.
I think it would be interesting to see how the King Tiger would perform with a modern (properly powered) engine, suspension, etc. Would it perform like Germany thought it would, or would it still have all the same issues?
Depending on how far you go, it would probably become a Ship of Theseus. A fully modernized Tiger II would just be a Leopard. If it was anything less, it would be a liability on the battlefield.
I often find myself amazed by the sheer size of these machines. It makes me curious about the immense amount of steel that must have gone into constructing all of Germany’s so-called ‘super weapons. Otherwise, Great video once more.
If the Germans could have put a more powerful engine inside the King Tiger (and fix the transmission), then the King Tiger probably would have been a solid tank. Just look at the US Abrams tank. It's also around 75 tons, but since it has a powerful reliable engine it's able to drive at tremendous speeds.
The materials science and advanced manufacturing processes required to develop something with capability and protection of an MBT did not exist during WWII.
@@Ungood-jl5ep - WW2 material science still allowed more powerful engines to be developed. The Germans had some available in small quantities. But the war forced the Germans to mass produce weaker engines meant for medium tanks and lighter armored vehicles because there was such a huge demand for as many parts as possible. They didn't have time to mass produce more powerful engine designs.
Yeah sadly the technology was simply not there to make such a heavy tank fast and reliable. Its really naive to compare what is likely the best main battle tank today and its success of being both fast and heavily armed and armored with a tank that is so much older. Its advancement in technology that made main battle tanks possible.
@@flowblow9880 The germans barely had petrol to put in the tank of their King Tigers, forget about new engines. When it comes to WW2, everybody can make this amazing tank / engine / cannon prototype. The problem comes with making a lot of them economically and reliable, suitable for mass production. That is no argument at all to make for how the King Tiger could be better. The germans made it as best they could with what they had. That was basically the case for most if not all tanks of that age.
@@Vlad_-_-_ No Allied philosophy in almost every area was to never make things better than "good enough". We never cared about survivability as much as they did. Many times it seemed more incidental if our equipment kept you alive longer.
Underrated. A design beyond its time, it's practically the first Western MBT in weight class, (all NATO tanks have the same weight for half a century now) protection scheme (concentrated on the front) and firepower (long gun with high muzzle velocity). Western designers essentially 'forgot' about it and re-invented a decade later. Any overstated shortcomings are because the design was ahead of the engine technology of the time. As far as I'm concerned KT is to MBTs as Stg44 is to ARs and Me262 to fighter planes. Late in the war in an unsalvageable situation so they look as wunderwaffe without any effect but the pioneers of all Cold War design.
They haven t "forgotten" it, it s just that in the 50s and 60s, weapon/ammo technology made big leaps and saw fast changes plus the strategy in Western armies changed along with the new Cold War scenario. The conclusion of projects like the KT after the war was: we actually don t need nor want a heavy tank concept, we need mobility above all coz ammo is expected to beat armor anyway. In the West, that then changed in the 70s and the idea of a versatile MBT with a greater stand-the-ground potential but still a high mobility was followed. The KT s concept/ intended use was different to the idea of later Western MBTs to a point I d argue, it remained a dead end. The Panther design is far closer to the concept of a MBT, even more so when you consider its role and use on the battlefield.
The presentation always seems amazing until the video just ends abruptly with little to no reflection or summary. The ending here was even more abrupt than usual! :O
Well, we all can agree on one thing: The Tiger 2 looks freaking awesome! Actually saw this exact one. Have pictures of me comfortably sitting inside the treads and i am 1.85m, so not the smallest person. My friend is 2m and looks like a dwarf, next to it.
Today, in 2024? Extremely underrated. In the first place, people don't seem to grasp idea of breakthrough tanks at all and amount of myths around Tiger II is so bad that it's basically 2024's equivalent of "Ronson Shermans". Makes my eyes roll so hard they retreat back inside my skull
I think the issue with breakthrough tanks is that it's just a flawed idea. Having an extremely expensive powerful tank you put at the front of an offensive is very costly for limited benefit. Plus in execution the Tiger II was a very flawed breakthrough tank due to its weak side turret armor and exposed turret ring from the rear. If it's looking right at you it is basically invincible, but if it looks even 15 degrees to either side you can penetrate it with relatively common anti tank guns. That's without getting into how underpowered and cumbersome it was. That long ass barrel would get caught on anything within a mile of your tank and it's extreme weight meant it'd be hard to tow, recover, and redeploy with any speed adequate to get it back up and running within a battle. For these reasons the Tiger I was better at its assigned role. For holding a hill from allied tanks at range though, it'd be unbeatable. Likewise in the unlikely event of a head on engagement at any range. I do think it's underrated in a sense. It was formidable and unlike the jagdtiger it's mechanical issues weren't quite severe enough to render it a joke. You can definitely understand why it was so feared and why capturing one was considered a triumph by American units.
My hope is restored by this comments section. The discussion on WW2 tanks went from uninformed German tank praise to brainless German tank hating. The tanks went from being the best of the war to absolute dogcrap. Objective analysis is actually happening now.
@@coaxill4059 You say that the breakthrough tanks are a flawed idea, and that having an extremely expensive powerful tank at the front of an offensive is very costly for limited benefit. But i do think it is worth to look at that doctrine from the view of the experiences of WW1 and trench warfare. Being able to considerably improve the chances of a breakthrough does not make it a limited benefit, if you have any plans to win a war of movement, right? Of course, that thinking does fall a little flat when considering that the germans did achieve massive breakthroughs in france and in russia in 41 and 42, even without the breakthrough tanks. I dunno, I dont think the concept of breakthrough tanks (/units) to be that flawed, they played an important part during WW1. iIt just turned out that it was not as much needed in WW2 as it was in WW1, for reasons that probably were not obvious until a few years into the war.
@@coaxill4059 It wasn't a flawed idea. The KT isn't really a breakthrough tank. The IS-2 is a breakthrough tank. They break through defences and fortifications, the 88mm isn't good for that, it's good for killing tanks. The IS-2s 122mm however is, it's basically just armoured direct fire artillery. And to address your concern, they made them on the cheap.
16:47 Its the part that trades more power for less speed. And its usually located either in the sprocket wheel, or just next to it (like on most US tanks).
All tanks need maintenance halts and that included Shermans, and includes T-80s and Leopard 2s. When Tiger II was regularly maintained it was relatively reliable. What isn’t taken into account these days is, it was introduced to battle when things were going very poorly for Germany, and higher level commanders often demanded too much of the heavy panzer battalions.
The Tiger II's deficiencies are simply the cause of a weak engine, not being overweight but not having the proper engine to drive it. The Germans were working on more powerful engines but, were never were able to develop one. Imagine the King Tiger with a 1000 hp engine and a robust enough drive train and transmission. You would be talking about an early MBT then.
Well, 65t would still be pretty heavy for much WW2 era infrastructure. And the problem wasn't just the engine, but all automotive parts. Even the turret motor was underpowered.
Weight always seemed to be the issue, combined with the lack of a new power plant so power to ( increasing) weight was an issue that became chronic. When Russia and Germany had that window of friendliness Russian visitors felt that the Germans had heavier tanks they were not showing them and were surprised that Pz. IV was "your heaviest tank", the Germans on the other hand knew the Russians had heavier tanks. The 35km speed was a road speed not across across-country speed, the breakdown aspect - with you on this, fuel, training time, and the inevitable inexperience of crew members new to the tank or completely new armoured units were at a disadvantage, crewmen with previous combat experience could adapt quicker and had insight whereas raw recruits and had to learn from scratch. Wartime production values certainly faltered across the board ( Me-262 and Type XXI submarines), new projects demanded time and resources that either did not exist or were in short supply, and development time certainly was limited, the pressure on designers and production staff must have been immense and production errors etc being inevitable. between design and the commitment to produce, circumstances change, and for Germany it was never for the better. Hindsight is a pretty useless tool but was this the tank that Germany needed, again one could debate this until the cows come home but it was produced, it saw combat but perhaps not in the role intended but as required.
I think the major weakness of the King Tiger was the thin armor of the turret top (1.75 inches/145mm). A hit from a US M9 anti-tank rifle grenade would knock it out, as my father knew as he chased one down in Germany and fired his at it. To his surprise, the grenade went into the open hatch, accomplishing the same thing. Technical note: It had a "Porsche" turret.
Stop caring about the performance of these weapons. They are cool. Just like Heavy Gustav. Or the Stuka. It's fun for video games. It's fun. Better than what game designers invent.
They were almost universally more effective than they're given credit for. Just remember, if German equipment was as bad as they always say, they would have been beaten back out of Poland. They never would have got almost to Moscow. They never would have lasted years on the defensive. For example, railway guns may not be necessary or smart to have in massive batteries, but having some around helped a lot. For instance the Allied landings in Italy would have only been opposed by infantry in some places without them. They were able to negate air & artillery superiority which made moving traditional artillery in impossible. By all accounts, they did have a shocking effect on the attackers. Attacks are about momentum, being able to break it from miles & miles away has a place. We just use missiles now (which they were also developing.. in fact they laid most of the groundwork).
Yes, obviously they should have built several smaller tanks instead which would require both more fuel and more infrastructure to get them the fuel... Dumb Germans trying to make what little they had more effective while outnumbered...
While the King Tiger did suffer from underpowered engine and weak final drive, one reason why so many ended up being abandoned in the field was Germany's lack of a suitable recovery vehicle to tow the disabled tank back to the rear for repairs. It took another Tiger to tow a disabled one, which often over taxed the towing Tiger, which then broke down as well. Seems development of recovery vehicles was an afterthought.
One of the other big drawbacks with the Tiger II is that there were no suitable recovery vehicles for it. There are for instance pictures of 5 Sdkfz 9s all linked up like a tug of war team trying to tow Tiger IIs.
Question about the 88 mm gun with the long barrel. Was there any mentions in the reports about the effectiveness of it's high explosive shells? I'm interested in how this tank did in it's assault roles against infantry?
I'd make an additional point about tanks and reliability. They're big, they're heavy and they can be deeply interconnected. Systems linked to systems linked to systems. Sure, modern tanks if the power pack goes, you have a lot of stuff in that. Even easy to link it back in too. When you need to diagnose other components, systems in the hull itself? The turret? Digging through all of that to dig out a fault in the system? Things can take a while. As for the metal quality for this royal kitty? That really doesn't help either on the maintenance side of things either.
This is best example of how well designed the King Tiger was regarding armour and slope. When you look at the King Tiger it appears as if it would be an armored vehicle that you might find on a modern battlefield. It doesn't look as dated as one might think for something produced about 80 years ago. The German engineers were ahead of their time. (No, it wouldn't last long on today's battlefield, but it looks like it could!)
I think it was just as good as people already say it is. It had great armor, a very good and accurate cannon, but was troubled by mobility and mechanical issues due to it's massive weight. Plus it was also very expensive to produce.
Love the video. But have to correct something about the prosess for the armour plates. Hardening is to make the plate harder. But it becomes at the same time brittle. As you say like glass at worst. But tempering is not where you add addatives. Its when you reheat the steel to lower the hardness and get more elastisiti back in. Addatives are added when melting the steel at the beginning. But as you say they got short on it so armour quality was not as good at the and of the war. Many tanks cracked in the plates and welds from first hits because of it.
I’ve always been interested in both Tigers, but as I got older the collapse of the Reich in ‘45 was much more interesting to me than the early or mid war era. For that reason, the Tiger II’s use in both the Halbe Pocket by SS 502nd, and the Battle of Berlin by SS 503rd is the most interesting use of these mighty heavy tanks in completely hopeless, nightmarish conditions.
Would have been nice to know about the 'Befehlswagen' variant e.g. Stab 1 of the s.Pz.Abt. 503rd in Czechoslovakia commanded by Hpt. Nordewin von Diest-Korber. Unique markings antennae and FUG radios...
It's hard to fairly rate anything introduced that late in the war because after a certain point, the odds were so stacked against them that no realistically achievable quality advantage was going to matter.
Play War Thunder for free and get a nice bonus pack with vehicles, premium time and more: playwt.link/militaryhistoryvisualized
Don’t forget to pin this
@@LaVictoireEstLaVie They did not defraud you. They have simply used your money to fund quality yt channels like this one 😝
@@aleksazunjic9672 I am not against upstanding companies supporting a very good yt channel , i am just against giving fraudulent companies airtime when they should rather be held accountable for their fraudulent actions.
It's rubbish in Warthunder the USA have the advantage at 6.7 tier.
Question: Isn't that, with Tiger 2, that it simple wasn't as big of a shock to allied forces as Tiger 1 was? Tiger 1 was, for its time, a massive , heavily armored tank with very good gun - a potent opponent. But when they start using Tiger 2 then allied forces has already develop tactics and ways to deal with with such tank, so its impact on the battlefield was way lower?
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I find the King Tiger with the production turret a much nicer tank to look at than the Tiger I. When I was young I only knew about the first Tiger (the one you see throughout pop culture productions). Since I found out about the King Tiger, I've always been baffled by the comparative lack of interest in it. Yes, it probably did not produce results that justified the costs made to produce it, but that hasn't stopped all sorts of even goofier late war German AFVs getting inordinate amounts of attention.
King Tiger is one of the best looking tanks of WW2 in my opinion. Depends on the angle though but it looks nice
It has the same refinement to it like comparing a T-34 to an Is-2
Because in 1942-43 the Tiger was absolutely the king of the battlefield.
I stood in front of several tanks. A T34, the King Tiger you see in the video, a Panther, a Tiger, and some others. These things are intimidating. There's nothing nice about them in real life. They were designed and built to kill and destroy. I get what you intend to say, the design is appealing to the eye, but I find it disturbing to refer to tanks as nice.
Thing is, King Tiger did not impress enemy nearly as much as Tiger I . When Tiger I appeared on the battlefield, Soviets had 76.2mm and US 75 mm guns that could not penetrate Tiger in most combat situations. When King Tiger arrived, there were tons of things flying at him (Soviet 122mm, 85mm, later 100mm , US 90mm, British 17pdr , US 76 mm with APCBC ...)
Well overrated or not, it's the best looking tank in WWII in my opinion
And current ones IMO.
The lines/ design is very Teutonic, looks more like a modern tank compared to what the armies of 1940 were using
Yes that and the Panther
Of course tanks are ment to look pretty not to actually function
look it really powerful
I totally agree with Military History Visualized as to the lack of training effecting the breakdown rates of vehicles, be they tanks or otherwise. I was in a unit that when we first received out new FMTV transport vehicles we never received the proper training or complete volumes of the operators or maintenance manuals. This led to numerous problems with improper maintenance and breakdowns when improperly towing the vehicles. Much damage to transmissions was done to some vehicles because of ignorance of the proper procedures. Bear in mind that these were mere transport vehicles, not complex AFVs.
holy shit which country are you from
@@squashbanana2926 I am from the U.S.I was in a National Guard Aviation Squadron at the time, which units like ours were usually the last to get new vehicles and technical manuals. As we had to turn in our older, but familiar 2 1/2 ton and 5 ton cargo trucks right before our annual training event, the time for familiarization and driver training was short. We learned the hard way through on the job (OJT) training.
Or better yet, from the lack of time or spare moments for these heavy Panzer units constantly given enormous tasks and missions. Rarely Tigers could be pulled from the frontlines even for a brief period of maintenance, since already so few was available at the front, either they had to stood fast the whole time, or immediately pack up and head to other threatened places. Moreover, some procedures were willfully skipped or substituted (poorly) as a result of lacking time and resources.
The King Tigers were like the really overburdened worker in a really understaffed place, even the most experienced and hard-working workers would break down eventually.
This beast mobility-killed itself.
The problems created the manuals and procedures. Like chickens and eggs didn’t come with a cooking manual
"Disclosure D"
"Disclosure A" - this is a god-tier joke, hats off to you, sir
Thank you! *big cat noises*
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualizedI’ll have you know I’m a cät person
glad i wasnt the only one who noticed lmao, that was great
Can someone explain pls
@@yarnickgoovaerts Panther tank designation began with D, and then went to A
Holy crap that thing is HUUUUGE
Jagdtiger: Understandable Have a great day 🗿
not really, it is about same size as Tiger A and just slightly larger then Panther.
Our host looks to be a good sized man and this behemoth towers above even him. I would feel like M22 gazing up at mighty Tiger 😂
The Tiger 2 isn't THAT big for the reputation it has, but in general, even stuff like Panzer IIs are a lot bigger than you'd expect them to be.
This information isn't very well known, but tanks are quite big :)
@@wallachia4797 are you really tall? Jw
Underrated if you are in a Sherman 1:1 against it.
Overrated if you are a Tiger mechanic.
Except that US army never actually operated like that. The smallest unit of Shermans were 5 of them.
And late war a bunch of Shermans shot a pair of King Tigers to shit even if their guns could not go through. They just slammed round after round into them untill they got turret rings blocked ( one of the Tigers got the cannot shot up ) and the crew bailed out ( one of which after they reversed into a house and got stuck ).
So forget about those mythical 1 vs 1 duels on a plane field.
@@Vlad_-_-_ It's 1 vs 1 if your in that lead sherman traveling down a narrow road in Germany and your round the corner to see a Tiger there....
@@bigwezz Except that Shermans never fought 1 vs 1 and that it legit happened that two king tigers saw a bunch of shermans long range, they fired and missed and the Sherman return fire knocked out BOTH king tigers. Happened in late war, with one of those king tigers is displayed outside with the cannon barrel cut off by the gun fire.
You can forget your mythical 1 vs 1 long rage duels, that germany army fanboys love bragging about.
@@Vlad_-_-_ The US Army never set-up units like that, but attrition did.
@@Absaalookemensch The smallest tactical unit was a platoon. 5 Shermans. Again you can imagine any wehraboo fantasy story of nazi glory in 1 vs 1 tank duels over 2km. It did not happen.
The armor quality of late-war tanks is a nearly insignificant issue that has been blown way out of proportion by anime profile WT sponsored "tank experts" in the last ~8 years.
The infamous Tiger II Kubinka test is often brought up as proof of bad German steel, the main culprit of this myth is our favorite buffoon "expert" TankieArchives, who released a seemingly thoroughly researched article based on Soviet documents.
In reality however, he skipped past half the documentation and took phrases and pictures out of context to create the illusion of "terrible" German steel. Very common behavior that we've come to expect of him.
According to TankieArchives, the Tiger II is ripped apart by a single 122mm HE shell to the UFP and then finished off by a 122mm AP and two APBC shells. Sophisticated commentary such as "blown apart!" and "torn to pieces!" is added by Tankie.
What our expert fails to mention, is that the first HE shell failed to defeat the armor and only the new BR-471R shell managed to actually penetrate the (weakened from the previous two AP hits) UFP plate, at a range of 600m, and that same shell failed failed to penetrate this weakened plate from 700m.
The Soviets shoot the LFP twice with no results, Tankie is disappointed and has little to say.
After this, the tank is shot at 29 times by various calibers including 100mm, 152mm and even captured 88mm guns. Tankie skips past all of them.
Instead he presents shot #34 as being shot #8. The AP shell hits the severely weakened turret face and causes a piece to break off. Tankie crows about the "vicious" result and lectures us about the perils of terrible overhardened German steel.
The final shot is taken at a range of 3400 meters against the broken turret face. It causes a crack but fails to penetrate. Tankie clearly wished for more, so he is disappointed by the result and has little to say.
Tankie also does not appear to understand how the construction of a shell influences the way it penetrates armor. Uncaped Soviet shells tend to defeat plating through shear failure, while German capped shells defeat armor through ductile hole growth. The large caliber and uncapped nature of 122mm+ guns, tend to cause cracks to welds and plate, as is to be expected. The caveat is that they have worse penetration and decreased stability during flight. Tankie does not know any of this, because his expertise comes from WoT and WT.
Finally, Tankie forgot to tell the readers that these tests were done in -10c ambient temperature, which further decreased the ductility of the armor.
I could write another 5k words about his disaster of an article, but I think I've made my case. Anyone looking for more can make their own research.
And yet not a single KT was frontally penetrated during the war.
Its honestly the copers who bring up post war tests under ideal conditions who are the WT simulation bros like yourself. Reality is different from the game however.
@@off6848 i'm not sure i understood your comment properly, but the original comment basically said that yeah there was a slight degree of degradation in the quality of the armor, but it's not a significant amount, and absolutely not as bad as people say today, and expecially for the people who believe the kubinka tests which are extremely biased and very badly interpreted like the first comment explained, and even worse the soviets said that they were not impressed by the tiger 2 armor because when they hit a spot that had already been hit the armor didn't resist the shot.... which doesn't make any sense, but the general internet doesn't think, it just takes what it likes and tries to demolish what it dislikes
@@willghezzi There is more to it. Other nations including the US also had trouble with variations in steel quality of plates and castings, this was not just a german Problem.
Futhermore the test by the US showed that the late war Panther Gs (without face hardening and substitudes), showed better results against capped rounds than a Panther D.
Damn that dude mentioned me.
That dude just claimed that 122mm had the energy to BLOW the upf of the Tiger II apart wtf?
We usually focus on the worst of performances when discussing late war german tanks. Which is good for the total picture and putting something up against those legendary myths of German super weopons.
But what is messing for me, is reports about what happened when the stars aligne and experienced crews meet good production vehicles and good maintenance.
Militär und Geschichte recently published a after action report of A Tiger II battalion which operated on the Easter front late 1944.
They drove their Tiger IIs around 240 km in unfavorable wether conditions with very soft ground into and behind enemies lines with only limited technical issues and great results.
They hold the Tiger II in high regards and blamed most of the issues which happened while fielding those tanks, to the lack of understanding of the higher ranking leader ship, which do not understand the limits and needs of a heavy tank in combat. They blamed the higher level leadership, which had wrong expectations and not the tank itself. Only a few complained about the weight and acceleration of the tank.
Interesting. Well to be fair early German tanks were rather underpowered as well.
And what many forget is the fantastic ability to traverse rough terrain and obstacles or loose ground that the Tigers and Panthers had thanks to their suspension and wide tracks.
Tests in Sweden also proved it was a tank with good mobility.
And yeah, the main point of your comment is what people can't understand the most. The main problem was a collapse of economy, production and logistics of Germany. This is what caused lack of spare parts, fuel, maintenance, damage of parts from sabotage from forced labor etc. every other tank would have the same problems because it was not matter of design but outside issues. If Germans fielded IS-2 or Churchill or Pershing instead of Tiger II the outcome would be the same. And people here would be writing essays on how horrible these vehicles were instead of understanding where the problems came from...
@@czwarty7878 the is 2 for example was only garantueed for 1000km by the manufacturer in summer 1944.
Thats even lower than the expected servicelife of a Panther in spring 1944 which was rated at 1000 to 1500kms at this point.
There are a lot of double standards applied in those discussions.
Fragment from the after action report OP mentions:
"The two combat groups [equipped with Tiger IIs] operated with great success: from 19/10/1944 until 23/10/1944 they destroyed 120 anti tank guns and 20 field pieces. The tenacious and steadfast enemy (a penal battalion) was shocked by our determined advance; the enormous confusion created in their rearguard by the destruction of several convoys and transport units finally caused the 6th. army to retreat from the Debrecen. The distance travelled during these operations, aprox. 250 km, was reached without any mechanical complications of note. During these operations the Tiger II fulfilled perfectly what was expected of it in terms of armor protection and mechanical reliability. Tanks hit by up to 20 impacts without suffering loss were no exception."
"When a Tiger unit is employed in a concentrated manner and under the correct tactical principles _it will always achieve decisive results_ "
Like to add that the report also was from the Eastern Front of the war, which was the arena they were designed with.
- Many superficial WW2 commenters tend to take an overly Western Allied-centric perspective when viewing German late war equipment and scoring them exclusively with battles in Normandy and such rather than the Eastern Front accounting 70-80% of German forces.
Giving arguments like the German heavies being difficult to navigate in narrow European town streets or unable to cross small European bridges, and not to mention being vulnerable to fighter bombers, somehow very fatal flaws for these tanks - when most of the Tigers and Panzers sent to the Eastern Front rarely encountered and performed as expected in large open fields against hordes of T34.
For some reason, once the war got to 1944, some ppl only remember Normandy and France and forgot about the Soviets, only to suddenly remember them back when they enter Berlin.
My dream is to visit this museum.
Do it. The building is not perfect for the collection (they Plan to change that soon) but the collection is really great. Not only WW2 but also a lot of sowet (ex NVA) army vehicles and quite modern stuff
Train from Hamburg to Uelzen, then a train to Munster. Not too complicated and can do it as a day trip
My dream is to see the Maus and the Karl Gerat. Sadly, their both in a museum in Russia.
It's really good.
我的夢想是跳上這些老古董開出去開上幾砲
最好是可以打些現在的坦克
The Panzermusuem in Munster is a must for all tank nerds. I spent two 6 hour days there when I went. I spent a lot of cash at the gift shop too on reference books and the like. The cafe across the street had good burgers and some really choice beers. Thanks for the video!
I tend to remember that all countries developing those heavy tanks had lots of problems with their gear boxes, sprockets or similar parts.
Material sciences was not yet advanced enough at the time.
Look at current modern tanks most of them are at the same weight class as the maus yet are more heavily armoured and are much faster than ww2 light tanks.
@@jamescawl6904 Definitely, materials and motors have massively advanced since then.
If you are not compromised somewhere,it means you are not trying hard enough somewhere else.You could make it more reliable if you accepted a smaller gun or thinner armour or delayed delivery until you have ironed out all the snags and the war is over .It’s always like this.
@@jamescawl6904 Same weight class?
@@jamescawl6904 the maus is three to four times heavier than modern tanks....
20:18 this is very important aspect to realise when reading critical reports of military equipment tested by another nation, and to always take it with grain of salt. I can recall multiple equipment reports that were devastating to otherwise proper or even very good equipment. First example can be tests of Shermans, Bazooka and Thompson SMGs by Soviets. All extremely critical, yet we know that first two were absolutely great pieces of technology, and the last one while not the best, was really an okay weapon. Despite this, reports were very critical.
Other examples can be also tests of allied tanks by Germans, also very critical of them, but again mostly because they didn't understand their applications and evaluated them according to their own tactical needs.
The final and most jarring example I can give is evaluation of StG44 by US ordnance experts in 1945, where they called it "weapon combining flaws of rifle and SMG and having no advantages of either", and the intermediate cartridge itself "a dead end in field of firearm development".
Obviously we now know that both these statements were ridiculously wrong, and the last one was finally proven wrong very brutally 20 years later by employment of Soviet intermediate cartridge weapons in Vietnam, but if you knew nothing about this and had no way to test it yourself - you'd believe these experts, right? Well this is basically what we're forced to do with reports of German tanks by allied nations. Not much ways to test their veracity, but I think they should really be treated with big grain of salt exactly because of that. Reports of other nations can be taken as one of many sources to create final evaluation, but should absolutely never be used as the only one. They should always be taken critically and compared to reports of crews that were trained for these vehicles, whose reports are more likely to be closer to truth.
@FaceFish9 How can you say this? What more could you want? It objectively kicks the shit out of anything comparable, with greater frontal armor and similar penetration to anything in its class. Meanwhile compared to the behemoths, it was far more tactically viable and had no significant issues dealing with them most of the time. And of course as infantry support it was phenomenal.
Yes, I totally understand and agree.
@@coaxill4059 But that is the point- US doctrine of Tank Destroyers and Infrantry support tanks pretty much failed- thus modifications to shermans to be more viable fighting other tanks, and making them, well, tanks. For the US- this was somewhat ok, because in 1944 they were leaps ahead of germans in terms of logistics, air support, and economy, shermans were already produced en masse, and Germany was in deep defensive, with USSR closing in from the East. However creation of t29 and rushed pershing(and later improved patton) clearly shows, that US faced with reality of Europe tank warfare needed tanks more in line with russian or german counterparts. They were fielded too late however. Shermans weren't a bad vehicle, just a bad tank(excluding ok-ish, i nterms of firepower,variant with long guns), that already were in mass production, and US joining the war as late as it did- wasn't able do develop and field a tank that suited their needs- though they almost made it with pershing.
@WielkaDraka And yet when they had access to both, many us tankers in Korea actually preferred the Sherman because against T34 tanks it was pretty much perfect.
Plus you can see how over time, the standard set by the Sherman would stand the test of time unlike any contemporaries. The Leopard with its thin armor and stabilizer became very popular among western powers, and still today we prioritize frontal armor, stabilization, repairability and mobility above extreme thorough armor protection and maximum caliber. In order to believe the Sherman had the wrong idea, you'd have to believe that all western militaries are full of idiots who based their development on bad doctrine and bad vehicles and somehow succeed anyway.
Instead, it's obvious to me that however impressive the IS and Tiger II were, they represented a hard dead end.
Excellent comment
I don't know about me, but my tabby Fredricka loved your lecture and began scratching my big screen when the bigger 'kitty' showed up!
As an avid SD2 player, and even beyond, this was superb. Thank you.
Ah a man of culture as well :) Glad you enjoyed it!
I would say that it is both. People overhype it's battle ability but don't pay enough attention to the engineering that it pioneered and developed for later tanks
US tankers who were facing it in Normandy were saying stuff like "if we had something like that we'd have been in Berlin by christmas '44"..
Good point. The Tiger II was a heavy inspiration for post-war French tanks; many of them had similar armour schemes and hull/engine designs.
@@IvanTre When exactly did US tankers fight Tiger 2s in Normandy? The earliest reference I could find of T2s in France was s.SS.Pz.Abt. 101 on August 20th. First combat was an attack on Guitrancourt on August 23rd, well after Normandy and not attacking US troops.
@@IvanTrebut the problem for the Americans wasn’t really that their tanks weren’t good enough.
@@iamsnakemasterthe first was the tank company 316 under the Panzer Lehr Division. They had 5 examples. The first full combat unit was the heavy tank brigade 503 which used them since 11th of july
Regarding the turret discussion; I think calling the preproduction turret Porscheturm as a colloquial shorthand is fine, because ultimately that turret was only ever put into production because of Porsche, so even while he did not design it, he is a causal actor in having it ever be built; but calling the production turret Henschelturm is complete bunk.
Thank you so much for this informative video. Whenever I want to know about German equipment from any war, I almost always will look for content produced by Germans (Or German speakers). Why? Because they can read German war documents. And that is why I always turn to this channel for great videos on German tanks of WWII, the research is always good.
Also no annoying background music!
@@bastiaan7777777 Amen to that.
I'm so glad to finally hear an explanation for the naming of the turrets for Porsche and Henschel!
And funnily enough, like many conceptions about second world war armour, it's been the standard for years, then people start to point out why that's wrong, and finally the reasonable middle ground between the misconception and the overreaction is found. If we're honest, it's pretty reasonable to call the early turrets 'Porsche turret', since they were ordered by Porsche, for the Porsche contender. At the same time, it's not actually a Porsche design.
I'm still on board with calling them pre-production and production turrets, but some of the hot takes exclaiming "they had nothing to do with Porsche" are clearly wrong
Wow, the Tiger I's gun had a muzzle velocity of 770 mm/sec, pretty sure that wouldn't penetrate your average uniform ^^
that was normal for WWII guns, the hellcats 76mm gun was specifically designed for anti tank and was only 790m/s
Too many "m"s
I mean, I'm pretty sure I can punch faster than 770 mm/s
770 m/s though, that's more in line with what's expected. @@optionalcoast7478
@@optionalcoast7478I think he's making fun of the guys misstatement of mm instead of m. Traveling 1000 mm a second would make it slower than running speed.
Tiger 1 they just pushed the shells out of the barrel with a stick 😂
Low set camera was a good choice for this vid😊
I am in the camp which thinks the King Tiger is a beautiful machine to look at. I also agree with those who claim the major Tiger failings are caused by Germany being on the losing side. The exigencies of the war call upon Tigers to be plugged into situations they don't belong. Nor can German logistics support them in those roles. Why? Because they are losing the war.
indeed. Had they had more time to properly develop the thing to work out the kinks you always have in a new design, properly train their people and set up a good logistics system to support them, they could be a lot more effective. And also by the time these machines arrived on the front, the allies had air supremacy meaning they couldn't drive during the day or they were attacked by rocket-armed Typhoons or similar aircraft.
Well, they win in the naming category.
😆 Tiger, and certainly Panzer, both sound much "cooler" than Sherman, l'Eclerc or Abrams, that's for sure!
Munster, the town of my birth, although it was in the British Military Hospital Munster (BMH), my dad was serving at Gutersloh, not far from Munster, but I was nearly born in the back of a military ambulance as the Autobahn was being severely hampered by a blizzard and, according to mum, it was a close run thing. I have wondered from time to time 🕰️ if I was born in the ambulance would that have made me, in any way, a German, obviously being born in a BMH I am British 🇬🇧 as it is legally British 🇬🇧 soil, but not so sure about a British military vehicle.
Another funny thing (to me anyway) my dad was an Armourer and during his tour at Gutersloh he worked in the ejection seat bay and 3Sqn, many years later I was posted to Gutersloh and when my mum and dad came out for a visit we discovered to our amazement that the bay (workshop) I was working in was the same one he did during his time in the ejection seat bay, and after I picked my chin up of the floor he just very dryly said “I thought they might have changed the Lino (linoleum/floor covering) by now) and he was being serious, but I couldn’t stop laughing and giggling for ages. One last bit of useless information, RAF Gutersloh was originally Flugplatz Gutersloh during WWII, and when the aircraft hangers were built they built in a round block of concrete (I presume) that sat in a niche cut into the supporting walls, the main structural beams were then laid on top of the round block and the rest of the structure was built on top, the purpose of the block was so that in the event the Nazis (as opposed to the German people) were going to be overrun/defeated a small charge could be detonated and destroy the blocks and some of the rest of the main structure that would ensure the whole roof collapsed into the rest of the building, now I don’t know how true that was, it could have been just an urban myth, however I can’t think of any other plausible reason why the architects/builders would have built the building the way it was, perhaps someone with more knowledge of the military architecture before,during and after WWII could enlighten me.
I know very little about Tanks/AFVs and what little I do know has been gleaned from RUclips, and from what little I know about the king Tiger I would say that it was overrated for multiple reasons, the overall weight, the Transmission issues and the complexity of in the field repairs/maintenance work made it unreliable, I even saw one video that stated that King Tiger crews had to abandon their tanks to the enemy just because of broken tracks or transmission failure, whether that is true or not I can’t say but it sounds like a feasible issue to me. I think that on the positive side of things (again from what little I know) the armaments were excellent and the “squeaky bum factor” (fear it might engender” would be palpable, I can imagine an allied tank commander on the R/T Saying “oh crap 💩, King Tiger/Tiger directly to the front of my position” or words to that effect but not quite so calmly and in a high pitched scream, closely followed by “reverse,reverse………..get this bloody thing going…..reverse” to the driver, but probably said in Russian as I believe (again through RUclips) most King Tigers were sent to the Eastern Front, and many of the reported contacts with them on the Western Front being early Tigers or Panthers, not as bad as a fully functional King Tiger but still a very formidable tank that was not easily destroyed by many allied tanks/anti tank artillery shells, with the exception being the up-gunned allied tanks like the “Firefly”
Most, if not all, of my comment is from watching RUclips videos, and for all I know I could be absolutely wrong, but nonetheless I found this video really interesting and informative, thanks very much for your excellent work, effort and time 🕰️ you put into this and the other videos you have uploaded, thanks again.
P.S Sorry for my very long and probably not very interesting comment, I have a mental health issue that I take some pretty powerful medication for, and one of the side effects is that I loose track of how much I have written and what it is about, so please forgive me, I promise I have put my soapbox away, vented my spleen and finished telling everyone my very uninteresting life events about my RAF service. Per Ardua Ad Astra. Lest We Forget, I Salute the Greatest Generation.
11:58 Like the nod towards TotalBiscuit here. RIP.
o7
King Tiger is good for the armour protection. I like the updated panthers more.
That would be the ""G" type.
The best allround tank of the war.
I found myself grabbing an old book of mine, "Epic Land Battles of History" that contains a double-page cutaway drawing of a King Tiger showing the final drive
I remember hearing that around half of the tanks were actually disabled or their nearly complete production ruined by a series of airstrikes in 1944. I’d be interested to know if the extra 200 tanks being in the field would change our understanding or evaluation of them.
Probably as they were only deployed on the Western Front in extremely limited (that always corresponded with a major operation) so having more would mean more chance encounters, thus more rumors spreading of Allied Tanks getting destroyed by a Super Tiger
200 or 1000 King Tigers for that matter would have made no difference in the war.
Oh most certainly.
Of course, if you look at the way we've come to measure their effectiveness vs the way it was done at the time, our way is ridiculous.
If I'm driving in a Sherman, bumbling into a King Tiger is a death sentence. I don't care if they "technically didn't always get extreme kill ratios" because most were taken out from the air or by infrastructure (fuel, replacements, repairs) not being available.
It's like how every genius out there calls the Jagdtiger a big dumb waste that was awful.
Those people are kidding themselves. Have you seen one rolling? They're as big as a house. Seeing one rolling down a street is terrifying. More importantly, when they actually saw combat they had like a 32:1 k/d ratio. That's absolutely worth building for a country that is massively outnumbered.
I often wonder what the numbers for German armored vehicles would be if we didn't insist on marking "surrendered, broke down, abandoned, etc" as combat losses.
@@gratefulguy4130 Love it when people like you come and get that " MuH Kd " comment. Invalidates your entire comment.
Plus, late war, a bunch of Shermans literally walked into the sights of 2 king tigers at range and the Shermans won with no losses. One of those king tigers is in an open air museum.
@@Vlad_-_-_ The question isn't whether it would have made a difference in the war, the question is whether the presence of a few hundred extra units would have made a difference to the psyches of allied forces. Would it have better been able to earn a reputation if there were more to use?
I just went to the Tank Museum in Munster a couple weeks ago and I was standing in front of that exact tank. Personally, I was very impressed with the German WW2 Big Three: the Tiger 1, the King Tiger and the Panther. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip there, BUT if you are planning to go there, you should note it is in Munster and NOT Münster (that’s over a three hour drive difference if you make a mistake). A very fun place to go-thank you, DPM!!!
6:50 770mm/s (milimeter) would be rather slow for a shot, would be comparable to a running squirrel. You probably mean 770m/s (meter)
Who doesn't fear the deadly APSQiRRL shot, that famous squicky Round with the fluffy looking muzzle Flash...it is coming for your nuts!
😂
Tempering is strictly a heat treatment process. If you want to add molybdenum, any other material to the steel, it has to be done in the steel melt furnace.
Face hardening is the last thing done, and it requires the plate to be heated to between 800 and 900 degrees C and then quenched, carefully ensuring the at the steel under the hardened surface remains tough enough not to crack.
Of the Tiger IIs lost in combat, most were not penetrated, but the armor welds tended to crack. Most of the Tiger II losses were due to mechanical failures, either on the way to the fight or during, which led the crew to destroy and abandon their tank. In their intended role, if they could get to the battle, these tanks were formidable, but overall they were not a strategic win for the Germans.
虎王絕對是被低估的主戰戰車，他的成形太早，缺乏足夠的測試與設計修正，而且被報廢的資源輸入也使零件材質缺乏完整性
如果E系列能夠成功，E-75 作為虎王的完成型，在戰場上的威脅性會大幅提升
You know, one of my favourite videos of yours is that about Kurland Kessel. It was just perfect, down to each and every detail. That was in essence military history visualized. I wish you made one about Africa in the similar manner. Just something to consider when you have time and will to do it.
About the video above - a friend of mine from a reenactment group rubbed his feldmutze against the tracks of that exact Tiger. Kind of funny. Some people's fascination with history takes weird turn sometimes.
🤤😅 I would have done too!
Could you/ have you done a video on how a tank that has been hit by a cannon shell is repaired?
Like when a tank has a bunch of gashes on its front plate from non penetrations, do they ever fix the damaged plate (even though it wasn’t penetrated) and if so how?
In doing research for a video I'm going to do, I believe I read that the Germans were surface hardening armor in the 16-30mm, 35-50mm and 50-80mm range to a brinell hardness of 450-600 or so. That would contribute greatly to surface cracking and it makes me course if the plates would then crack all the way through as the steel is "softer" the further through the plate you go.
"...although commonly referred to by peasants as Blitzkrieg....." I love this guy!
Love 'Lame Cat' way better than 'Lame Duck' made me chuckle 😁. Great video as per usual
KwK ... Kampfwagenkanone. I never knew what that abbreviation meant to this very day. Thanks for pointing this out!
You're welcome. ☺️
If I understood it correctly, ALL tanks are in fact "Kampfwagonkanones" , yes?
@@Rugmunchersauce3 In fact "kanone" only designates the weapon, kanone is the German word for 'cannon'. And 'Kampfwagen' is a (very old fashioned) way of saying 'combat vehicle'.
@@Rugmunchersauce3 Its literal translation is combat wagon cannon. Its a part of every tank but thats not an description for an tank itself.
Yes, the StuGs had a Sturmkanone, which usually was a slighted modified KwK.
I want a King Tiger as my everyday vehicle = instant street cred💪rush hour won't be an issue, finding a parking lot won't be an issue etc., maybe with a few upgrades like a cup holder and a solid sound system so I can hear 'TNT' by ACDC for full blast👍
The fuel costs will kill you though …
They were trying to get a more powerful engine, power to weight normally improves reliabilty tiger 1 is 13ph/ton as like you say this is 10. This they were ever trying a diesel engine and a gas turbine based off the BMW jet engine think this was fitted to the jagd tiger. Not much information on the gas turbine would be interesting to know they were looking at like 1200hp but ofcourse with high fuel consumption but J2 instead of high grade petrol.
The jet engine that was already destroying itself so much most 262 never got one?That seems foolish.
The gas turbine sounds like a terrible idea. With the mineral shortage, high temperature alloying elements were short and thus turbine blades had to be replaced a lot in jet engines. On a positive note, it could have been run on grain alcohol gained from letting populations starve.
Having seen the cross section plans vs the turboshaft arrangement in the M1 Abrams (i.e. without the recouperator that makes it all work), I'd conclude that the late war plans were more of an exercise in keeping the drawing office staff out of the army more than anything else...
@@ExPatTanker yeah probably had no chance in making it work properly. I think the British had one working in the 50s
@@alwoo5645 possibly, but first GT in service was the S tank, and that was a US designed motor.
Thank you Bernhard. In regard to the Porsche/Henschel turret myth, Mr Doyle said, in a recent video, that the confusion arose because of an error in translating a tank book from German to English. If I recall correctly, the error occurred in the 1970s. I suggest that you get in touch with Mr Doyle to get the exact details from him. Cheers from NZ🇳🇿.
Tiger 2 has a place in my heart. I wonder how good of a tank it would have been if it's armor was cut back across the board to get it's weight down. Say 90-100mm sloped frontal armor and since the turret front is a small target 100-120mm. Side armor leave the same but with 50-60mm rear armor. I wonder how many tons that would shave off. Even cutting armor thickness behind the road wheels to 50-60 like the Tiger I would have likely helped. Tiger II was just too darn heavy.
About, 1, 2 maybe 3 ton. It won't drop by much
80mm upper front slope of Panther was vulnerable to late war guns, 100mm on a KT would be obsolete with just an ammo upgrade. If anything the turret front should have received an -add-on plate like late Pz4 variants had. Rather than thickness, it was the size that amplified the weight. Nobody except Russians tolerate cramped interiors though.
it was not too heavy.......it was underengined!
Thanks for the discussion. Despite adequate mobility and speed, I would still suggest that Tiger II, at some 70 tonnes, was usually effectively a mobile pillbox, although aspects like the terrain in which they were employed would be important. Perhaps a good English word to describe it is "cumbersome" . One can see quite a lot of photos of the beast bogged down, or that have collapsed roadways. It was too heavy for most European bridges. There were complaints from German commanders in the Ardennes that it was too cumbersome and held up the advance, although that could have been an excuse provided for their failure.
They had to be railed on special railway wagons. They were next to impossible to recover due to their weight, difficult to maintain and demanding of all kinds of resources to keep battleworthy, resources the Germans couldn't afford by that stage of the war. They achieved some successes as a long ranged anti-tank gun, especially in the East, and in places like Hungary, but those successes were really relatively few. Panthers probably would have sufficed. It wasnt the best design for the Germans to go with at the time. JS 2 wasn't much heavier than a Panther, so not sure it should bear comparison with the Tiger II. And, although JS 2, had lots of problems like little ammunition stowage, it was pretty successful in its role (mainly a fortifications cracker). So, I may be inclined to think Tiger II a failed design, but hey that's just an opinion.
The Tiger II a bad tank? Please! The Allies were deathly afraid of it and in terms of combat performance it could match or overpower anything they were able to field.
That being said: it certainly wasn't cost effective, using up a lot of scarce resources. It also had a very high maintenance reliance which held it down. Shot for shot, there wasn't anything better, though.
Think I read that KIng Tiger faced Shermans only 5 times in WWII. Shermans won 3-2, one of them being some abandoned tanks on a rail car. The problem for the KT was that you didn't face one tiger with one Sherman, but many of them. Or they would bypass you can leave you in the dust.
@@christophersmith8316 It's possible, but combat doctrine for the KT was to engage the enemy at range to make full use of its superior cannon. It could knock out almost any allied tank up to a distance of 2 km.
Standard procedure for american tank crews was to either call in air support or engage at an advantage of 5 to 1 when encountering German heavy tanks.
That's not to say that Shermans couldn't score victories, but they had to get pretty close to penetrate the thick armor of a KT.
What a great machine, most impressive. I like it. I'm glad that some examples still exist in such great condition. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for examples of aircraft, both Allied and Axis. So much has been lost.
Great video, by the way. 👍🏽👍🏽🐯⚔️
That's one of the benefits of giant steel hulks: they tend to last, aren't exactly easy to move or scrap, and are fairly easy to restore. Aircraft... less so.
Russia lost over 64,000 T-34s destroyed in combat, the few available tiger tanks Germany had speaks volume about their effectiveness n quality against overwhelming odds !!!
it was the best tank around!
I dont have a source but im willing to bet that tigers were responsible for a very few of those kills mainly due to their low numbers
@@raducristea4116 - No Sources because your too LAZY TO DO SOME RESEARCH N so you only can babble nonsense, 64,000 T 34S is CONFIRMED DESTROYED OFFICIALLY BY RUSSIA, IM WILLI G TO BET YOU LACK BRAIN MATTER to make unfounded remarks LOL
@@raducristea4116 - No Sources because your too LAZY TO DO SOME RESEARCH N so you only can babble nonsense, 64,000 T 34S is CONFIRMED DESTROYED OFFICIALLY BY RUSSIA, IM WILLING TO BET YOU LACK BRAIN MATTER to make unfounded remarks, my source is your comment here LOL
well not king tigers more likely tiger ones and panzer ivs and the pak 40
Bin to munster 2x when i lived in the NETHERLANDS, never seen the museum 😢, I didn't know it was there, now i live in spain....darn it!
You probably were in Münster not Munster, the latter is way smaller and the museum would be hard to miss.
If anything, it is in my own *VERY CORRECT OPINION* the sexiest looking tank from the era.
For those just wanting a quick answer from the comments, here's a summary.
Short answer for if it is under or overrated: Yes, but actually no.
Long answer for if it is under or overrated: Neither; with tank manufacturing, steel used in tank production has to go through various processes that take precious time and resources that the Germans didn't have in the late stages of the war. Because of this, tank armor on various units has various quality on its armor. One example is that one Tiger 2 could have a well made frontal armor plate take a hit from a Firefly at the opposite end of a small town in France and survive, but in this exact same scenario, if it was a different Tiger 2, it might not since this one's frontal armor plate could have been made from a lower quality batch of tank steel. This had actually been a problem Soviet tanks faced during the war because of the initial invasion had some processes had to be dropped during T-34 production to hasten production during their desperate attempts to halt the rapid German advances which is why there are so many different stories of a single German tank picking off T-34s like flies one by one and others about T-34s picking off German tanks one by one.
I think it would be interesting to see how the King Tiger would perform with a modern (properly powered) engine, suspension, etc.
Would it perform like Germany thought it would, or would it still have all the same issues?
It would probably have the same mobility as a Challenger II MBT
Depending on how far you go, it would probably become a Ship of Theseus. A fully modernized Tiger II would just be a Leopard. If it was anything less, it would be a liability on the battlefield.
I often find myself amazed by the sheer size of these machines. It makes me curious about the immense amount of steel that must have gone into constructing all of Germany’s so-called ‘super weapons.
Otherwise, Great video once more.
If the Germans could have put a more powerful engine inside the King Tiger (and fix the transmission), then the King Tiger probably would have been a solid tank.
Just look at the US Abrams tank. It's also around 75 tons, but since it has a powerful reliable engine it's able to drive at tremendous speeds.
The materials science and advanced manufacturing processes required to develop something with capability and protection of an MBT did not exist during WWII.
@@Ungood-jl5ep - WW2 material science still allowed more powerful engines to be developed. The Germans had some available in small quantities. But the war forced the Germans to mass produce weaker engines meant for medium tanks and lighter armored vehicles because there was such a huge demand for as many parts as possible.
They didn't have time to mass produce more powerful engine designs.
Yeah sadly the technology was simply not there to make such a heavy tank fast and reliable.
Its really naive to compare what is likely the best main battle tank today and its success of being both fast and heavily armed and armored with a tank that is so much older.
Its advancement in technology that made main battle tanks possible.
@@flowblow9880 The germans barely had petrol to put in the tank of their King Tigers, forget about new engines. When it comes to WW2, everybody can make this amazing tank / engine / cannon prototype.
The problem comes with making a lot of them economically and reliable, suitable for mass production.
That is no argument at all to make for how the King Tiger could be better.
The germans made it as best they could with what they had. That was basically the case for most if not all tanks of that age.
@@Vlad_-_-_ No Allied philosophy in almost every area was to never make things better than "good enough".
We never cared about survivability as much as they did. Many times it seemed more incidental if our equipment kept you alive longer.
Can you imagine being US GI in Europe in 1944-45 armed only with an M-1 Rifle, suddenly seeing this 70 ton monster rumbling towards you?
Sturmtiger: Stay pround You are strong
Excellent video!!!
Finally an episode with the big boy, the most beautiful beast on tracks ever made
awesome presentation..Thank you
Underrated. A design beyond its time, it's practically the first Western MBT in weight class, (all NATO tanks have the same weight for half a century now) protection scheme (concentrated on the front) and firepower (long gun with high muzzle velocity). Western designers essentially 'forgot' about it and re-invented a decade later. Any overstated shortcomings are because the design was ahead of the engine technology of the time. As far as I'm concerned KT is to MBTs as Stg44 is to ARs and Me262 to fighter planes. Late in the war in an unsalvageable situation so they look as wunderwaffe without any effect but the pioneers of all Cold War design.
Interesting take. Noted.
They haven t "forgotten" it, it s just that in the 50s and 60s, weapon/ammo technology made big leaps and saw fast changes plus the strategy in Western armies changed along with the new Cold War scenario. The conclusion of projects like the KT after the war was: we actually don t need nor want a heavy tank concept, we need mobility above all coz ammo is expected to beat armor anyway. In the West, that then changed in the 70s and the idea of a versatile MBT with a greater stand-the-ground potential but still a high mobility was followed. The KT s concept/ intended use was different to the idea of later Western MBTs to a point I d argue, it remained a dead end. The Panther design is far closer to the concept of a MBT, even more so when you consider its role and use on the battlefield.
Some very good points raised here. Thanks.
Came here just to hear him say "Second Wuhwah"
Love your work
Panther, Tiger1, and King Tiger were well ahead of their time. Beautiful tanks.
Ahead of the time is an oxymoron
The presentation always seems amazing until the video just ends abruptly with little to no reflection or summary. The ending here was even more abrupt than usual! :O
Starts at 2:03
Well, we all can agree on one thing:
The Tiger 2 looks freaking awesome!
Actually saw this exact one. Have pictures of me comfortably sitting inside the treads and i am 1.85m, so not the smallest person.
My friend is 2m and looks like a dwarf, next to it.
Today, in 2024? Extremely underrated. In the first place, people don't seem to grasp idea of breakthrough tanks at all and amount of myths around Tiger II is so bad that it's basically 2024's equivalent of "Ronson Shermans". Makes my eyes roll so hard they retreat back inside my skull
I think the issue with breakthrough tanks is that it's just a flawed idea. Having an extremely expensive powerful tank you put at the front of an offensive is very costly for limited benefit.
Plus in execution the Tiger II was a very flawed breakthrough tank due to its weak side turret armor and exposed turret ring from the rear. If it's looking right at you it is basically invincible, but if it looks even 15 degrees to either side you can penetrate it with relatively common anti tank guns. That's without getting into how underpowered and cumbersome it was. That long ass barrel would get caught on anything within a mile of your tank and it's extreme weight meant it'd be hard to tow, recover, and redeploy with any speed adequate to get it back up and running within a battle. For these reasons the Tiger I was better at its assigned role.
For holding a hill from allied tanks at range though, it'd be unbeatable. Likewise in the unlikely event of a head on engagement at any range.
I do think it's underrated in a sense. It was formidable and unlike the jagdtiger it's mechanical issues weren't quite severe enough to render it a joke. You can definitely understand why it was so feared and why capturing one was considered a triumph by American units.
My hope is restored by this comments section. The discussion on WW2 tanks went from uninformed German tank praise to brainless German tank hating. The tanks went from being the best of the war to absolute dogcrap. Objective analysis is actually happening now.
@@coaxill4059 You say that the breakthrough tanks are a flawed idea, and that having an extremely expensive powerful tank at the front of an offensive is very costly for limited benefit.
But i do think it is worth to look at that doctrine from the view of the experiences of WW1 and trench warfare. Being able to considerably improve the chances of a breakthrough does not make it a limited benefit, if you have any plans to win a war of movement, right?
Of course, that thinking does fall a little flat when considering that the germans did achieve massive breakthroughs in france and in russia in 41 and 42, even without the breakthrough tanks.
I dunno, I dont think the concept of breakthrough tanks (/units) to be that flawed, they played an important part during WW1. iIt just turned out that it was not as much needed in WW2 as it was in WW1, for reasons that probably were not obvious until a few years into the war.
@@simenk3 Considering Wittman last charge or before last charge, life is hard for a breakthrough tank.
@@coaxill4059 It wasn't a flawed idea. The KT isn't really a breakthrough tank. The IS-2 is a breakthrough tank. They break through defences and fortifications, the 88mm isn't good for that, it's good for killing tanks. The IS-2s 122mm however is, it's basically just armoured direct fire artillery. And to address your concern, they made them on the cheap.
Love this channel
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11:58 I love that gaming reference
The King Tiger just looks amazing: Slopped armour, massive gun, able to protect itself from infantry. Just a monster on the battlefield
They couldn't help but make the turret face flat. It was so close to perfect.
16:47 Its the part that trades more power for less speed. And its usually located either in the sprocket wheel, or just next to it (like on most US tanks).
Strictly speaking, a tank isn't a tank if it won't run and you cant recover or fix it. It's a bunker.
Especially if that tank is actually more impenetrable than a concrete bunker.
But that would apply to any tank that finds itself disabled, even a Cromwell for example
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All tanks need maintenance halts and that included Shermans, and includes T-80s and Leopard 2s. When Tiger II was regularly maintained it was relatively reliable. What isn’t taken into account these days is, it was introduced to battle when things were going very poorly for Germany, and higher level commanders often demanded too much of the heavy panzer battalions.
Or if you don't have the fuel to feed it.
The Tiger II's deficiencies are simply the cause of a weak engine, not being overweight but not having the proper engine to drive it. The Germans were working on more powerful engines but, were never were able to develop one. Imagine the King Tiger with a 1000 hp engine and a robust enough drive train and transmission. You would be talking about an early MBT then.
Well, 65t would still be pretty heavy for much WW2 era infrastructure.
And the problem wasn't just the engine, but all automotive parts. Even the turret motor was underpowered.
Weight always seemed to be the issue, combined with the lack of a new power plant so power to ( increasing) weight was an issue that became chronic.
When Russia and Germany had that window of friendliness Russian visitors felt that the Germans had heavier tanks they were not showing them and were surprised that Pz. IV was "your heaviest tank", the Germans on the other hand knew the Russians had heavier tanks.
The 35km speed was a road speed not across across-country speed, the breakdown aspect - with you on this, fuel, training time, and the inevitable inexperience of crew members new to the tank or completely new armoured units were at a disadvantage, crewmen with previous combat experience could adapt quicker and had insight whereas raw recruits and had to learn from scratch.
Wartime production values certainly faltered across the board ( Me-262 and Type XXI submarines), new projects demanded time and resources that either did not exist or were in short supply, and development time certainly was limited, the pressure on designers and production staff must have been immense and production errors etc being inevitable.
between design and the commitment to produce, circumstances change, and for Germany it was never for the better.
Hindsight is a pretty useless tool but was this the tank that Germany needed, again one could debate this until the cows come home but it was produced, it saw combat but perhaps not in the role intended but as required.
Can we all agree , wether they were effective or not and obvious political implications, Germans tanks were sexy in WW2?
Just like their Uniforms.
The bad guys always look cool
That tsnk looks good man
Useless against a good old fasioned Cromwell, I'm sure.
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Probably can’t even penetrate the tracks! Of the cromwell of course
On a horse track, yes. On the battlefield, probably not.
@@TheEpicNoob want to bet
"It's bark is worse than it's bite. Go ahead."
I think the major weakness of the King Tiger was the thin armor of the turret top (1.75 inches/145mm). A hit from a US M9 anti-tank rifle grenade would knock it out, as my father knew as he chased one down in Germany and fired his at it. To his surprise, the grenade went into the open hatch, accomplishing the same thing. Technical note: It had a "Porsche" turret.
Stop caring about the performance of these weapons. They are cool. Just like Heavy Gustav. Or the Stuka. It's fun for video games. It's fun. Better than what game designers invent.
They were almost universally more effective than they're given credit for.
Just remember, if German equipment was as bad as they always say, they would have been beaten back out of Poland. They never would have got almost to Moscow. They never would have lasted years on the defensive.
For example, railway guns may not be necessary or smart to have in massive batteries, but having some around helped a lot. For instance the Allied landings in Italy would have only been opposed by infantry in some places without them. They were able to negate air & artillery superiority which made moving traditional artillery in impossible.
By all accounts, they did have a shocking effect on the attackers. Attacks are about momentum, being able to break it from miles & miles away has a place. We just use missiles now (which they were also developing.. in fact they laid most of the groundwork).
Flexing that glorious Zerstörer in WT sponsor part.
It was a waste of resources since Germany was running out of fuel and resources they desperately needed
Yes, obviously they should have built several smaller tanks instead which would require both more fuel and more infrastructure to get them the fuel...
Dumb Germans trying to make what little they had more effective while outnumbered...
While the King Tiger did suffer from underpowered engine and weak final drive, one reason why so many ended up being abandoned in the field was Germany's lack of a suitable recovery vehicle to tow the disabled tank back to the rear for repairs. It took another Tiger to tow a disabled one, which often over taxed the towing Tiger, which then broke down as well. Seems development of recovery vehicles was an afterthought.
Nice Vdieo again.
Thank you
I love how the Sturmtiger is just chilling beside the Tiger 2.
One of the other big drawbacks with the Tiger II is that there were no suitable recovery vehicles for it. There are for instance pictures of 5 Sdkfz 9s all linked up like a tug of war team trying to tow Tiger IIs.
Question about the 88 mm gun with the long barrel. Was there any mentions in the reports about the effectiveness of it's high explosive shells? I'm interested in how this tank did in it's assault roles against infantry?
Nice presentation, although universally known as the king tiger, the," Königstiger" translates as, "Bengal tiger" one of the larger cats.
Great Video. Thanks to you.
Greetings
Grüße
Andreas
I'd make an additional point about tanks and reliability. They're big, they're heavy and they can be deeply interconnected. Systems linked to systems linked to systems.
Sure, modern tanks if the power pack goes, you have a lot of stuff in that. Even easy to link it back in too.
When you need to diagnose other components, systems in the hull itself? The turret?
Digging through all of that to dig out a fault in the system? Things can take a while.
As for the metal quality for this royal kitty? That really doesn't help either on the maintenance side of things either.
This is best example of how well designed the King Tiger was regarding armour and slope. When you look at the King Tiger it appears as if it would be an armored vehicle that you might find on a modern battlefield. It doesn't look as dated as one might think for something produced about 80 years ago. The German engineers were ahead of their time. (No, it wouldn't last long on today's battlefield, but it looks like it could!)
Great video
If the transmission held together , fuel was in good supply and no damage to the wheels and Trac it was a good tank.
I think it was just as good as people already say it is. It had great armor, a very good and accurate cannon, but was troubled by mobility and mechanical issues due to it's massive weight. Plus it was also very expensive to produce.
Great looking for sure.
Love the video. But have to correct something about the prosess for the armour plates.
Hardening is to make the plate harder. But it becomes at the same time brittle. As you say like glass at worst. But tempering is not where you add addatives. Its when you reheat the steel to lower the hardness and get more elastisiti back in. Addatives are added when melting the steel at the beginning. But as you say they got short on it so armour quality was not as good at the and of the war. Many tanks cracked in the plates and welds from first hits because of it.
In vast open tundra this would be quite a challenge for the russian armor. Thats where it was in its prime.
I’ve always been interested in both Tigers, but as I got older the collapse of the Reich in ‘45 was much more interesting to me than the early or mid war era. For that reason, the Tiger II’s use in both the Halbe Pocket by SS 502nd, and the Battle of Berlin by SS 503rd is the most interesting use of these mighty heavy tanks in completely hopeless, nightmarish conditions.
Would have been nice to know about the 'Befehlswagen' variant e.g. Stab 1 of the s.Pz.Abt. 503rd in Czechoslovakia commanded by Hpt. Nordewin von Diest-Korber. Unique markings antennae and FUG radios...
It's hard to fairly rate anything introduced that late in the war because after a certain point, the odds were so stacked against them that no realistically achievable quality advantage was going to matter.