28mm Tiger and Puma
The table setup for a 28mm game. All of the terrain is scratch built.
Heroic 28mm on the left, and 1/72 scale on the right.
I played my first game on the new table last Saturday against Owen's Russian forces. I was committed to using both the Tiger tank and Puma armored car and consequently faced down two T34 tanks and bucket loads of soviet infantry. It was a lot of fun to finally play on the table, and more photos of the battle are coming.
Take a look at the Sherman turret next to that King Tiger turret. I know which one I think wins in a fight. On the bright side, the German tanks were poorly welded due to difficulties in the manufacturing process. This meant that an allied shots that would not normally be able to penetrate the King Tiger's armor could still cause spalling on the interior. Basically the welds came apart and shot through the interior, damaging the vehicle and potentially killing the crew. We'll see how well this big cat does against a full Sherman platoon in an upcoming game. Even five on one it doesn't seem fair.
We have to start calling them Tiger B, Konigstiger, Bengal Tiger. or Royal Tiger. Even though Königs is the German word for King,Königstiger is the German word for Royal or Bengal Tiger. King Tiger is pulling a Jelly Donut Kennedy move.
ReplyDeleteFoy is learning me much.
I am really looking forward to Foy. Were there stuarts at Foy? I know the stuart was long in the tooth at that point, but they were still in use as scouting vehicles.
DeleteMaybe not much at Foy proper during the battle, but yes they were in use during the battles around there.
DeleteWas at a reenactment last weekend with a Tiger. It broke down. Sad face.
ReplyDeleteOr true to life! Breaking down is totally in character with wartime performance.
DeleteThe operational % of the Pz4 was 62%, highest of any German tank in the war. The Tiger 2 was super bad at first, though was at 59% and considered the 2nd most reliably operational German tank by March 1945. Lil late though.
DeleteThat's a surprising stat. I wonder if that OR rate for Tiger 2's is so high due to the fact that they were rarely used in maneuver engagements during the late war. Also, a large percentage of armor formations existed on paper only during the last months of the war, so that could skew Tiger 2 OR rates upward as false reporting became widespread. The idea that Germany's ability to maintain its heavy tank battalions in the field improved as the war drew to a close doesn't make a lot of sense, but I could be wrong about that. It certainly defies conventional wisdom in both the historical and logistical camps.
DeleteDid the Germans upgrade the Tiger 2 power pack in 1945 so it could handle the weight of the vehicle?
Although, now that I use my thinking cap a little more, my reaction was to "2nd most reliable" rather to the actual percentage. 59% is god awful.
DeleteYeah, German OR rates for their armor were generally crap. That's the somewhat unsubtle irony of them being "2nd best."
DeleteThat said, their tactical maneuvering and speed capabilities were considered superior to nearly any other tank they went up against ... again, ironically (because that didn't mean much when they couldn't do anything).
A lot of the Konigstiger story seems to be the establishment of a really bad reputation for being unreliable pillboxes early on in their relatively short (1 year, at best) operational history, and not resolving it until quite late in the war (Feb/March 45). Once some of the bigger problems were resolved, however, they became super deadly and super effective.
I read last night that the numbers are off because the Germans were generally on defense and that as mobile pillboxes the tanks did fairly well. If they had to do heavy maneuvering their weaknesses would have been more prominent. Another factor is that late war the lifespan of a tank was so short that it did not have time to break down before it was destroyed by the allies. This is one of those statistics without context kind of things.
Delete