by Izzet Inak

Created on: January 21, 2011

Most of the German tanks used during the WW2 were light and medium tanks like the Pzkpfw I and the Pzkpfw III. And these types of tanks never had problems when Germany was invading Poland and some other countries that didn’t have tanks to match the German ones. Also during the first years of the war, Germany had no problems providing high quality resources to its weapon manufacturers; therefore most of the German weapons built during the first years of the war were very sturdy.

Wehrmacht (German Army) was implementing Blitzkrieg tactics and this tactics involved the use of light and medium tanks storming into the front lines quickly, and penetrate the defenses with the help of the Combat Air Support planes.  

As the war continued and new fronts were being opened in the Africa and Russia, German armor started facing the powerful British and the Russian Anti Tank guns and also tanks like Sherman and T-34. Even T-34 was a very hard opponent to the German light and medium tanks; Russians brought KV series tanks into the fight by the start of the Operation Barbarossa. Especially the KV-2 tank was a monster when compared to the other tanks of that time and a single KV-2 tank was enough to stop German 6th Panzer Division around Dubysa River.

The only way that the Germans could destroy KV-2 tanks was using close air support, howitzers or their famous 88 FlaK. 88 FlaK was designed as an anti aircraft gun but proved to be very effective when used against ground targets especially tanks. 88 FlaK was very heavy to be pulled by soldiers and it was only possible to move it with the help of a truck or a halftrack.

The German engineers have realized how hard it was to relocate this powerful AT gun so they came up with the idea of mounting the 88 FlaK on a tank, better known as the 88 KwK (Kampfwagenkanone). The German tanks in service were too small to mount this huge gun and unable to match the Russian tanks in terms of armor.

Henschel located in the city of Kassel was given the job of producing the new tank while Krupp was going to design the turret and the gun. Henschel at that time was already designing a new heavy tank, the VK3601; so it wasn’t going to be hard for them to produce a new chassis for the new tank. If you have a closer look at the VK3601 and the Tiger, you can clearly see that the chassis of the both tanks are very similar.

As the first Tiger was delivered in August 1942, it didn’t take too much time for this tank to become famous on the battlefield. As the armor of the Tiger was so thick and its weapon was so deadly, it was causing fear amongst the Allied troops and the tankers. Some great German tank commanders like Kurt Knispel, Walter (Martin) Schroif and Michael Wittmann scored more than 100 kills with their Tiger tanks; however too much resources were needed to build a Tiger tank and this caused only 1347 to be produced.

Another problem that the Tiger faced was its weight; the tank was too heavy to be pulled by the recovery vehicles. Two halftracks or three recovery vehicles were needed to tow this giant tank. However the weight of the tank did not affect its speed thanks to the 700 hp Maybach engine.

With the introduction of the Russian IS series of tanks, Wehrmacht decided to cease the production of Tiger tanks and give concentration to the development of Tiger II. Even there were many tank models used in the WW2, the Tiger was one of its kind. Despite many modern and highly sophisticated tanks of nowadays just like M1 Abrams or Leclerc, Tiger stands alone with an impressive battle record and the legacy of the tank aces that commanded this top class fighting machine.

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