King Tiger: Over- or Underrated?

The King Tiger / Königstiger (Tiger II, Tiger B) was the heaviest mass produced German tank in World War 2. Some call it as a marvel of German engineering, others call it trash. In this video, we look at various aspects like firepower, armor, mobility, but also driver training, armor quality and other aspect to get a more nuanced picture of this vehicle.

DISCLOSURE D: This video is sponsored by the free-to-play game War Thunder.

DISCLOSURE A: I was invited by the Deutsche Panzermuseum in 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2023.

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»» SOURCES ««

Jentz, Thomas L.; Doyle, Hilary L.: Germany’s Tiger Tanks: VK45.02 to Tiger II, Schiffer Publishing Ltd.: Atglen, PA, USA, 1997.

Jentz, Thomas L.: Panzer Tracts No.6: Schwere Panzerkampfwagen D.W. to E-100 including the Tigers. Panzer Tracts: Boyds, Maryland, USA, 2001.

Trojca, Waldemar/Trojca, Gregor: Tiger Ausf. B Königstiger: Technik und Einsatzgeschichte. VDM: Zweibrücken, Germany, 2014.

Jentz, Thomas/Doyle, Hilary: Kingtiger Heavy Tank, 1942-45. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, UK, 1993.

Spielberger, Walter J.; Doyle, Hilary L.: Panzer VI Tiger und seine Abarten, Spezialausgabe, 1. Auflage, Motorbuch-Verlag: Stuttgart, Germany, 2010.

Fröhlich, Michael: Der Panzerjäger Ferdinand Panzerjäger Tiger (P), Porsche Typ 131. Paul Pietsch Verlage GmbH & Co: Stuttgart, Germany, 2020.

Vollert, Jochen: Panzerkampfwagen T 34-747 (r): the Soviet T-34 Tank as Beutepanzer and Panzerattrappe in German Wehrmacht Service 1941-45. Tankograd Publishing-Verlag Jochen Vollert: Erlangen, Germany, 2013.

Videos by the Deutsche Panzer Museum

00:00 Intro
00:31 War Thunder
02:04 The better Tiger?
05:33 Firepower
07:35 Armor
08:13 Armor Quality
11:00 Turrets: NO “Porsche Turret”
13:45 Mobility
17:25 Driver Training
20:56 Development History
24:37 Production
25:45 Organization
26:31 Summary
28:09 War Thunder

#kingtiger #königstiger #tigerII #tiger2 #tigerb #ww2 #tanks #warthunder

[johnhighway]

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.

[mensch]

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.

[TheVeeker]

"Disclosure D"
"Disclosure A" - this is a god-tier joke, hats off to you, sir

[davidlavigne]

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.

[jvcpaints]

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!

[hothoploink]

Wow, the Tiger I's gun had a muzzle velocity of 770 mm/sec, pretty sure that wouldn't penetrate your average uniform ^^

[Dumb-Comment]

Well overrated or not, it's the best looking tank in WWII in my opinion

[mikhailiagacesa]

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!

[billmiller]

I tend to remember that all countries developing those heavy tanks had lots of problems with their gear boxes, sprockets or similar parts.

[Absaalookemensch]

Underrated if you are in a Sherman 1:1 against it.
Overrated if you are a Tiger mechanic.

[HaVoCX]

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.

[llLorenzoll]

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

[Blockio]

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.

[czwarty]

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.

[MrKurtank]

As an avid SD2 player, and even beyond, this was superb. Thank you.

[samwiseme]

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.

[bruvaasmodai]

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

[EverettGajerski]

Low set camera was a good choice for this vid😊

[sdcoinshooter]

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?

[ethantaylor]

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.