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Hi all. Does anyone know (in real life) how many King Tigers the Germans actually had (in all likelihood)?

Was it at all common to see them drive around in fives?

I wouldnt have thought that production was very high, not given all the attention Germany's factories were recieving in the last couple of years of the war. The figure I heard was about 500, and I would be surprised if the Germans were ever running more than half that at any point in time.

According to Wikipedia 492 Tiger IIs were produced, that figue has Jentz as a reference so its probably accurate.

Here is my figures from river of HEros,page 62-63 tiger 1E 1354 - kt 489.

490 according to Armies of Germany

490 is the figure I have read in various pre-Internet sources.


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They were probably organised into heavy tank battalions, but I would need to look into that to be sure.


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That said, Wikipedia says the 502nd heavy tank battalion only received eight Tiger II tanks.

Didn't they suffer from mechanical problems? Im sure I heard that a lot of them spent more time being fixed than on the front line

Daston wrote:
Didn't they suffer from mechanical problems? Im sure I heard that a lot of them spent more time being fixed than on the front line

They were extremely heavy and their engines, transmission and suspension simply couldn't cope with the weight so they were less than reliable. Germany was also running out of materiels at this stage so the quality of the Tiger IIs armour was not good, it was very thick but it was quite brittle and prone to spalling.

@KILKRAZY

just had to say EPIC - PORCO ROSSO AVATAR!!!

Most of them were either rear guard, hit by aircraft, artillery, or broke down during withdraws, and were scuttled by their crews.

It was just too much tank. Overkill and too big to hide.

In flames though they make great road blocks. lol

I think the King Tiger used the same engine as the Panther and Jagdpanther but it just wasn't up to the job of supporting the extra 24 tonnes of the King Tiger.

They where deployed en masse in the Battle of the Bulge but their unreliability meant they mainly got left behind and the Panthers ended up leading the charge.

They do look cool though don't they? I've got 3 and I can't see any situation where I'm ever likely to use them.

Not sure they were as unreliable as people like to make out... The faults were largely solved early on. There are alot of myths that seem to be repeated about the Tiger II...

The main issues were the over worked drivetrain and the double radius steering gear. Lack of training of the drivers also made the issues far worse.

During the period 1st Jan to 1st April 1945 s.SS. Pz Abt. 503 claimed 500+ kills for the loss of their 45 machines. Not a bad return.

On 15th December 1944 Tiger II equipped units recorded 80% reliability on average compared to 72% for Panzer IVs and 61% for Panthers at the same time period. Virtually all of the issues were due to lack of spare parts and lubricants for the Tiger IIs.

In the Bulge, those big Tigers pushed on as far as most Panthers. Lack of fuel stopped them.

All contemporary reports indicate that its mobility was as good as most other German and Allied tanks. For its size, it was remarkably agile when handled by an experienced driver.

It's funny how there's always this polarisation over the effectiveness of the TIger II. It tends to depend on who you read.

I'd challenge your rather positive assessment. Tiger IIs were something of a liability in the Bulge fighting, with their high fuel consumption, great weight (remember the narrow, frozen roads were major impediment to the advance, and the heavy Panzers were unable to spearhead the assault) and fragile drive train. The figures for combat readiness don't reveal the enormous drain on resources that these vehicles represented. I think we've all been brainwashed to some extent into giving these vehicles far more attention than they deserve (Dr Goebbels' propaganda machine still works its magic); in fact, they were of marginal tactical value compared to the smaller, more practical SP guns and older tanks like the Panzer IV.

I was refuting the claims that they were all mechanically unreliable.

That is not true.

I certainly agree that they were an utter waste of time and material, not to mention fuel consumption.

Personally, I'd have just built loads of Hetzers.

Big P wrote:
I was refuting the claims that they were all mechanically unreliable.

That is not true.

I certainly agree that they were an utter waste of time and material, not to mention fuel consumption.

Personally, I'd have just built loads of Hetzers.

I know some of the Documentaries that i have watched, alot of troops say that Germany should have stayed with the Tiger I E,Just perfected and modded it.

The Germans could have built whatever they wanted, but without Fuel they were going to be screwed. It's odd because Rudolph Diesel actually used Vegatable oil for his first engines. If Germany had used it's Chemical industrial capacity and Agricultural might to create alternative Bio-Diesel they could have been in a stronger position. Lucky for us, they didn't...As it was Germany was the world leader in Synthetic Fuel, at the time and we were working on lots of alternatives but never managed to get it in significant amounts to make a difference.

As big P says, thousands of Hetzers would have been a massive help. Certainly better than over engineered solutions that took thousands of man hours to make and get to the front, for an IS-2, Sturmovik, Firefly or Rocket Typhoon to destroy.

From what I've read, the Tiger II had serious drivetrain problems due to the Germans using drivetrains from lighter vehicles and dodgy gaskets. Out of the first 45 delivered to the Eastern front, only 8 were operational by the time they arrived. All due to drivetrain issues.
By all accounts the Allies were lucky, in Thier rush to get these awesome Tanks to the frontline, the Germans cut some corners on the engineering front. As to the original question, I'd read that anywhere between 490 and 500 were actually built. There is only one currently operational, in France.

492 were built.

The re-built Tiger II at Saumur has had its engine replaced. It broke down in 2007.

The initial batch of Tiger IIs, the 45 to Schwere Heeres Panzer Abteilung 501 and those to Panzer Lehr were very poor, in much the same manner as the horrific Panther breakdown rate at Kursk. In general, the rush to get tanks into action led to problems only really coming to the fore when under extended use.

The five (or possibly six) delivered to Panzer Lehr also all broke down, though these seem to have been prototype examples rather than production run ones I think.

503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion in Normandy had better luck with their batch.

Of course the other huge problem with the Tiger II and other late war production tanks was spalling. The poorer quality metal would produce spalling on non-penetrating hits cause splinters of metal to fly around the tank like shrapnel... Not fun for tank crew. Also the welding seems to have been particuarly poor in general on the Tiger II and you will often see broken or cracked seams after heavy impacts.

It was however the general maintenance that was required to keep the thing running that was also a big problem. Lack of workshop crews and facilities, not too mention spare parts, added to the failure rate.

 mwnciboo wrote:
As it was Germany was the world leader in Synthetic Fuel, at the time and we were working on lots of alternatives but never managed to get it in significant amounts to make a difference.

Erm... You know that in 1943 Germany produced 36 million barrels of synthetic fuel... Nearly 50% of total yeild. Indeed the Allied air raids on the hydrogenation plants from 1944 onwards are what really nailed the coffin lid shut for Germany.

Field Marshal Erhard Milch wrote in 1943;

The hydrogenation plants are our most vulnerable spots; with them stands and falls our entire ability to wage war. Not only will planes no longer fly, but tanks and submarines also will stop running if the hydrogenation plants should actually be attacked.

So, I'd say you may need to revise your view on German synthetic fuel production.

Erm... You know that in 1943 Germany produced 36 million barrels of synthetic fuel... Nearly 50% of total yeild. Indeed the Allied air raids on the hydrogenation plants from 1944 onwards are what really nailed the coffin lid shut for Germany.

Field Marshal Erhard Milch wrote in 1943;

The hydrogenation plants are our most vulnerable spots; with them stands and falls our entire ability to wage war. Not only will planes no longer fly, but tanks and submarines also will stop running if the hydrogenation plants should actually be attacked.

So, I'd say you may need to revise your view on German synthetic fuel production.

Yes I was aware that almost 50% of German Fuel came from Synth. If Germany had focused on Bio-diesel they would have had massive yield increases (Well beyond those achieved with Synfuel using say "Bergius process" with Coal or "Fischer–Tropsch process" . Just because 50% of their fuel was made this way doesn't make it efficient, if anything it was a huge Achilles heal. They never really achieved the vast amounts you need for Industrial Warfare. Biodiesel would have allowed them to be almost Fuel independent, as you can de-localise fuel production and the Allied Airforces would have struggled.

As it stood, alot of the plants were knocked out, captured or never completed being built. The Technology was great, but then we found huge reserves of Oil in the middle East and so the price dropped and it became "uneconomical" to make you own fuel.

But you said;

"but never managed to get it in significant amounts to make a difference. "

Clearly they did as without them, they would have not been able to carry on.

You never mentioned efficency, merely pointed out it did not make a contribution, when in fact it was 50% of their fuel yeild - A largecontribution to the war effort, whether efficent or not.

But also way off-topic!

Alright I argued my point badly Germany was always short of fuel.

Anyway, back to TIGER II's..