Tuesday 6 March 2018

British Tiger II Intel

The British, impressively enough, were already aware of the King Tiger long before ever seeing it in combat, at least by May of 1944.


On July 18th, 1944, the Germans lost three King Tigers on the Western Front. It doesn't look like the British noticed them, however.

The following information was published in September of 1944. It's largely correct, but some errors are present. Complete information about the King Tiger would not be published until February of 1945.


8 comments:

  1. Wonder if they at least partly picked it up from Ultra decrypts? Sounds plenty plausible that radio traffic broaching on the topic would mention the kind of general information present in the first entry but already for practical reasons not go into technical specifics.

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  2. When did the Americans do a report on this beast? I would have thought the intel would have been shared.

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    1. The earliest American report I've seen was January 1945. It was in an intelligence summary article though, so they probably got the info in late 1944. I also have a letter asking the Soviets for info on a "Tiger Imperial" dated October 4th, 1944, so presumably they had no info on it at that point.

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    2. Thanks, Peter. Weird, one of the things that was supposedly really good about the US army by the end of WWII was its training programs--which presumably would include the results of intel like this on how to fight enemy hardware (supposedly this is why green units in the Ardennes fought like veterans). Yet no official report with 'how to fight this' suggestions on a major piece of German hardware? Maybe as William Sager says, it was passed along by word of mouth.

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    3. ...for a given value of "major" anyway, given their pitiful numbers (total production didn't reach *five hundred*) and the fact the German AFV fleet mainly consisted of StuGs, Pz IVs and increasingly Panthers.

      PITA when you ran into it no doubt but of rather debatable importance, and in practical terms you dealt with it (or didn't) essentially the same way as the Panther and Tiger I what now the sides were thicker skinned.

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  3. The British 2nd Army in Normandy would have been encountering Tiger IIs at least by early July if not a bit earlier.

    There's some reason to believe US forces encountered more Tiger IIs than Tiger Is. There were no heavy tank units deployed in the US sector in Normandy, and by the time the US units came up against heavy tanks later in 44 and in 1945, the Tiger II was the type more frequently encountered.

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  4. Strange as this may sound perhaps information about the strengths and weaknesses of German tanks may of been passed around by word of mouth or other unofficial channels.

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    1. Good point, I've never seen the kind of "shoot these tanks in these weak spots" diagrams that the Soviets published in huge amounts.

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