How to fight Tigers - Tactics & Weaknesses

while the tiger is probably one of the most famous kitties on this planet so what is the best way to deal with the panther come from his ex Oz film a first off the tiger was such a threat for most allied tanks because of its combined firepower and armor protection so it could kill serious damage to most tanks at ranges they could do rather little against it this is very well illustrated in the wartime publication tiger fever tiger primer that was issued to the tiger cruise where clover leaf was drawn for the Sherman t-34 kv-1 Lee and Churchill indicating for each tank and what range it could penetrate the Tigers armor as well at which range it could be penetrated by the Tigers 88 millimeter gun it explicitly noted the spittle eaten this clip lattice East TV under Isaac for Bolton the entry into the clover is forbidden for t-34 white interesting is the missing article in front of the tank names yet far more interesting is that the clover shape also accounts for the angling of the tank as such the illustration give a clear indication of the tiger standoff advantage which allowed it to kill without being killed and although the number of Reds grew over time the Tigers maintain the standoff advantage over virtually all their opponents throughout the war as such the training Department of the German army High Command already in October 1943 noted the tiger should strive to conduct combat at distances over 1,000 meter this guideline was particularly issued to counter the misconception that the tiger was in rural and it was referring explicitly to penetration trials by the Saadat against the tiger but also providing the solid table of weapons used and the penetrations achieved and this brings us to the first way to deal with the tiger namely to get up close and personal just like in the petting zoo there were two ways to do this either close in on the cat or ideally let the cat come to you and if you have experience with cats you know that they usually do exactly the opposite of what you want so let's look at the closing method this was the way the salt instructed a tanker before the Battle of Kursk although with limited success for example on the 5th and 6th July 1943 two companies of the 500 v heavy pants a battalion destroyed 111 Soviet tanks for a loss of only three of their own so our tactics were to close with the Tigers as rapidly as possible and engage the thinner side and rearm oh these tactics were difficult to execute and the two tiger battalions doing Citadel lost fewer than 10 tanks in combat by destroying several hundred Soviet tanks so it's particularly noted that Tigers RIA is one able to incendiary bottles usually called Molotov cocktails because the engine air intake was located there sadly I could not find any accounts that are successful in this regard except one mentioned by Tiger commander Otto Carius who noted in 1944 that only one tiger was lost to a hunter-killer team yet pointing out that this was due to the fact that the tank was deployed as an individual tank with all proper protection nevertheless the threat alone affected tactical deployment hereõs also noted that he had six clothes in mines mounted on the turret in case someone wanted to pet his tiger note that this might be an error in the memoirs since according to her other source there were only five s mine discharges mounted on the early Tigers thank you to Schleifer for pointing his own additionally in an after-action report from March 1944 Carter has noted I had to drop back approximately 200 meters from the ruins when it became dark I did this to be safe against hunter-killer teams and to have fields of fire and such hunter-killer teams clear restricted the freedom of action of tigers and tanks in general it had very limited success rate unless I missed something crucial hence the preferred method was to let the tiger come to you this worked especially well for gun crews yet this required iron nerves in order to avoid opening fire too early as victory scruff pointed out one of the gun layers sergeant Sierra Duke became unnerved and fired as soon as the tanks appeared on the hilltops he missed and the German tanks immediately spotted his gun it was blasted with a direct hit cameras pointed out how hard it was to spot anti-tank guns usually we didn't make out the anti-tank guns until they had fired the first shot we were often hit right away if the anti-tank crew was on top of things because we had run into a wall of anti-tank guns hence it was crucial that the Gunners hold the fire till the last moment this was also the experience of the British fighting in Tunisia but British 6-pounder that is a 57-millimeter gun was able to take out a tire from the engagement the following lessons but wrong a the British Gunners did not open until the enemy tank was well within effective range B in addition to opening five of the primary weapon the 57-millimeter the anti-tank unit also opened with intense light machine gun fire which forced the tanks to button up and in effect blinded him visually apparently became confused and it was extremely traversing his guns away from the anti-tank guns when he was knocked out for good as such the British concluded the following a the unobstructed vision of the ganna in a tank destroyer gives him a very real advantage of his opponent squinting through the periscope or narrow vision slits of a tank B the tank destroyer unit must force the enemy tank to button up by intense fire from every web me has including machineguns tommy guns and rifles and the last observation leads us directly to the next point namely if you have enough taka daka acre firepower you can also just blast away with everything this might not necessarily put the tag out of action but likely will reduce its combat effectiveness as the German High Command noted even mass file for weapons also light infantry weapons can reduce the fighting power of the tiger because even if the strong armor usually will not be penetrated damage to sensitive parts tracks and suspension weapon turret ring optics occurs now there was a major issue with the early variants of the tiger namely the fact that the commander cupola was very high and just valid on this made it a rather easy target and also very vulnerable carios pointed this out several times in his memoirs likely also to fact that he almost got killed by such a hit the entire commander's cupola had flown off my Tiger had shrapnel in my temper and face since the Soviets captured the tiger in January 1943 and tested Referral II they were aware of its strengths and weaknesses including the issue of the commander cupola they distributed leaflets that indicated which areas of the tiger could be damaged with which weapon especially prior to the Battle of Kursk the turret ring commander's cupola weapons ports and bow machine gun port should be engaged by heavy machine guns and anti-tank guns the tracks the front and rear track wheels and drivers vision port should be fired upon with guns of 45 millimeter calibers or upwards the track bridge should be engaged with anti-tank grenades and the cooling intake with incendiary bottles note that the instructions in some cases were far more detailed than this now someone pointed on in a comment section that the commander's cupola is a tired that is too small to hit properly while the 500-foot heavy pants a battalion clearly disagrees an after-action report from the 503rd heavy panther battalion which was equipped with tigers later commented what was striking was how frequently the commander's cupola was penetrated by direct hits or badly damaged Russian instruction on how to combat Tigers spread surprisingly quickly and was followed by all enemy arms of service with great stubbornness note that the soffits shared the experiences with the Western Allies and speaking of the Western Allies let's look at how detailed with the panther camp on sex Ostrom ii since the employment of small arms fire and other elements to blind or distracted tigers wasn't always an option especially in long range engagements as such one method was to outflank the tiger one New Zealand division depth of the tiger effluents the following way a tiger was engaged with three Sherman's knocked out one meanwhile a 17 pounder gun was moved forward at a range of about 2400 yards from the tiger and engaged his side and the tiger realized that it was being engaged by high-velocity gun it swung around 90 degrees so that it's heavy frontal was to at the gun although sever hits the school at the range was too great to knock out the cat yet tactics were to make Tyga expose its flanks to the Sherman's at the range of almost 500 yards by swinging around onto the anti-tank gun I get it justice and many was engaged by Sherman's it withdrew thank you here to Max ravenclaw for pointing out that there was something odd with the ranges and mobius 504 tracking down a primary source it had different ranges although the other parts of the text were equal to reprint in a secondary source 9 North Africa before the British and US forces in access to the 17 pounder gun how did the deal with an attack from tires after all there were several occasions in such attacks failed most notably of Hudson Boxing Club ox-head in 1943 one method was simply to pull back from rich to rich and deploying minds of course these minefields had to be protected by anti-tank guns as well furthermore artillery engaged two tigers once the hit mines this prevented engineers from clearing the minefield additionally the Tigers had to button up and were unable to maneuver without risking to hit another mine there were several instances for such a combination of Mines anti-tank guns and especially artillery how did the advances of Tigers in 1943 and 1944 and of course one of the easiest or harness methods depending on a point of view was to up gun your troops by increasing the penetration capabilities of their guns it is required usually a lot of time since won't either the proper gun and even if that was available if needed to be distributed to the troops or worse fitted in a proper vehicle for instance the sword captured the tag and January 1943 which led to several reactions first in April 1943 the people's commissariat of the tank industry issued orders for provisioning of hollow charged ammunition for the 122 millimeter guns on version of the 85 millimeter anti-aircraft gun to an anti-tank and tank gun development of an 85 millimeter self-propelled gun which would later become the su-85 production of specialized anti-tank 485 and 152 millimeter guns after the conclusion of the penetration tests performed on a tiger the following orders were issued in May 1943 development of new armor-piercing subcaliber ammunition for the t-34 the development of a long barrel 122 millimeter self-propelled gun the later ISU 122 and the development of a 100 millimeter gun for the planned is tank big THANK YOU to ilver Fomenko for pointing out my arrow about the su-152 and to peter from tank archives on confirming this additionally a big thank you here to dr. Roman Tupper for providing the information on the various measures taken by the Soviets in April and May 1943 so on paper upcoming is easy in reality it was not nevertheless it happened over time and as a result in September 1944 the Inspector channel of the Panzer Papa Heinz Guderian noted in the time of the 12 point 2 centimeter tank gun and 5.7 centimeter anti-tank gun in the east as well as the 9.2 centimeter anti-tank anti-air gun in the west and southwest the tiger even due to his capabilities cannot ignore the fighting principles necessary for other tank types anymore well not much to add here and if you run into Tigers on your way to work with school you know what to do anyway if you like my research content like this consider supporting me on patreon or alternatives linked in the description big thank you here to Ilya max ravenclaw mobius 501 Slifer for pointing out various issues in this video also a big thank you to tank archives and dr. Beaumont Oprah for answering my various questions special thanks to check my to end woman for books that made this video possible as always sources are in description thank you for watching and see you next time

Channel: Military History Visualized

Views: 483,614

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Keywords: Military History, Military History Visualized, History, Visualized, mhv, How to fight Tigers, How to kill a tiger, Tactics, Tactics & Weaknesses, Panzer VI, Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung E, ww2, how to kill a tiger tank, anti-tank tactics, panzer vi tiger, anti tank tactics ww2, tiger tank vs m4 sherman

Id: Gyv7VTXvAfw

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2019