King Tiger's in Normandy?

I have a few questions about them. I know the 503rd heavy panzer battalion was supplied King Tiger's.

How many were using the Porsche turrets and what happen to the surviving KT after the retreat out of France?

 

I put this puzzle together a few yeas back, thought it was fiction till I did a little research. Though I doubt Mustang's flew that low over a Tiger.

 

I believe there were 5 still experimental King Tigers the German OOB issued for field trials, all were lost during the retreat seeing little combat and were Porsche turret. So not a full company unless some arrived later.

 

The ones that did would have been in 2 TAF markings and flying Arty (R) or Tactical recce missions

 

The print is 'Normandy Tiger Hunt' by Heinz Krebs, which apparently depicts an incident in which the 339th FG strafed King Tigers in Normandy.

As to how much artistic licence has been used.........

 

Going from memory here, but I believe that two of the King Tigers issued to the 1st Company, schwere Panzer Abtielung 503 had the later Henschel turret.

 

It depends how you define 'Normandy'.

sPz Abt 503 had 13 TII(p)and (fkl)316 attached to Pz Lehr had 5 TII(p)
Only the 13 sPz Abt 503 TII fought in 'Normandy.
One company were then withdrawn, equipped with 15 Tiger II and returned to France but never quite got into Normandy.
For years it was claimed only 2 of the replacement TII in 503 were TII(h) but there are at least 3 shown in photos, more likely 4 and possibly 5. Not that that sort of detail matters to anyone but a complete anorak but you would not believe the abuse heaped on those who produced the photos because it was the account of von Rosen (who insisted there was only 2 TII(h)) and no one was allowed to contradict 'one who was there' never mind a decorated Tiger 'hero'!)
sSSPz Abt 101 also had a Company re-equipped with 15 TII(h) but they too never got back to Normandy.

So TII in France up to end of August 1944:
TII(p)28-30
TII(h) 18-20

 

Is "Tigers in Normandy" by Wolfgang Schneider considered a reliable source. I enjoyed reading it and it appears to track every Tigers, both 1 and 2 types from the beginning of D-Day until the retreat over the Seine and infact covers several in that area down to the vehicle number.

I am not in a position to know whether it is accurate or not but it is not sensational in character, rather reads more factually. It does not paint the Tigers as super tanks and virtually all meet their demise. If my memory is correct most from mechanical problems, fuel shortages, air attacks but some from allied tank and anti-tank means. It has been some time since I read it.

It seemed pretty honest.

Gaines

 

Schneider misses no chance to transfer a Tiger from the 'knocked out' list to the 'abandoned' list. This is how it works. Over a month 10 Tigers get knocked out. 6 are repaired but 4 are so badly damaged they never get fixed and become a ready source of spare parts. In August the German bolt and run for home. All the hanger queens get left behind and are classed as 'abandoned' Hey presto our 4 knocked out Tigers become (like many other panzers) non combat losses!

 

Ah, creative writing ! I think they teach that in universities. Appreciate your insight, really.

 

Tigers were hangar queens even without enemy action, but given the strategic and spares situation after 1943 once it started getting cannibalized for spares a German tank was probably doomed unless it got loaded on a flat car and railed back to the factory for rebuild. But I should not quibble, I as you probably have noticed I have issues with the Royal Navy practice of reporting ships as "scuttled" or "constructive total loss" .

 

Great stuff. I have a few questions if you dont mind. Why was sPz Abt 302 given TII over others? Was it to replace any lost tigers? Also did they have any engagements in Normandy? from what i understand a lot of german armor were knocked out by ground attack aircraft like the P-47.

 

In the aftermath of the Normandy The Operations Research team from 21st Army group examined every Pz V and Pz VI of which they were made aware and a fair selection of Pz IV, in Normandy lost between 6 June and 31 August 1944. Report 17

They visited 333 German tanks. of which 20 had been knocked out by aircraft, compared to 77 from AP shot and 115 destroyed by their own crews and 67 abandoned. They counted 35 Pz VI Tigers , of which 20 were destroyed by their own crew, six abandoned by their crew, eight by AP shot and one to unknown causes. None had been lost to air attack.

One factor is the difficulty of validating pilot claims. Report No4 was the results of the analysis of wrecks in the Mortain area studied between 12 and 20 August. They found 78 AFvs and 128 motor vehicles - compared to claims of 153 AFVs destroyed, 43 probables and 148 vehicles destroyed and 20 probables.

The researches found 21 AFVs destroyed from the air, compared 29 destroyed by the US Army. None of these were tiger tanks. five panthers and two Pz IV were KO by rockets and one of each by bombs.

 

3 groups of Tigers were hit by bombers in Normandy. sPzAbt 503 lost at least 4 on 18/7/44. sSSPzAbt 101 lost 2-4 at Evercy 15/6/44 and sSSPzAbt 102 lost 2 Tigers 10/7/44. TAC might struggle to prove success but Bomber Command did the business!

 

The survey was done in two parts because the conditions of each were different. Combining the two sets of numbers and averaging distorts the picture. Obviously when an enemy is in full retreat he is going to throw away a lot of tanks. When he stands and fight few tanks are discarded. Introducing the large number of abandoned tanks into the static phase helps create the myth that under all conditions abandonment was always high. It was not. Only the mad dash for home gave rise to the 'could not be knocked-out-in-combat' super-panzer myth. During both the static and fluid phase of Normandy of all German tanks lost in combat over 60% were caused by AP shot. Once they showed their front to the Allies AP did for them!

 

Seems to me the Allied Air Force paid a big price for the advance even if the Allied tank and infantry also were losing men and armor:

Unfortunately some of the sites don´t work anymore but the lowest one does:

[SIZE=10.5pt]Canadian Military history[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]The history of Second Tactical Air Force [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]http://www.legionmag...story/99-01.asp[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]The Germans had been forced to concede air superiority in France, but they equipped their forces with enormous quantities of anti-aircraft guns, including the dual-purpose 88- and rapid-firing 20-and 40-mm guns.

Flak was a particularly dangerous threat to ground-support aircraft that were committed to low-level reconnaissance or tasked to attack ground targets. In the book Blue Skies, Olmstead writes: "Flak is the one thing that pilots, be they fighter or bomber, fear above everything else. Flying along in formation a mile or two above the earth, it is possible to avoid flak by taking evasive action through frequent alterations of course and altitude, but once committed to a dive on a target, the pilot must press home his attack while shells and bullets of all calibres flash by. We were quite philosophical about flak, as much as we hated it, because surviving flak was strictly a matter of luck, and it claimed the best pilots as well as the poorer ones in time. The 88-mm shells and heavier calibre guns burst with a bright red flash surrounded by a large ball of black, wicked-looking smoke that hung lazily in the sky. At dawn or dusk, pink tracer shells were visible, a sight that flyers will remember for years. It was a horrible feeling to climb away from a target and watch the rosy balls of red-hot death streaming by, missing you and your aircraft by a very few feet. Then there was the reverse effect when you attacked a target, and the shells seemed to come up so slowly that you felt you were watching them for ages. Not until they were close did you get the full impression of their tremendous speed. It took steady nerves to carry on facing so many deadly messengers."

The German anti-aircraft regiments, manned by the Luftwaffe, had years of practice. They inflicted terrible losses on Second TAF pilots. Between April 1 and June 5, 1944, 133 fighter bombers were shot down, and the toll increased after D-Day. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]-------------[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]In April and May 1944, the Allied air forces lost nearly 12,000 men and over 2,000 aircraft in operations which paved the way for D-Day.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm[/SIZE]

 

All Armies paid a high price in WW2. However the Allied had a positive result in return for their pain. They won. The Germans spent the post war years rewriting history so they could put their defeat down to being outnumbered. They obviously could not erase their defeat but hit upon a brilliant way to skew things. Thus we got the mantra 'look how many Russians we killed', 'see how many Allied tanks we destroyed', 'Our air aces shot down 1000s of Allied aircraft' all to reinforce the implied 'if it were one-on-one we would have won'.
Tanks and aircraft are consumables in a war. They are no different from shells and bullets. Tank and aircraft losses meant little to the Allies because they fought a joined up was where production was tailored to consumption. They could replace all losses. To make a valid comparison you should total up Allied losses and compare to ground gained/enemies destroyed. That equation is overwhelmingly tilted against the German war machine.

 

A thing that often gets ignored in these conversations it he synergistic impacts of various forces. For instance TAC air may not have resulted in as many direct losses as some would have you believe. On the other hand they took out a fair number of logistics vehicles, prevented or at least inhibited daylight movement, and threw the timing off on what were suppose to have been coordinated counter attacks. Indeed these indirect contribution to losses may have had greater impact than the direct damage they inflicted on AFVs.

 

"...In his room in a Parisian hotel on the Boulevard Haussmann, Hauptmann Scherf informed Leutnant von Rosen that 3.Kp had been earmarked to re-equip with the King Tiger tank at the Mailly-Le-Camp training ground, which would be their destination in several days time. As the tanks had yet to arrive from Germany the crews were being granted a two day leave pass, which they were free to spend in the French capital city. Scherf and von Rosen were in the meantime summoned to the Staff headquarters of Panzer Brigade X -located in Reims- to which their 3./Kp was then subordinated. With their all-to-brief spell of leave over, the men of 'the Third' arrived at Mailly-Le-Camp in several groups. They would have to wait until early August for the first Tiger II tanks to arrive from Germany - 12 Tigers with the Porsche turret & two Tigers with the production turret (‘300’ and ‘301’), according to von Rosen. Some crews went back to Germany to bring other Tigers to the front. von Rosen later recalled this period as one of high tension. The crews had barely ten days to familiarise themselves with their new charges. To general surprise this brief working-up period was conducted in front of the cinema newsreel cameras. PK reporter Katzke had been assigned to film a news report about the unit. The star of the piece was undoubtedly the fabulous new Königstiger and still images from the filming continue to be published worldwide. On 11 August some twelveTiger IIs entrained for Paris, leaving two behind in Mailly. On 12 August the rail convoy came under attack from US fighter-bombers between Sezanne and Esternay, Tiger ‘311’ tipping off its wagon as von Rosen attempted to drive it off the train during the strafing attack. Von Rosen was injured in the process and hospitalised in Meaux.." '45 Tigers in Normandy', Lodieu

3./ Kp got as far as Mantes (50 k south-west of Paris) before encountering the 79th Inf Div who had established a bridgehead across the Seine..