Geschichte(n) aus Stahl, Folge 15 (2/3): Der vergessene Blitzkrieger - der Königstiger (Teil 2/3)

The canyon is something where there is no myth to deconstruct, no false or misleading narrative. It represented an enormous advance in matters of penetration and precise range both from night to 56 Tiger and from 75 70 Panther At. At first glance, the tiger looks like a large panther to most people and this assessment, in principle, is not bad at all. There is also a lot of focus on the inclined front song, which is based on the same experiences as the rear wall inclined motor. It was taken directly by Panther. In fact, the Tiger B finished the Panther in such a special way with the initial tower that after the first encounter, the Western Allies mentioned them in some reports at the beginning of the game, so they packed a suitcase. word of Panther and Tiger So the merger of the two lines was immediately recognized and obviously there was no big secret.

The Panther's design was influenced by, among other things, the T 34, and is visually compared to it. Rarely, because the Tiger Two is much larger than the T 34. If we skip this intermediate step and put it on the side, which can easily be done in digital format, you immediately see what the Hesse design is like. I don't want to say that it has been copied, but the same problems and the same knowledge of ballistics and so on continue to lead to the same solutions, what is immediately noticeable with the Tiger and the Panther now is the displacement of the frontal armor plate, of Of course, the interlocking of the armor plates was similar but not exactly the same.

German military engineers long resisted welding armor plates at an angle to each other. And there were good reasons for it, it wasn't just the simple thing. Conservatism of Roll Film In general, weld seams are a weak point in a tank shell due to the conduction there when we are in the zone of influence and the associated structural change there in the base material, end of quote , box. The German construction method had its own weaknesses in the way it featured vertical plates and had threaded connections, but at least the front armor plates could always rest on the vertical plates behind them when hit.

This was an abrupt system, but. inclined armor was now necessary. At least the tenon or interlocking principle was used and the plates meshed together and could hold each other. On the Panther, these spikes were significantly different lengths. for better load distribution and therefore you can sometimes use both vehicles when taking difficult photographs. Keep them separate if the rest is blurry or unclear from the light so you can make the necessary complex cuts you had to make around the corner, an important step forward. These panels were no longer cut mechanically as before, but increasingly with autogenous acetylene or luminous gas, which represented an enormous time saving of up to 90 percent before the 90th work step, for contemporaries it must have been like cutting suddenly. butter This was a significant small advance with major effects on German tank production, which remains the case today.

It is often overlooked because it seems so irrelevant. Wehrmacht armor specialist Raum wrote after the war that this procedure was the main one. The first to allow German industry to supply German armored vehicles, which was notable for this war. Without the use of Brenz cutting technology, it would be impossible to manage an immense fleet of machines with an amount of work that cannot be exceeded. In the end, even if the work is in many ways a letter of justification, it reads quite interestingly, the problems are very hidden, simply, so at least you are completely right, since on many technical issues the plates in Yes they were still a The problem was especially the enormously thick front armor plate with a thickness of 150 mm.

These steel armor plates had to be hardened first and then left on to get the right combination of hardness and toughness, which is also important for a number of armor plates, but this is how it should look now. chemie.de explains to us that the process often consists of heating up to a temperature that depends on the material, maintaining the temperature of the parts and, finally, rapid cooling, cooling taking into account the critical cooling rate, that is, heating it. It can be cooled and then cooled as a cooling medium. By the way, very different substances can be used, water of course is what guides us, it just comes to mind, but different oils can also be used against salt baths. , air or very specific gases for armor plates over 100 mm thick, however, for technical reasons at that time you could only use what Shrek had as a means, other things did not work yet, but that requires highly qualified workers. competent and we only have men on the case because the power of water as an extinguishing agent would have caused it to cool down too quickly.

If you were not careful which would have distorted the spatial structure of the iron atoms in an undesirable way, they have been poorly tempered and now poorly made and this causes deformations and undesirable properties such as brittleness and sometimes drastic decrease in the experience or lack of experience of workers. The lack of specialized knowledge on the part of the workers caused such errors to be made. In the final phase of the war there were no longer specialists who could do it. In other words, the extinction of the thick plaques in the heart was a critical moment that required special knowledge and special experience in the Tiger King phase.

It then went into production, which was one of the many reasons why the King Tiger's powerful armor plates often didn't perform as well as they should. In the next step, the steel is left as I said, as chemistry. from now tells us a more detailed quote in this state only beveled the steel is very hard and brittle and unusable for technical use the state is very accurately described as hard glass in a second step the so-called Leave on or also called temples the hardness is Se The desired usage properties are reduced and adjusted. The hardness, tensile strength and toughness of the steel are again adjusted according to the government ratio and the desired properties.

We cannot get into the interaction of hardness and traction. and the compressive strength and toughness of armored steel now, that would take us too far with ours. Tempering is now too important for us, but it is also essential that it has to be done if the armor plate does not break with each hit. The glass was there during this step, but retracted. The Cherry Dancer Star lexicon explains what can go wrong in this step. To achieve possibly low voltage components, these are cooled as slowly as possible from the temperature of the manganese-chromium wire. and chromium nickel steel tends to become brittle at different temperatures between 425 and 500 25 degrees Celsius after long-term maintenance or slow cooling, the hardness is reduced.

I think the remedy is accelerated cooling from the initial temperature. It is often not practical, it is recommended to use molybdenum or tungsten, end of quote. Therefore, even at this step, you can leave it on again. , it's too easy to break splinters. If specialized knowledge and experience were lacking, the problem could have been solved with the government, as I just heard, but precisely these substances were always missing, that is, tungsten has always worked. Enough for Germany When the King Tiger goes into production in 1944 Molybdenum supplies from Japan and Finland run out and the boy's mine in Norway dries up due to Allied bombing I can produce more The proportion of tin-molybdenum armor steel sing from 0 to 55 percent to 0.25 percent less, that's always better than nothing, but in reality it's no longer enough.

The King Tiger's armor plates were often not sufficiently tempered during the hardening and/or tempering process. They were still very hard, that's why it couldn't be done. continue to resist the penetration of foreign bodies into the material. There was toughness, but when penetration occurred, the plates often lacked the properties that prevented the catastrophe from completely destroying the thing. Firstly, they had very little tensile strength, that is, the ability to resist. expand, deform before cracking, deform and thin before breaking again and there was a lack of toughness, that is, there was a lack of resistance to further crack propagation or large-scale failure if the hardness and strength were found to be They were means of piercing if These impacts caused an impact with catastrophic consequences, the plates were so fragile that they broke or splintered easily when a bullet exceeded the hardness of the plate.

The third problem point in production was the welding itself, because the zapf technology was logical, but the wheel, the execution of everything was a challenge, the German welding process with the beautiful name, quote, electric fusion welding with boards genetics and ferry adds the final quote has its own problems Rolf Helm writes about this quote location with higher carbon content greater than 0.22 percent requires complex heat treatment of the weld areas or addition to all others government plans such as molybdenum an improvement and, therefore, the risk of subsequent formation of cracks to avoid the end of listing and molybdenum, as just explained, was no longer sufficient because at the same time, the level of formation of welding workers also decreased and therefore 44 and 45 continued working from the beginning, between 30 and 40 percent of the workers.

In cases of welding defects in the form of cracks up to 40 cm after with improvements. On the electrodes there were still 10 to 20 percent of these defects with huge cracks, so, despite all the German perfection, the seams The welds were not of particularly high quality, but rather had fissures, cavities, cracks and patches. But this makes the points especially ballistically weak. They were there anyway, we explained to ourselves that they were even more so when they were poorly executed. A direct hit at this point was no longer necessary, the transmission of force through the plates could also cause the weld seams to burst if the bullet impacted;

Elsewhere on the plate, the analyzed report shows Dr. what makes the head of quality control at dhv dortmund an important tiger two production companies and openly said that the highest quality in production was no longer considered necessary. That was not the point, so our idea was that perfection was not present at that time. On the contrary, he says that in the final phase of the war there were only production figures and that is an image that he relates to the Soviet tank industry. But for the Königtiger period. Image of the vehicle The problems described apply, of course, to all German tanks of this era more or less, but only in the case of the Königtiger are they an ineffective part of its being because this vehicle was built exclusively in this situation of lack and capabilities and therefore affects this vehicle in its entirety and with its technical properties, its extreme pockets have also taken the problems to the extreme and this fact is all the more surprising as the king's league must serve as a key witness and extreme example of the idea of ​​quality instead of quantity in many stories Now it turns out that the Kö

nigstiger

s didn't really realize one or the other.

The tower, my goodness, the Kö

nigstiger

s were used by two different companies. Around 50 Königstiger had a very elegantly rounded tower. Much more angular corner tower In the exhibition we also have rounded doors, more elegant. It is often called the Porsche tower, but that is incorrect. How did the two towers come about and, above all, should it be like this? It is clear that all Tiger towers were developed and designed by Krupp for both the Tiger 1 and the Tiger 2. That is why the Porsche prototype and the Henschel prototype of the Tiger 1 competed in the same tournament.

The Wald Krupp team received the partial order. The tower, no matter if they would get the general order next, no matter who. The chassis design would have been the same with the Tiger 2. Krupp developed the turret for the Tiger 2 and both versions. The most elegant tower was a first draft and. yes, I would have entered the Porsche 2 Tiger or the Henschel Tiger. Two would have arrived depending on who had won the competition. It would have been Krupp's second Tiger. The only difference between the two towers. It would have been that the Porsche tower should rotate electrically and the Henschel hydraulically but it was internal, that's why you can tell with the shape.

There was nothing to do, but now it turned out relatively quickly that tower two looked excellent but had crucial technical problems. The shape could have been inspired by the panther, we don't know exactly, but in the end it was very unique, the red was just a very red as intended due to the rounding. Small targets and round surfaces could slide, butPrecisely thanks to this rounding, as in the Panther, the projectiles could also be directed towards the rotating ring of the turret or all the way to the bottom. The construction of the turret was also relatively complex due to the rounded armor plates and their processing.

Due to the dangers and effort involved, Coup redesigned the turret again before it was released into series production. , the faceplate was simply designed to be much thicker. Steel was installed so that more ammunition could be brought in. So you see the first draft, she doesn't like it and she reconstructed it based on the documents, so the previous version could and should have been forgotten because, like so many components during the development of German tanks, if she had given it a brief moment on paper, it would have been obsolete and thrown in the trash, so it was just a pure development stage, but similar to the Tiger. 1, Porsche was onto something very bold and started production of a few examples right from the start.

Porsche wanted the towers to be ready for their vehicle which once again they were sure would be built and these were still the first towers because they were the simplified version. Coop at that time like Porsche had huge bonuses that it was not yet finished like Porsche and then it was kicked out of the competition 50 towers because these 50 costumes that were only provided by Porsche had finished and of course they decided to install these existing 50 elaborately produced. Anything else would have been a huge waste, because these towers were developed and designed by Coop and then commissioned by Porsche.

In reality, the doors purchased from Porsche have been consolidated. more correct: the obsolete tower, the previous tower, the development tower, the pre-series tower, the one that was produced too much. These would be the names that threaten Porsche. We can see some interesting things in. The tower itself basically follows the three-man arrangement, which is available to the Wehrmacht since the Chamber of German-Soviet Cooperation in the early 1930s and the year is decisive for the successes. The tank's gun was three. Human assault is one of the most important German tank inventions. The commander and right gunner sat to the left of the gun in the direction of travel.

Once you've seen it, you can't see it there anymore. There are constructive reasons for the tower itself, that is, the serial tower weighs 13.5 tons, which is the weight of exactly two and a half 1 tanks, the clear inclination of the roof and, of course, the interaction with the vertical surfaces, on the one hand, to avoid and minimize the commander's field of vision, so that was not visible because the tank is in the way, but this area was 11 meters in front towards the other side and 25 meters towards the worst side directly to the right, so that was not 25 meters to the right of the commander I could see because there was simply a tank in the way and the angle was very bad.

The commander's cupola had plug-in brackets for a rain canopy, so please don't make stupid statements. Photos of tanks are once again circulating on the Internet where the crew, like the sun or the rain, had already placed them. For this, Königstiger had a mount that allowed the commander to lie face down and observe and make decisions. Even in bad weather, the turret would spin depending on the engine revolutions between 140 and 20 seconds, depending on how much the engine had been built, but a turret is not supposed to spin like a top in battle, which is why this key figure is.

In reality, much more nonsense is the question of how much you need for a quarter turn, which is the most important key figure, and the turret needs between 35 and five seconds for a quarter turn, which is crucial for a battle real. It was not that bad. In the end, fine adjustment was done using a handwheel and one turn resulted in half a degree of movement. The built-in cannon was 88 long, like I said, and the tank was there, but. What type of cannon is it? In reality, we had abandoned the discussion of the cannon in detail when it was still unclear which model should be mounted.

In the competition, Rheinmetall had opted for the existing 8.8-centimetre flat 41 with a length of presumably 74 caliber. Krupp engineers were supposed to somehow build a tone around it, but Krupp suddenly worked harder and designed a completely new 8.8 cm extra-long barrel and this now shoots in the technical core essentially with the competition model does the same thing, but The group's execution is special in the details. Adapted to tank use in terms of accuracy and penetrating power, both guns are completely comparable, there are no big differences, but the gun had a whole series of tank-specific advantages. Same performance with a barrel almost 30 centimeters shorter, which was in confusing terrain.

A real advantage here is that the tank is more compact, the better, every centimeter makes a difference. Secondly, it provided junction areas with which the cannon return. Eventually the tube was reduced and allowed the turret to be made smaller, meaning it had less impact area. Thirdly, it had shorter and thicker return cylinders to be adjusted or pushed forward again after firing, which were to be installed. in the tank turret to save space and thus also contribute to reducing the silhouette of the tank. Fourth, it had a powder gas bubble system that protected the crew by containing the gases.

The shot prevented them from retreating to the combat area and putting. a strain on the crew's lungs and also gave the crew less space to craft and eventually thicker but shorter boxes were developed that were much easier to handle in the tight turret space for shop shooters and all. This meant that the gun was much easier to install on a tank with the same firing performance as Rheinmetall's Flag 41 because when building an anti-aircraft gun intended to be in the open field, none of this has to be taken into account. The gun is built and then it is free and the length of the tube does not matter because it points up or is aligned in the gear on the axis of the car so that it does not bother you, you do not drive with it on the terrain, The muzzle brake does not It was necessary because the king could go back as far as necessary, the carriage was adapted accordingly.

They were in Freimann and had the space available. For the same reason, cylinders were also designed to take up more space. because structurally it was easier to solve, because it had always been done that way and because there was no problem outside and the committee's gunpowder gases, of course, were not a problem in open combat with shooting, so the contract was awarded to the Canon. The tank-optimized gun was now presented as the 8.8-centimeter KBK 43 L 71. Thus, when the gun of the 43rd combat vehicle had a caliber of 8.8 and a length of 71 calibers, that is, 6.25 meters, the story was different.

It already appeared in the press among contemporaries and the story was a converted farce and was even spread in propaganda as proof that it is a very reliable weapon that has already proven its effectiveness and that, in principle, it is right and wrong. At the same time, because no, the protection was not converted from an existing flag gun, that is not the case, it was built recently, but well, at the same time yes, because it was not actually developed recently, the Rhine meter is very similar. The Rheinmetall Wallis table model has a very direct inspiration. So Hitler got exactly what he asked for in the summer of '41.

Let's remember the beginning of this little conference, remember the quote with which he started it. The installation of a long 88 on the Tiger said that the 88 was originally developed for anti-aircraft purposes. Such a planned further development of the country's tank fire seems possible and is too demanding and precise. The original flight was just the base. from which a cannon for the construction of tanks with many peculiarities was developed as planned. The cartridges of this new cannon were now very large for the time, because the long barrel was used to carry a larger propellant charge and achieve greater speed.

The projectile, but this propellant charge also had to be moved. The propellant charge was in the pants and then had to be balanced in the barrel. These cartridges, everything is a bird cartridge, depending on the type and version, about 20. kilograms. The 39 43 tank grenade fired a ten kilogram armor-piercing projectile of solid metal from the center of the propellant charge. That's quite an advertisement. The explosive grenade, on the other hand, carried a kilo of TNT or Amazon. It broke the head, which itself was made up of 84 kilograms of metal, into thousands of splinters, but these cartridges were used very relatively or in relatively small quantities.

The canyon is something about which there is no myth. To deconstruct that there is no false or misleading narrative. It represented enormous progress. In terms of penetration and accurate range, there was both the Tiger's 8 856 and the Panther's 75 70, which was excellent protection all around, extremely powerful. Extremely precise, without major defects in the turret, at the rear it had a large side hatch to insert the ammunition. Which was actually a relief with these oversized cartridges, because otherwise they would have to be passed through the hatch. on the turret roof, as before, which really works with these large cartridges.

Through this opening, Ubisoft could remove the weapon if it needed to be repaired or replaced, rather than having to remove it directly from behind. It should be a good step forward. On the roof was the so-called sleeve closure, an opening through which the sleeves could be ejected during combat without having to compromise the armor of the turret in any way and without having to introduce more and more compressed air systems into Heusenstamm. , as I said, the powder gases come out after the shot, a small fan on the roof says that the remains that came to the tower from the tower are used for this.

A system with very high efficiency. The engine looks like a Tiger 1 from the outside. , but when you look closely, it is built differently. The Tiger 1 had a slotted transmission where everything was symmetrical. The Tiger Two has a stepped transmission. It has 4 pairs of internal and five external rollers on each side, offset from each other on each one. side, so they were installed in a staggered manner. This had advantages in terms of maintenance and repairs, but it also created new problems because an unintentional tilt caused by the weight of the vehicle resulted in uneven loading on the connecting rods, so the King Tigers basically pushed their transmission down and bent it a bit. bit.

As a result, the chains became screwed and could no longer be turned very easily, resulting in a high bending resistance of the chains, so the chain has to be placed. right forward which lost power in other words it literally did not run smoothly and became stiff as a result, the rollers also wobbled a bit back and forth due to an axial shift, all the problems but with Despite all the problems , the goal of acceptable ground pressure has been achieved: 70 tonnes of weight must be distributed widely so that the vehicle does not constantly get stuck. You can imagine how much wider the better, and this was achieved with the normal Königstiger loads of 1.02 kilograms per square centimeter. chains on the ground which is a better ground pressure than the old 1 who had 1.04 and played in the same league as a challenger 0.96 or one night it was 0.97 years and decades later in American reports it is always can find praise for how little The Panthers and the Tickers 1 and 2 are 1 lower compared to the Germans with relatively thin chains where this often happened, although of course one always has to criticize these types of reports because they were written with some internationality, but accept that for now.

We are facing the heaviest mass-produced turret tank of the entire war, the King Tiger has very soft legs thanks to its wide and long tracks, which had to be raised to be able to travel on the train, the specific pressure on the ground. then it immediately jumps to 1.3 kilograms per square centimeter, so it immediately increases. These chains require a lot of skill on the part of the driver. The problem that bridges weighing 70 tons created tactical or even operational obstacles was another matter. Don't drive anymoreNow, from good weight distribution, by the way, the best distribution doesn't reduce the overall weight, so no matter how prepared you are, if you're too late for the bridge, then the thing will break.

That is a specific problem. the King Tiger, but technically these were very sophisticated ground pressure solutions, such as an engine that again serves as the Maybach Heil 2 30 30 with 700 HP, a 1.3-ton subscription rip-off that was built many times and the research was carried out with only ten horses per ton, Königtiger expected to now be at the lower end of the mobility scale. It arrived correctly, but forthe heavy tank, that was nothing unusual. They were absolutely underpowered. The M 26, the American wanted to go into battle. with around 11 hp, the only second manufacturer now also with around 11 hp, the Churchill in later versions with 95 hp per ton and the British 31 service even with 7.5 hp per ton.

This monster never went into series production, but yes. So no, the King Tiger had a 10hp engine and, especially for its class, it wasn't absurdly underpowered as you hear time and time again. The engine consumes about 500 liters per 100 kilometers on the road and about 700. Liters per 100 kilometers According to Henschel, the vehicle had 860 liters of fuel, so according to factory specifications it could travel 170 kilometers on the road and about 120 kilometers off-road. she. That's pretty little, but it's not absurdly small for the time. for the tactical needs of the Second World War, not at all. We don't always have to think about the risks of the advances we imagined in the Cold War.

They were definitely powerful for the tactical operational approaches that were planned in. the weather was good they were not good but they were good the dances were distributed throughout the vehicle a tank in the upper rear part of the engine area with 85 liters two tanks in the upper left and right part of the engine with 290 liters two tanks in the bottom left and right of the engine with 65 and 80 liters and second left and right in the combat area under the ammunition with 340 liters of fuel all around. The problem was that the fuel lines were very branched and because of this they were very complex.

In total there were almost 200 connections between all these lines and the dance which produced many leaks. This system works with electronic sensors that when a certain temperature is reached inside is 160-170 degrees Celsius, it automatically emits a 7. -second jet of extinguishing agent inside to easily extinguish everything that could have caught fire there, the The temperature did not drop drastically, the process was simply repeated until it was ready. The Königtiger had eight gears and could therefore reach upwards. at 41 km 5 km h, theoretically from where upon reaching 43 the engine reached 2500 limited revolutions which, by the way, was also relevant for the rotation speed, the vmax nominally dropped to 35 km h.

Again, yes, that is currently. in the lower third, but not at all small. In theory, these numbers are top speeds, most importantly the Tiger or King Tiger. It was mainly in the lower kmh range, but that was typical for tank battles of that era. What was missing, however, due to the interplay of engine, gearbox and weight, was agility. What was missing from the German translation of Roccat's standard work was what sounds so beautifully like an agility vehicle, completely outside of tactically important acceleration. To give you an idea, the way out was also very limited, no, I wasn't motionless, I wasn't constantly hiding and I could barely move, but you have to say that I wasn't the least bit animated either.

It drove, as you might say in a car review, but was otherwise relatively comfortable for the driver to use. The gear lever and steering mechanism were very complex constructions that, on the one hand, allowed very quiet and comfortable intuitive changes, but also required the driver's full attention. In the middle of a battle, stress and that's something that can go wrong. When the vehicle came into the world it had many small problems, for example, now I have identified some. The clutch slipped often, that's why. It didn't grip as it should, for example. There were too many bad joints, word had already spread, especially in the fuel lines, the balanced transmission with its inclined position caused very rapid wear, which meant that with this chain as resistance there were bad or faulty manual pages that many Sometimes they broke down and still Some other things, especially the Maybach engines, although in reality quite mundane, had a relatively large number of failures in use and there was Then an investigative committee formed by the tank commission was formed, which examined engines at Maybach to identify and solve problems.

This commission found, among other things, seizures in the pistons in no less than 23 of the 26 engines examined, which is a flagrant They found tight cylinder heads. They discovered there were fires caused by carburetor kickback and much more. Many of the errors identified could still be corrected. Not everything about the King Tiger was radically unreliable, but that's also a shorthand and an exaggeration. It worked, but of course, because it was so complex, there were also a lot of bugs. Apart from these emergency changes, the vehicle, like all German tanks, was constantly changed and developed and the changes were also incorporated into ongoing operations. in the Königstiger without there being a vague distinction.

This meant that vehicles at the end of production, that is, those that had just left the pavilion, looked different from those that had been in the same factory on the same day or in between. at the beginning of production it is a relatively expensive system by today's standards, changes during production include, among other things, the following and now not in chronological order but only as a medley, the fixing of one or the production of supports for The two-ton improvised material is supposed to make it easier for the crew to move heavy components. The engines were fitted with metal protective plates to better protect them from splinters and gunfire from enemy aircraft.

The seat material was changed. From leather to canvas, hence the old saying that the game is not about being in the front before leather seats existed, this is also possible here to a limited extent. Chain holders were mounted on each of them so they could. take as a replacement. The ballistic protection of this construction is extremely questionable. We'll talk about this again in the series on tank protection, but psychological insurance probably played an important role and, as I said, it was fine. way in use everyone had to carry it with them a thicker protective cargo hatch was installed a rain cover was installed for the target object, which is quite exciting Apparently there were problems and raindrops hitting the target objects so that you couldn't see anything anymore.

The optics were changed again and the problematic fuel lines and scraper lines were rerouted and connected better, so the connections were renewed. However, there was much more planned and the war situation was obviously completely ignored in many ideas, so fantastic gold-edged solutions were found for complex tasks in offices and offices that had absolutely no chance of being realized in the apocalypse. of '44 45. However, in November of '45 there was a short list, that is, a priority list of improvements that could have had a really decisive influence on the performance of at least each vehicle and I will present it very briefly because that was the objective .

The introduction of a rangefinder was planned for April 45, so a device with which it could be measured would be installed. distance to the target rangefinders were useful when the battle was more than 1000 meters why is below 1000 meters the bullet charge due to the large drifts so quickly so flat so straight that the bullet is practically in line Then the target Hit what you see through the optics, which is what you hit, especially if you wanted to hit at more than 1000 meters. You had to work harder and harder with ballistic shots in a kind of archery to get where you wanted to go, but to be successful.

In order to be truly accurate, you need to know the distance to the target as accurately as possible, and the greater the distance, the more precisely you need to know how great the distance is. However, in World War II it was mainly estimated. or then roughly calculated with the help of general rules and the assistance and speed of experienced crews, but a device that would have allowed them to complete this task easily and with great precision, which of course would have been gold for the crew at that time. This rangefinder technical solution has been available for a long time, for example in artillery, which also provided very precise measurements.

For us, the devices have not yet been successfully installed on the tanks. We are happy that it is so. They had not yet achieved it, so they had not bothered with this project for a long time, so the installation of the rangefinder was carried out among companies in Germany since June 1943. The Zeiss lights with head and hand on the heart and the roof of the King Tiger should be raised by 25 millimeters and the rangefinder should be installed at this height and the right shooter should measure the correct distance in practice only by looking through the rangefinder.

Then determine the main carrier, look through the lens optics, make the appropriate adjustments and then shoot, that is, using a two-stage system and a rangefinder. Purely thanks to optical technology, in theory, an overhead line would have been possible up to more than six kilometers, although they were open to six kilometers. Simply put, installation on the tank was much more difficult than expected. It was not so easy to install, so the start of the series in April '45 never happened. However, at the end of the war, these devices were gone. still planned to be available from 7/45 Install and then let the King Tiger hit the battlefield starting in the summer of 45.

The introduction of stabilized optics was also planned for 45/45. Until now, gyro stabilization of the cannons had only been carried out successfully. in tests of up to 3.7 centimeters in Germany The large Coop systems became too large The problem seemed technically unsolvable, at least at that time The promise of success only seemed possible, but at least stabilization. of the target was boiled when a tank crossed the terrain. There were violent movements if the tank. If you look through the optics, the skilled shooter really only sees the terrain shaking back and forth, a wild back and forth. in the landscape, but it was impossible to keep an eye on a target, meaning you kept losing sight of the enemy.

If you move, if the rifle sight and gyroscopes were decoupled from the vehicle's movements, this would at least allow constant observation of the moving target. The tank would still have to stop at the end, as before, and the cannon would still have to be brought to a position where it was again in line with the target's optics, due to it being a modern weapon. Tracking systems did not exist then, but the firing process would have been significantly sped up because the enemy would have been my sight. The right-handed shooter wouldn't have it over and over again.

First you would have to visit the enemy and this. It would have significantly improved the tactical vision and also the survivability of the tank, so a great system in all aspects is an important system. Even another approach was developed to speed up this process - a special device that adjusts the speed of the tank. The barrel could be measured and compared with the optics, which meant that the moment the gun barrel was so restrictive that it was equal to the angle of the optics, the shot would have been fired automatically, so the shot would have been Too much faster. and the right-handed shooter would have the target.

I only had to take a brief look at the optics until the barrel was there and then it would have fired. This combination, this construction was a very modern process, but it was never installed. and after the tank protection was considered sufficient and the firepower was optimized, only the question of mobility remains there and therefore a 900 hp Maybach injection engine was planned for August 1945 for those here announced that they would have given away the Tiger, sorry. , the greater agility that was so urgently needed, this agility and acceleration. The unit was also completed where it was installed as standard while these developments were being installed so that the King Tiger would have initially reached the technical level later achieved by tanks in the Cold War that had characterized the initial phase of the Cold War, but it would have been and it would have been here too the Keywords Nothing I have just presented is even close to mass production.

All of these things were actually built just in offices in the decline of early 1945 to 445.