Tiger Tiger...?

You forgot more timely otherwise the Comet would be the answer

 

Jim,

Barbarossa posed a real challenge to the Germans in many aspects.Recovery of disabled tanks was one and it appears that recovery was mandatory and only in exceptional cases when the tank was of no further use was this order dismissed.Some tanks not fit for combat were used as prime movers in recovery,other wrecks if they could be cannibalised, were recovered as spares.

An account from a German point of view reads....Towing heavy tanks over long distances,the Tiger model in particular was very complicated and therefore avoided whenever possible.In one instance in 1944, an attempt to evacuate a Tiger turned out to be a full scale operation.It had to be interrupted for several weeks because a hard surface road caved in under the weight of two 18 ton prime movers,one tank transporter and one Tiger model B (King Tiger),weighing a total of 140 tons.

Over short distances,a super heavy tank such as the king Tiger,which weighed 75 tons could be moved by another King Tiger.

(Road weight carrying capability is always crucial when delivering by road....bridges can be a problem too.I remember in the early 1960s when British hard surface roads had a weight restriction of 200 tons which restricted the movement of heavy plant in excess of that and also restricted the design and development of plant beyond 200 tons.Road weight capability has increased since then with the development of much improved transporters)

 

(Road weight capability has increased since then with the development of much improved transporters)

Hold my beer:

 

Dave....transporters of advanced design...increasing the loading area to reduce the weight/unit area which means larger physical transporters which have to have steering functions to minutely negotiate street and road furniture.

In India,there is an example of where a GE Frame 9 F gas turbine was being transported to the Pipavav Power Station site in August 2009 and inadequate attention and planning had been made to the route being taken.The load would be something in the order of 280 tons and the route took involved passing over a concrete bridge on the Shetrumji river crossing..As the transporter passed over the first span,that and subsequent spans collapsed resulting in the transporter and load falling into the river....11 deaths to personnel.

The photographs of the incident are here on this link...the people throwing this up, initially referred to the load as being a stator (stationary winding of a turbo generator from which electrical load is drawn off).Having being involved with GE gas turbines,I would recognise it as a gas turbine,a F 9 Frame type which I was involved with and which has been subject to advanced development since it was first designed...capable of generating 280 MWs depending on atmospheric conditions.

Bridge On The River Shtrumji

Here the same GE Frame 9 gas turbines were delivered to the power station site dedicated wharf from the docks,30 miles away using a river rather than have to negotiate and pay for road alterations.

Further to the German tank handling experience in Russia,the Germans only used transporters on hard surfaces to carry tanks.Normally the policy was to recover tanks off the hard surfaces by prime movers and load tanks on to the transporter when on hard surfaces.That was the experience after loading transporters off hard surfaces and finding that they had to find a solution to a transporter and tank being bogged down in the adverse weather conditions found on the Eastern Front.

Overall as with all experiences, learn from others' engineering experiences and misfortunes.

 

In Canada, we have the purported advantage of frozen roads, rivers and lakes which, for a slight loss of traction, offer a solid base for large cargoes. In fact, winter is often the only time these loads can be moved.
Eat your heart out India!

 

An alternative view was offered by the REME in one of their earliest postwar 'Craftsman' journals. In an article on the recovery of a Tiger, they were pleasantly surprised by its low rolling resistance once they'd got on the road.

 

Incidentally I posted this:



In the thread: 75mm Sherman Vs Tiger

...the other day, as it does a bit of a comparison of the Tiger vs. the Sherman.

As a "spoiler" - In the way of such things, it highlights the Tiger first, but then I think the Sherman "wins" overall.

Afterwards, then the drift is back to the Tiger, as it gets phrased as a question - "but which would you rather have / be in".

Even at that point though, I still don't think I'd have chosen the Tiger, with the prior arguments etc. still weighing heavily against it.

 

Thought that you might like this one a bit.

 

Makes you think of how much better the Tiger might have looked with chromed bogey wheels.

 

Now a Tiger would be easy meat for this Sarens monster of construction world order....a Belgium piece of kit.

Destined to lift the reactors at Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station...requires a very good hard standing.

SARENS - Sarens Launches the Largest Crane in the World: The SGC-250

 

She's a better engineer than the Germans!

 

Harry makes two good points.
Barbarossa was the game changer everything went out the window, all options, decisions, policy thinkings, and outcomes would ultimately be made with this front having the greater degree of governance.
The spares situation, logistics, fuel, deployment of reserves - often problems to be sorted out - reactive and pragmatic more than organised.
The Tiger was a product of times, changing circumstances driven by am immediate need which Barbarossa had accentuated acutely.
Tiger, was it the product of "we are so far along with this do the best you can with it?" In its development phase, a larger tank heavier armoured, bigger gunned as needed and the German Army based its ability on attack, not defense so "go with it", after Kursk the direction of the war in the east had changed with it the deployment of the Tiger.
German planning and production values hindered industry - the Army were used to asking for, insisting on and having changes made often were tweaks here and there which to them seemed reasonable but for the people making the product these proved disruptive and unnecessary.
Tiger was not perfect, like everything a mixture of pros and cons perhaps objectivity lies in the middle ground. Like a lot of things she carries the propaganda image from 42-45 with her and very little has been taken away in the repeated telling of her story.
Like a high-class lady, Tiger was a high maintenance doll but on the right stage she could preform but like so many acts there were only so many roles that could be met and the expectations were always high.

 

Good article here on Soviet trials on captured King Tigers:

Tank Archives: An Overloaded Big Cat

I'm used to being underwhelmed by the reliability of German tanks, but this was a bit worse than I was expecting, tbh.

 

I saw some translated Russian language maintenance manuals a while ago that the Soviets printed for their captured Panzer IIIs and VIs. Somewhere in them they said that the Panthers and Tigers were to be used only until they stopped running and them scrapped.

I enjoyed that Tank Archives article very much. Very interesting that we only call Tiger IIs King Tigers and not Bengal Tigers is because of a translation error

 

Road loading...this thread reminds me of what I saw as a snippet a couple of months ago. It reported in 1945 that a load of 80 tons being carried by low loader over the River Ure on the Great North Road (A1) at Boroughbridge had caused the stone bridge to collapse, the A1 being a vital military north/south link during the war.

It may have been a military load for the Army restored the crossing using a Bailey bridge which was in use while the stone bridge was rebuilt

 

I tend to be superficially fooled by reports on German tanks, as the fact that one of the Tiger II's had accumulated 444 km sounds not too bad for a 70 ton tank. Then I remember that I have to convert that into proper units, and get 275 miles, which is really not very good at all.