<h2>Armour</h2> <p>The Tiger I rumbled onto the battlefield in late 1942, built around slabs of flat, interlocking armour that made it a fortress on tracks. Its frontal hull and turret cheeks each wore 100 mm plates, backed by a gun mantlet that ranged from 120 to 200 mm thick—enough to shrug off most Allied and Soviet anti-tank rounds at combat ranges.</p><p>Along the flanks the hull sides carried 60 mm of steel, with the raised superstructure and sponsons bumped up to 80 mm. The turret’s sides and rear matched that 80 mm thickness, giving all-around protection. The deck and belly started at 25 mm, and from March 1944 the turret roof was beefed up to 40 mm to guard against plunging fire and artillery bursts.</p><p>Rather than relying on slopes, designers left the plates flat and taught crews to “sit angled” at roughly 30–45° when firing. That simple tactic boosted effective thickness even further, turning the Tiger into a nearly immovable steel wall whenever it held its ground. </p> <h2>Firepower</h2> <p>When designers settled on the Tiger I in 1942, they chose the mighty 56-calibre 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56—a gun born from Germany’s famed FlaK 88—that married blistering muzzle velocity with a precision Leitz TZF 9b sight (later swapped for a monocular TZF 9c). In British wartime trials it proved deadly accurate, landing five shots in succession on a 410 by 460 mm target at 1,100 m, and outclassing the 7.5 cm KwK 40 of Panzer IVs and StuGs at long ranges, even if the Panther’s 7.5 cm KwK 42 edged it out under 2,500 m. Crews learned that reload times varied from six to sixteen seconds depending on turret angle and ammo bin location, making turret handling as crucial as marksmanship.</p><p>Inside its ammo racks the Tiger carried four shell types—PzGr 39 APCR, PzGr 40 tungsten-cored rounds (in increasingly short supply), Hl Gr 39 HEAT, and sch. Sprgr Patr. L/4.5 incendiary–shrapnel shells—all fired by electric primers to speed firing. This mix let the Tiger engage everything from enemy tanks to dug-in infantry, cementing its reputation as perhaps the most feared gun on tracks in World War II.</p> <h2>Mobility</h2> <p>The Tiger I’s heart was always meant to be a powerful engine, but Germany’s lack of a suitable diesel forced designers to fit a petrol V12. Early Tigers rolled out with the Maybach HL 210 P45, a 21.35 L alloy-block engine putting out about 650 hp at 3 000 rpm. It could push the 57-ton behemoth to 38 km/h, but as weight crept up beyond the 251st vehicle, crews began calling it underpowered.</p><p>To fix that, later Tigers swapped in the iron-block Maybach HL 230 P45, breathing on 23.1 L of displacement to squeeze out roughly 699 hp at the same 3 000 rpm. The heavier block meant more torque and better reliability, and units like sPzAbt 501 praised its endurance—some engines ran over 3 000 km without major failure, provided drivers monitored temperatures and steered clear of overheating.</p><p>Power flowed forward through an eight-speed, semi-automatic Maybach-Olvar pre-selector gearbox and a double-differential steering system derived from Britain’s Merritt-Brown design. That setup—rarely seen outside heavy tanks then—gave the Tiger sixteen turn radii and a true zero-pivot capability, all handled by a familiar steering wheel rather than awkward levers.</p><p>Up top, the 11-tonne turret spun on a Boehringer-Sturm L 4 hydraulic motor driven by the main engine, first limited to 6°/s but later upgraded with a high-speed gear letting gunners swing through 360° in under ten seconds at 3 000 rpm. Foot pedals controlled traverse speed down to a crawl of 0.1°/s, enabling fine target laying without the handwheel work common in Shermans or T-34s.</p><p>In the end, the Tiger’s drivetrain married brute power with surprising finesse—if crews kept the engine cool and well-oiled, the tank moved with a precision uncommon for its size, earning its fearsome reputation on both Eastern and Western Fronts. </p>

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Tiger Tank