Why Two Tigers

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by chipm, Oct 14, 2020.

  1. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    Sorry if this has been Asked/Answered several times already.
    Why...or did they actually refer to it by another Name/Nomenclature.....did The Wehrmacht have two tanks with the same name.?
    I realize one was a Tiger-1 and the other was a Tiger-2..... but why the same name.?
    Also, i never hear the Tiger-2 referred to as a Mk VII.
    Did the Germans call it a Mk VII.?
    Thank You
     
    Dave55 likes this.
  2. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    Welcome to the wonderful world of German administrative language:

    A) Panzerkampfwagen VI „Tiger I“ (Sd.Kfz. 181)

    B) Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf. B "Tiger II" (Sd.Kfz. 182) a.k.a „Königstiger“

    The Tiger II was officially regarded as a further development of the Tiger I with sloped armour and a larger cannon, therefore Ausf. B Tiger II instead of PzKpfw VII
    According to the common legends, the larger cannon was an explicit "wish of the Führer" (would be interesting to hear what Freud had to say about this), also the authorship of the suggestive names Tiger/Kingtiger is attributed to him.

    In the technical nomenclature, however, the identification Sd.Kfz. 181 and 182 was used
    the colloquial language for differentiation was usually Tiger or King Tiger
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2020
    4jonboy, Dave55, Harry Ree and 3 others like this.
  3. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    Well, when put that way it is not so odd.
    Thank You

    Though they just as easily could have called it a Leopard or any other name i suppose.
    I guess i could have taken it up with Adolf at the beer hall.
    Too late now.:)
     
  4. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    The use of the names of big cats for German armoured vehicles dates from 1941 with the VK1603 (D) Leopard battle reconnaissance tank. Only the prototype was built and the Puma armoured car filled the role. The Pk Kpfw II Aus L Lynx (Luch) of 1943 followed the trend. There is no evidence that Hitler was directly involved in starting this.
     
  5. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I'm looking forward to hearing the forum tank experts weigh in on this one.

    Always seemed to me that the King Tiger should have been called the King Panther since it looks like a scaled up Panther much more than a Tiger.

    GM occasionally faced awkward marketing situations when one of their brands brought out a car that might out perform the Corvette
     
  6. smdarby

    smdarby Well-Known Member

    There are a number of tank presentations from Bovington Museum on youtube which I've found very interesting. The one below explains the "Tiger Programme" and how the Tiger II was developed.

     
    Chris C, 4jonboy, Harry Ree and 2 others like this.
  7. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    According to Stephan Cazenave and Rudiger Warnick - Tiger !: The Tiger Tank In The Eastern Front, In Normandy And In Germany 1942-45, It was Ferdinand Porsche who gave the appellation Tiger to the Panzerkampfwagen VI
     
  8. ceolredmonger

    ceolredmonger Member

    And the Brits. not content with spreading confusion with their own AFV terminology messed up translation of Königstiger - twice!
    It should be Bengal Tiger.
     
  9. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    By which logic Königsberg = Bengali mount?
     
  10. m kenny

    m kenny Senior Member

    Given that 'Panther' is a class of animal (Jaguar/Leopard/Cougar ect) rather than a specific type of big cat why should we just argue over the term King/Bengal Tiger?
     
  11. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Watch out for the pink ones
     
    chipm likes this.
  12. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    It's a little uncomfortable for me to be the head teacher here (read: clever dick), but:
    From a purely German understanding, "Königstiger" is here IMHO to translate into English as "King of the Tigers", the "Ultima Ratio" in tank construction. Therefore I would assume King Tiger in a sense of King Kong (you know: THE big guy ) is a very close translation
    This was a propagandistically charged term: Such suggestive names became fashionable from 1944 onwards, like:
    Sturmgewehr, Panzerfaust, Hetzer, Jagdpanther, Vergeltungswaffe and the like
    As a non-native English speaker, I can't for the life of me explain it any better, sorry that
     
  13. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    As I always understood it - where the hell Bengal comes from beats me. In 1981 I met a guy who at 18 in 1945 found himself driving one and he called it a King Tiger. Mind you he did learn his English in a US Army prison camp.
     
  14. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    As a native English Speaker........ your post makes sense to me. :)
     
    JimHerriot and ltdan like this.
  15. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    What we call a Bengal Tiger the Germans call a Königstiger.

    Königstiger – Wikipedia


    2020-10-14 20.19.46.png
     
  16. ceolredmonger

    ceolredmonger Member

    The wild and whacky world of linguistics - translation vs transliteration. The difference between a dictionary conversion and knowing "they call it this, we call it this" can lead to some serious historical confusions especially when the process appears logical.
     
  17. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    And the Bengal Tiger is also known as the Royal Tiger, which is what the British called the Tiger II in a lot of their contemporary documents.

    Reminds me of this scene:

     
    ltdan and Dave55 like this.
  18. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Bengalischer Tiger would apparently be more apt. However the sub species is sometimes referred to as the Royal Bengal Tiger sometimes shortened to Royal Tiger and Konigstiger might be appropriate in this instance
     
  19. chipm

    chipm Well-Known Member

    He says that 300,00 man hours went into each Tiger-2.
    That means (2000 hours per year) one guy would have a job for 150 years.! :)
     
  20. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I was thinking along similar lines when this segment aired.

    500 people working full time would produce one Tiger 2 in three months at that rate. Seems like a lot of man hours for a single tank, doesn't it?

    Wonder what Henry Ford would have thought about their production practices :)
     

Share This Page