Anyone have any of the famous pictures that were from the propaganda movie showing Fallschirmjager riding on a King Tiger during the battle of the Bulge?
Interesting you said it was propaganda…did any of the fallschirmjager actually meet up with any armour during the Bulge? I believe their operations (in german uniform) were all doomed to failure in that operation.
I believe that there was a “Rally the Troops to Victory” movie made by the Germans of a King Tiger with members of the 3rd (I believe) Fallschirmjagers riding the tank to the front. I have seen only stills from it.
I have some of them. I need to scan them in and I’ll post them here in a little while.
Thanks!! I will grab them tonight.
Jason, I’m not sure what you want to look at, close-ups of the Fallschirmjagers, the Tiger or both with some background in the image? Here is a close-up of the Paras having a smoke on the back of the well-known Tiger 222;
I am going to be building my first diorama and views of the tank, the Fallschirmjagers and the background are all useful. Thanks. The really noce thing is I have the Tamiya Ardennes tank with the motorcycle in it, so that pic you just posted is fantastic.
Is that from a book, by the way??
This photo is from; Battle of the Bulge Then and Now, part of the After the Battle series of books. I’ll get some more up in a few minutes.
Here is the classic shot of Tiger 222, probably one of the best known tank photos of all time!
And here is another shot of “Smokem if you got em”
Note the guy on the left armed with a Sten SMG.
these are great-thanks. I saved the first three. I will check back later
I believe in the World at War series, episode “Pincers”, they have a quick blurb of the Tiger with the paras in Peridexion’s photo riding down the road.
I will have to look for that, thanks Tigerman
Osprey’s Battle of the Ardennes 1944 (1) has a 2 page center-fold color plate based on Tiger 222. I would try to scan it, but I don’t think it would look very good due to the center-line seam between the 2 pages and I don’t really want to trash the binding trying to flatten it out, sorry.
Well, hell with it, I did it anyway!
Thanks!! Hope you didn’t ruin the book. By the way, whats with that G on the front? Never seen that before. Tamiya gives you the 222 decals in the regular King Tiger kit, but no G. The other oddity is the color of the 222. The Tamiya decal is blue w/ yellow outline. That pic and a model I saw of 222 show it with a red 222. Is that due to an interpretation of BW pics or is one just wrong?
As if reading my posts, I saw this from Jaguar on Greatmodels’ New list!!
[:D]
OK, the letter “G” is the “March Route” meaning this vehicle had to use route “G” during the offensive. This was an easy way to help direct traffic on the mess of roads used during the B-B. Can’t say that I’ve seen any other letters like this on other vehicles used for this offensive, but then again I haven’t been looking for them either. [;)]
As for the numbers, red outlined with white is correct for the Tiger IIs of the second company of sSS PzAbt. 501. The third company used blue outlined with yellow, the first company black with white outlines. Battalion command tanks were “large” red numbers with white outline.
Thanks!
Well, the 222 they included is blue with yellow, so it must be a different tank. my options for a tank from sSS PzAbt. 501 are either 204 (with the G- new Tamiya boxing) or 234 (no G). I guess my next question is did more than one tank carry Fallschirmjager’s or just 222?
Paraphrasing Osprey here; By December of '44, the once fearsome 3rd Fallschirmjager Division, decimated in the summer battles, was now reconstructed using surplus Luftwaffe ground personnel, reject-grade recruits and lead by inexperienced Luftwaffe staff officers. After the embarrassing all-day delay of the start of Peiper’s advance by a US infantry platoon holding-up a entire paratroop regiment, Peiper commandeered a battalion of paratroopers to reinforce his own men. Since the paratroopers could not keep up with Peiper’s columns on foot, he had them ride on the backs of the Kingtigers. They saw very little combat during the opening phase of the battle.
So…yes, they rode on several KTs, it’s just that 222 was a camera hog, at least it seems that way. I have photos of many of 501’s TKs, including 204, but I don’t see any of 234 yet.
I have color plates of 104, 212, 223, 313, 003, 332, and 204. I now notice that Osprey depicts 204 and 003 with tactical numbers in blue outlined in yellow…Hum…[%-)] And this Osprey title is by Jentz and Doyle, and they are supposed to know this stuff, though the artist is Peter Sarson. Maybe he slipped one by the editors? The previous statements about the color-coded numbers for each company came from Tigers in Combat, volume II, page 7. For what this book costs, it had better be correct! So it seems there is some disagreement as to the number colors…(like I haven’t seen this problem before!) [:p] Personally, I am inclined to believe the Tigers in Combat version. Why would the author simply make up this color scheme, (which was not uncommon with other units), if he didn’t have any evidence? Also, Osprey’s artist depicts 2 KTs of second company, 222 with red/white numbers and 204 with blue/yellow numbers. My intuition tells me that having two different color schemes in the same company is rather unlikely. Plus, Tigers in Combat is a 421 page book, Osprey’s is 48 pages…Make your own call.
Damn lazy Fallschirmjagers all they ever did was ride on tanks and smoke, geez…