I see that a fair amount of german armor has travel locks for their guns (panthers,jagdtigers,some model of stugs,jagdpanzer,…) externally on the hull and I know some had internal ones(? I think I read that somewhere). Did the King Tiger have an internal travel lock for the gun or no? For a side project I’m working on.[whstl]
I don’t recall ever seeing an external travel lock on a King Tiger, no… Just finished going through a few dozen photos of 'em I have and didn’t spot one in any of them either…
There’s a photo somewhere that shows how they did it. A wood block with a semicircular cutout was placed on the rear deck. Traverse the turret and the barrel was placed in that cutout just behind the muzzle brake. A bit of rope and there ya have it.
G
Nah… I mean, that’d be… Nah…
You serious G, or you yankin’ m’ chain?
Thanks for the input guys, but I was asking if it had an internal lock in the turret to help hold the gun from bouncing around during transit/travel.
Internal lock: yes…
Nope, no yankin this time.
There’s a pic of the battalion lined up just before the Ardennes offensive. Every tank has a wood block on the rear deck cut as described.
Lemme see iff’n I can find that.
G
I’m guessing that was for rail transport purposes.
From an on-line discussion of the wooden device you have seeen:
This is actaully a bit odd. IIRC both the Panzer IV, Panther and Tiger I & II had internal travel locks for the gun and the Panther was the only one to have a fixed, external lock as well (why?). Why would the Tiger II need a removable, external travel lock like the one apparently seen on the photo?
All pictures I can recall of Tiger IIs travelling either by road or by rail does not show this device in use and I’ve looked at a bunch of Tiger II pictures and only this one actually shows the device - and only on some of the tanks. If it was something you would commonly use, then one would think you’d see it in use more often?
Looking at Tiger IIs travelling on the road or on rail-cars, it would seem, that once the internal lock was engaged, the weapon would be in a rather elevated position, as you can see on the first picture. My guess would be, that in some cases, you would need the gun to rest in a lowered position and in order not to damage the elevation gears, a temporary rest would be used like in the attached picture.
Anyway, I came across one picture which appears to show something like this “gun lock” (perhaps rather a gun rest) in use. It seems to be resting on the ball mount, supporting the gun.