Ok, so a friend of mine (and customer at my second job), Owns one of the Tigers built for the Film Saving Private Ryan. Thought that you all would appreciate seeing a few pictures, up close and personal. I had originally thought (because of descriptions on the internet!) that it was just the chassis from a T-34/85 with a “Tiger” body placed on it… The internet “experts” were wrong (as usual). It is actually a complete T-34/85, turret and all, under that skin. I had been around it before, but never too close, as it was always in operation. Yesterday I finally got to crawl all over it and take pictures. Here they are:
There are a handful for now. I do have images of all of the exterior markings, if anyone is interested in modeling this tank (as I am right now).
I will have the owner of this one try to find out if the Tiger from Kelly’s Heroes is even still in existance. It’s really only since the 80’s that film production companies started either saving or selling their vehicles… before that, they were pretty much scrapped (or stripped down and rebuilt as something else). The exceptions being the vehicles that were “Hero cars” in big blockbuster films.
As I said, i do have more pictures, and i will post them later in the thread. The owner has quite a nice collection, including the M2/M2A1 in my Avatar, a German 105, a Japanese 37mm, and an M-24, just to name a few. The M2/M2A1 saw action on Guadalcanal, and has bullet pock-marks from Japanese direct fire on the grill slats. I have pictures of that vehicle too.
Oh, and the second job that I referred to in the OP is restoring these vehicles. So if you have something that you are modeling, and need reference, just ask, we may have worked on one.
Two of the three are original and were built by Higgins Industries in Louisiana. Contrary to popular belief, there are still a few around, but like these, the were coated with fiberglass to add longevity and workability, thats why the D-day museum had stated that there weren’t any left, and had to build one… they were looking for original plywood craft.
Thats the one! At the moment it isn’t running. As soon as the weather breaks, we will be loading it up and bringing it down to the shop. It will be getting a complete tuneup and repair on the engine, and a fresh coat of paint… oh, and new markings to reflect one of the two Re-enactment units that use it occasionally.
The vehicles that are there are just the ones that won’t fit in his warehouse… so that is only a portion of his collection.
Very nice up-close shots, thanks for sharing! It’s interesting to see just how well they were able to obscure the T-34 lines in favor of the Tiger’s well-known profile…the shot of the front hull in particular is very informative. Perhaps we’ll see a CH kit of this one in the near future? [(-D] Can’t ever have too many Tigers…
A great post, i saw one of these tanks from the film when they had it at bovington a few years ago. there is actually a kit out know of the kelly,s heroes tiger.My only thoughts are you should not paint this as you will take away the authentisity and they look better when they are a bit bashed about and chipped and rusty.DONT DO IT.
Great post and great pics. I new the SPR tiger wasn’t a tiger, but I didn’t know it was a T34. I wonder how hard it was to find it - seems like a they could have found something fairly modern to modify??
With the break-up of the former Soviet Union, T-34s became readily available from all sorts of places. There are still some nations, even now, with them in their operational inventory. Dimensionally speaking, the T-34 is a pretty good match to the Tiger vs. more modern equipment as well, making it a better choice.
In Band-of-Brothers, they used a British tracked APC (can’t recall the exact type off the top of my head) as the chassis for a mocked-up StuG III, so more modern items can and do show up in the movies/series if you look carefully enough.
Most of the Tiger part of the tank is actually made of wood, including the engine covers. They seem to be done quite well, but are starting to show wear and tear. One of the plans dicussed for the refurbishment of this vehicle (since it is used in re-enacting) is to replace all of the wood with re-enforced sheet metal.
You can find videos of the Tank in action at various events on YouTube. You’ll see that they are listed as being owned by the 9th SS re-enactment group. This is not true… and is the main reason that the actual owner may not be letting them rent it again in the future.
That was a source of much debate on several other forums… some did, some didnt. the ones that did looked just like these, hand painted, and in the proper light pink. Overall, I think that the prop builders did quite a good job. The layman can’t tell the difference, they did quite a good job with the Zimm and color scheme, and if you look at it from a 45 degree angle from the hull up, it is quite convincing. Up close, though…
