Here is something to ponder over your morning coffee. What would it take to reverse engeineer and construct a Tiger II tank. This popped into my head when I saw a YouTube of a company in Poland that reproduces many parts ( tracks , gears , suspension parts etc.) for german armor , but of better quality than the original. So if you take that to the next level and keep going , you end up with a complete tank! I guess you can cheat a little and add a modern engine for more power and reliabilaty. But how cool would that be to have a brand new Tiger II. What are your thoughts?
I don’t know the dynamics of what your talking about,but yes it would be very cool to have a working Tiger Tank.
Almost anything can be reverse engineered and built; it’s all about the $$$.
That’s not sarcasm or negativity, as I have been amazed at what restoration outfits are capable of.
But you gotta have the $$$ to spend. Or more like $$,$$$,$$$.
The Tiger II had a very significant impact on US turret design. If you look closely at the turret of the M47 Patton and the turret of the M60A1/A3, they are inspired by the shape of the King Tiger turret.
They just married it to the superior automotive components that US tanks had.
There was an old WW2 analogy that if 100 German tanks road marched one hundred miles, you might have 2 arrive. If 100 US tanks road marched one hundred miles, 98 would arrive.
I don’t know about a Tiger II, but the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum has restoration videos for a variety of German vehicles. You need a group of highly skilled craftsmen and lots of time and money, as evidenced by their work on a Panzer I and a Stug III. They do a lot of business with the guys in Poland.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=australian+armour+and+artillery+museum
Much of that will be based on whether you want:
One Vehicle, or
A Regiment of Vehicles.
Then, either of those choices is compliated by whether you want:
An arm’s length replica, or
Actually military-useful armor (which then raises a question of “Useful in 1946” or “Useful in 2024”–two very different beasts).
Review the various you-tube videos of very talented people modeling metal 1/16 armor, and consider how that would “scale up.” Using 10mm or 15mm sheet steel would give “heft” to a replica, which would make it very much look like “the real thing.” And without the headache of needing a 50 or 75 tonne transport trailer.
Like as not, the hardest part would be in finding a foundry with enough spare production capacity to cast and/or forge all the wanted track links, a place where one does not want to skimp (and having owned a metal-tracked excavator, track want rather more attention than they seem to need at first glance).
I suppose if anyone actually did make a new-build Tiger II, it would incorporate modern components like wiring and switches, plus a more reliable gearbox. Making the armor out of hardened steel would probably be an uneccessary expense, as it would be highly unlikely the owner would go all “Girls und Panzer” and try taking it out to an actual gun battle.
The new-build Me-262s created in the US used modern engines and avionics, which probably went a long way to making them safer and more reliable.
I figure if an outfit like the guys over at the Tank Museum built a Tiger II they would probably do something similar. A modern diesel engine with the same dispacement would no doubt put out way more power. Or conversely, a smaller engine with the same output as the Maybach could be mated to a strengthened gearbox to produce authentic performance. But without the headache of stripped gears and breakdowns.
That would be cool! But I probably would rather have a Tiger I, or maybe a Hellcat (because of speed).
S.H.
Hello!
There is a very cool armor museum in my town here - in Poznan. We have some unique vehicles here, like a StuG IV or a JS-2 Tank in running condition.
What you wrote here reminds me a lot of the pops of my friend who was at one time restoring an M38 Jeep and I was helping him with a correct paint scheme for it. Now his pops was all like and let’s take this and replace it with some Polish parts, let’s rework that and replace it with some German parts. If we did that the outcome wouldn’t look a lot like a jeep…
Same with what you write about other mods to the hypothetical Tiger tank - if you replaced the armor, engine, tranny, wiring and maybe the running gear too - what would that vehicle be good for? That’s why those surviving vehicles are so valuable.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day
Paweł
Absolutely Ponderable. Good question. It really depends on how bad you want something. I note that the Russians reverse engineered a whole B-29, called it the TU-4 and made 847 of them.
BUT that was state-of-the-art at that time. It was a bit like admitting a defeat on the Soviet side…
I’m reminded of the original Disneyland Railroad.
Disnet commissioned locomotives be fabricated from scratch at 80% full size. But at Orlando it was found to be much more economical to salvage and restore/ modify narrow guage sugar cane railroad engines. Worked fine for what was needed at a small fraction of the cost.
My old client Jacques Littlefield did some wonderful restorations capped with a running Panther.
Bill
Let me elaborate. If it were my project. I would want the hull and turret to be the true thickness ( yes , I know that would be heavy ) wire and switches made of modern materials and meathods but with the original look. AKA retro. Gears of better material. The only deviation would be the engine. A modern engine would give it the power and reliability it deserves. Now if I could only hit the Lottery! lol
Not necessarily.
The gearing in late-war Panzers was suspect mostly for not being designed to the task very well. Usually dues to trying to make too few HP move too much metal faster than intertia might allow.
Modern tank engines are “better” (and that’s a very relative term) largely for the quality of their accessory bits. And, largely, for being able to be yaned out as entire units for repair/rebuild on a stand, rather than in the confines of a crowded engine bay.
Now, modern engines are going to be ‘better’ for not being ad hoc things like multi-bank, or paired combos and the like.
The King Tiger does not have that generous an engine bay, there’s no way to shoehorn a modern power pack (or even a period soviet D12) in there.
Also, as a thught exercise, it’s easy to dismiss the weight of a “full tilt” replica. That is unless you have some experience moving 40 or 50 ton vehicles around, and the permits wanted to trailer them.
A twenty ton “thin skin” replica will be either 16 time or 64 times easier to move around than a “full on” 60 tonne replica. And, if a person had either, they would be asked to share their toy and not just piddle about within their own 30-40 acre sand lot.
Capn Mac:
You made me ponder. In past years I created a W.W.2 Aircraft Carrier for an event. It took Two 14’ boats and twenty four sheets of plywood BEFORE we got the Hull done. The boats used had a Freeboard( amount of boat above water at occupancy) of almost two feet. After all that plywood the Freeboard was only thirty inches. After the flight deck and Operator was added the freeboard was less than a foot. So any Lookalike or Dupe would have to take that into consideration. The local air model R.C. club flew their fighters of her deck!
You could base a “Tiger” Dupe on a Cat tractor(Say a CatD-8 running with a modified gearbox , but what would considered backwards(The usual tank engine being in the back.) I personally would rather have a Greyhound or SDKFZ-251-1. I think it might be more fun! For some years I did own a Former Marine Corps “Weasel” But track maintenance was a pain. ( I used it in 4th of July parades!) Any tank dupe would have to be carefully thought out for many reasons. If true to type as to material at 60 or so tons It becomes more than a toy. It becomes, without proper crew, an accident waiting to happen.The Weasel had to be trucked to the parade marshaling point and have it’s rubber track blocks installed.
A modern diesel engine as opposed to a '40’s era will put out much more HP/torque for a given displacement. For example… The Cummins engine in loads of Ram trucks put out about 400hp and over 1000 lb-ft of torque and with a bit of tuning can push that to over 1000 hp. The diesel engine in the LVTP-7 that I used to work on had to be limited to only 400 hp to keep from blowing the transmissions. It was a compact V design. So I respectfully disagree.
I’m thinking that if I had the money to actually undertake this monster of a project . I could afford to trailer it here and there. LOL.
Remember the movie “Kelly’s Heroes”? The film company built 3 Tiger 1’s on T-34 hulls.