I am in the process of gathering info for a future build and need a little help. The build will be Tamiya’s mid production Tiger I. I wish to model it as a vehicle without zimmerit as I want to use the set I have for the Tamya Tiger I late production that I also have in the stash. I have been able to determine that there were a handful of Tigers that left the factory without zimmerit. They were the first mid production Tigers to roll off the line, chassis numbers 250405-250550. Is there any way to tell what unit these Tigers were sent to, operational history, and eventual fate?
Nope, first I have heard of these w/o zimm—did they have the “new” cupola?
Manstein
Yes they had the new cupola but zimmerit was not applied until September 1943
Hmm I’ll have to look through my books. But remember some of these “early” mid productions had a mix of early and mid production features. The very first ones even had the Feifel aircleaners on the rear and the new cupola.
According to Ron Klages book Trail of the Tigers, which is a great book for this kind of research, chassis # 250456 went to s.Pz.Abt 509 along with 250544 while they were in Mailly Le Camp in France. Chassis # 250491, 250494 and 250496 went to s.Pz.Abt 505 in Smolensk, Belarus.
250502, 250506 and 250515 were supossed to go to III/PzRgt GrossDeutchland but the train was captured by the russians before it reached its destination. Thats what i could find on the chassis numbers, now i’ll try and find some pictures.
I found some pictures in Jean Restayn’s book “Tiger I on the eastern front” There are more than i will show here and you can find more Wolfgang Schneiders book “Tigers in combat” Vol 1.
Your best choice is s.Pz.Abt 509. there are a good number of pictures of thier mid production tigers without zimmerit, and some of the mid production tigers with feifel filter, i have only scanned 3 pages here and some of them are Jean’s artists impressions of what they would have looked like, from what i can see they are fairly accurate. Enjoy, and i hope it helps.
Thanks for the info and pics TMN1. From what I can tell 509 was one of the few units to receive mid production Tigers without Zimm. Wish there was a good source of photos on the net.