How to kill a King Tiger with a Sherman

[altipueri]

"Although the entire column was trapped some of the veteran crews stayed cool and utilized their advantages. One of the crews with a M4 Sherman with a short-barrelled 75mm was near the middle of the column when the three King Tigers appeared on the right side........in a split second he told his gunner to load a white phosphorus round. It struck the glacis plate right above the driver's compartment with a blaze of flames and smoke. Although there was no chance of penetration, the shock in the tank must have been terrific. The entire faceplate in front of the turret was covered in burning particles of white phosphorus which stuck to the sides of the tank. The smoke engulfed the tank, and the fan in the engine compartment sucked the smoke inside the fighting compartment. The German crew must have thought the tank was on fire and immediately abandoned it. Although the tank suffered little damage, had the crew stayed inside they would have been over come by the deadly fumes.

The Sherman immediately turned its gun on the second tank in the column and fired white phosphorus, with the same result. Although the ingenious tank commander knocked out two King Tiger tanks (without ever getting a penetration), his tank was then knocked out by another Tiger."

From "Death Traps" by Belton Y. Cooper

So, now you know how to do it.

[LongLeftFlank]

"You have to shoot it in its ass"

[gunnersman]

"Wooof!"...

[Rokko]

There were only like 6 KT in Normandy I think. And all in the British sector, so I smell BS here. Although I have to admit that I don't know the book.

[Sublime]

Why BS? Every Allied Army used Shermans..

[Ranger33]

It's a pretty interesting book. It's more about the logistics of keeping an armored division up and running than anything. I don't remember the details of this part though and my copy is 150 miles away. The author was in a unique position (running paperwork and news between the front and HQ) so he knew pretty much everything that was going on, but certainly would not have witnessed any of this himself.

[ASL Veteran]

There were only like 6 KT in Normandy I think. And all in the British sector, so I smell BS here. Although I have to admit that I don't know the book.

1st Company of the 503rd Tiger Battalion commanded by Oberleutnant Oemler was equipped with the King Tiger in Normandy. The King Tigers had the Porsche turret. Their first action in Normandy was in a counterattack on the left flank of Operation Goodwood. Oberleutnant Oemler's King Tiger immobilized itself in a bomb crater, Tiger 111 and Tiger 101 were both knocked out. King Tiger 112 was rammed and knocked out by Lieutenant Gorman of the Irish Guards.

All the King Tigers were lost in the retreat to the Seine River in August.

[Rokko]

Is that so? I thought that only the PLD had some KTs in some akward specialist company.

[Sergei]

"Death Traps" is not specifically about Normandy, anyway, so it doesn't matter how many there were.

[Broadsword56]

Whatever and wherever the KT distribution might have been, the thread still seems relevant for our upcoming Commonwealth Module, where the Shermans will need good tactics to counter even the Tiger I.

[altipueri]

Ok, so here's a bit from Normandy, the Tigers bit was in Germany 1945.

Action at Villiers-Fossard

"...the Germans ..would run telephone wire completely around the perimeter of each of several fields in a row. As they were driven out of a field into the one behind it, they could hook their telephone clips into the wiring and immediately call for mortar fire in the field they had just left. This abilty to get mortar and artillery fire almost instantly would prove devastating to our tanks and infantry who had just occupied the field."

"after the two dozer tanks were knocked out, the only way to get through the hedgerows was by planting explosives and blowing enormous gaps so that the remaining tanks could pass. This of course warned the Germans where the next tanks were coming;"

Actions at Airel, Pont Hebert, and Vents Heights

"The building was in flames and two dead, young American soldiers were lying naked on the ground near a Jeep. Apparently, they had taken cover from artillery fire in the courtyard; a shell had struck the building and the blast had been deflected directly down on them.It had blown them both out of the Jeep and torn off their clothes. Their horribly burned flesh was splotched red and black."

"We found out later that the Germans had been able to hoist a 75mm PAK41 anti tank gun into the church steeple about quarter of a mile from us....

close to daybreak one of our tanks located the anti tank gun in the steeple and knocked it out with one shot. This decreased the incoming fire considerably.

"The first casualty was an M4 tank with the body of one of the crew still inside. According to surviving crew members they were hit on the highway. The German gun crew apparently held their fire until the tank was no more than fifty yards away."

"When a tanker inside a tank received the full effect of a penetration, sometimes the body, particularly the head, exploded and scattered blood, gore and brains throughout the entire compartment."

[LongLeftFlank]

Whose blood, gore and brains mod are you using?

[Makes Hannibal Lechter noise] F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f!!!!

[sburke]

Whose blood, gore and brains mod are you using?

[Makes Hannibal Lechter noise] F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f!!!!

ROTFLMAO Fava beans anyone?

[MikeyD]

I recall an account of a New Zealand 75mm Sherman at Massa Lombarda Italy taking out a Tiger 1 in April '45. The account said the gun crew emptied their entire ready rack into the Tiger from 50 yards. If I recall correctly the ready rack held fifteen rounds, six of them smoke shells. Let me repeat that - six out of fifteen ready rounds were smoke! Only two AP rounds were in the ready rack. That should tell us something about which rounds were considered effective and which weren't by the end of the war.

[Vark]

Don't modern day recovery crews have special equipment to remove what is left of the crew, after penetration hits on tanks? Somethink like a massive industrial vacuum. I was told modern APFSDS rounds impart so much kinetic energy that if the tank does not explode the crew can be torn to pieces, similarly HEAT rounds either fry the tank or shred the crew. I remember the picture in Ellis' Sharp End, of two Brit engineers, gingerly lifting out the, burned and shattered, corpse of a German tanker using a pick axe and wire.

Surely we have become more 'sophisticated', though reading accounts of the IDF in 73, some poor sod had to climb in the recoverable tanks hit and clean the insides with a bucket and sponge!

[Vark]

Only two AP rounds were in the ready rack. That should tell us something about which rounds were considered effective and which weren't by the end of the war.

Or how few German AFV's they expected to face, in 45, seems like a selection to defeat AT guns, and their infantry support. Ah, the ready rack, reminds me of AH Patton's Best, great game, even moving to engage a contact was fraught with danger!

[rocketman]

Ah, the ready rack, reminds me of AH Patton's Best, great game, even moving to engage a contact was fraught with danger!

Ohhh, the memories. Probably my first real WWII game. Loved the solitaire style. I've thought many a times to give it a go again, but CM-games has taken its "space". Which is a good thing after all.

[altipueri]

Ready Rack - the truth?

"The main ammunition rack was a fabricated aluminium box approximately three feet wide, two feet high, and three feet deep. It had a series of three-inch longitudinal tubes nested together in several rows to accommodate thirty-four rounds of ammunition..................

....the trouble was obvious once I got inside the tank and examined the front of the rack. This particular tank had thirty rounds of 75mm ammunition and four bottles of Cognac."

[ChrisND]

"

....the trouble was obvious once I got inside the tank and examined the front of the rack. This particular tank had thirty rounds of 75mm ammunition and four bottles of Cognac."

An ingenious tactic invented to combat heavy German Panzers. Shoot the cognac at the German tanks, and then wait. Attack when they are drunk and their aim is off!

[Vark]

Fire the cognac, then the WP and watch the conflagration of flambeed kitty! Rocketman, agree, I remember the tension as a German tank appeared, hell a Stug was bad enough. If I remember rightly the counters representing infantry were just a picture of a rifle, SMG and LMG, because that is all you would hear, not see, hear! Brilliant, and it showed how good the M4 was in its main infantry support role.

[Erwin]

Funny that no one thought of chemical/napalm-type shells to put the target tank on fire.

[JonS]

Armstrong's tank then crashed its way through some trees between the old course of the Santerno—the Santerno Morto —and the lateral road south-east of Massa Lombarda which had been given the code-name Greyhound. The driver accelerated to cross this open road, two heavy bumps jarring the crew as the tank crossed the ditches on either side. It then crashed through a hedge, with the infantry close behind, and made for a cart track leading to a two-storied house.

‘While I was shooting the house up,’ says Hodson, ‘Dad yelled “God Almighty! Traverse right, there's a Tiger!” I didn't see it. But Bogie said he fired a shot and moved off. He was nearly 100 yds away. Bogie saw flash. The thud of 88 AP landing shook the ground. Morale bloody low. Pulled behind house to recover from fright.’

The infantry then joined Armstrong's tank, then suddenly they shouted a warning as another Tiger was seen coming down the road. ‘Owing to trees couldn't see him until about 75 yds away,’ Hodson continues. ‘Wopped her onto power traverse page 564 …. engine running. Bogie put her into gear and speeded her up. Things got a bit confused. My chief thought was to knock his gun or blind the gunner. Knew bloody well our gun wouldn't penetrate. Pep's periscope smashed by Spandau bullet and no time to replace it. He was blind.’

Although it was now late afternoon, the light was still good. The enemy tank was completely shut down. The Sherman's first shot of ‘Yank smoke’ burst on the front of the Tiger in an intense white ball; the second, armour-piercing high explosive, aimed at the driver's hatch, struck his periscope, ricocheted and exploded inside the tank, wounding the driver and smashing up the transmission. The Tiger, which had been going ‘flat out’—about 17 miles an hour—then stopped. It was about fifty yards away.

Hodson had emptied his ammunition rack ring—it held 15 rounds, six of them American smoke shells, two AP, and seven APHE—before the first of the German crew, the driver, baled out. The rest of its crew—there were nine men in the Tiger: its normal crew of five and four spandau gunners—then baled out through the back hatch or jumped out through the cupola hatch and took shelter in a nearby ditch. Sergeant Armstrong has recorded his ‘happy relief’ at the sight.

After a few more rounds from the Sherman's gun there was no sign of movement and the infantry rushed up to the enemy tank. Three men lying in the ditch, two of them panzer grenadiers, then ‘chucked it in’ and came towards Armstrong's tank with their hands up. The enemy tank was then looted by the infantry, much to the chagrin of the Sherman crew.22

Of the Tiger's crew and passengers the wounded driver, who had taken shelter under the tank and was again hit, died of his wounds, three were wounded by shell splinters—one of these men later dying—one ran off up the road and got clean away in spite of an infantry Tommy-gunner's attempts to bring him down, and the rest were made prisoner. The tank commander, a young panzer grenadier lieutenant, was a truculent prisoner: he emptied the magazine of his Luger at the platoon's sergeant page 565 while the latter's tommy gun was not loaded and later attacked him with his fists when it was and was shot.

22. Back at Massa Lombarda a few days later, the 26 Battalion platoon presented Sergeant Armstrong with a Luger taken from one of the Tiger's crew, a gesture much appreciated. It is also of interest that the C Squadron-26 Battalion ‘team’ had as senior officers four 20 Battalion ‘originals’—Lt-Col M. C. Fairbrother, Majors G. A. Murray and B. Boyd, and the squadron commander, Major Moodie.

Link

(padding)

[wokelly]

Perhaps a bit more related to the commonwealth module, from an old post in 2005 on these forums by Gpig:

Here's another one (15 April, 1945 - from the South Alberta Regiment History), but this is a STUART vs KingTiger;

. . . RHQ called them back with orders to circle around the other squadrons and secure a hamlet with the interesting name of Amerika. Their advance would take them over the ground of a small Luftwaffe airfield northeast of the village of Varrelbusch.

Halkyard had been out that way in the morning with his tank and a Sherman troop. Halkie was in the lead and "it was a beautiful morning," George Gallimore recalled, when suddenly, "Right out of the ground from a ditch or dug out," like some primeval behemoth, lumbered their worst nightmare - a German Tiger II tank. Called the King, or Royal Tiger, this 68-ton monster from the Henschel factory at Cassel, with face-hardened armour plate up to four inches thick and an 88mm gun almost longer than their Stuart, represented the ultimate in Wehrmacht tank design. "Get in reverse, back up!" Halkyard shouted at his driver, Sonny Plotsky, just as the first 88 round hit nearby and the "dust rose, the tank was just full of dust." Plotsky threw the automatic transmission into reverse but the tank nearly stalled because his foot was on the gas pedal and there was some anxious seconds until the Stuart jerked backwards. Another round came in, and then another - that "bugger fired three shots at us and missed," remembered Gallimore, which allowed Halkyard to take cover behind a building where the four Shermans of their supporting troop were waiting. The South Albertas only had one weapon that could even damage a Tiger and that was a 17-pdr. so the suppoorting troop's Firefly moved up to fire and was just as promptly knocked out.

[snip]

RHQ was anxious for Danny "to press on." Having heard of a Tiger in the vicinity he was not about to take chances so decided to make a foot recce forward and dismounted from his tank. Years later he thought to himself, "You dumb bastard, they could have had snipers in those woods" but he arrived at the tree line, where in the fading light he could make out an armoured vehicle some eight hundred to a thousand yards ahead behind a blown bridge over a small creek. As he recalled, "I put the binoculars up to my eyes and I swear that the muzzle of this thing was sitting at the edge of my binoculars, it was so huge." Danny was looking at the same King Tiger Halkyard had enocountered that morning.

Returning to his troop, he discussed the situation with Tom Milner and they decided to move the troop's two 17-pdr. tanks forward clear of the trees and open fire. This was done, and they immediately came under fire from the Tiger but just as quickly returned it. Carson Daley recalled that he fired "three shots and they ricocheted into the air off the Tiger and my knees were knocking something terrible." Tom Milner recalls firing eight rounds of 17-pdr. AP and that "either the first or the second did something to the gun in the turret, and the barrel was left pointing cockamamy." Danny remembers watching the 17-pdr. rounds go "wheww" and they just glanced off. Matters were not helped by RHQ, which prodded Danny by asking "how are you making out, we've got to move." Danny pointed out to them that, even if he got the Tiger, they would still need a bridge to get across the creek ahead. A few thousand yards away, the other troops in the squadron were monitoring the fight on their wireless and Bill Luton remembered "it was fascinating to sit there and listen to Danny McLeod masterminding the battle over the air and hear the firing, which was not far away. The pyrotechnics were not bad either.

Danny now brought his two 75mm Shermans up to add weight to his fire. "We fired everything," he remembered, and "to this day, I cannot tell you what happened, whether an HE hit the muzzle brake and bent it back or it was a 17-pdr round that hit, but it was bent back about six inches." At this point the Tiger commander decided that perhaps discretion was the better part of valour and began to back away, but "backed a little more broadside to us" and Danny "thinks it was an HE round that set the engine compartment on fire." The Tiger began to brew. When it was over, Milner recalled, "a Tiger tank lay all shattered and in pieces, a barn had burned to the ground, and a house had been blown to bits." By now it was dark and Danny was ordered to pull back and Laager for the night. As they did so, Tom Milner remembers that a British SAS jeep pulled up beside his tank and the driver shouted, "Thanks, chaps, we weren't too sure how we were going to get around that corner" and then drove off into the darkness. Danny moved his troop back some distance and they "lit up the landscape" pouring HE into every flammable structure they could see. That done, they settled down for the night, having fought one of the most successful single-troop actions in the history of the South Alberta Regiment. It had been, the War Diarist concluded, "a ding dong fight in the failing light."

---------------------

Danny got a Military Cross for this action, and post war went on to have a relatively successful hockey career. He is still alive I believe, if you watch "Greatest Tank Battles: Hochwald Gap" you will see an interview by him since he took part in that battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0WKajKktaA

[Sergei]

The rest of its crew—there were nine men in the Tiger: its normal crew of five and four spandau gunners—then baled out through the back hatch or jumped out through the cupola hatch and took shelter in a nearby ditch.

Maybe it was an A7V Sturmpanzer? Some day historians are going to piece together everything that we know about WW2 tanks and they will be mightily confused.

[Vark]

Really all these accounts show is that NO computer game will ever be able to simulate the myriad factors that go into such encounters. CMBN will only ever be an approximation and will, by dint of its mechanics, often be unable to simulate the factors that led to victory or defeat.

Sometimes the old roll a D6 and get a 1 to KO the KT seems to be more realistic, as that 1 could represent so many factors in play. Perhaps computers give an illusion of realism but simple rule books give a better approximation of it, interesting idea.