Description

This newly released 1/35 King Tiger “Henschel Turret” Sd.Kfz.182 w/ Zimmerit, kit No:84530, from Hobby Boss consists of over 550 parts. Both a slide mold upper and lower hull are included featuring crisp, refined details. The 1/35 King Tiger “Henschel Turret’ also comes with individual workable tracks. The protective Zimmerit coating is included as a thin Polystyrene sheet for both the hull and turret.

In early October 1942, plans for the production of the VK 45.03 were reviewed. Two designs were provided, one by Henschel and one by Porsche. Both designs integrated a turret design from Krupp, with the main differences being in the hull design, transmission, and suspension.

The Henschel version used a conventional hull design with sloped armor resembling the layout of the Panther tank. It had a rear mounted engine and used nine overlapping road wheels per side, mounted on traverse able torsion bars, in a similar manner to the original Tiger. To simplify maintenance, however, the wheels were overlapping rather than interleaved as in the Tiger heavy tank.

Henschel won the contract, and all Tiger IIs were produced by the firm. Two turret designs were used in the production vehicles. The initial design was sometimes mislabeled as the “Porsche Turret” due to the belief that it was designed by Porsche as their prototype. In fact this turret was simply the initial Krupp design for both prototypes. This turret had a rounded front and steeply sloped sides, with a difficult-to-manufacture curved bulge on the turret’s left side, to accommodate the commander’s cupola. Fifty early turrets were mounted to Henschel’s hull and used in action. The more common “production” turret, referred to as the “Henschel Turret”, was simplified with a flat face, no shot trap (created by the curved face of the initial-type turret), less-steeply sloped sides, and no bulge for the commander’s cupola.

The track system used on the Tiger II chassis was a unique one, which used alternating “contact shoe” and “connector” links—the contact shoe link had a pair of transverse metal bars that contacted the ground, while the connector links had no contact with the ground.

The Tiger II was developed late in the war and made in relatively small numbers. Like all German tanks, it had a gasoline engine. However, this same engine powered the much lighter Panther and Tiger I tanks. The Tiger II was under-powered, like many other heavy tanks of World War II, and consumed a lot of fuel which was already in short supply.