The German King Tiger Porsche Turret WWII produced by Tamiya in 1/16 scale assembly kit, is classified in Scale Models - Military Series - Tanks
Reputation for the German King Tiger "Porsche Turret":
German military successes at the beginning of the next World War had been understood as "Blitzkriegs" (meaning lightening wars), and demonstrated the effective utilization of armored cars in thoroughly in the offing operations.
A big change in German armored weapons appeared with all the arrival of this Russian T-34 tank in 1941. It soon became apparent that the Type III and IV German tanks had been inferior in performance towards the T-34, which had excellent flexibility, armor dish and a strong 76.2mm main weapon. To be able to counter this T-34 threat, Germany developed and produced the kind V "Panther" and Type VI "Tiger I" tanks.
The Tiger I was introduced in 1942 and utilized the effective 88mm Type 36 L56 primary weapon up against the T-34. Even though the Tiger we proved effective, the Russians, upon assessing the tank, up-graded their T-34 with an infinitely more powerful long barreled 85mm main gun. The hull area significantly resembled the last Panther tanks, but ended up being bigger in dimensions and weight because of the heavy armor protection. The big difference between the two prototypes ended up being the turret configuration. The Porsche designed turret had an extremely distinctive form, with a rounded front section and slim waistline, in comparison to the Henschel version. The Porsche turret front armor was 100mm thick and 80mm quietly panels, plus it mounted the 88mm Type 43 L71 high velocity primary weapon, capable of penetrating 152mm dense armor dish from a distance of 2,000 meters.
The engine used in this massive tank was the Maybach Type HL230 P30 V-12 cylinder, fluid cooled version of 700 horsepower. The King Tiger, being more heavily armored versus Tiger we, weighed significantly more than 64 tons, and had a maximum rate of 35km/h and a cruising selection of around 170km. Porsche produced 50 turrets due to their version of the King Tiger before the official adoption associated with the Henschel model for mass manufacturing. Evaluation revealed that the Porsche turret lacked necessary armor thickness, and needed complex tooling due to its curved contour sculpturing. The 50 completed Porsche turrets were mounted on Henschel chassis' and deployed towards the front side.
The Porsche turret variations of this King Tiger first saw action in mid 1944 throughout the Normandy invasion operations and its awesome firepower became well known. Even though the King Tiger was an unrivaled tools system, owing to its advanced technology and elegance, less than 500 total had been produced, including the Henschel versions, and available for combat at any moment.
