Greeting to all. I want to ask you is there SS units on the western front which have used King Tiger with porsche turret. And if this is fact - in which battles they used them. Thank you beforehand.
While I can’t answer your question I can give you a starting place to look. Given that only the first 50 Tiger II’s were equipped with the ‘Porsche turret’ it would seem likely that the SS Heavy Panzer Battalion 101 of the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler would be the most logical unit to check since they were the first SS unit on the Western Front to receive Tiger II’s.
- Panzer-Lehr-Division got 5 Tiger II with Porsche turret in March 1944.
- Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503 got 12 vehicles on June 12, 1944 and another 12 in late July.
IIRC a few tanks were given to the Ersatzheer (Reserve Army) at Kummersdorf and Paderborn in early April 1944.
Also very few vehicles were given to the SS-Ersatzheer in late '44. That last one would be the only Waffen-SS/Tiger II (Porsche) connection I read about.
Yes indeed. I know that the first SS unit which received tiger II is 101 SS heavy panzer battalion in the end of july 1944. But the thing that awake the doubt in my mind is that there were hand out more than 50 pieces of kingtigers till that period. But im not sure in that all the porsche tigers were hand out till that time, they kept most of the produced numbers some time before give them to the units. My point is that its possible some henschel units been given before the complete hand out of all porsche types, and its possible at least one porsche tiger reached the 101 SS. If someone can give me exact information i will be very thankful. Its important for me to know that, because im working on historical diorama and i want to reproduce everything with 100% historical accuracy!