"WHITE TIGER"

[jarndice]

Now what would a gang of soviet partisans do with a heavy lift jack and a set of Feifal filters?

[doc larsson]

Now what would a gang of soviet partisans do with a heavy lift jack and a set of Feifal filters?

building their own tiger 1 and those parts were missing from the kit ?

[HERMAN BIX]

Probably clogged & froze, rip em out and let the mechanics worry about it !
I ran it up today to make sure all was well in the driveline and trans hardware, discovered these HL's actually do pull off high speed turns almost without warning. AND on carpet. Good thing though, no sqark of doom from any of the trans components so I'm pretty happy. With the battery on board and a small weight(frozen butter block) perched on top to add weight the suspension returned to position after I pushed it flat & let it go. Another win- seems this has H/D springs fitted.
With this inspirational series of tests over and enough confidence not to need to tear the running gear out of it, I burst outside & went about the neighbourhood searching for the pole on the side as in the picture with a set of pruners !!
deciding I am useless with wood, the natural option could not possibly fail. Several options cut & now drying outside.

[HERMAN BIX]

What you dont see is that down the road they are jacking up one side of a parked tank & are flogging the wheels off it. The filters will go into their mates cars to make them go faster on Friday cruises to the township
Ahem, perhaps with the support troops and maintenance units fine at this stage of the war, no need for a jack

[HERMAN BIX]

After a few days of drying out, made a mock run for unditching pole selection. seems to be pretty close on both options, I would appreciate your collective opinions on which is better. Winterising, weathering etc etc could change the entire perspective, but one has be chosen. I prefer the one with the turret slewed to the right, the log just seems a bit more rugged and closer to scale compared to the subject picture.. But the alternative is a nice pole.

option 1

[HERMAN BIX]

I've let him sit while his more flamboyant cousin is given all the attention. But being that this is going ahead, I bought some enhancements that will be required as soon as that damn base is completed for the jagd.. A nice surprise was that these are Taigen parts, no real way of describing detail or quality due to never having any comparison examples, but these bits look razor sharp. Metal early headlights, metal driver and radioman hatches that open, debris screens, a metal machine gun with LED, deck & turret vents( and roof granate launcher) a pair of heavy duty tow cables, steel shackles , and an omnipresent bucket.
Rugby season both televised & on saturdays for the son has returned thank god, but it sure does cut short the tanking time.
The new hatches will allow easy access to the steel gearsets for lubrication, and the rest will do to bring this 'meat eater' into as close a reality as I can get.
Settled on an unditching pole, and got some other bling figured out & awaiting budgetary approval from the Minister of War & Finance.

[billpe]

Been looking at the subject picture a bit more. Can some one give me a heads up on what the telephone pole is attached to that keeps it on the track guards ?
There does not appear to be anything at the rearmost end that it hangs off, and the helmets & crew accoutrements are in front of that, but from this photo, theres nothing wrapping around it that runs back up to the hull. Assuming this is used for assisting in unditching this leviathan when its up to its ass in Russian mud, there must be devices like gate hing gudgeons or similar that are used to secure the thing to the side of the tank., and then to help to drag the pole under the tracks in a morass. There does not appear to be one on the Barn side from what I can tell. Did these guys actually have the very first industrial velcro, or is it just the picture !

Its a Tiger from 505Abt, the unditching pole, at least at the rear is probably held on using the three loop holes welded to the hull sides (three per side on the rear half - not a detail that comes with most models). It was fairly common for 505 tanks to have these poles and can be seen on other photos from tanks from this unit. I think the photo cones from tigers in combat 2.

[HERMAN BIX]

Thanks mate, yes it is an early 505 machine.I have looked for any details on what these poles might have been secured to, but nothing I can really say for sure are not just expedient measures. I would have thought chain the most likely to bear the dynamic weight of these poles, or at least cable, byt really, they are replaceable so anything close to strong would have done.
Do you have any differnt pictures that may clarify the retention method further ?

[billpe]

There are some images in tigers in combat 1 and Thomas Anderson's Tiger book of these unditching beams but none are entirely clear as to what the anchor point is. It looks like at the front and middle chains or rope is used and there is an attachment on the deck for them to loop through and the rear is held by the loops on the hull side which is a normal feature.

It's entirely possible that customised mounts were welded on, much like c and s hook mounts were. The website Tigers in focus has a section on 505 and may have some clearer images.

[HERMAN BIX]

Thanks mate, I intended to use a bit of 'artistic licence' when setting these points up just simply because there is not really any definitive methodology that I can find . At this stage of the conflict they would still have had very good access to rear area support & maintenance, field workshop type infrastructure so any expedient measures to make the lives of the machines crews better, and increase the fighting capabilities of the machine in this geography & environment should have been fairly simple & done to a much higher standard.
As things dragged on it would have been left to each crews skills in scrounging & creativity to overcome any shortfalls like this.
Taking all things into account : initial securing of a pole once lifted into position, making it secure enough to last up there, making the securing method easy enough to actually remove the pole when /if its required for use, the recovery & reinstatement of the pole once used and doing this repeatedly. Again, with all the picture records around I have not seen any of a Tiger using this method to assist its recovery, but we know they must have. I personally would go for stout hemp rope with about an 1 1/4" diameter that can be tied off to anywhere and cut with an axe if required for use. The rope could be reused fairly readily, and little modification or creativity should be required to do it the first time.