Where and how would you store on a tiger 1early?

[BamaCoop]

I have a few German gas cans and the couple of other things that I would like to stow on my tiger one. So my question to you veterans is this: Where would you put them and how would you put them? Just trying to give it up a little bit of character.

[jarndice]

Most items stowed on a Tiger 1 were around the Turret or in or draped over the stowage box on the back of the turret such as the crews steel helmets as to gas/jerry cans there was not much to be gained from an extra 20 litres of petrol when the fuel consumption was measured in Gallons per Mile
What you would see on long road journeys would be a 200 litre fuel drum behind the Turret and in the Russian campaign the more resourceful crews would lash one or two tree trunks down the flanks to aid ditching.
The only time the Tiger 1 might be expected to be seen carrying stores would be when the Tanks were being transported by railway flatcars,
Later Tiger 1s which no longer had the Feifal Air Cleaners would use the space on the rear panel for stowage but there is surprisingly little available external space for stowage on the Tiger 1 early,

[jarndice]

I have always thought that the reason T34s were fitted with a pair of saddle fuel tanks is because the fuel being carried was diesel which was much less likely to catch fire or explode unlike all German and most allied Tanks with their petrol engines.
A few British Tanks being diesel powered.

[Lert]

Other tanks, like Russian tanks in general would have gas cans external, never could understand that unless they did not care if a tank was taken out from a fuel fire

It's not so easy to lose a tank due to a fuel fire. The external fuel cans on Russian tanks were not hooked up to the fuel system, so there's no connection between them and the engine / internal fuel. If an external fuel can is hit chances are very likely that it wouldn't quite catch fire but just start leaking. And even if it did catch fire, the tank would just have a burning stream of fuel on the outside, leaking down over the inert steel of the running gear. It'd be very, very unlikely that fuel would 1) spread over the engine deck, 2) in such concentrations that it could sustain a burn, 3) catch fire and 4) keep burning long enough to leak into the engine bay, on fire.

TL;DR, it's incredibly unlikely for a hit to a Russian tank's external fuel cans to pose a danger to the tank itself.

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