Königstiger

[piers 25497xp 10]

1/72 Revell kit done up for fighting in Hungary…

[oriskany 60789xp 2]

Amazing Tiger II, @piers .  So Königstigers in Hungary, I’m presume we’re talking about Fall of the Reich?  Lake Balaton, Operation Spring Awakening?  sPzAbtg 503 or 509?

Definitely a battle that deserves more attention.  Every time I hear or read about the Ardennes / Battle of the Bulge being the Third Reich’s “last gamble” I always get a little chuckle.

“6 TA CC” = 6th Panzer Army SS, where I presume (admittedly) these two sPzAbtg were deployed.  There’s a lot of panzer divisions packed in there, SS and Wehrmacht, of course so many of them were so badly understrength.

Like 6th SS Panzer Army commander Sepp Dietrich is supposed to have said about this time:
“They call us the 6th Panzer Army … because we only have six panzers left!”

[setesch 420xp 1]

As far as I know sPzAbt. 509 was a Wehrmacht unit. Where 503 was a SS Abt.

But at these times the borders blurred so it’s also possible they were issued to one or the other on the “kurzer Dienstweg” (short chain of command, or unofficially) 😉

 

@piers : As allways great paint job. Espicially the weathering.

[damon 7532xp 2]

Lovely bit of kit, great paint job.

[oriskany 60789xp 1]

Please don’t get me wrong, @setesch, I do not know whether sPzAbtg 503 or 509 were Heer or Waffen SS … (and didn’t presume to say) … I just found them in an OOB listing for the Spring Awakening / Lake Balaton.  In fact, @piers doesn’t even say whether he’s doing this battle in particular, I just see “Königstigers in Hungary” and … come on, 99/100 we’re talking about Lake Balaton.  😀

6th SS Panzer Army was the main parent unit of that attack, but as we see on the RKKA map above, there are plenty of non-SS units grouped in there for their attack (at just one glance, without even zooming in I’m looking at 44th Infantry, 23rd Panzer, 356th Infantry, 3rd Panzer, 1st Panzer …) although I’m sure these were mostly skeletal kampfgruppe by this time.

And of course it looks like 2nd Panzer Army was trying to launch some kind of supporting attack from the south of Lake Balaton.  Not nearly as strong, looking at this they didn’t make very much progress at all.

[piers 25497xp 1]

@oriskany

Yes… He is for the next book – Battlegroup Konrad

Covers the fighting in Hungary 44-45 with the various Konrad operations, Budapest and Spring Awakening.

So really should have done it broken down in a big muddy pool…

[oriskany 60789xp 0]

Ugh, don’t mention German tanks broken down in mud, @piers .  Gearing up for some material on the 75th Anniversary of Kursk, and I always get depressed when I read about 10th “Panther” Brigade in that muddy ravine at Cherkasskoye.  🙁

That Königstiger must be a beast in 1/72 – 20mm.  I have an Abrams in 1/72 so I can take a vague guess at how imposing that PzKpfwVIb would be.

[piers 25497xp 0]

@oriskany

He is a big boy… More imposing with the rest of the Zug though…

[oriskany 60789xp 0]

Oy!  A whole platoon of these things!  😮 Makes perfect sense, though, tanks always fight in units and 3-5 of these things would be damned imposing on a 20mm table.  Bring some grenadier support, though!   Sounds like the Soviet player had better call up some IS-2s or better yet, some rocket-armed Sturmoviks!  😀

[a27cromwell 3218xp 0]

Just a heads up guys , over on http://www.themodellingnews.com  ( July 8 ) , they have a pictorial walk around and history of the five Tiger variants now a Bovington .  Some really great pictures of stuff all tank nuts love , like wheel nuts and tool clips . I must be in  tank heaven

[piers 25497xp 0]

Guess where I was last week…

 

 

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