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The heavy industrial firm Henschel und Sohn, known for producing high
quality locomotives as well as the Panzer I, II, and III, produced the
Tiger. Nevertheless, the Tiger's size and complexity meant an
expensive and slow production process; the greatest number built in
any single month only reached 104 and this number came in April
1944; far too late in the war for the Reich's survival. Each Tiger tank
possessed 26,000 parts, needed 300,000 man-hours to build and fully
outfitted cost nearly 300,000 Reich marks. Therefore, each Tiger took
twice as long to build as the new Panther main battle tank, cost as
much as three Panzer IV medium tanks, at 103,500 Reich marks
apiece, or nearly three Panthers, at 117,000 Reich marks each.
Henschel built only 1350 Tigers between August 1942 and August
1944; all made in Kessel Germany and a number totalling less than a
single month's production of T-34s.

The Tiger also was also bedeviled by substantial operating costs to
match the vehicle's high production cost. The Tiger consumed fuel in
tremendous amounts and demanded extraordinary service time to
remain in operating condition. Each tank consumed 535 liters of fuel
for every 60 miles traveled with another 82 liters of oil needed to keep
the engine, transmission, gears, drives and turret operating. The
biggest problem with the Panzer VI Tiger tank was its unnecessary
size and weight. The tank was a relatively unimaginative design; it
resembled little more than a massive Panzer IV. German engineers
could have more effectively designed and built the Tiger simply by
sloping the armor to even a small degree. Sloped armor offered great
savings in weight, primarily because a tank with sloped armor could
deflect enemy armor piercing rounds as if the vehicle mounted thicker
vertical armor plating. Lower weight also reduced fuel consumption
and increased transmission and engine life. Among other things, these
benefits produced by lowering a tank's weight also reduced the
servicing time caused by increased wear and tear.

In summary, the Tiger, for all its accolades, represented a less than
the ideal weapons platform and featured clear tradeoffs in
capabilities; its potent firepower and protection on the one hand
against its poor range and serviceability on the other. In all likelihood
the Germans would have put up an even stiffer late war defensive
effort had they concentrated their efforts on producing in greater
numbers the equally potent but more cost effective Panzer V
"Panther".

Page One Picture Courtesy of Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German
Federal Archive), Bild 101I-299-1805-12

Picture This Page Courtesy of Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German
Federal Archive), Bild 101III-ZSchaeckel-207-12

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