The Tiger P was Porsche’s unsuccessful heavy tank design in
1942; when Germany needed a tank that can match the soviet T 34 and KV 1; they
immediately came up with an idea of mounting an 88mm on a tank chassis. There
were two companies working on the project Henschel and Porsche, Porsche never
built a tank before while Henschel is already producing tanks. On 21 of May
1942, both companies were asked to build a 45-ton tank capable of mounting the
successful 88mm gun, both designs must be equipped with the same turret
produced by Krupp.
Porsche were working to redesign the VK 30.01, the new
Porsche was powered by twin V-10 engine and each of the engines will drive a
separate generator, one on either side which then will power two electric
motors and one to power each track from the rear-drive sprocket. But the engines
were new and still proved to be unreliable, they discovered that Henschel’s
tiger is a bit maneuverable than Porsche. One more problem is that the engine
is very pronged to malfunctions and needed frequent maintenance, there were 10
fully manufactured Tiger Ps and 90 other turretless tigers were completed.
The tank's weight was 60 tons heavier than Henschel’s Tiger;
its armor was 20-100mm thick. Its main armament was the same as the Tiger as
well as the secondary armament; it had a longitudinal Torsion bar suspension a
newly developed suspension by Porsche. Because Porsche’s engine is new and still unreliable
it only had a top speed of 35km/p. Even if Porsche’s Tiger failed, the other
surviving 90 chassis and the other 9 Tiger P were redeveloped and put into service;
one Tiger P no. 003 saw action and even destroyed 50 soviet tanks, but sadly
none of them ever know what happen after it was lost in battle neither
destroyed by their own crew after getting immobilized or knocked out by Soviet
anti-tank guns.
The other 90 chassis were converted into a heavy tank destroyer
Ferdinand and Elefant and it truly saw combat. Today, there were 2 Elefants surviving
in Museums and 1 captured Ferdinand during the battle of Kursk and now it was
displayed in the Kubinka Tank Museum. Even if Porsche failed on his Tiger, it
didn’t stop him from developing tanks. But during the development of the King
Tiger, both companies again competed on each other and Henschel again won the competition.
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