Slitherine

If any of you are interested in attempting to name your units in your campaigns, I am posting a link of the statistics of the Tiger I & II's that fought on all fronts during the war. So if you are a Tiger tank fan, I hope you enjoy it and using it for your units.

http://www.alanhamby.com/losses.shtml

Interesting. Assuming those total AFV losses are correct, it's no wonder the Germans couldn't win in the East, if the Russians were capable of surviving such massive losses in the early years.

Losses roughly match the numbers I know.

The only thing I think is not 100% correct is the loss numbers are losses for all Tiger units across ALL fronts.

Total Tiger I production + delivery according to my data are 1350 units.

Tiger II ~500 units.

Looks like the loss list either includes other "Cats" tanks (Panther, Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger...) or also include Tiger IIs.

Apart from that losses for easter front look roughly correct. Consider though that the majority of the early russian tanks (1941/1942) were T-26, BT-7 and consorts, only around 1500 T-34 were in the red army on 21st June 1941.

Thank you for the information. I passed it on to a friend (91 years old, BAR carrying Infantryman in the 94th Div (USA) in WWII). He was quite interested. As he pointed out, they usually called all tanks Tigers because they found a hole and crawled in until the Arty/Air/TD's took care of it.

These tables give a "general" view in relation to overall numbers combined. To get clearer picture of the number, one needs to make some adjustments. Some of the adjustment filters cannot be implemented for obvious reasons, so I will only use those that are readily obtainable.

The first Table indicates only Tiger units combined for the years of production and service (1942-1945). And the tables are indicating ONLY Russian AFV losses, not other Allied AFV on other fronts. The second table is indicating ALL German AFV losses and ALL Russian (only) AFV losses to ALL German AFV (and air forces) for the years 1941 through 1945. The tables include Tiger losses incurred in North Africa, the Western Front and Italy in their total unit losses.

Since Tigers were first deployed from late 1942 in North Africa and southern Russia (November), to get a true picture of their contribution to the losses of Russian AFV (Armor), you need to deduct the year 1941 from the second table. By doing so you obtain the net figure percentage from Tiger deployment in total for their years in combat (1942-1945). That is 63,000 Russian AFV destroyed from ALL German AFV and air forces deployment for the years 1942-1945.

In 1942 Tigers were only deployed in combat for the last 2-3 months of the 12 month year. This futher dilutes the effectiveness percentage of the Tigers. It is also a given fact and known that a substantial number of Tigers I & II were lost/destroyed by Allied air power, lack of gasoline and mechanical failure, especially in 1944-1945. Tiger losses due to these causes are not obtainable for obvious reasons. BUT, with only 2-3 months in 1942, the Tigers actually saw combat for 25% of the calendar year of 1942.

By taking this a step further, deducting 75% from the total Russian AFV losses in 1942 will leave a total loss of 52,750 Russian AFV lost in the adjusted combat time for the years of 1942-1945.

Tiger losses accounted for only 7.5% of ALL German AFV losses while they managed to contribute to the destruction of 15.63% of the total Russian AFV losses by ALL German AFV (and air forces) for the CALENDAR years 1942 through 1945. If you factor the short year (1942) combat time of the Tigers, they account for 18.67% of all Russian AFV destroyed by German AFV and airforces 1942-1945 with an 8.2% share of German AFV losses. That is an effective total of 227% in the positive for the Tigers produced VERSUS a loss factor of 8.2% net.

No doubt had ALL Tigers been exclusively used in combat on the Russian Front, it is reasonable to conclude that the total losses for Russian AFV would have been significantly higher. Succintly if "pure" data were available to compare, the percentage would be IMO substantially higher for the Tiger's effectiveness and contribution to the German war effort.

Well...the following data are roughly translated from:

"Chronik der Militärfahrzeuge - Deutsche Panzer" by Dr. Thomas Müller. For this post I use these data with no crossreferences to other books and data sources I own. So some of the following is surely open to discussion.

A total of 1354 Tiger I (all variants) had been built and delivered to the front units .

He also lists the following usage/loss statistics:

From 29.8.1942 - 1.3.1943
6 lost - 160 killed (only the units around the Ladoga lake !)

Dr. Müller also gives reported "kill ranges" for T-34 tanks against Tigers as ~100m vs SIDE ARMOR of the Tiger I - the front armor was practically not penetrable by T-34 with 76mm guns.

Whilst reported kill ranges for Tiger I vs. T-34 FRONTAL armor are up to 2.000m.
Similar ranges are valid for SU-122.

During Kursk 113 of the totally available 152 Tiger tanks were used.
The Heavy Tank Battalion 505 (Schwere Panzerabteilung 505) equipped with Tigers killed 111 Tanks in the first 2 days.
@Prochorowka (part of Kursk battle) 15 Tigers of this Tank Battallion killed 120 Tanks with no own losses.

In reality a maximum of only a meagre 5% of the german tanks were Tigers @all single times during WWII.

During the entire Operation Zitadelle (Battle of Kursk) a lousy 13 Tigers were reported as lost.

BUT due to the extreme survivability against soviet tanks, the russian tactics when fighting tigers was changed...since fall 1943 the russians began shooting with everything at hand on Tigers when spotted, due to the large amounts of "blind hits" the Tiger crews had often to withdraw from the fights because of "minor" damages to optics, tracks etc.

With the introduction of the T34/85 and the new 85mm + new Ammo the soviet "kill range" increased from the above values to ~500m vs front armor Tiger I.

The maximum of simultaneously used Tiger tanks on the whole eastern front was in May 1944 with 300 operative units.

During Operation Bagration nearly half of the german Tiger losses were because the troops had to abandon Tigers in the repair sections (apart from some technical design issues a major factor was due to the russian tactics, see above, the amount of Tigers in "repair duties" was usually around 50% of the total available units.)

Comparable from the Africa Front. A total of 31 Tigers was delivered there. 7 were killed in combat. The other 24 were abandoned because of technical defects (often caused by "minor" damage during fights or by aircraft, mine hits, artillery fire).

Similary of the 17 Tigers on Sicily 16 were self-destroyed or abandoned and destroyed by their crews. None were killed during a fire fight. One escaped to Italy.

Since Summer 1943 until spring 1944 a total of only 35 Tiger Tanks was in service against the allied army in Italy. Later one additional units were delivered.
Between June and July (Cassino fights) 64 Tigers were lost, 5 of them killed by enemy fire, the rest abandoned because the repairs took too long and the units could not be "retreated".

For the D-Day 126 Tiger Is were moved to normandy - but because of the extraordinary air superiority the units could move only @night if at all (resistance destroyed often important railways or Bridges) so this impressive "fire power" arrived in Normandy practically squad by squad.
And then were hard brought down by the sheer mass of Churchill and Sherman tanks OR the ALL present Tactical Bombers and Fighers of the allied air fleets.

The only real "threat" @that time was the Firefly with his 17Pdr which had a similar firepower as the 88L56 of the Tiger I.

According to Dr. Müllers book the allied command issued a rule to "widely drive by spotted Tiger-Units" which caused them to get lost in large area maneuverings where they often got out of fuel or occasionally spotted by fighters/bombers which took care of them.

From D-Day till Mid-August ~500 allied tanks were destroyed ONLY by Tigers.

Tank Cmdr. Wittmann and his crew scored 144 hits !. Wittmand died in Normandy though in the end.

EVEN during the Ardennes offensive the remainder of 35 Tiger I took part in the battle - NONE casualties. Though many had to be repaired.

The 2Pdr Gun of Churchill could not penetrate a single spot on the Tiger I armor.
The 6Pdr british AT Gun with default AP rounds only "dented" the surface armor.
The 75mm Sherman gun could not penetrate the front armor and @nearly 90° angle could penetrate the side armors @90m distance.

The first roughly "Tiger" class tank of the western allies seeing action on the west front was the M26 Pershing, of which a mere 20 arrived in europe before end of war.

Iscaran wrote:Losses roughly match the numbers I know.

The only thing I think is not 100% correct is the loss numbers are losses for all Tiger units across ALL fronts.

Total Tiger I production + delivery according to my data are 1350 units.

Tiger II ~500 units.

Looks like the loss list either includes other "Cats" tanks (Panther, Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger...) or also include Tiger IIs.

Apart from that losses for easter front look roughly correct. Consider though that the majority of the early russian tanks (1941/1942) were T-26, BT-7 and consorts, only around 1500 T-34 were in the red army on 21st June 1941.

The loss numbers depend upon the definition of "loss".
Like casualties consist of killed and wounded (ie mission kill), losses are defined similarly (but with variation depending on source).
So like wounded can heal and become a "casualty" again, a "loss" tank can be repaired and become a loss again...
Which means the losses can exceed the # produced. # produced depends also on the definition. A tank which is very badly damaged and has to return to the factory for repair is often included in the # produced...

As always with statistics, the numbers depend on definitions...