Having rediscovered the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp last year attending Tankfest (atmosphere rather a heavy metal version of Flying Legends) I signed up for the first Tiger Day of this year. Despite having seemingly one of everything ever, the Tank Museum recognises that about its biggest crowd-drawing icon is its WWII Tiger I, no. 131. This was captured in Tunisia towards the end of the North Africa campaign pretty much intact after a shot from a Churchill deflected off the bottom of the gun mantlet and jammed the turret from traversing, causing the crew to abandon. It was shipped home, analysed, tested, trialled and then put away until it was gifted to the museum. Eventually they got it running using the Maybach engine from a Tiger II and with its running time strictly controlled it now has its own feature days. It appeared as the bad guy in Fury.
I said icon and I meant it, I reckon it is right up there with the Spitfire in that respect. And it is a beast: we've all heard critics panning its speed, manoeuvrability, reliability etc but the truth is it was almost as fast as a Sherman, has a similar cross-country performance due to tracks as wide as any modern MBT and reliability was no worse than most WWII tanks and, with a good driver, better than some!
Here are a few shots from the day, mainly Tiger 131 but some other contemporaneous stuff too.
The business end (not how you want to view that 88mm): note the unrestored battle damage where an AP round has spanged off the turret fitting on the right of the photo.
20220423 (102)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
Rear view on the move. It paraded around slowly and we did think, yeah, slow, like "they" said - then they moved up a gear or two and it took off at a rate of knots.
20220423 (96)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
20220423 (103)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
20220423 (106)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
Sherman "Fury" itself with Tiger 131. I've since discovered Fury is not in fact an "Easy Eight" but a lookalike. Works for me.
20220423 (167)_M4A3E8_Sherman by John Dixon, on Flickr
Hand-cranking the Tiger for its valedictory laps and return to the museum. Apparently this was the ordered start mode on pain of court-martial after the first start of the day!
20220423 (210)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
Heading home. The commander's hat had blown off on the track, I suspect he didn't get it back given the amount of heavy metal that had gone round there....
20220423 (220)_131_Tiger_I by John Dixon, on Flickr
Previous generation: the museum's Panzer III running round the arena.
20220423 (145)_Panzer_III by John Dixon, on Flickr
M3 Stuart. Supplied under Lend-Lease it was more than a match for Italian tanks in the Desert and the Japanese Ha-Go in the East, but not for German Panzers of any vintage.
20220423 (153)_M3_Stuart by John Dixon, on Flickr
Privately owned and soon to depart for a museum in Japan, a good one to see running, Type 29 Ha-Go light tank.
20220423 (148)_Type_95_Ha-Go by John Dixon, on Flickr
Crew of Sherman M4A4, long welded hull, short 75mm gun, resting.
20220423 (65)_Nine-tenths Boredom by John Dixon, on Flickr
The Tank Museum comes across as a confident, forward-looking organisation with plans and ambitions to do more and very much on-side with its enthusiast community. If you haven't been then I recommend it and that includes the event days.
Thanks for looking.
Tiger Day April 2022
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Tiger Day April 2022
Last edited by FarnboroJohn on Fri 01 Jul 2022, 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Tiger Day April 2022
Excellent, love the Tiger but the Sherman is my personal favourite tank of all time.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing.
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- Posts: 3044
- Joined: Tue 28 Aug 2012, 6:57 pm
Re: Tiger Day April 2022
Thanks for looking.... you'd have enjoyed this year's Tankfest, "The Sherman Story" was a theme: five Shermans running included an M4A1 (cast hull, short 75mm), the welded hull short 75mm M4A4 illustrated above, Fury, and a pair of ex-Israeli tanks, an M50 (welded hull, long 75mm based on the Panther's gun) and an M51 (cast hull, long 105mm gun!!!) Unfortunately the highlight Firefly was a no-show but old machinery sometimes plays up. Maybe next year...