Quote:
Originally Posted by donna52522
I have read that even when bridges were taken intact, the Tigers, I and II's, were too heavy to cross them, and had to pull off the road to let smaller tanks and infantry cross to make a bridgehead. Thus allowing engineers to either add support to the existing bridge or even build a new bridge next to it in order for the Tigers get across the river.
I had seen the movie The battle Of The Bulge, and the tank battle at the end confused me, it seems to be set in a desert type locale, I don't believe there is a desert in the Ardennes forest.
|
It was also very difficult to transport them by rail. The Tigers needed their tracks swapped out for narrower transport tracks to fit onto the wagons. Once they arrived the tracks had to be swapped back. There is a tank museum at Munster which has a Sherman and a King Tiger (unfortunately not a "normal" Tiger) and the difference in size is enormous and I fully believe that the Sherman was hard pressed to knock them out while being very vulnerable to their firepower.
Here is a (almost 20 years old) picture of me next to the King Tiger just to show how big it is (I'm average sized: 1,80m (~5ft 10'):
