TIGER PzKpfw VI № 231 After Battle Report

After Action Report | Feb­ru­ary 11–12, 1943

On Feb­ru­ary 11–12, 1943, the Kampf­gruppe Sander Tigers of the 503rd Heavy Tank Bat­tal­ion took part in a Ger­man coun­ter­at­tack on a col­lec­tive farm west of Sse­merniko­vo, on the out­skirts of Rostov.

The Kolkhoz defences were well pre­pared, the Tigers spear­head­ing the attack came under with­er­ing fire from well dug-in artillery, tank and self-pro­pelled anti-tank gun positions.

One of the TIGER I tanks advanc­ing on the farm was that of the act­ing pla­toon com­man­der, Leut­nant Zabel.

Leut­nant Zabel… report­ed this attack near Sse­merniko­vo kolkhoz, on Feb­ru­ary 11–12, 1943:

The Tiger attack­ing as an advance pla­toon left the lighter tanks behind, and attract­ed all the ene­my fire.

The tanks received hits on the front and to the right-hand side. The ene­my, with tanks, AT guns and AT rifles opened fire at a great distance.

My Tiger received a 7.62cm hit in the front of the driver’s posi­tion. The spare track links fixed there with an iron rod were ripped off. In the tank we noticed a bang and a slight shak­ing. The near­er we came, the stronger the bangs and shak­ing from the 7.62cm hits became.

At the same time we noticed con­sid­er­ably high dust clouds from artillery ground impacts near the tank.

Fur­ther on, the crew noticed a some­what lighter bang fol­lowed by a burst of yel­low smoke, most like­ly a hit from an AT rifle.

A short time lat­er we received a hit from a 4.5cm AT gun on the cupola.

The brack­ets of the bul­let-proof glass were smashed. The glass vision block jammed and became opaque caused by heat from the explosion.

A fur­ther hit destroyed the brack­ets and the hatch fell into the tur­ret inte­ri­or. There was dense smoke in the fight­ing com­part­ment and the area became very hot.

The loader’s hatch was jammed and stood slight­ly open and it received a num­ber of hits from AT rifles demol­ish­ing the hinges and brackets.

After the bat­tle two 4.5cm AT guns and 15 AT rifle hits were count­ed on the cupola.

On both days of the attack the ene­my destroyed our machine guns. The smoke dis­charg­ers on the tur­ret were also destroyed.

The smoke in the tur­ret caused so much trou­ble that the Tiger was not ready for action for some time… …all crew mem­bers nerves were frayed, we lost our sense of time.

We felt nei­ther hunger nor any oth­er needs. Despite the fact that the attack last­ed for more than six hours, all men in the tank felt the time had gone by in a flash.

After a fur­ther 7.62cm hit on the mant­let the gun mount­ing bolts sheared off.

The recoil brake lost its flu­id and the gun bar­rel remained in rear (recoiled) posi­tion. Due to elec­tric prob­lems the breech block could not be shut.

Due to shocks inflict­ed by fur­ther hits the radio sys­tem failed and the steer­ing levers were jammed.

When the exhaust cov­er was destroyed, the engine caught fire. This fire could be extin­guished by the fire-fight­ing system.

Fur­ther hits loos­ened some tur­ret ring screws. The tur­ret tra­vers­ing sys­tem failed temporarily…

We count­ed 227 hits by AT rifles, 14 hits by 5.7cm AT guns and 11 hits by 7.62cm AT guns.

The right sus­pen­sion was heav­i­ly dam­aged by shelling. The con­nect­ing pieces for sev­er­al run­ning wheels were ruined, two tor­sion bars were bro­ken. A rear idler wheel bear­ing was damaged.

In spite of this dam­age, the Tiger was able to be dri­ven for fur­ther 60km.

The hits inflict­ed cracks to some weld seams. A fuel tank began leak­ing due to the heavy shocks.

We noticed a num­ber of impacts in the track links, which how­ev­er did not par­tic­u­lar­ly impair mobility.

Sub­se­quent­ly, it can be said that the armour on the Tiger had come up to our expectations.

— Signed, Lt. Zabel