Dear friends,

There is this famous/ impressive video clip/picture of a single king Tiger tank with its commander Richard von Rosen reviewing an entire battalion of King tigers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d9Y4tzp7go

Scroll to 3.10 min

a) Are all the KTs w/o zimmerit? Seems to me there are no zimmerit, but the closeup of the commander's KT, there seems to be zimmerit marks...confusing

b) It seems to me they are mostly in 3 tone, but are they spotting ambush camo? Or is it painted too light to see?

c) They are all in transport tracks, interesting sight.....but why? they just came off the rail transports?

d) Which tank company was this? Are the numbers in red with white outline

I have a KT with transport track, 5 spoke sprockets front wheel, so I was thinking of re-doing my camo colors after the KT in this battalion

Cheers
Kiong

At 3:33, there is a tank with definitely the ambush "spots". And the commander's tank does have Zim from the video. At 3:39, as the tanks move off, the tank in front does have Zim as well.

As far as the transport tracks, I'd guess they're staging just before or just after they got on a train.

Good luck on the build.

Hi Kiong,
The KT's are from the sPzAbt.503, filmed at the training camp Sennelager, near Paderborn in Germany.
It's the end of Sept '44 (begin Oct' 44?), the 503 have just been issued 45 KT's.
That's why some have zimmerit and some not, and also why some have the 'new' ambush camo and some not.
They are on transport tracks because they are ready to be entrained to Hungary (12 Oct).
The turret numbers are Black outlined in White.

Lots of thumbnail pics of the 503 at Sennelager and in Hungary (Ungarn) here:

503 Tiger Im Focus

Best, Grant.

PS: This kit box gives an idea of how the zimmed 503 KT's might have looked in colour:

The tanks of the 503rd seen in the footage are also seen in stills published in one of Schiffer's paperback Tiger books. It was actually part of two companies, as the cameramen wanted lots of vehicles for the folks in the theaters to marvel at, and as mentioned, some had Zimmerit and some did not. The tanks without the Zimmerit had not yet been numbered, unfortunately. The battalion entrained for Hungary a few days later, and the second company participated in defeating a short-lived coup attempt in Budapest. This is also extensively photographed.
Von Rosen was temporarily in command of third company, and he is riding in the battalion's second incarnation of "300," as the first tank of that number was lost in France a few weeks earlier. Older paintings depict the turret numbers as red with white outlines, but more recent artists have favored black with white outlines. Take your best guess, as there are no color photos available.