Interesting. A Chinese book from 2001.
It seems that the book includes one illustration which is derived from the cover of an Osprey book. I wonder if they have a license for that?

Interesting. A Chinese book from 2001.
It seems that the book includes one illustration which is derived from the cover of an Osprey book. I wonder if they have a license for that?

Antal,

Just found this build log. Looks great so far and the detail you are putting into the Tamiya kit is great.

I built Tiger 112 from the same battalion and got a lot of help from David Byrden on the build. I painted mine in RAL7008 grey green. I have it set as being on the road to Pont Du Fahs in January 1943.

If you wish you can take a look at on my blog. Just click on the gallery section on the right.

http://totalwarinscale.blogspot.ca/

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Antal,

Just found this build log. Looks great so far and the detail you are putting into the Tamiya kit is great.

I built Tiger 112 from the same battalion and got a lot of help from David Byrden on the build. I painted mine in RAL7008 grey green. I have it set as being on the road to Pont Du Fahs in January 1943.

If you wish you can take a look at on my blog. Just click on the gallery section on the right.

http://totalwarinscale.blogspot.ca/

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Dave, congratulations! Very nice build and thanks for sharing. A question about turret numbers: Which was the right format in s.Pz.Abt 501?
Just asking because i bought the Archer AR35112 decal set, which contains red with white outline style numbers. And the Tamiya kit contains turret numbers in same style. Or both numbers are bad?
And here is another link.
http://tiif.de/thread.php?threadid=11&sid=7a38c6b28610e2f96b8191d372d517ce
(I gather the infos, but these sometimes contradict each other.)

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That photo is a fake, it consists of two photos blended together. Where was it published?

David

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Oops! I didn't know that. Otherwise, I found the pic in this japanese book.
Antal

Dave;

The caption in "Tigers on the Western Front" for this photo, is just wrong.
The hill of Zara is visible. We're going to Tunis from Bizerte. And Tiger 112 doesn't show the damage from the Tebourba battle, so it must be 1942.



Here are some actual Tunisian road signs of the period, if you want to fix that;



David

Antal;
Questions about Tigers are discussed at TIIF.DE, so you might like to read the relevant pages.
We don't know what happened to Tiger 111. It simply disappears from the record. There was supposedly a Tiger shot in the turret at Sidi N'sir, but there are no photos of wreckage. That could be 111 because there are only a few other candidates, and they are less likely to be involved.

The book is wrong. The Tiger that burnt out on 22 January was actually 122.

David

Dave;

I'm glad to answer this one. With this diagram;



There is a triangular hill [1] south of Bou Arada, which probably led to the caption in the book. It's not a great match to the hill [2] in the Tiger photo, but that may depend on where you stand.

Two things made me suspect the given location.

Firstly, Tiger 112 is seen with repaired mantlet damage in most photos, and one of them [3] is labelled "El Bathan". The tank probably picked up this damage at Tebourba.

But in the convoy photo, it's undamaged. It looks brand new. So I suspected we are seeing it during that first week in Africa.

Secondly, these two photos match up because of the exact same configuration of the Tiger;



and this one is obviously taken at almost the same place;



It happens to be Tiger 11. If I was right about the dates, only three Tigers existed in Africa at the time; 112, 132 and 11.

Using these extra photos, I can see more of the background. There's a river or canal with a line of pylons. I can't find such a thing on the Bou Arada road.
In the distance is a series of small hills [4]. I couldn't find matching hills behind Bou Arada.

So I loaded up Google Earth and flew around the whole countryside between Bizerte and Tebourba, looking for a triangular hill. The hill of Zara [5] was the best candidate. So I looked into that, among other things.

I calculated the angle of this hill versus the road, using the Tiger's body in the photo to give me approximate angles. Looking at the map, there were only a couple of stretches on one particular road that could match for the hill of Zara.

And it happens that 2 tree-lined canals cross the road in this area. Either one of them could be the waterway in the photos.

To the northwest, I found a series of small hills [6] at the correct angle from the road, and they seem to match those in the photos; but there was a mist on the morning of the photo, so we can't be sure.

The final thing to look for was a farm with a suitable corner in its boundary. Such a farm [7] showed up beside one of the canals. That's when I decided I had the correct location.

Triangulation from hills and the farm gave me the locations of the Tigers. It also put the photographer on a culvert.

I can't be sure of all this until Google or somebody goes and takes photos at the actual spot, but I'd bet money on it.

David