I am getting ready to paint my king tiger from the 505
Two tone yellow and red brown cammo
What ak or ammo set would I need early or late
Or is the XF -64 the best match

Craig ... cause its a king tiger i would use the late AK or Ammo set ..they are made for the late war vehicles .


Phill

In my job as a museum curator I met a King Tiger gunner who had been in the 5th SS Viking Division. Russian front service. His English was very good but tinged with a Scottish accent as thats where he was a POW. He was drafted and young.
On the topic of tank colors etc he said that there was no overspray camp just the Panzer yellow. I asked him about "victory rings" on the 88 barrel. He said no way because if the Russians had captured them they would have killed them! He had 35 kills- all Russian.Thought I would share that with all of our fellow modelers.

I don't believe that the 5th SS Wiking division had Tiger IIs assigned as an organic part of the division. SS Tiger IIs were grouped into independent heavy tank abteilungs such as sSS PzAbt. 501, which fought with the 1st SS Panzer Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Thus, if your "source" claims that he was a Tiger II crewmember as a part of the Wiking Division - he must be lying!

Or he might just be confused, probably a pretty old guy by now.....

Or his unit may have been assigned to the 5th SS.

And as for the topic of "kill rings" on the KT barrel...



Note that the unit is SSs.Pz. Abt. 503 - so not all SS panzer crews were afraid to advertise their kills!

Ref: E. Kleine, V. Kuhn, "Tiger: The History of a Legendary Weapon," J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, 1989

Gents

What the troops did (SS or otherwise) and what the propaganda people did are probably opposite sides of the same coin.

Regards

Rob

Take it easy. The conversation was more than several years ago. And was your photo from the book taken on the Eastern or Western Front? He would have no reason to lie about panzer colors and kill tings. The conversation was intelligent and forthright.

I checked with a good source and it's possible that his unit was attached to the division. It was a conversation we didn't have the time to pull out photo books.
We talked in my agency military military museum--I am 63 and not naive and have modeled and read extensively. The word "lying" is a little too harsh for this forum.

Thanks for answering my question
cheers

David-

Sorry - didn't mean to offend you. I'm not saying that you were lying but rather, that your source's info seems a little suspicious to me. I suppose that giving the benefit of the doubt, there are 3 possibilities:

1) He served in two different units (5th SS then a heavy tank battalion) at different times - the heavy tank detachments were considered elite units so they drew many of their personnel from experienced members of other panzer units.

2) As you mentioned above, he served in a heavy tank battalion in support of 5th SS for a particular operation or period of time.

3) Either he misstated his experience or you misunderstood him, due to language difficulties.

I suppose a 4th possibility would be that he was confused, didn't remember correctly or suffered brain damage as the result of a an injury that could cause either of these possibilities. This would seem unlikely if he was a young guy and didn't have difficulties communicating.

If none of these explanations were correct then I am afraid that my original charge - that he was a liar and misrepresented his wartime experience (if he even served during the war) was accurate. However, at this time, we will never know.

Regards,
Kevin