German Heavy Tank Sd.Kfz.182 King Tiger (Porsche Turret)

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The Tiger II was a German heavy tank of the Second World War. The final official German designation was Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B, often shortened to Tiger B. The ordnance inventory designation was Sd.Kfz. 182(Sd.Kfz. 267 and 268 for command vehicles). It was also known informally as the Königstiger (Bengal tiger, lit. 'King Tiger'))Allied soldiers often called it the King Tiger or Royal Tiger.

The Porsche hull designs included a rear-mounted turret and a mid-mounted engine. The suspension was the same as on the Elefant tank destroyer. This had six road wheels per side mounted in paired bogies sprung with short longitudinal torsion bars that were integral to the wheel pair; this saved internal space and facilitated repairs. One Porsche version had a gasoline-electric drive (fundamentally identical to a diesel-electric transmission, only using a gasoline-fueled engine as the prime mover), similar to a gasoline-electric hybrid but without a storage battery; two separate drivetrains in parallel, one per side of the tank, each consisting of a hybrid drive train; gasoline engine–electric generator–electric motor–drive sprocket. This method of propulsion had been used on the rejected Tiger (P) design, which had been rebuilt as Elefant, and in some US designs and was put into production in the French World War I era Saint-Chamond tank and post-World War I Char 2C. The Porsche suspension components were later used on a few of the later Jagdtiger tank destroyers. Another proposal was to use hydraulic drives; Dr Porsche's unorthodox designs gathered little favour.