Historical look at the real #221 King Tiger During the Ardennes Offensive, Dec 1944 (1 Viewer)

[egonzinc]

I always like to look at the historical setting of miniatures.

Did some looking around my reference books and found this information on the King Tiger "Red #221" (BB030) which is modelled recently by First Legion.


This is Untersturmfuhrer (2nd Lieutenant) Georg Hantusch's King Tiger.
He was the commander of the 2nd Platoon, of the second company of the 501 SS Pz Batt, attached to the 1st SS Division's Kampfgruppe Peiper during the Ardennes attack which began in December 16, 1944.

Here an imagen of Hantusch when he was an NCO:

These are some excerpts form the Patrick Agte book "Michael Wittmann and the Commanders of the Liebstandarte"

Tank #221 was involved in actions around La Gleize.

Then later, the end of the line comes to this particular tank on Dec 22 1944:

Here a look at how the tanks markings looked, note the numbering differences from each company:

 

[Andanna]

Thank you for the amazing legwork you did. Always live this kind of research.

 

[katana]

Great post. The historical context of military vehicle employment is very interesting. The comments about the number of Shermans in action against the Kingtigers valadates the saying by the Russians that Quantity has a Quality all its own! The unit markings chart and camouflage pattern reference is very interesting. The green used is much darker than most Toy Soldier manufacturers use. The brighter greens are in error and cannot be attributed to fading, since the KTs in use at the Battle of the Bulge were new production with fresh paint under overcast skies.

 

[bradleyl30]

That is great. Thanks for doing the research and posting it.