Since everyone seemed to enjoy my last article on German heavy antitank battalions, it occurred to me that you might like to know where and when the Tigers were deployed. It certainly seems like they were everywhere, at least judging by their frequency of appearance in games run with some of those other rules. (Hisss! Hisss!) So what follows, on page 8, is a tabular listing of all of the tiger units in the German Army and SS of battalion size. (Companies are not covered. Regiments and brigades didn't exist.) I have to plead ignorance when it comes to Luftwaffe ground troops, but I would not be surprised to find that there was a Tiger battalion with the initials H.G. as well. Each battalion is listed by quarter, from 3rd quarter of 1942 (when the first Tiger battalion was formed) to first quarter of 1945 (the last time they really pestered anyone in a major way). The letter in the column indicates the front on which the battalion fought. Two fronts separated by a slash indicate that it fought first on one front and then the other during that time. The letters RE indicate that the battalion spent a substantial part of the quarter re-equipping. Parenthetical numbers following the front assignment indicate which companies served there. For example, only 1st Kompanie of the 504th Batallion served in North Africa in the second quarter of 1943 (and was destroyed there). The surviving 2nd Kompanie then fought on Sicily in the third quarter. Battalions with quarter assignments printed in normal type were equipped with Tiger Is, while those printed in outline type were equipped with Tiger IIs. So, for example, the 502nd Batallion fought on the Eastern Front with one company (the 1st) in the 3rd quarter of '42, and soon lost most of its tanks. It spent the next quarter re-equipping its first company, and then sent it east again in the first quarter of '43. In the second quarter it was expanded to a full 3-company battalion, and continued to serve in the east for the rest of the war. In the first quarter of 1944, however, the battalion was redesignated the 511th (the first version of this battalon) and was equipped with Tiger IIs by the third quarter of 1944. In the first quarter of 1945, it resumed its original designation (502nd). One thing is worth noting on this chart. I have often heard it claimed that the Gross Deutschland Division was the only German division to include an organic Tiger battalion. That does not seem to be the case. The I Battalion 130th Lehr Panzer Regiment (of the Panzer Lehr Division) was equipped entirely with Tigers in Normandy. After the regiment was nearly wiped out, it was entirely re-equipped (without Tigers) and I Battalion became the regiments Panther battalion. A more obscure unit is the III battalion, 35th Panzer regiment (which does not even show up in some sources) which was apparently created for the Kursk offensive, and seems to disappear thereafter. 35th Panzer Regiment was the armored unit of 4th Panzer Division, which was reinforced to a true super division for Kursk (perhaps the subject of another article later). ORGANIZATION OF THE TIGER BATTALIONS Tigers were in short supply at first, and the concern for putting a number of units hi the field quickly lead to a reliance on lighter tanks to stretch the Tigers' numbers. Tigers were meant to deal with opposing tanks, but it would also be necessary for these units to deal with infantry as well. So that the Tigers would not be held up or expended overcoming enemy infantry, each Tiger company included two platoons of Tigers and two begleit ("escort," although "pest control" might be a more accurate description of their role) platoons, usually equipped with Panzer IIINs (with short 75mm guns). Later, (perhaps in mid-1943, but certainly by 1944) as more Tigers became available, the organization became simply three platoons of Tigers. Likewise, the first Tiger battalions had only two companies, but by midlate 1943 there were generally 3 companies in the battalion. Heavy Panze Battalion Headquarters Company. with: 1 command Pz VI 1 staff radio halfirack 4 medium ammo trucks Maintenance Company, with: 1 heavy recovery tractor 1 heavy truck Two (later 3) Tank Companies, each wift 1 command PzVI 1 PzVI 2 Pz IIIN (later replaced by 1 Pz VI) Back to Table of Contents -- Command Post Newsletter #7 To Command Post Quarterly List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by Greg Novak. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com