I saw a video about the capture of tiger 131. The tank attacked a group of churchills guess they were bold thinking they out classed the Churchills and had nothing to fear the churchills fired with their 6pdrs and one shot hit the lower part of the gun mantelet now the cgi slow mo showed the round began to shatter but enough mass was deflected that it didn't show it penetrating the deck but fragments I think it showed broke off inside and destroyed the radio possibly killed the driver and damaged the traversing gear. The crew then abandoned their disabled tiger and the British captured it the next day. It's considered the best preserved tiger left and the only running one but I thought I had read that two different groups were trying to restore a tiger to running condition if so I hope they succeed since they are so rare now. Also I'm surprised that the crew bailed weren't they suppose to try to save their tank and if not destroy it as to not let it be captured intact, seems a lot of tanks captured by the allies were just that tanks damaged in combat the crews bail out and leave the tank behind and without setting demolishing charges. I still think it something the allies capturing those remantufacturing factories for tanks in my panther book it has a few pics of a factory setup for rebuilding panthers the stock yard full of dozens of stripped turrets and stacks of track sets. The assembly line a line of tanks in various stages of reconstruction. It's impressive to see the large scale they went thru to try to keep tanks in combat and those were just the one they couldn't repair in the field.
Ok, wonder what Russia did with those king tigers they had in the reserve army like our national guard I remember reading they had several that they finally decided we're too old to keep maintenance on and decided to retire them. The article said one of the things they did was to replace the 88 with the 100 mm antitank gun. I sure it wouldn't take a lot to,refit bush one of those although getting an 88 L71 would be a task. Not likely many of those lying around these days. Wonder what else the Russian army kept in service after the war.
I'm not sure about the Finnish m38/39/42 if they were based on the t38, the hulls do look close but again the road wheels don't look like anything I can find on Czech tanks. There's some pics of supposedly Finnish troops using a t38 hetzer but I can't find any mention of Finnish army ever aquiring any but it does say they got a number of tanks from Czech later in the war, so they might have but a lot of stuff on the net many times is missed reported or missed identified. Like I found s pic saying a company of m36 tank destroyers in a field the day before the bulge the guy was wrong I could tell the were m10s with the turrets turn to the rear and can't tell you how many times looking for the su152 the pics were actually the isu152. M46 for m26 or vise versa. There close but the rear deck is the usual giveaway. If it angles down toward the rear m26 if it's flat m46. Anyway tried going to the tank encyclopedia and not much there on Finnish tanks other than their use of mostly French tanks, German stug IiIs and IVJs, and various captured Soviet armor, but not much of anything on the m38/39/42.
Prospero, at least I read that the bottom compartment was Pz4 And the armour and the gun were from STUGIII. we had some Soviet tanks but most of the tank killing was panzerfausts and artillery and Molotov cocktails. First kill the protective troops and the tanks are quite vulnerable. We did no have own tanks. Only the captured Soviet ones and the Stug Iv:s we bought from Germany.
I found some articles about Finnish tanks that said they were Czech designs. Now yes and no, the tanks were purchased from Sweden m31/38/39/40/42. The Swedish saw the build up of other countries and in the beginning did not have the engineering or infrastructure for tank building and lacked the money to build new industries. The Germans made a deal to start a tank factory under the guise of a tractor factory and teach the Swedish tank engineering and built a few of their first tanks. Most of Europe was still hurting from the delression and hitler went to server so,countries to build his prototypes before going to mass production in Germany, subs in Norway, planes somewhere else and artillery in another, they didn't just use the soviets. I guess spreading it out and supposedly doing all work under secret was to make things harder to trace. With the money the Germans were paying the Swedish military commissioned Czechs to build a tank of their specifications, that they built in small numbers and sold to other countries the Finnish was one so though they were Swedish by order the design was Czech so I guess that's why the article identified them as Czech although the Czech themselves didn't build them for themselves but did build later models like the 38/39/40 for the Swedish as well. The Swedish did finally get their own manufacturing going but most of the work was by hand and took forever to build anything the new m42 prototype ordered in 43 only six tanks took them till 46 to complete and deliver. They say this moved the government to abandon any more attempts of indigenous tanks for decades buying British and American massed produced tanks. Finally they decided to build a tank but it was so complicated and expensive no other countries were interested in investing in it so they built it just for their needs not many as they still cannot build tanks on a large scale and still buy leopard twos as their main stay armor. Btw I like the Finnish copy of the ms 406 looks very close except the front looks a little bit more stream lined I think it looks a little bit better.
Cheers Quevedo, Must read more detailed info as I recall we had only old French tanks from the late 1910's and usually played them as 'tanks' in military rehearsals. In the 1930's we had not much Money and could not Invest in military. For example when the Winter War started many men wore their civil clothing as the army could not give them a uniform. Only the Finnish badge to their Winter hat. Now that is poor!
Yes the Finnish army had acquired a number of old French tanks and found them lacking and shopped for alternatives. The Czech Swedish tanks were still crude but cheap and lent themselves to modification which the Finnish military is known for modifying and upgrading equipment since they didn't have the money or infrastructure to mass produce large numbers of new equipment of their own. The BTs and T26s were really not much good for combat but they took many and made them into SPGs and a number of BTs were also converted into armored personnel carriers, wish I could find a overhead view to figure out how much they modified the vehicle to make it into a carrier.
Why start a thread on Tiger 131 , then discuss anything but Tiger 131? Were you reading the "alternative finland" website regarding the czech/swedish/finnish tanks ? Ignore it, total fantasy.
I just thought it was interesting that it was disabled the turret anyway by a 6pdr shot and the Germans managed to break away and escape. Then abandoned it and the British captured it intact. One of the standing orders was if they had to abandon any kind of equipment they were suppose to destroy it yet in this case and many others the crews abandoned their tanks and ran. A disabled elephant was captured by US forces when the drive casing was penetrated and disabled the vehicle, the crew fled leaving the tank pretty much intact, it was recently restored to full running condition.
Finlands history is a bit violent, they were part of the Swedish empire way back and then giving over to Russia. Finnish paramilitary groups staged a fight for independence and Finland broke away from Russia then a civil war broke out the Reds for communism and the whites for a democratic republic the whites beat the Reds decisively and surviving reds fled into Russia. I guess that might be why Stalin wanted Finland it use to be a part of Russia be they had won their independence for decades by then.
