Tiger in Kursk

thanks guys...im halfway in my tiger construction. decided to replicate tiger no. S33 of Das REich without the brackets and tracks on the turret.

Poch

In the Squadron book Tiger in action they show a picture of a tiger that is supposed to be with Gross Deutschland in 1943 and it has track links hanging from the turret. They also show a tiger that still has the pistol port on the turret that has track links on the turret.

Poch,
I have looked at all my reference pics of the Das Reich division and some of the tanks did have the track brackets and some didn't. I do not find ANY pics with the tracks actually mounted on the turret.

Hope this helps.
BTW, I built Tiger#S33 of that division. If you want to see how I did it, you can check out my album in my sig.

Poch

I have checked through my reference books and have found one picture that is said to be a Das Reich Tiger at Kursk which shows the tank has brackets but no links. The picture has a crew member dangling his legs over the side, so turret number is obscured. Maybe the lack of links is a common thread here.

Just be a little careful accepting the captions from the Panzer Colours books as, like many reference books, some captions are known to be inaccurate ( I have the original 3 books and can confirm this).

Good luck with getting more info.

Happy Modelling

Peter

poch,

I have to say that when I first read your post, I immediately thought that I knew that the answer was no, they did not. BUT I looked up when the track brackets were added, and saw that it was in April of 1943. Looking harder at the photos that I have, I identified at least one picture of a tiger attached to Das Reich that had the brackets at Kursk. For some reason this tank did not have the tracks in the brackets, but rather used them as hangers for the crews helmets. I cant see the turret number in the pic, but I was under the impression that most of the tigers at Kursk attached to Das Reich did not have the brackets (apparently I may be wrong). I have since identified turret numbers S11, and S33 as having these brackets.

One last thought… You might be mistaking the cut off smoke discharger mount for a track bracket too. The smoke dischargers would often go off when hit with small arms fire, creating a mess for the crew of the tank. For this reason all the pics of the tanks from Das Reich at Kursk that I have seen, have the dischargers dismantled. Das Reich also received replacements before the end of the winter which had the spare track brackets.

I am thinking that you need to check the turret number to see if it was at Kursk, or if it was a replacement.

Hope this has helped,
edog