The King Tiger "What-if" story is:
Relations between the Allied forces deteriorated quite markedly in 1945 and following the surrender of Germany, there was an urgent need for bigger, more protected, tanks to face up to the Soviet armour. Although there were developments taking place in British factories, British tank experts pored over the remains of the Henschel & Sohn works at Mittenfeld they discovered that Henschel had been developing improvements for the King Tiger. These included better steering with improved torque, a supercharged version of the Maybach engine and a new gearbox. It was decided that the King Tiger with these improvements should be put into production bearing in mind the urgency of meeting the threat of Soviet armour. The gun would be replaced with the 20-pdr that was to have been used in the A45/FV201.
Incomplete King Tigers were shipped to the UK, along with machine tools, drawings etc and within six months the first British King Tiger - now called the "Chevron" rolled off the production line. It was not a great success more in part because of poor British workmanship than the design and it frequently broke down. However, within a further twelve months the wrinkles were ironed out and it gave sterling service for many years in various guises including Bridge-Layer, Recovery, Bulldozer some were also used for weapons trials
This build was a "weapon trials" Chevron based at the Fighting Vehicle Research & Development Establishment (FVRDE) at Chertsey, Surrey. It is equipped with a 120mm L11 gun as eventually used on the Chieftain.
Dave
Relations between the Allied forces deteriorated quite markedly in 1945 and following the surrender of Germany, there was an urgent need for bigger, more protected, tanks to face up to the Soviet armour. Although there were developments taking place in British factories, British tank experts pored over the remains of the Henschel & Sohn works at Mittenfeld they discovered that Henschel had been developing improvements for the King Tiger. These included better steering with improved torque, a supercharged version of the Maybach engine and a new gearbox. It was decided that the King Tiger with these improvements should be put into production bearing in mind the urgency of meeting the threat of Soviet armour. The gun would be replaced with the 20-pdr that was to have been used in the A45/FV201.
Incomplete King Tigers were shipped to the UK, along with machine tools, drawings etc and within six months the first British King Tiger - now called the "Chevron" rolled off the production line. It was not a great success more in part because of poor British workmanship than the design and it frequently broke down. However, within a further twelve months the wrinkles were ironed out and it gave sterling service for many years in various guises including Bridge-Layer, Recovery, Bulldozer some were also used for weapons trials
This build was a "weapon trials" Chevron based at the Fighting Vehicle Research & Development Establishment (FVRDE) at Chertsey, Surrey. It is equipped with a 120mm L11 gun as eventually used on the Chieftain.
Dave
