Elefant
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- For other uses, see Elephant (disambiguation).
The Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Elefant (Sd.Kfz. 184) was an anti-tank Panzerjäger (tank hunter) of the German Wehrmacht in World War II. They were originally built under the name Ferdinand, after their designer.
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Development
The design evolved from cruder, improvised designs of 1941-42, as well as the later, but still defective, Marder designs. The chassis was created from the 90 Porsche Tiger I models already built with new tracks and an all-steel wheel arrangement: three twin bogies on side sprung torsion bars driven from the rear breast. The engines were placed in the middle of the hull to give room for the armament at the rear in a simple box structure on top of this chassis. The driver and radio operator were in a separate compartment at the front. A 88 mm PaK 43/2 L/71 gun was fitted. This gun was not the same famous 88 mm gun that had found fame as an anti-aircraft gun and improvised anti-tank gun in the Western Desert. This new gun fired a different, longer cartridge than the Flak 18 or 36 guns. As fitted the gun was capable of only 25° traverse and a similarly limited elevation.
Production
Porsche AG had manufactured about one hundred hulls for their proposal of the Tiger tank, the 'Porsche Tiger' in the Nibelungenwerke factory in St. Valentin, Austria. Since Henschel's design was chosen for production, the Porsche hulls were of no use. It was therefore decided that the Porsche hulls are to be used as the basis of a new heavy tank destroyer, mounting the Krupp's newly developed Pak 43/2 anti-tank gun. Ninety hulls were converted. The two unreliable air cooled engines in each hull were replaced by two 300 hp Maybach HL 120 TRM engines powering two generators that drove two electric motors which in turn powered the drive sprockets. Add-on armor of 100 mm was bolted to the front plates, increasing the plate's thickness to 200 millimetres. A large housing for the gun and most of the vehicle's crew was mounted in the rear end of the vehicle. The work was completed in just a few months in the spring of 1943. After deployment in Russia, forty-eight of the fifty surviving vehicles were modified by addition of improved vision capabilities and gun-ports and one or two MG 34s as anti-infantry weapons. This increased the weight to 70 t. These were named Elefant by Hitler's orders of February 1st and 27th, 1944.
3 Bergepanzer Tiger (P), armoured recovery vehicles were produced in 1943.
Usage
The units were deployed at a company level, sometimes sub-divided into platoons, with infantry or tanks to protect the vulnerable flanks of the vehicles. On the attack, this Jagdpanzer was a first-strike vehicle, while in defence, they often comprised a mobile reserve used to blunt enemy tank assaults. Toward the end of the war, the Allies proved the vehicles to be particularly vulnerable to air attack.
Combat History
All but one of the available Ferdinands were put to use in the Battle of Kursk, the first combat the Ferdinand saw. Although they destroyed 320 Russian tanks, they performed quite poorly in other respects. Many units broke down and they proved dangerously vulnerable to infantry, lacking good local defense. At this point they were recalled and modified and received the name Elefant. While the modifications improved the vehicles, some problems could never be fully fixed. Elefants served in Italy in 1944 and the last surviving vehicles were at the Battle of Berlin.
Survivors
Only two of these unique and intimidating beasts survived the war - one was captured at Kursk and is now at the huge Kubinka museum outside Moscow; one was captured at Anzio by the Americans and is part of the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum's collection.
External links
- Information about the Panzerjäger Tiger (P) "Ferdinand" or "Elefant" at Panzerworld
- Ferdinand/Elefant at Achtung Panzer!
- WWII Vehicles
| German armored fighting vehicles of World War II | |
|---|---|
| Tanks | |
| Panzer I | Panzer II | Panzer III | Panzer IV | Panther | Tiger I, II | Panzer 35(t) | Panzer 38(t) | |
| Self-propelled artillery | |
| Wespe | Hummel | Grille | Panzerwerfer | Panzerfeldhaubitze 18M | SIG 33 | Wurfrahmen 40 | |
| Assault guns | |
| StuG III | StuG IV | StuH 42 | Brummbär | Sturmtiger | |
| Tank destroyers | |
| Panzerjäger I | Marder I , II , III | Hetzer | Jagdpanzer IV | Jagdpanther | Nashorn | Jagdtiger | Elefant | |
| Armored half-tracks | Armored cars |
| SdKfz 4 | 250 | 251 | 252 | 253 | Sdkfz 221/22/23 | Sdkfz 231/32/34/63 |
| Self propelled anti-aircraft | |
| Flakpanzer IV: Möbelwagen, Wirbelwind, Ostwind, Kugelblitz | Gepard | |
| Prototypes | |
| Maus | P-1000 Ratte | E- series | Panther II | Waffenträger | Neubaufahrzeug | |
| Proposed designs | |
| P-1500 'Monster' | Panzer VII 'Löwe' | Panzer IX | |
| German armored fighting vehicle production during World War II | |
de:Elefant (Jagdpanzer) fr:Jagdpanzer Elefant ja:ティーガー(P)駆逐戦車 pl:Elefant sk:Ferdinand (stíhač tankov) fi:Elefant