Tiger II

The Tiger II, officially the Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B and informally called the Konigstiger or King Tiger, is a German heavy tank of the Second World War, built by Henschel with a turret from Krupp and issued exclusively to heavy tank battalions of the German Army and the Waffen-SS beginning in 1944. Weighing close to seventy tonnes and protected by up to 185 millimeters of frontal armor, it carried the long-barreled 8.8 cm KwK 43 gun, among the most powerful tank guns fielded by any nation during the war, giving it the ability to defeat almost any Allied tank at long range. It first saw combat during the Normandy campaign in July 1944 and later fought on both the Western and Eastern fronts, but Allied bombing of German industry and the tank's own mechanical complexity limited total production to only 492 vehicles, far fewer than the numbers the Allies and Soviets could field against it.