Tiger 11 going to Jedeida

This is Tiger tactical number 11, assigned to the command of the 1st company, s.Pz.Abt.501 in Tunisia. The date is 1st December 1942, around 14:00. This tank is part of a convoy; the battalion is going to join the fighting at Tebourba. This will be the first combat for Tigers on the western front.

The location is on Route National 7, about 4km east of Jedeida, where the vehicles will use the town's old bridge to cross the Oued Medjerda. The is the first photo of a sequence on a negative strip; the next one was taken just moments later and it shows Tiger 112.

The date and event are deduced from the location. Thanks to the other photo, we know that this site can only be on a few specific roads. From one of these roads, we can find (using Google Earth) a very good match between this photo and the modern landscape;

The match holds good only for a few hundred meters of the road, on which we find a farmhouse with an unusual sloped roof, and a large old tree (uncommon in Tunisia), which also resemble those in the photo. Drawing sight-lines through these features and aligning them with the hills, we get this;

If this were not where the photographer stood, it would be a huge coincidence that the two lines intersect on the south side of the road.

The date is deduced from the German battle reports. Although the battalion may have travelled from their base to Tebourba on two or three consecutive days, it was only on 1 December that they report having more than one usable Tiger.