Repairs to Tiger 21

In 1943, a soldier of s.Pz.Abt.501, serving in Tunisia, took a set of photographs of his surroundings; villages, animals, his comrades. He wasn't very interested in photographing his unit's vehicles. But one day he saw a Tiger parked inside a stand of cactus, and on a whim he took this photograph. He later annotated the back of the print with this text:

Auch auf einem "Tiger" zwischen Kakteen kann es gemütlich sein. (Sbikha)

"Sbikha" is the German rendering of "As Subayhah", the name of a town in Tunisia. So the text translates to:

In a Tiger you can be comfortable even among cacti. (As Subayhah)

The crew are working on the tank. One man is standing in the engine compartment, indicating that the engine has been removed. The engine cover plate is on the ground close to us. An open toolbox rests on the exhaust shield. This Tiger has been modified by removal of the Feifel filters and the addition of metal straps so that jerrycans can be stored in their place.

The whimsical decision to take this photograph gives us the only known evidence of the origins of this Tiger, which survived the war to become a museum artefact in the USA. Because it was numbered "712" when captured, it requires a careful analysis of dozens of other photos, and a study of the differences between the 20 Tigers in this unit, to prove that it's undoubtedly the same tank. In fact, the digit "1" in this photo was never overpainted and became the central digit of the number "712".

But what about the other digit here? At first glance it could be either "8" or "2". We know that the Tigers of the 2nd company were renumbered when they became the 8th company of Panzer Regiment 7, and in all of the tanks for which we can find "before" and "after" photos, this renumbering consisted of merely changing the initial "2" to "8". But we can't assume that this Tiger would follow that pattern. We can't assume that it was both "21" and "81". We'd like to know what the photo actually depicts; and, frustratingly, we can't see enough here to tell "2" from "8".

But we can see what's NOT here. This is a composite photo showing the "8" digit from the other side of this turret, painted at the same time by the same person, and identical in style to all the other "8" digits that we can see in photos. I have carefully scaled it so that it's the same size as an "8" would appear in our mystery photo. I have aligned the digits vertically. And we can see that the two digits don't match up. If the mystery digit were "8", there would be some of its lower half showing. Since there is nothing, it must be "2".

The tank's number, in this photo, is therefore "21". That means it is the company commander's tank of 2 company, s.Pz.Abt.501. A later photo implies that it retained this role when they became the 8 company, so it should then have been renumbered as "81".

Thanks to Richard Pogodda for the translation.