Kurt Knispel in Tiger 101

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The "ace" gunner Kurt Knispel is in the cupola of a Tiger numbered "101". It's the company command tank of 1.company s.Pz.Abt.503 and as such it's not his usual vehicle. There's reason to think that one other photo of Kurt Knispel shows this same Tiger on the same day.

Tiger "101" has black-filled digits, painted in Spring 1943. We can see here that its turret has a Pz.3 turret bin, therefore it's one of the first 20 Tigers issued to the battalion, and originally it had white digits. What was its number then?

The support strip for the turret bin is welded some distance below the top edge of the turret wall. We can rule out some of the battalion's white-numbered Tigers from being this one because their strips are welded exactly at the top of the wall. Many of the other Tigers with white digits cannot be this one because we know what numbers were assigned to them at the time of this photo, or because they were destroyed before black numbers were applied. Only Tigers "white 221" and "white 101" are candidates, at time of writing, to be the original of this Tiger. And the evidence suggests that Tigers were not exchanged between first and second companies during the reorganisation and repainting. This turret should be the old "white 101".

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The photo research was largely the work of the old TIIF.DE team.

 
 

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