The Ever-Impressive and Imposing Jagdtiger

Here are a few more armor pictures I thought you might like. This Jagdtiger is on display at the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum in Aberdeen, Maryland. It is certainly one of the more spectacular things up there due to its imposing size. This vehicle is the tank destroyer(or what the Germans called, the "jagdpanzer") version of the infamous Tiger II, or King Tiger. There is one interesting tidbit about this particular vehicle. The main gun appears to be smaller than it actually is because this vehicle was "scuttled" by its crew. They drained the hydraulic fluid out of the main gun's recoil damper and fired the gun; for the last time. They say that the breech remains impacted to the rear wall of the gun compartment. So, even though the gun still looks quite huge, it is the 128mm Pak 80, it is actually bigger than it appears to the observer today. I'm sure there are some other interesting stories that could be told about this particular Jagdtiger. If you look carefully at the closeup shot of the glacis plate you will see scars from projectiles that impacted and were deflected. You can also see a big gouge that was taken out of the recoil sleeve surrounding the main gun.