The Last Tiger - The real history of Vimoutiers Tiger - Battle of Normandy.

Originally uploaded on Aug 12, 2019.

The Last Tiger - The real history of Vimoutiers Tiger - Battle of Normandy.

Tiger I Ausf. E Late at Vimoutiers, France.
This late-production Tiger, with steel road-wheels, is one of the several remaining Tigers of the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion and originally carried the number 224 on the side of its turret. But many sites still claim it's the tank that carried the turret number 231, but that Tiger was commanded by Hans Lorits and was knocked out at Ussy on august 14, Lorits had an impressive amount of tank kills, but was killed with it's crew at Ussy, 45 kilometres from vimoutiers. The Tiger at Vimoutiers was actually commanded by Unterscharführer Reisske and on august 20 his Tiger participated in a counter-attack launched from Vimoutiers to Trun in an attempt to breakthrough the Falaise's pocket. They took several key roads to Vimoutiers but because of close combat in the area the Germans took a lot of casualties. On the southwest road to Vimoutiers near Champosoult several enemy tanks from the Polish 1st Polish Armored Division were knocked out. It was during this phase of the operation that Tiger 224 of the SS-Unterscharführer Reisske which took the 979 road breaks down, reisske order it's crew to place starches to blow it up and leave it behind, but only succeeded in blowing of the engine deck covers and jamming the turret. So the Tiger wasn't lost because of fuel shortest but to a big mechanical problem wich states loss of oil pressure resulting in engine failure. All this is based on actual testimony of Ekkehard Förster and SS-Unterscharführer Wilhelm Fey. After the war Tiger 224 was sold to a scrapper name Morat, but the Tiger was to hard to move and Mr Morat only removed the easily removable parts and the gearbox, after Morat died his sister sold the tank to a scrapper in Caen, that started cutting up the Tiger, and removing the turret, this is were the the cutting marks ontop and on the side of the turret come from. When the local people of Vimoutiers heard of what was going to happen to the tank, the tank was bought for 6,000 Francs, to be place as a monument. in 1975, the tank was recovered by Alain Roudeix, it was restored and placed on the spot it sits now. Note: that the engine deck is restored with Panzer 4 engine deck covers. So in 2017 a plan was made to restore the tank and a site was created to raise money for the tank, the plan is to restore the tank and place it into an new museum in the town of vimoutiers, but until then only a fence is placed around the tank to prevent any other people from climbing onto it. if you want to help out the project you can visit the site of the vimoutiers tiger association and maybe you can contact them for a donation.

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■ Information obtained from several sites.
■ Wikipedia
■ tanks-encyclopedia
■ the.shadock.free.fr/Surviving_Panzers
■ preservedtanks
■ pantser.net
■ the.shadock.free.fr/Tanks_in_France

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