Tiger II Ausf.B
s.SS-Pz.Abt.501

The model should represent Tiger II "332" of 501st Schwere Panzer Abteilung, part of the infamous Kampfgruppe Peiper. It was completed on 11/9/44 with chassis number Fgst 280043. It was originally issued to Wehrmacht s.Pz.Abt.509, and then passed on to s.SS-Pz.Abt.501 in early December 1944. It was captured in the Ardennes on 26/12/1944 and there are several different accounts of its capture, but most agree about the following:

It was captured by a 3rd Platoon of D Company of the 740th Tank Battalion when a leading Sherman commanded by Sgt. Glenn D. George, while patrolling on the road near La Gleize noticed a single King Tiger. They stopped and waited but the tank was silent. They fired a star shell, and to their surprise, the crew, probably sleeping at the time, quickly bailed out to the nearby forest. Now there are different accounts, some of them claiming that tanks were taken by US crew and driven along the road until they ran out of fuel, others claiming it was left there until morning. Anyway, it was recovered the next day by the 463rd Ordnance Evacuation Company with their M 19 tractor-trailer combination, nicknamed 'Tank Taxi', which is the combination of M20 Prime Mover (Diamond T 981) and M9 45-ton Trailer. Accompanying it were two T5 (M32) ARVs and an M1A1 Heavy Wrecker. The tank was then moved to the Stavelot Railway Station in Belgium where it was loaded on the captured railcar, and moved to Antwerp, from where it was shipped to the US and transferred to US Army Ordnance proving grounds at Aberdeen.

While at Aberdeen, the vehicle was extensively tested until the mid-1950s and then moved to the Ordnance Museum. It was exhibited there until the 1990s when it was moved to Patton Museum, and after that, in 2011, to the National Armor and Cavalry Museum workshops in Fort Benning, where it is now, but not in public display.

The model should represent a vehicle as it looked after being captured (hence the white markings added by the 463rd Ordnance Evacuation Company). The model is based on the Revell kit, which is not bad, but the detailing is quite weak, so a lot of AM extras were used.

Painted with a combination of MRP, Hataka, and Vallejo paints. There's no definitive conclusion about how it was painted, except that it was factory painted in 3-tone camouflage. Looking at the photos, I decided to go with the soft-edge camo.