Mystery of Tiger 131 - The Allies Capture a Strange Abandoned Tank 

The tiger, a formidable opponent if you can find one that runs

Yup... The turret / gun was disabled and then the bailout occurred. If not mistaken the Tank itself is in Bovington in the Tank Museum, it still running today .

@@fetus2280 Cant they shut it off? 😜

@@philmenzies2477 HA ! Took me a sec to realize wth you're talking about.. Good one mate, Dad joke of the day :) Cheers

@@fetus2280 It mentions the Museum in the close of the video.

The Tiger 131 turret was jammed from a shot to the turret ring. The crew bailed out since the turret couldn't be traversed. I never ever heard of the commander of the tank being killed by a deflecting shot off a lug. Please give a link. 😉

I have had a warm up ride in the commander's position in her....she is awesome! The wounds on the turret and chassis are frightening, I don't blame the crew for bailing out.

@Shane Doe you could just say "Russian" yknow, communists are people. "Marching to their death" shouldn't be a joke. Your parents raised you wrong.

@@BuBornham in truth the Germans originally called the Russians Bolsheviks not communist but later generalised simply Russisch

Me granddad learned to drive a valentine at bovington

I’ve been there too

I think that might have been a Sherman tank because some used radial engines as one of their engine options. That Chrysler multibank (5, six cylinder inline, flat head engines) was a wild setup.

Spot on mate. Big difference there.

Thought those were tiger 2’s still a badass tank also looks like a couple of PZ lV

Or talking about Tiger 1's production while showing M3 Grants on the production line. Hmmmm.

@@replicant5393 Ha! I know.

In some regards he's getting to be worse than Jingles. Though Jingles at least admits he's crap at times.

Thank you for your service! Just a weekend Warrior during the Reagan years

@@paulprigge1209 Paul,thank you sir for your service.I served in the RA,and NG.

@@markpaul8178 My uncle was World War II. His wife and Mother-in-law got stuck in Germany during World War II. He served Army. My dad was Army Air Force and then Air Force that transition of 45 to 47

@@paulprigge1209 Thanks Paul for your story.

Sir,your name rings a bell.I have heard your name somewhere down the line.

With digital controls no less!

It kind of is. The Leopard is a descendant of these (mostly the Pahther) WW2 tanks

No it wouldn't

ford t was on production ober 100 years ago and still a lot of this are alive, not like only one last tiger

@@nanab256 yes

Exactly.

So, its just backing footage to the audio

@@solariss452 buddy, there's only so much footage out there, it's just eye candy to look at

The video is free, so what is the problem?

It’s just a guy making videos. It’s not the fucking History Channel. Cut him some slack.

Yeah we will see the results of the leopards in Ukraine now it should be pretty lopsided.

@@JimHugg-gl9bs they getting destroyed lmao most of em are gone

@@TheMrmango69 probably why i haven't heard about them then

I though it slightly amusing seeing an American Medium Tank M3 production line coming on-screen when talking about German tank factories.

allso m3 Lee factory

I tend to really listen only, the footage is done with after a minute. Then they loop sometimes. And 100% agree with the comment concerning the Tiger 2 footage whilst the original Tiger is being described. It's as bad as I've seen. Just lazy.

There are SO many falsities in Dark Doc videos. I don't even think he does his research. What WW2 buff doesn't know the difference between a Tiger I and 2!!?!?!?!?!

And when he’s talking about the “advanced” engine of the Tiger he’s showing footage of a radial engine going into an American tank 🤣.

If I ever make it to England, Bovington tank museum is the first place I intend to visit. We have nothing like Bovington here.

Lol go watch something else then. Like real footage is falling out of trees.

@@smallthings6590 I can only imagine how videos like this is how history becomes so warped over years and years.

But hey king Tigers are basically the same as 🐯s eh lol.

Just pretend it's story telling time, just like it was in the 30's and 40's.

@@smallthings6590 it’s too bad you haven’t seen the documentary called tiger files which is an hour long video completely on tiger 131 it’s on Amazon prime but good try.

Majority of footage are tiger 2’s

@@haterbehavior4583 facts

Would be nice if there were some in the video.

Cause Hugo Boss. Not all Germans were Nazis. We fought the wrong enemy. (George S Patton) I don't condone the Nazis but they have the best uniforms.

@@Nikolai.... they did have the best uniform, but they also had the worst reason for fighting in the opinion of most rational people.

The engine shown looks like a radial engine not a V12. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybach_HL230

@@pctrashtalk2069 it is by all means a V-12 engine, has nothing to do with a radial engine. Two important things: the Tiger 131 was originally powered by the HL 210 with a slightly smaller displacement and lesser torque compared to the never seen green HL 230. The great difference was that the HL 210 made extensive use of aluminium including the crankcase and block, the opposite was using gray cast Iron, larger displacement more horsepower but more importantly a better and more reliable torque!

I had AIT at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Spring 1967. There was a King Tiger in the tank park which had sustained two direct hits by Shermans in the nose. The hits looked just like the damage you'd do to a stick of butter with a table knife. In other words negligible, pitiful. The Tiger must have also been abandoned, since there was no other visible damage. The turret was tall enough to stand upright in, regardless of the hull. A freaking massive tank. Remember, the Tiger's main gun was an 88mm antiaircraft gun. No wonder it was feared.

Dark Docs be that way.

Mark Felton Productions recently posted a video on the same subject and did a far better job than Dark Docs.

@@HollywoodMarine0351 mark is fantastic ain't he

@@jaex9617 yet I still subscribe. Lol

@@guylelanglois6642 we watch Mark Felton for facts, while Dark Docs for the entertainment of catching their errors. lol

Grants and Shermans built a special built Chrysler plant

If you want to see the actual tank. Tiger 131 is in the Movie Fury. Its one and only time in a major Film IIRC

If you live in England or ever visit there, it's on display at the Bovington Tank Museum. Furthermore, each year Tiger 131 is driven in the "Tankfest" parade on museum grounds. And yes, to date it's the only running tiger in existence, although a number of others are planned to be refurbished to running condition.

Same bro, I love his work.

Thank you for saying it! I've thought that exact same thing since I found this channel a few years back. Can he teach my corporate office? They really need help in speaking... 😆

Rob Lowe

He sounds exactly like Tom Cavanagh and Aidan Gillen combined

If this guy narrates your life, the video will be mostly photos of other people, not you.

You are correct, they also have the Sherman ‘Fury’ 76mm that was used in the film too at Bovington along side 131.

The T34's of both guns were fundamentally well designed machines (if uncomfortable !), but mass production created massive quality issues rendering them much less effective than they might have been ... The KV1 was also a monster tank, but not many of them were available and I understand that they were fairly slow ...

@@Jester-Riddle the kv1 was also known to have a obsolete and weak transmission that left them stranded a lot

I read the first KVs used the same engine and transmission as the T-34. The problem was the KV was just to heavy for that engine and transmission.

The superiority of the t34 has been greatly exaggerated as well.

@@bluntone2273 Part of the 'superiority' came from the fact that it was cheap and quick to produce, so volumes were available ...

Any videos of a Tiger 1 would be preferable to endless Tiger 2 footage. It’s not as if footage of Tiger 1s is difficult to find.

@@flynhiinthesky a lot of people don’t get how long it takes to make a 10 minute video either

@@EducationInHistory spend the time doing a video properly and get congratulated for it; or do a inaccurate video and get criticised for it. Which is better?

@@flynhiinthesky it's just the footage that's wrong. All the info he gave is right

@@mr1ybbob3214 I agree, but a video is a visual format. If it was just a audio recording, then it’s good quality production. But if you’re going to add pictures or video, try to use footage appropriate to what is being spoken about. Don’t get me wrong, I subscribe to all the Dark channels and the vast majority of videos are great. Just not this one. Anyway, we’ve picked on him enough. Let’s wait for the next video.

Easy to tell them apart.

@@jamessnee7171 for me yes, but someone who doesn't follow the history of WW2... they probably won't know.

No, dude, you need to have better standards. The video is about the Tiger 1, and most of the footage shown is the Tiger 2. Whe he says about production we are shown footage of Grant tanks. Like this is History Channel level content. Narration thrown over any black and white footage they could find.

Dark series videos always come with errors. Mark Felton Productions recently posted a video on the same subject and did a far better job than Dark Docs. Take a look and see the difference in quality details.

They had the nickname ,, woofers,,

Most often people arent recognized for that type of stuff some dude had great ideas about armoring a tank, and planned out to the workers and they were recognized as a team(company) for making such a great tank. The single worker is barely recognized, especially in the Soviet union.

The Russians didn't really have better tanks if you knew their secret. The most famed of the Russian tanks was the T34, which the Russians went to great pains to keep far away from the Germans until they had a great number of them and first used the T34 in a massive tank battle at Kursk. They did great until the Germans were near the end of their own tanks. The Russians had merely put more armor on the front of the tank, but didn't develop a much better engine. Thus, in order to keep the engines from breaking down, they had taken armor off the rear of the tank. If they were fired upon from in front with cannons, their armor was thicker and better than anything the German possessed, but it was said that you could fire into the engine, fuel tank, or crew area wiry any rifle. They literally ALWAYS had to face the enemy or they were riding in steel coffins.

The big reason for the T-34's advantages was that Germany had contracted the Soviets to build THEIR tanks, pre-Barbarossa. Oh, if Hitler had only paid attention!

The Soviets studied many tank designs while coming up with the T-34,including using the "Christie"suspension.They wanted it simple and easy to mass produce in numbers.The Germans on the other hand usually had way over engenered stuff that was harder to produce.

Angled armour was the main reason. Any armour plate at 45° has a greater effective thickness and has the added benefit of deflection. If Hitler hadn’t been such an ADHD nightmare, stuck to simple, cheaper designs, and out-manufactured the allies, we’d all be speaking German right now.

You are correct. The guy does not bother to inform himself. Pity.

He’s talking about tiger 131, the footage is irrelevant

@@vthegoose If the footage is irrelevant it shouldn't be there. This is supposed to be an informative video. Imagine your teacher in primary started teaching you about a new animal, a Giraffe for example, telling the kids about it's long neck and spotted skin. While a zebra was on the blackboard. Little Timmy: "Teacher what's that on the blackboard?" Teacher: "Oh that's a zebra, it's got nothing to do with what I'm currently talking about, I just thought it looked cool there"

@@Deuce_and_a_half Dark series videos always make errors. Mark Felton Productions recently posted a video on the same subject and did a far better job. I watch Dark Docs for the entertainment of catching errors, and Mark Felton for facts.

Not at that time. The British were already hurting for production of tanks due to lack of resources. The war was on and they needed to field tanks. So the tanks that were in production like the Churchill, Cromwell and towards the end of the war the Comet, were used. It wouldn't be until after World War 2 that the research and design would bear fruit with the introduction of the Centurion tank that fought in the Korean War.

@@metalmilitia1o740 Well, the Centurion missed out on WW2 by minutes, it was most certainly not a postwar tank. What's really impressive is it became the most successful tank there has ever been!

The Churchill was a good tank, very heavy armor, decent firepower, and it will go anywhere. The slow speed was intentional, as they were meant to advance with infantry

Lol but the Tiger 1 did the opposite of "win wars" Germany's heavy tanks lost them the war.

@@Deuce_and_a_half not really

According to Lindybeige the 1st two tigers in n.Africa were taken out by british 6 pounder anti tank guns

To annoy you Yanks. Anyway, we guessed you would Welch on your agreement to share nuclear technology after the war, even though Brits were involved in the Manhattan project 😆

What makes you think it wasn't - on top of the US's own experiences in North Africa? The M4 was designed to be reliable and easy to make and had armour as good, if not better, than anything in it's weight class. Also - the M4's starting in 1942 were equipped with 76 mm guns on some models with better penetration than the 75 mm depending on round used. Then there is of course the E2 'Jumbo' where they welded on more plates to give it an effective thickness of 180 mm or over 7 inches - 75% more than a Tiger I. And German reports that even the base line Sherman's if at a 30 degree angle were either immune to the 8.8 cm gun if hit in the upper angled plate, or had to be within 800 meters as it varies. There was also the fact people further up the food chain were more focused on Tank Destroyers in the US than UK - so getting improved tanks, like the T/M26, or up-gunning/better armouring the M4 (there are photos of a test version an M4 normally meant for a short barrel 105 with the turret and 90 mm gun of an M26) was like pulling teeth and eventually required Eisenhower to step in to even get the M26 production going and have them shipped over. The US was stuck in a doctrine of 'Tank Destroyer destroys tank, Tank supports infantry' as opposed to the UK and USSR which was 'Tank supports infantry - and destroys other tanks' so they kept improving their tanks in order to both support the infantry and fight other tanks. They did up gun and up armour Shermans, problem is that it was a fight to do that because the doctrine was they weren't supposed to fight tanks, they were supposed to support the infantry and it was adhered to too strictly by people in positions to block further developments and all that would have gone against it.

They have to have modern sensors with air/ground threat detection or infantry support, (which modern ones do) but I agree, although I think we'll eventually see more tank "drones" with auto-loaders for that exact reason, or possibly conventional tanks with a small, rear of tank based/deployed, dedicated synced drone for even better overwatch and incoming alerts without having to rely upon outside air assets, especially handy for urban combat where tanks will be separated and buildings would block a single asset overwatching multiple armored vehicles... 🤔

They both have 88s, the konigstiger has a 71 caliber gun and the tiger has a 56 caliber gun. Caliber is just the length of the barrel, given in terms of the bore, so the tigers barrel has an 88mm bore and the barrel is 56x88mm long

@@vthegoose I heard wrong I think, and you are correct :)

@@vthegoose the Tiger 2 carried an updated version of the 88, the KwK 43 which was a 71 calibre length gun.

All German 88mm guns could easily kill a Sherman.

@@Idahoguy10157 Yes and the american 76 easily destroys tigers :)

@@common_moss8998 ….IIRC fortunately encounters between Tigers and Shermans were rare. Thats not a criticism. Germany was running out of gasoline to operate vehicle. Tigers and Panthers were mechanically unreliable and repair availability was limited. The Panther had a tendency for engine fires.

​@@Idahoguy10157 Yea the panther had a problem with fuel lines leaking

Typical. Any errors or inconsistency must be somebody else's doing.

Tiger 131 has most of its original insides.

@@daveybyrden3936 indeed it does