The Elefant was deployed in Russia and also saw action during the Warsaw uprising in 1943, and finally ended its career in Italy.
In Italy, a field version of a demolition carrier version of the Tiger I was built by maintenance crews in an effort to find a way to clear minefields. It is often misidentified as a Berge Tiger recovery vehicle. As many as three may have been built. It carried a demolition charge on a small crane mounted on the turret in lieu of the main gun. It was to move up to a minefield and drop the charge, back away, and then set the charge off to clear the minefield. There is no verification any were used in combat although such a vehicle would have been of great value at Kursk.
During 1942, anticipating orders for his version of the Tiger tank, Ferdinand Porsche had actually gone as far as to build 100 chassis based on his Tiger prototypes. On losing the contract, the Porsche vehicles were used as the basis for a new heavy assault gun/tank hunter. In the spring 1943, ninety-one hulls were converted into the Panzerjäger Tiger (P), also known as Ferdinand. After Hitler’s orders of 1st and 27th February 1944, the Elefant.
The Ferdinand or Elefant, shown here in Italy in 1944, actually performed far better in combat than is generally perceived.
The Ferdinand represents a fascinating glimpse into what the Tiger might have been the Tiger had Porsche won the competition for the Tiger contract. This heavily armoured tank destroyer variant utilised all of the remaining redundant chassis which Ferdinand Porsche had ordered to be produced in anticipation of receiving the order for the Tiger I. These vehicles were a scratch built solution introduced into combat in 1943. The Ferdinand has an unfair reputation as a complete failure and is widely held to have floundered then disappeared following an unsuccessful showing at Kursk where the poor performance has been ascribed as being due to the lack of a close defence machine gun. The reality is that the Ferdinand was a highly effective tank destroyer which performed very creditably in Russia and Italy. Mechanically the Ferdinand was to prove remarkably reliable and in many respects may actually have been a better machine than the Tiger I.
Among other factory variants of the Tiger I was the fearsome Jagdtiger which was one of the most formidable tank destroyers of the war however production was very low and only 160 machines were built. Also of note was the compact, armoured self-propelled rocket projector, today commonly known as Sturmtiger, only 16 of these machines built and when the first of these was captured by the Americans a great deal of attention was focused on this remarkably powerful weapon.
The Sturmtiger with its 15in howitzer protuding. This calibre was as great as many a battleship’s big guns.