The Germanic Invaders Gallery

Julius of the Julius Tank Team, sent in by Bill Bailey. The Julius Tank Team is part of the German Team for the Oklahoma D-Day event. Built by Rick Tuck and crew of 'Busted Stuff Engineering'. An interesting quote from the Julius Tank web page:

Opponents are also afraid of what's often behind the wheel:

Some Pictures from the 2004 Spring West Point game. Although Julius played on the US team that game which doesn't really fit with the 'Germanic Invaders', Julius is simply too cool and multiple examples are fine.

And some pictures from the 2002 Shatner Spplat Attack.

Definitely not two turrets you want pointed in your direction in that last pic ;)

Steve 'German' Webb, Michael Paige 'Arms Minister' and crew of Team Hun with their incredibly detailed SdKfz251 Half-Track. This is the kind of detail that we are striving for with our Tiger. These guys have matched the detail of Bret Golihew's Sherman.

The Woodland Warriors Cannon sent in by Bill Bailey. Bill has 6 of these that they use (to stop American tanks) at the Bunker Extreme D-Day in Oklahoma.

I was sent this picture last June from STP showing his Panzer Hetzer T38 when it was at D-Day '03. I really should have put it here some time ago.

Although the side plates remind me of the Panzer IV this is a pretty accurate version of a Hetzer. Actually if he paints the side plates like Bret's Sherman was originally painted there'd be no mistaking it for those familiar with German armor. One things for sure considering the trouble the Shermans had with the Tiger and Panthers these things must have been even harder to penetrate. For those of you who don't recognize this here's a site with a lot of info on the Hetzers.

This was the German 6-wheeler from Skirmish D-Day 2004. This is also the first tank that Dawn scored a tank kill on, earning the AFX/Panther it's first barrel ring.

These are pictures of Frida from Skirmish D-Day 2004. Although I didn't get to really get some good details on this tank I did notice that it had a household A/C unit installed. I hope they've had better luck with that than we did.

Since they're becoming so popular I'm putting all the Tiger tanks into their own sub category.

Cousins_BG05_Coram_c1_0004.jpg (70766 bytes)

The LI Tiger. While its new makeover does look fantastic, it's not the most realistic Tiger but I'm leaving in the first position since it was the first Tiger I knew of. ;) I'm no longer involved with this tank anymore, pretty much George and Butch are it's driving forces, although Butch has talked about turning his Jeep into a Sherman.

Heath Riley, also responsible for the Hetzer below sent me this shot of his new Tiger. This is quite possibly the most impressive tank yet.

Panzer Commander's King Tiger premiered at the Michigan Monster Game 2001 hosted by Exotic sportz in Pickney Mi. I haven't seen it yet but it's a lawn mower based tank that is somewhat larger than a car.

Bob lost his tank base to a barn fire but is still planning on building a King Tiger as soon as he can.

A little background for those who are interested. The Panzer V Panther and Panzer VI Tiger/King Tiger shared some similarities. From what I've read the Panther was the most cost effective to build and wasn't much less combat worthy than the Tiger I. Our Tiger is roughly based on the Tiger I. Two movies that it's been shown in is 'Kelly's Heroes' and 'Saving Private Ryan'. The King Tiger or Tiger II had a much greater slope to it's Armor (50 degrees opposed to 81 degrees) and it's armor was about 50% thicker, possibly because of the greater slope. The Tiger II's turret was a bit longer and because of the slope much narrower. The two Tigers also had different mud flaps for the tracks. With the armors angle the nose of the Tiger II looked much different than the Tiger I. The driver of the Tiger II didn't have the window the driver of the Tiger I had instead he had a periscope. It's sad to say that these monsters outclassed our Sherman's at the time in most important areas. In fact they were designed to not only equal the massive Soviet T-34 that had stunned the Germans at first but to take tanks a step beyond the T-34. The Tigers armor was so thick that shells fired from a Sherman literally bounced off of it's front armor, while shells fired from the Tigers were known to pass completely through Sherman tanks. I saw a WWII vet on television once and he survived such a shot as it passed between his legs. The only areas that the Sherman surpassed the Tigers were in dependability, ease of maintenance and finally production. My friend and team captain Paul Sherman's father was talking to a German tanker near the end of the war and the German claimed "Our Tigers were as good as 10 of your Shermans, but you always seemed to have 15". George was telling me that our M26 Pershing tank that showed up at the end of the war was equal to the Tiger but I haven't read anything on any Tiger vs. Pershing battles.