Tiger II Porsche Turret

Tiger II with Porsche Turret Panzer VI, is a misnomer.  While the Roco catalog has called this the Porsche turret, the turret was actually made by Krupp, but intended for a hull designed by Porsche.  As it turned out Krupp made fifty turrets, but the Porsche hull design was not accepted for service.  Not wanting to waste the already manufactured turrets, these so called Porsche turrets were placed on the hull designed by Henschel.  These tanks were 70 tons, heavily armored and carrying an 88mm L/71 gun.  The official unit organization was three platoons of four tanks each, and two headquarters vehicles for a company total of fourteen tanks. A battalion consisted of three companies. Both tank types were used together and the earlier Porsche turret version was often mixed with the earlier Tiger I tank. Later production Tiger II tanks used a new turret, also designed by Krupp, on the same Henschel chassis.  This HO scale model Minitank is all plastic and easy to assemble.