I was watching a WW2 documentary about the Battle of Kursk and saw something interesting. Apparently a Russian gunner managed to destroy 8 Tigers, before his position was compromised and a projectile knocked him out. He managed to do this single handed because his squad was annihilated in a previous attack. His name is Mikhail Borisov and he accomplished this no small feet with a 76mm anti-tank gun. Makes you think twice how good Porsche's tank was.
Modern analysis of German tank losses has shown that this is probably Soviet propaganda, like the memorable Pravda headline proclaiming the Russian victory "The Tigers are Burning!" Have a look at the armour penetration tables of a Soviet 76.2mm gun here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/76_mm_divisional_gun_M1942_(ZiS-3) Even at 500m it says (best case) it could penetrate 75mm and the Tiger's armour was up to 120mm thick. The Tiger could start firing at the gun from 2ooom away if it could be seen from that distance. It is also unlikely that a single man could maintain a high rate of fire on such a large gun. The Tiger I was a Henschel design, not a Porsche design. The Porshe tiger hulls were converted into the Elephant/Ferdinand tank destroyer, which mostly broke down due to its excessive weight and complex design ( a petrol engine providing power to an electric one) or (at Kursk) were destroyed by infantry as it had no machine gun (one was fitted to the remainong hulls after the battle though).
He got ripped into pieces would be more accurate. "knocked out" is the sugarcoated HC-Documentary term for dying, I don't like it, it's misguiding.
Isn't it seems to be a superseded one of the Real combat[of Borisov] ... !! @ ! Personally what I believe ,is a propaganda...
Perhaps he didn't have access to information concerning the specific wounds. "Knocked out" covers everything from concussion to the complete destruction of the human body that you referred to. The man was eliminated from further participation in the action, thus he was knocked out. As for "knocking out" that many Tigers from a 76mm in a fixed position, I have my doubts.
not possibul, fist a fixed postion can not kill a tiger 1 tank unless it is 50-75 yards away and has it's ass to the gun. Five tigers would be in a attack postion, that would be side by side with one or two protecting the flanks and rear, could not happen, sorry.
Well, that is unlikely. But, it's good for discussion. would you like to share to us the title of the documentary so we could check that out ourselves? Documentaries should also be critically studied. Not all documentaries are neutral.
