Last Tiger in Sicily, part one the history background

Last year I spent some days in Sardinia and while I enjoyed the sun at the beach I had the idea for a new diorama.

To build a Siebel ferry had a high priority on my to-do list, but so far I always had some problems with the design. Back from vacation I took the old files and decided to do everything fresh from the beginning. Together with a very good book I was able to finalize the design.

During this process I contacted the German Forum Marinearchiv, where I got the right help and a very important hint!

The ferry I was looking for, was not a Siebel ferry, it was a „Schwere Fähre 40 s.F.40“ and it had a name: „Hai“. The dimensions are different and with the name I found more about the life and destiny of my ferry. So here are two pages with more information about this type of ferry:

http://warsailors.com/forum/read.php?1,11254,11287

http://www.navypedia.org/ships/germany/ger_amph_sf40.htm

Shapeways was so friendly to print it in the first attempt without any problems.

From several books and Internet pages I knew, that the Germans had around 18 Tigers in Sicily.

First it was planed to ship them to Africa, where parts of their units were already fighting. But with the sudden end of the Germans in Africa, there was no longer a need for Tigers.

So the German decided to use them in Italy / Sicily.

When the Allied started operation Husky, the codename for the landing in Sicily, all Tigers saw action in heavy fighting. More and more of the Tigers got lost. One was blown off, as the crane needed for maintenance was no longer available. They had borrowed it to an other unit.

Finally there was only one Tiger left, the number "222". At the harbor one of the last Siebel ferry gave him a ride to the mainland. Remember the Tiger has a wight of ~ 57 tons, so this was a heavy job for the ferry.

Good for me, there are three pictures about this shipping to Italy.

One last comment about the History, some days later, even the last Tiger got lost, the transmission gave up.

An interesting movie (German Wochenschau) about the German evacuation from Sicily you can find here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSqIctkbqpg

2 of the 3 pictures from the German ferry you can find here:

http://worldwartwo.filminspector.com/2013/09/tiger-tanks.html

Note you have to scroll down for the second picture. The text for the first picture is wrong, as it shows the same ferry and not one from the Caucasus area.

The Tiger "222" is waiting for his transport back to to Italy.