Tiger II (H) Sla.16

Tiger II (H) Sla.16

Tiger II (H) Sla.16

Germany

IV Rank

Battle rating:

AB	RB	SB
7.0	6.7	6.7

Class:

PREMIUM

Heavy tank

Purchase:Bundle or Gift

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Description

The Pz.Kpfw. VI Ausf. B (H) mit Simmering Sla.16 is a premium rank IV German heavy tank with a battle rating of 7.0 (AB) and 6.7 (RB/SB). It was introduced in Update 1.57 "Battle March". As a purchasable bundle vehicle, this variant comes with premium bonuses and the experimental installation of a diesel power engine, increasing its mobility vastly. But the vehicle functions near identically to the in-tree regular varient. It fits into the 6.7 lineup very well, and can be utilised greatly in battle because of it's enhanced combat capabilities.

General info

Survivability and armour

Describe armour protection. Note the most well protected and key weak areas. Appreciate the layout of modules as well as the number and location of crew members. Is the level of armour protection sufficient, is the placement of modules helpful for survival in combat?

If necessary use a visual template to indicate the most secure and weak zones of the armour.

Mobility

This vehicle is bestowed with a higher performance experimental diesel engine, making it far quicker than the in-tree variant of the Tiger II (H). This means you can get into combat quicker than your friendly Tiger IIs. The traverse in both neutral and in motion are considerably and noticeably much quicker, making flanking enemies easier to deal with if they haven't shot at the Tiger II yet. The top speed on road forwards is around 40-48 km/h (25-30 mph), and the reverse gear is surprisingly good at 16 km/h (10 mph) on average backwards.

Armaments

Main armament

The main gun this Panzer beholds is the KwK/43 88mm long-barreled gun. This gun performs astoundingly well for this BR, offering high muzzle velocity with more than enough post-penetrational damage. The muzzle velocity of this gun sits at around 1000m/s for APCBC and 1400m/s for the APCR round, and also has HEAT shells, making it an exceptional sniper and brawler alike. The APCBC stock shell gets a fair amount of explosive filler with a wide one-shot capability upon penetration. This shell exceeds in ammo-racking enemy tanks, so aim for ammo stowage on the enemy vehicle. The APCR should only really be used for engagements on enemies you cannot punch through with APCBC alone, since it offer significantly higher penetration at the expense of post-pen damage, making it a very situational round. The same can be applied to the HEAT shell for long-range, as penetration dropoff does not matter on angled armour layouts, but instead offers poorer penetration values.

Machine guns

This tank, unlike the standard version, receives an additional top mount MG34 7.62mm machine gun located atop the commanders cupola with a wide arc of fire, designed for anti-aircraft purposes. However, this extra gun proves inadequate at efficiently dealing damage to aircraft and so should be used more prominently as a spotting tool or a light armour remedy.

Usage in battles

Considering most of the players which use this vehicle will be using it in RB/SB, this section will cater to them. This vehicle can be used as a brawler and a sniper equally. With its potent gun and reliable armour layout, this tank can take a fair few shots before expiring. Try not to let your flanks become exposed if playing in urban maps. On open maps, you should stick to towns or hills and remain hull down to utilise your thick turret cheeks well. Aim for noticeable weak spots on enemies, ie. lower glacis shots or ammo rack shots will more often than not result in a reliable way to destroy them. You will adapt over time and learn where the weak spots of most opposing vehicles. At times, this tank will act more as a support tank when considering the typical opponents will more than likely have stabilisers and sufficient suspension dampening, putting you at a disadvantage if you can't train your gun onto the target first.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Considerably quicker than the in-tree variant, acceleration is noticeably much more efficient because of its diesel engine.
• Astounding frontal armour when angled, however turret cheeks around the mantlet are where people with typically aim for first.
• Great turret traverse for its size at around 14 degrees per second.
• Reasonably efficient reload speed with an aced crew
• 88mm gun KwK/43 is one of the best at its rank, with the capability of one-shotting most opponents if the shell penetrates.
• Guns penetration is great for the rank, not many targets can efficiently bounce or absorb its shot.
• APCBC gets a decent amount of explosive filler.
• 12 smoke grenades can be launched individually from the top of the turret by the gunner.
• Fast neutral traverse, good traverse rate in general.
• Cupola mounted extra MG 34, good for dealing with open topped or lightly armoured vehicles.

Cons:

• The ready rack forces ammunition to be placed in the rear of the turret, making it an easy target for flankers to instantly destroy the Tiger.
• Susceptible to being flanked
• Frontal armour considerably easy to go through with HEAT-FS shells found on most tanks in the matchmaking.
• Will have to face vehicles such as the IS-6 and T-54 in an uptier, both of which can reliably withstand a shot to the turret or hull frontally.
• Rarely gets into a downtier match
• Still arguably slow comparing it to other contemporary vehicles

History

The Sla.16 diesel engine developed by Simmering-Graz-Pauker from Vienna. With a power output of around 750 hp, it was considerably more powerful than Maybach engine used by the Tiger I, Tiger II, and Panther tanks that had 690 hp. The Sla.16 was also proposed as the power unit for the infamous super-heavy Maus tank. According to various of sources such as Military Engineer and Amazing Porsche and Volkswagen Story, the engines were tested with positive results. The recommendation was that these diesel engines were to be attached to the heavy tanks and tank destroyers currently in production for increased efficiency of the vehicles. A diesel engine was mounted onto a Tiger II as a prototype built by Nibelungen Werke and went through testings, though results has not been found from this test. Further proposals also wanted the engine to be mounted in the Panther and Jagdtiger vehicles for increased power, but the war's constraint on supplies and Nazi Germany's capitulation resulted in the cancellation of these programs.

Media

• Skins and camouflages for the Tiger II (H) Sla.16 from live.warthunder.com.
• RideR2's Realistic gunsight (TZF4a, TZF 5a/b/d/e/f/f2, TZF 9b/b1/c/d, TZF 12/a) for Pzkpfw II, Pzkpfw III, Pzkpfw IV, Pzkpfw V, Pzkpfw VI

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

• reference to the series of the vehicles;
• links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.

External links

• [Devblog] Tiger II Sla.16: the diesel-engined “King Tiger”

Germany heavy tanks
Tiger 1 (Henschel)	Tiger H1 · Tiger E · ␠Tiger
Tiger 1 (Porsche)	VK 45.01 (P) · Pz.Bef.Wg.VI P
Tiger 2	Tiger II (P) · Tiger II (H) · Tiger II (H) Sla.16 · Tiger II (10.5 cm Kw.K)
Super heavy tanks	Maus · E-100
Trophies
Great Britain	▀Pz.Kpfw. Churchill
USSR	▀KV-IB · ▀KW I C 756 (r) · ▀KW II 754 (r)