THE TIGER TANK THAT SHOT DOWN AN AIRCRAFT

On December 16, 1943, Unteroffizier Heinz Kramer, gunner of a Panzerkampfwagen VI “Tiger” of schwere Panzerabteilung 502, shot down a Soviet aircraft because its machine-gun fire was getting on his nerves:

“On the other side we had a lot of trouble with the aircraft. My gunner, Unteroffizier Kramer, can claim a feat that was probably without equal on the Eastern Front. He actually managed to shoot down a Russian fighter with the Tiger’s gun. Annoyed by the relentless pest, Kramer laid the gun on the aircraft’s approach lane. I talked him on. He took his chance and fired. On the second attempt he hit the machine in the wing. It went down behind us.” – Otto Carius

Kramer later became a tank commander himself, received the Knight’s Cross in 1944 and was killed in action the following year. Otto Carius survived the war and in 1956 opened the “Tiger Apotheke” in Herschweiler-Pettersheim, which he ran himself until shortly before his death in January 2015.

Shooting down that aircraft is the only known case of anyone pulling this off in the Second World War.

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