Tiger 131

<p>The <strong>forgotten battle </strong>for Gueriat el Atach Tunisia 23-24 April 1943 is much <strong>greater in scale space and forces - and heroism </strong>- than would be suggested by the well-worn photographs of Tiger 131 sitting alone on a hill top after capture.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tiger 131 </strong>of the 504th Heavy Tank Battalion was the <strong>first running Tiger </strong>to be exploited by Western intelligence and is the only Tiger running today.</p><p>Its capture in late April 1943 on Gueriat Ridge was the climax to more than <strong>four months of fighting </strong>between German Tiger tanks and Western Allied forces in Tunisia.</p><p></p><p>Yet Tiger 131's provenance came to be lost in a false claim that Tiger 131 is the same Tiger that had been found abandoned below Djebel Djaffa two days earlier (Tiger 712).</p><p></p><p>While the discourse obsessed with the where and when <strong>everybody forgot to investigate the battles </strong>on and around Gueriat Ridge.</p><p></p><p>My <strong>ground-breaking research</strong> from the archives to the battlefields shows that Tiger 131 likely fought alone for two days against parts of <strong>four battalions of tanks and six battalions of infantry</strong>.</p><p></p><p>Each day it faced about 50 Churchill tanks. It was an impressive performance. It deserves to be remembered as one of <strong>the greatest defenses by a single tank</strong>.</p><p></p><p>This book examines the evidence and theories and <strong>reconstructs the fights</strong> using exhaustive forensic examination of Tiger 131 itself the archives and the battlefields.</p><p></p><p>Features annotated <strong>THEN-AND-NOW </strong>photographs of the battlefields and of Tiger 131.</p>