When in 1944 the Germans launched the offensive in the Ardennes, the Allies were almost completely taken by surprise, first of all because they did not expect the offensive, and also because they did not think that Germany, which had been bled by the war and torn apart by the bombings, were still capable of such effort. Naturally, the German propaganda started a large campaign to praise the efforts of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, trying to demonstrate that the Germans were advancing towards the "final victory". To prove this, the photographs of new "absolutely invincible" tanks, which would thwart the Allied ranks, were widely distributed. The so much praised tanks were the Panzerkampfwagen VI B "Königstiger" ("Royal Tiger"), the most recent stems of the large family of tanks produced by Germany during the conflict. Indeed, the propaganda did not lie when it referred to them as invincible weapons, for in the Allied side did not exist any tank which could face these monsters of almost 70 tonnes, which had armor of up to 180 millimeters in thickness in their turret and which were armed with an 88-millimeter 71-caliber cannon. In the battlefield the "Königstiger" could move with either good or bad weather. Nothing nor nobody could stop it in any way. It had some difficulties only in the Eastern Front when facing the "Stalin" tanks, which were armed with a 122-millimeter cannon. But what the propaganda did not say was that, with a full load of 860 liters of fuel, the tank could travel only 110 kilometers on road and 85 on countryside, nor did it say that the invulnerable steel mass (which had a size of 10.28 x 3.75 x 3.09 meters) had a turning radius of not less than 4.8 meters, and consequently a slightly narrow or weak bridge, or a too low overpass, or a very tight curve in a bend or in a village would be enough to frustrate its unstoppable advance. And this without taking into account that the Allied aviation had in its sights the supply columns which were continuously necessary to deliver the precious and scarce gasoline to the tanks. These circumstances have divided into two groups those who have taken an interest in the problems which are inherent to armored elements: one which is enthusiastic and another one which is prone to negative considerations. But let us see the tank from an exclusively technical standpoint. The interior of the powerful tank (whose armor had a thickess ranging from 80 to 180 millimeters in the turret and 100 to 150 millimeters in the fore part of the hull) housed a crew of five men. The gasoline engine was a Maybach HL 230 of 12 cylinders in V and 600 horsepower, cooled by water. It sometimes originated problems, because the considerable weight which it had to move and several technical reasons tended to shorten its life a lot. The turret had been chosen from two projects: one from Porsche and another one from Henschel. This latter had been the preferred one, but meanwhile 50 Porsche turrets had been built. These were installed in the first series exemplars, whereas the Henschel turret, which had a more polished line and less "shot traps", was installed in the subsequent ones. The turret could be turned either by hand or by motor. The tracks, of up to 80 centimeters in width, along with the torsion bar suspension, granted an exceptional comfort when moving and a rational distribution of the weight in the terrain. The cannon, which had a vertical sliding breechblock, fired piercing projectiles of 10.4 kilograms in weight with an initial muzzle speed of 1000 meters/second, which were capable of piercing 145 millimeters of steel armor from a distance of 2500 meters with an incidence angle of 0 degrees, or 127 millimeters with an incidence angle of 30 degrees. From a distance of 500 meters, the piercing power was 207 millimeters with an incidence angle of 0 degrees or 182 millimeters with an incidence angle of 30 degrees.