March 25th. Tiger Hunt!

**Moortz** Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:33 am

Enemy forces gathering south and south west of Roermond.

Churchill Mk VII was requested to intercept enemy armour moving up to the riverline from the enemy held town of Heinsburg.

Left Masseik Armybase at 15:35, heading NE up the river road. Observed a low level fight between a Spitfire and a 109, flew straight over our vehicle and headed north. Left the river road in case the 109 had reported our position, and moved up towards the enemy positions.

A boat was moored on the river and began shooting wildly in my direction - it seemed he was flying a british flag, and he soon stopped firing at us when enemy troop transports and anti-tank guns were reported near our position.

We didn't get visual on any of these troop transports, however after a few minutes we heard the unmistakeable clank and noise of a Tiger.

Picked up visual about 15:47, he was about 700 yds away and moving across from right to left.

Loaded AP and began firing at approx 600yds achieving three hits on the side of the Tiger, no penetration. The Panzer VI then stopped and turned towards our position. Realising frontally our 76mm gun had little or no chance of a critical hit, we began to target the gun, hitting it with good shots several times. The Tiger replied with 5 or 6 shots that were all long, and we kept pounding the turret of the enemy tank to prevent him getting a range on us.

After a few minutes of this exchange, the Tiger stopped firing, and we assumed the gun was out of action, however after this long pause the Tiger began firing again, finding a range and hitting us frontally. We kept returning fire blindly, and received another blow to our left front quarter, de-tracking the left side. down to only 20 rounds, we kept firing on the Tiger, and again he stopped returning fire on us and began to withdraw. At this point, we heard more enemy vehicles approaching, and abandoned our disabled Churchill. The Tiger was also later found abandoned, the 88mm gun destroyed by several hits to the barrel. Our Churchill was recovered a few hours later.