The UK museum with a £1m plan to get Germany's most fearsome WW2 tank working again

A UK museum has launched a £1 million plan to restore one of the Second World War's most terrifying German tanks - and get our formidable foe running again. One of WWII's heaviest tanks, the 68-tonne King Tiger with its fearsome 88mm gun, followed Adolf Hitler's obsession for bigger, more powerful tanks and was first used in July 1944 with just 492 made.

Since the 1950s The Tank Museum has boasted a unique King Tiger known as 'V2' - an early factory trial version with a rounded, pre-production turret - but it is an empty shell and does not move. Now the museum and charity in Bovington, Dorset, is launching a £1m fundraising campaign to re-equip the inside of the tank, and get it running again for their many packed-out outside arena shows.

There is only one other fully working King Tiger tank in the world, which belongs to the Musée des Blindés in Saumur, France, and proved to be a huge crowd-puller for The Tank Museum's summer 'TANKFEST 2025'.

Chris van Schaardenburgh, The Tank Museum's Vehicle Collections Manager, said the whole project could take four years adding: "This is the most ambitious project we have ever attempted and been considering for some time.

"It's something that has been frequently suggested - so we hope our supporters around the world will get behind us to make it happen.

"We're fundraising so that the project will not interfere with the core activities of the museum - but we will benefit from the opportunities it offers in research, in developing new skills and will help train the next generation of heritage engineers.

"If you see them drive, and if you see them one-to-one with a Sherman tank, they are impressive beasts.

"And also because they are so rare, because not that many were built, and not that many survived, they have quite a huge following in the tank world, and with history buffs.

"Our aim is to return King Tiger V2 to as close as possible to the condition it was in when the British Army took control of the vehicle.

"It's going to be a fascinating and challenging project - and we're looking forward to sharing every step online."

Despite lacking in numbers and being prone to mechanical and mobility issues based on its size and weight, the King Tigers' combination of devastating firepower and thick sloped armour plate made it a formidable adversary for Allied forces on the rare occasions it was encountered on the battlefield.

The King Tiger succeeded the equally powerful Tiger I tank, of which 1,347 were built. The Tank Museum's 'Tiger 131' is the currently the only operational Tiger I in the world and was famously used in Brad Pitt's 2014 war movie Fury.

The museum hosts two days every year dedicated to Tiger tanks, with about 5,000 visitors a day coming to see their smaller Tiger 131 tank in action.

It is hoped restoring the King Tiger back to fully working order will prove an even bigger draw with King Tiger V2 and Tiger 131 together attracting tank fans from across the globe.

The tank was built in December 1943 and as the second off the production line, it is known as "V2" - the V being short for "Versuchs" which translates as "trial".

The unique vehicle is not only the oldest surviving King Tiger tank, it's also the only one to survive with the pre-production turret designed by Krupp. Later models had a more angular turret.

King Tiger V2 was discovered at the Henschel testing facility, the German vehicle-maker awarded the contract to build the main tank body.

It spent the remainder of the war as a test vehicle and never fired a shot in anger - but when it was recovered by the British it was robustly tested and dismantled for evaluation.

The King Tiger V2 tank arrived at the museum incomplete in 1953, stripped of many of its parts for analysis - like the gearbox - while other parts in the 1980s were used to restore Tiger 131.

Now, with the inside a completely empty shell, staff at the museum said putting it all back together was going to be a complex task.

The man in charge of the restoration is workshops manager Duncan Masters, who likens it to a giant jigsaw.

"I don't know whether I've got all the corners missing on my jigsaw or if I've got that one piece in the middle missing," he said.

"I don't know yet, so we'll empty all the crates out and try and run through photographs and the engineering drawings we've got to see what parts we've actually got and then we can work out a shopping list from there."

The Tank Museum also boasts a second King Tiger, but this one has heavy battle damage and there are no plans to ever get that static tank moving again.

The project's estimated £1m budget will pay for three extra engineers to work on the restoration full time, but some parts will need to be sourced from elsewhere and others fabricated from scratch.

Mr Masters said: "My analogy is it's like buying a piece of cake - if you went to a cake shop it's 50p but say it's for a wedding it's £5.

"Here if we mention any part is for King Tiger, the noughts just grow on the end of the price."

He said at first it seemed a daunting project, but now he is confident it can be done, and is looking forward to getting started and seeing it completed over the next four years.

"I'm probably looking to retire at that sort of time so I think it would be quite a nice way to finish my time here having seen this restored and up and running," he added.

The Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset boasts over 300 tanks from 26 nations, and the finest and most historically significant collection of fighting armour in the world.

These range from the world's first ever tank, Little Willie, through to the British Army's current Main Battle Tank, Challenger 2.

The Museum's powerful exhibitions tell the story of armoured warfare spanning over 100 years of history, where visitors come face to face with tanks and hear incredible true stories from the last century.

*To donate to the King Tiger fundraiser visit - https://tankmuseum.org/support-us/ktv2-fundraiser