Otherwise the mountain brackets would have been worn out too quickly and exact aiming would have been impossible. . . Locking down the barrel during a road march was necessary, of course. It had to be removed from outside during contact with the enemy. A better idea for the travel lock of the eight-meter long cannon of our ‘Hunting Tiger’ was also necessary. Because of that, transmissions and steering differentials were soon out of order. . . “Any large traversing of the cannon had to be effected by movement of the entire vehicle. Tiger ace Otto Carius was not thrilled with this “secret weapon that could still save Germany,” as described in his autobiography Tigers in the Mud : The Jagdtiger also mounted a machine gun in the hull, and sometimes a second antiaircraft machine gun on the rear engine deck. The forty rounds of two-piece ammunition had to be assembled by two loaders before each shot, and the gun had to be leveled to evacuate the breech. Its sixty-pound shells traveled at 950 meters a second, with a range of up to fifteen miles if used for indirect fire. The 128-millimeter Pak 44 gun measured fifty-five calibers and had only ten degrees traverse to either side.
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