The King Tiger - officially the Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf. B or Tiger II - was the most powerful production tank of World War II. Armed with the lethal 88mm KwK 43 L/71 gun and protected by up to 185mm of frontal armor, it was virtually impenetrable from the front at any combat range while being capable of destroying any Allied or Soviet tank it encountered. The Henschel turret variant, with its distinctive sloped armor, became the primary production model and is the version most associated with the King Tiger's legendary battlefield reputation.

First deployed in Normandy in 1944, King Tigers made an immediate impact - a single company of King Tigers could hold defensive positions against forces many times their number. At the Battle of the Bulge, they spearheaded Germany's last major offensive through the Ardennes, where their combination of armor and firepower gave Allied commanders serious cause for concern. On the Eastern Front, they were the most feared German vehicles the Soviet Army encountered in the war's final year.

Despite its extraordinary capabilities, the King Tiger suffered from the same issues that plagued all late-war German heavy armor - mechanical complexity, fuel consumption, and production bottlenecks meant that it was never available in the numbers needed to change the war's outcome. But in terms of raw combat power, nothing the Allies fielded could match it in a direct engagement. The King Tiger remains the definitive symbol of late-war German armored engineering.