Tiger I
Historian Steven Zaloga credits Wittmann with "about 135" tank kills and points out that he achieved 120 of these in 1943, operating a Tiger I tank on the Eastern Front. Having advantages both in firepower and in armor, the Tiger I was "nearly invulnerable in a frontal engagement" against any of the Soviet tanks of that time, and Wittmann thus could destroy opposing tanks from a safe distance. Zaloga concludes: "Most of the 'tank aces' of World War II were simply lucky enough to have an invulnerable tank with a powerful gun" (quotation marks in the original). German documents from 1944 state that Allied technology had caught up with the Tiger I and that: "no longer can it prance around, oblivious to the laws of tank tactics". Zaloga believes that Wittmann's fate reflected that new reality: after transfer to France, his crew only lasted two months, and was destroyed by a British medium tank, the up-gunned Sherman Firefly.