Hobby Master Archive

008 was the personal tank of Joachim Peiper (January 30, 1915 - July 13, 1976) more often known as Jochen Peiper from the common German nickname for Joachim, was a senior Waffen-SS officer and commander in the Panzer campaigns of 1939-1945. The yellow turret numbers are standard colors for the 509th so this would have been one of the Tiger IIs that was reassigned to the 501st at the last moment. By the end of his military career, Peiper was the youngest regimental colonel in the Waffen-SS, officially known as: SS-Standartenfuhrer Joachim Peiper, 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler. Peiper participated in some of the most notable battles of the war to include the two battles for Kharkov and the Kursk offensive of 1943 on the Eastern Front of the USSR. Most notably, he commanded the Kampfgruppe Peiper of the LSSAH (assigned to the 6th SS Panzer Armee under Sepp Dietrich) during Operation Wacht am Rhein (Battle of the Bulge). All of his success as a great tank commander and reports of his taking Jews that were being held as prisoners by Italian forces and setting them free, have been overshadowed by the accusations of his involvement in the Boves and Malmedy massacres. Peiper spent 11 1/2 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, for Malmedy but was never prosecuted for Boves. Upon his release he moved to France where he spent the rest of his life in fear of being killed for his past. In 1976 this fear was realized when he was murdered by suspected French Communists who fire bombed his home.