Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  For the tank killers of most battalions, the slow march up the Italian mainland became a series of small-scale fire-support missions for the infantry. The 3-inch gun on the M10 was effective in the direct-fire role out to six thousand yards.56 The TD crews encountered mainly well dug-in machine-gun and antitank positions supported by roving self-propelled artillery pieces.57 The Tank Destroyer Command had advocated the use of TDs against fortifications in 1942 but backed off after being accused of over-selling tank destroyers.58

  Enemy tanks to kill were rare. In both the attack and the defense, the Germans usually exposed no more than two to four panzers at a time.59 The Germans were using tactics that could have come from the TD field manual: The panzers were deployed in depth where they could move to previously reconnoitered firing positions to engage Allied armor whenever the Allies attacked or achieved a penetration.60

  Most personnel and vehicle losses in the TD battalions were the result of landmines, followed by German artillery fire.

  Experimentation led to the formation of ad hoc teams that were better able to handle the mix of German defenses. The infantry was vulnerable to strongpoints and tanks, so separate tank battalions were attached to provide close support with their machine guns and 75mm cannon. The M4 Sherman tank cannon, however, lacked sufficient penetrating power to defeat the front armor of the Mark VI Tiger tank or the new Mark V Panthers that would soon be appearing. So tank destroyer units were added to deal with tough armored threats. The usual mix was one TD platoon per tank company, or one TD company per tank battalion.

  As early as Operation Avalanche, elements of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion had been incorporated into an ad hoc team, with B/751st Tank Battalion actually attached to the TD command.61 By October, the tank killers from the 601st worked routinely with the tankers from the 751st; the reconnaissance company at times provided the infantry element to the team. Infantry commanders were usually new at combined-arms fighting and unfamiliar with the capabilities of the 3-inch gun, however, and typically told the TDs not only at what to shoot but also from where to do so. They tended to think in terms of direct fire, which placed TDs in exposed positions that invited rapid counter-battery fire from the Germans. The TD crews much preferred to shoot indirectly from defiladed positions.62

  Indeed, TD battalions that were primarily engaged in close-support roles fired numerous indirect artillery missions, as well. Company A of the 645th, for example, conducted a fire mission on 19 October against a German battery at 13,300 yards under the control of an artillery observer. During November, the battalion fired 8,899 rounds of HE in its artillery role and only 360 rounds of AP. On one occasion, the new CO of the 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion, Maj Edward Austin (a field artillery officer himself), complained that the infantry was using TDs for fire missions that could have been conducted by organic artillery with less risk of counter-battery fire.63 But the big artillery was plenty busy. Up to forty battalions at once were used to saturate German-occupied hills while the doughs moved in to storm the positions with rifles and grenades.64

  The TDs worked well with field artillery units, but they were stepchildren. Supported units at times failed to inform all concerned when a TD battalion moved into position and began firing missions. The 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion recorded that its M10s drew friendly counter-battery fire several times.65

  The 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion made a specialty of artillery support. On 10 October, the 776th’s firing companies were attached to the field artillery to conduct joint fire missions with the 125th, 151st, and 175th Field Artillery battalions. The men found that the months of summer training in Algeria adapting and perfecting coordination with the artillery paid off handsomely. The battalion adopted a provisional internal organization that divided each company into two six-gun batteries, and each company was normally attached to a light artillery battalion. (Other battalions also used this system at times when conducting indirect fire missions.66) Some reconnaissance and security personnel were cross-trained to help man company-level fire direction centers.67

  The 3-inch gun proved to be particularly effective in certain artillery roles. It was best at long-range missions because of the gun’s great range and the round’s flat trajectory, which would endanger friendly troops if fired at targets too close to the front lines. The 3-inch gun was better than the 105mm howitzer for shelling roads over which American troops planned to advance because the former left almost no crater but had a similar burst radius to the bigger round. The M10s could also turn to new missions by merely rotating their turrets rather than having to reposition guns.68 One drawback was that crews lacked a good white phosphorous round similar to the ones used by artillery to register their guns.69

  Company A of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had been firing artillery missions, was hunkered down under an enemy barrage one rainy morning in late November. A shell struck one of the M10s and damaged the gun. The crew was ordered not to fire until Ordnance had checked the weapon. In due course, a lieutenant from Ordnance appeared and examined the vehicle, but he offered no opinion as to the extent of the damage. When the next fire order reached the platoon, the crew opened up, too. A radio repairman from Battalion was working in the turret when the order came. When the gun fired, the concussion blew the barrel off and knocked everyone in the M10 to the deck. The repairman got to his feet and sadly observed, “I don’t know how you guys can do this all day long.”70

  * * *

  Recon companies, meanwhile, continued to perform a dizzying array of jobs, as needed. German demolitions frequently prevented the M10s from advancing until division or corps engineers could repair blown bridges. The terrain off the roads made jeep reconnaissance impossible, so the recon companies often turned to foot scouting to spot well-concealed German strongpoints.71 Mine clearing also became common labor. Most recon troops had received little training on mines but a lot on explosives, which evidently was viewed as close enough.72 TD recon OPs provided fire control for battalion indirect fire missions—and occasionally for artillery units up to corps level.73

  * * *

  The 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion debarked at Naples on 2 November. The outfit had reorganized as a towed gun battalion in October after the North Africa fighting ended, at which time it received thirty-six new 3-inch guns. On 15 November, the men received a foretaste of what awaited them as the only towed TD battalion in Italy. The crews were ordered to conduct service practice against a mountainside. The weather was by now not only rainy but, in the words of VI Corps CG MajGen John Lucas, “cold as hell,” particularly at higher elevations.74 The 3-inch gun M5 weighed 4,875 pounds with its carriage and thus confronted the crew with a wrestling match even under optimal conditions.75 Company C had to winch its guns into position, lost all rounds fired in clouds or crevices, and then had to winch the guns back out.

  The battalion advanced to a bivouac in what its operations report described as “alluvial mud” on the west bank of the Volturno river by 19 November. The 805th’s operations officer was initially informed that there was not even room for additional guns firing indirect fire missions, but on 26 November the outfit was attached to the 18th Field Artillery Brigade, whose artillery battalions would provide telephone wire, survey, fire direction, and observation. Three days later, the men attempted to move their guns into firing positions. Most were winched through the muck, but bulldozers and tractors had to be brought in to move others. Usually, the vehicle sank in the mud. Because of the lack of experience with the 3-inch guns in both the battalion and the artillery, and because of the lack of space, the firing positions selected were poor. Company C’s guns were lined up hub-to-hub.

  Second Corps—which, with the 3d and 36th Infantry divisions under command, was just moving into the line between VI Corps and British 10 Corps—informed the 805th that it would have no antitank mission and would fire solely as artillery. On 1 December, the guns finally did so, firing some twelve hundred rounds in support of a planned attack by British
10 Corps. The attack was scrubbed.

  By the next day, the crews had learned that trail shifts—or manually swinging the entire piece to point in a new direction—were necessary between practically all fire missions. Unless the guns could be positioned on the reverse slope of a hill, moreover, the crews had to dig trenches under the trails in order to obtain sufficient elevation for the guns. Sometimes, the prime movers (2-1/2-ton trucks at this time) had to be winched into position from which to winch the guns. It was going to be a tiring business.

  * * *

  On 13 December, the 805th received orders to replace the 776th in support of the 2d Moroccan Infantry Division at Celli.76 The division, which had arrived in late November, was one of two selected from the ten French divisions training in North Africa to join the Allied effort in Italy. The U.S. 1st Armored Division had also arrived, accompanied by the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, and was in Fifth Army reserve pending an opportunity to employ large numbers of tanks.77 The 701st got into the action immediately, however, by conducting indirect fire missions.78

  Lieutenant Arthur Edson from the 701st now commanded Company A’s tank destroyers. A TD company commander could expect to lead a fairly exposed life. He was issued nothing but a jeep and, armed with a pistol or carbine, often entered a new area ahead of his armor to scout out the best firing positions. Reports of captains and lieutenants from the firing companies being killed or captured while on reconnaissance appear with surprising frequency in the records of the TD battalions. It would be hepatitis, however, that would send Edson to the hospital in late 1943.

  * * *

  By December, tank destroyer battalions were firing an average of fifteen thousand rounds a month in indirect fire missions. Crews of the 701st were firing as many rounds in a thirty-hour period as they had during the entire Tunisian campaign.79 One result was a temporary shortage of 3-inch HE rounds, which curtailed the TDs’ use as artillery. At one point, the TDs of the 645th were allocated only seven rounds per tube per day, and the 701st was reduced to a single round per gun.80

  The combination of terrible weather and difficult terrain forced the U.S. Army to bring back the mule train to supply its forward units, including the tank destroyers. The 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion, for example, in December 1943 had an average of fifty men per day assigned to division pack trains as “muleskinners.”81 Even the 805th, which was acting as artillery well behind the infantry’s foxholes, had to use mules to support its OPs.82 The muleskinners had to lead their charges over narrow, icy trails above deep precipices, almost always at night. It was nerve-wracking business.83

  John Voss was a muleskinner for the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion. He returned one December day with a swollen hand and explained what happened. “I carried that mule and the rations both up the mountain, then he fell down. I helped him up, and he kicked me. Then I hit him and broke my fist.”84

  The high mountains also played hob with radio communications. The 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion at one point later in the campaign issued carrier pigeons to its scattered companies so they could forward required daily reports.85

  The divisions of battered VI Corps began to withdraw from the line in mid-December; they would soon have business elsewhere in Italy.86 On Christmas Day, 1943, the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion was withdrawn for rest after ninety-two consecutive days of action. The next day, orders came down for yet another reorganization of the tank destroyer battalions, which reduced manpower by one hundred thirty-six men.87 Other battalions implemented the reorganization in December and January, as well.

  * * *

  On 15 January, the Allies finally approached the Rapido River and the Gustav Line. They had taken the Winter Position after three months of heavy losses to enemy fire and to the elements. The turnover of lieutenants in VI Corps, for example, had been 115 percent.88 Fifth Army’s battle losses were forty thousand men—far higher than German casualties—while the weather conditions had claimed another fifty thousand sick in the preceding two months alone.89

  Fortunately for the tank destroyer units, the action set a pattern that would continue with few exceptions for the rest of the war: Casualties were substantially lower proportionately in TD outfits than in the infantry and separate tank battalions—although each man would be sorely missed, to be sure. The 636th, for example—which supported a bloody eighteen-day ranger and infantry attack on San Pietro beginning on 30 November—lost only three men killed and twenty-nine wounded during the entire month of December. The 776th would lose only seventeen men killed and one hundred four wounded during its one-year stay on the Italian front.

  Chapter 5

  Anzio and Two Roads to Rome

  “Those were four of the most trying, most terrible, and most exasperating months in the history of modern warfare.”

  — An Informal History of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion

  On 22 January 1944, VI Corps executed Operation Shingle—an amphibious flanking movement around the German Gustav Line—and landed at Anzio, a mere thirty-five miles southwest of Rome. Landing craft bearing the assault wave headed toward the shoreline at 0200 hours. The invading forces achieved almost complete surprise, and only a few coastal artillery and antiaircraft guns offered a brief and futile resistance.1 Harassment raids by the Luftwaffe began about 0815.2

  A few men from the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, including platoon commander Lt John Hudson, who was there almost by accident after checking himself out of a hospital to stay with his outfit, splashed ashore with a naval forward observer team. As the naval officer and two sailors established radio communications with warships offshore and directed supporting fire,3 the 601st landed in force to support the doughs of the 3d Infantry Division and therewith participated in its third D-day assault. The tank destroyers rolled four miles inland against no opposition by the evening of the first day.

  Recon Company elements from the 601st drove unmolested to within seventeen miles of Rome before turning back.4 Tank destroyer reconnaissance companies had received new vehicles before the Anzio landings; the M8 Greyhound armored cars had replaced the M5 light tanks.5 The six-wheeled M8 had a crew of four, sported armor as thick as 5/8 inches on its hull front, and carried a 37mm gun and coaxial .30-caliber machine gun in a fully rotating, open-topped turret.6 The vehicle was capable of speeds up to 55 miles per hour. A utility armored car on the same chassis—the M20—also joined the TD battalions in place of some halftracks.

  The British 1st Infantry Division landed to the left and also made easy progress inland; engineers and the Navy had the port of Anzio open by mid-afternoon. By midnight, VI Corps had thirty-six thousand men and thirty-two hundred vehicles ashore. It had lost only thirteen men killed and ninety-seven wounded.7

  * * *

  Discussion of a possible end run had ebbed and flowed from the time Eisenhower had first raised the possibility as German resistance solidified after the Salerno landings. Several strategic considerations were in play. The first was pressure from the Joint Chiefs on Eisenhower to release landing craft on schedule for the invasion of France. The second was an Allied assessment that even in the best case, available transport would support only a small expeditionary force. Alexander identified Anzio as the landing site as early as 8 November, but commanders viewed the entire enterprise as contingent upon making sufficient progress up the peninsula to guarantee a rapid link-up with the landing force. The virtual stalemate in the Winter Position persuaded Clark to recommend scrubbing the operation on 18 December.8

  By December, Eisenhower had received the nod to take command of the invasion of northwestern Europe, and General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson had been named to take command of a combined Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Theater. The British were now unquestionably the senior partners in Italy, and Churchill wanted to pursue the Anzio option. On Christmas day, Churchill obtained Eisenhower’s backing.9

  The U.S. VI Corps would make the assault. The corps commander, MajGen John Lucas, would have the American 3d and Britis
h 1st Infantry divisions, the American Ranger Force of three battalions, a British special service brigade with two commando battalions, and an American parachute infantry regiment and an additional parachute battalion. A week before the landings, Clark promised Lucas elements of the 45th Infantry and 1st Armored divisions, with more to come if needed.10

  Lucas wanted more time, but the deadline for surrendering landing craft for Operation Overlord permitted no delay. Preparations were rushed. Sixth Corps did not fully extricate itself from the line until 3 January 1944, and then the final landing rehearsal, on 19 January, was a fiasco. Lucas recorded that he feared he was in for another Battle of Little Big Horn and noted on another occasion, “[T]he whole affair has a strong odor of Gallipoli.”11

  * * *

  Beginning on 12 January, Fifth Army had launched a furious attack against German positions along the Rapido and Garigliano rivers in the hope of drawing enemy units in striking distance from Anzio away to the south. On 17 January, British 10 Corps crossed the mouth of the Garigliano, but a subsequent assault crossing by the British 46th and American 36th Infantry divisions were repulsed.

  Despite some progress, the offensive failed to crack the defenses. Nevertheless, the battle drew the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier divisions away from Rome. The Eternal City lay defenseless.

  Major General Lucas viewed his job as establishing and defending a beachhead at Anzio, not kicking open the door to Rome. He judged his initial assault force to be too weak to risk penetrating the Alban Hills that dominated the landing site from a dozen miles inland, although by doing so he could have cut the main highway—and supply route—from Rome to the Gustav Line.12 Lucas’s decision decided the terms under which the battle at Anzio would be fought.