Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  * * *

  The day after the landing, M10s from 2d Platoon, B/601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, engaged and destroyed a German tank as well as a machine-gun crew that had set up in one of the sturdy stone houses.13 Their appearance suggested the enemy was beginning to react to the landings. Indeed, Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring and the German High Command in Berlin had quickly ordered the lead elements of twelve divisions and a corps headquarters into motion to contain the beachhead.

  Sixth Corps spent the next several days slightly expanding and consolidating its holdings. By the third day, the Allies controlled a flat strip along the coast seven miles deep and sixteen miles wide. The left flank was anchored on the Moletta River and the right on the Mussolini Canal. A pine forest covered the center of the lodgement.

  On 25 January, the British advanced up the Albano road toward Rome and captured the fascist model town of Aprilia, which the Allies dubbed “the Factory.” The American 3d Infantry Division, however, encountered serious resistance as the doughs tried to advance toward Cisterna, a town in the Alban Hills. The lead elements of the 45th Infantry and 1st Armored divisions began landing that day. The arriving GIs soon shared Lucas’s earlier misgivings regarding Operation Shingle. Informed that the Anzio operation would cut off the German forces defending Cassino, the men quipped, “Yeah, we’ve got ‘em surrounded now.” The history of the 157th Infantry Regiment recorded, “Anzio breathed disaster, and each man felt it.”14

  Rain, hail, and sleet began falling the next day while the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion landed and deployed to support the British—who fielded only towed AT guns—the Rangers, and the 1st Armored Division.15

  Lucas kept VI Corps sitting virtually still as he awaited the arrival of more troops. The Germans, however, were furiously active and threw units into the defensive line as they arrived.16 Indeed, on 27 January, the tank killers of the 601st were ordered to provide close support to the doughs of the embattled 3d Infantry Division. They encountered a tough defensive line that exploited stone houses, ruins, and the natural cover offered by canals, stream beds, and draws as positions for strongpoints. Gunners dueled with German antitank guns at ranges of one thousand to seventeen hundred yards and knocked out three. The M10s of 3d Platoon, Company B, engaged a tank at only three hundred yards and destroyed it by firing 3-inch shells through two walls of the house behind which it was lurking.17

  Lucas decided on 29 January that he was ready to break out, and he ordered an attack for the next day. The British 1st and American 3d Infantry divisions (the latter supported by the Rangers and the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment) were to continue along their axes of advance. The 1st Armored Division’s CCA (CCB was still in southern Italy) would swing around the British left and hit the Germans from the west. The ground units would receive support from naval guns, artillery, and air strikes. By then, however, Kesselring had stopped worrying that he could not contain the landing.18

  The 1st Armored Division attacked on 30 January. Here was Lucas’s strongest punch. The worst mud since the disaster at Medjez el Bab kept the armor road-bound, and the tankers fought much of the day just to reach their planned line of departure. The next day, the combat command—weakened by a requirement to loan a medium tank battalion to the British—tried again. It gained only a thousand yards. The division retired to the pine woods and dug in. The tanks would spend much of the next few months with nothing but their turrets exposed, firing artillery missions.19

  The British 1st Infantry Division made better progress and in three days punched through the German main line of resistance and captured Campoleone. Early on 30 January, Sergeant Dixon of Company C, 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion, set of with a patrol of fifteen British riflemen to scout for gun positions that the TDs could use during the day’s planned advance. German troops spotted the patrol, opened fire, and killed every man except for Dixon and a British sergeant. The two men crawled forward and shot the crew of a German machine gun. When another MG opened up and killed the British sergeant, Dixon fell to the ground and pretended to be dead. A German soldier approached and fired his pistol into the ground beside Dixon. Satisfied, he took the American sergeant’s helmet, carbine, and pipe. Dixon lay still for forty-five minutes while German soldiers stood nearby talking. Finally, he saw his chance and crawled back to his M10.

  The advance kicked off at 0630, when TDs carrying Tommies from the Irish Guards moved out. The M10s provided close support and engaged infantry and panzers that were carefully camouflaged and hard to spot beyond nearly point-blank range. One M10 KO’d a Volkswagen by driving over it. About 1530 hours, a hidden AT gun put four rounds through both sides of Sergeant Dixon’s M10, killing him and wounding two crewmen. Sergeant Clark, who witnessed the action from five hundred yards distance, put four rounds of HE into the offending gun. Two other Company C TDs were damaged during the fighting.20

  The 3d Infantry Division, meanwhile, launched an assault toward Cisterna that in three bloody days would gain no more than three miles before burning out in exhaustion. Tank destroyers from the 601st again provided close support and engaged German guns, machine-gun nests, and armored vehicles from ranges as close as fifty yards. The tank killers claimed four panzers during the last two days of January, one a Tiger KO’d with three rounds of AP in the turret at one thousand yards. Recon troops were as usual far forward; 3d Platoon of Recon Company on 31 January beat off a counterattack with the help of their M8s, which at one point were firing pointblank with their 37mm guns.

  The battalion CO, LtCol Walter Tardy, quickly concluded that his M10s were poorly suited to the close-support role. Commanders were highly vulnerable to small-arms fire, and he argued that the vehicles needed a sponson-mounted .30- or .50-caliber machine gun. Both the M10 and the M8 proved unable to move cross-country on the soupy ground. Other battalions quickly reached the same conclusions.21

  The German Tide Rises

  On 2 February, Alexander and Clark ordered Lucas to go over to the defensive. They told him to build a strong defensive line and to keep a powerful force in reserve to handle the German counterattack they expected at any time. The command also sent Lucas the First Special Service Force—a mixed American-Canadian outfit—and the British 56th Infantry Division, which would arrive in stages over the next two weeks.

  As anticipated, the Germans struck the British sector of the line late on 3 February. A battalion of the Irish Guards and elements of the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion were cut off during fierce night fighting. Platoon Sgt John Shoun led three Company C destroyers through the ring of German tanks and circled through the enemy rear. The M10s raced across an open field—the commanders madly firing the .50-cals—and roared back toward Allied lines over the heads of German infantrymen huddled in their foxholes. They made it out, but at least seven TD men were captured in the initial German assault.22

  The next morning, Sgt Leo Dobson—whose crew, along with those of three other TDs, had also escaped encirclement the night before—found the battle situation extremely unclear. The Irish Guards sector had devolved into dozens of separate small-unit engagements, and heavy clouds, mist, and rain kept the air support away. Dobson spotted a Tiger tank backing out of one of the concrete houses. The huge tank had driven through the back wall and had been firing out through a window. The Mark VI was headed directly toward Dobson’s M10 when it turned aside about six hundred yards away. The M10 gunner, Cpl Tom Perry, missed with his first shot, but the second caught the panzer broadside, and it caught fire so quickly that no crewmen escaped.

  Some time later, an SP gun that had been trying unsuccessfully to hit Dobson’s M10 pulled from a grove of trees, presumably to get a better angle. Perry fired rapidly, and the shells caved in the armor plate.23

  Over the next week, repeated assaults drove the badly depleted British 1st Infantry Division back from Campoleone and the Factory at Aprilia. The TD crews from the 894th were constantly in the thick of the fighting and made heavy use of their .50-caliber AA machine guns agai
nst attacking infantry. M10s covered the final withdrawal from the Factory, and grateful Scots Guards dubbed the crews the “fighting tankbusters.” Once again, a platoon of Company B became completely surrounded and had to dash three miles back to friendly lines. The crews waged a running battle using tommyguns, carbines, and grenades against the German infantry who barred the way.24

  Lucas had to decrease the British frontage, and on 10 April he committed his two reserve regiments from the 45th Infantry Division to part of the British sector. The Americans tried to retake the Factory, but failed.

  An uneasy lull settled over the Anzio beachhead.25

  * * *

  Companies A and C of the 701st disembarked at Anzio on 10 February and joined the 1st Armored Division; the rest of the battalion would trickle in over the next two weeks. The TD men were strafed as soon as they arrived at their assembly area, and air attacks were an almost daily occurrence for some time. Indeed, on 14 February, German planes attacked company gun positions five times during the day. The TDs joined division artillery in executing indirect fire missions.26

  * * *

  During the night of 15 February, 2/157th Infantry, 45th Infantry Division, moved into positions three thousand yards in front of a huge incomplete concrete highway overpass (sometimes called the “flyover”) that would become the center of much of the fighting in the coming days. The men moved into the holes dug by British troops and the 504th Parachute Battalion. The ground in front of the doughs was flat and open, and the Factory was to their right.27 The Albano–Anzio highway at the overpass now formed the border between the American and British sectors.

  At dawn on 16 February, the men of the 45th Infantry Division underwent the heaviest artillery barrage they had yet experienced. The shelling ceased, and German tanks supported by infantry advanced through a concealing fog down the Albano-Anzio road toward the American line. Although attacks also struck the positions of the American 3d and British 56th Infantry divisions to the right and left, respectively, this was the main assault.

  The Germans put the tanks with the thickest front armor— Mark VI Tigers and newly arrived Mark V Panthers—at the point of each column.28 The Panther was arguably the best tank fielded by any army during the war. The 45-ton panzer had 80mm (more than three inches) of well-sloped frontal armor and 40mm on the sides and rear. It was capable of reaching 30 miles per hour on roads—as fast as the much lighter Sherman tank. The Mark V carried a powerful high-velocity 75mm cannon that was the envy of American tankers, as well as a coaxial and hull-mounted machine guns.29 It was prone to mechanical problems, however.

  In the area held by the 157th Infantry, Company E was supported by a single M10 from the 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion—probably that commanded by Sgt John Kirk from Company C’s 2d platoon. Panzers overran the left flank, but this exposed them to fire from the TD, which quickly destroyed two of the German tanks. Kirk identified the first of the two panzers he KO’d that day as a heavily armored Ferdinand SP gun (which carried an 88mm cannon protected by 200mm—eight inches!—of frontal armor on a rejected model of Tiger chassis). The remaining tanks withdrew, leaving the German infantry—who had broken into the center of the company area—to fight alone. The TD opened fire on the Germans with the .50-caliber AA machine gun and mowed down the attackers by the score. The doughs credited the TD crew with breaking up the assault, but the M10 had expended all of its ammo and had to withdraw. Company E was almost wiped out over the next twenty-four hours.30

  The German attack pushed into the seam between the 157th and 179th Infantry regiments. Tanks, SP guns, and artillery pounded the line, but the men grimly held on. American artillery struck furiously in return. The TDs of the 645th engaged in a wild shootout with the advancing panzers. Second Lieutenant Jack Lindenberg’s 2d Platoon, Company A, battled three Tigers and two Mark IVs in thick smoke at only three to four hundred yards. The American gunners caught two of the Tigers from the flank and forced the Germans to pull back. But Jerry destroyed one M10 in return and sent another limping to the rear with one of its two diesel engines shot out. Similarly, 1st Platoon killed one Mark IV for the loss of one TD, while 3d Platoon KO’d a Mark III and a Mark IV but left one burning M10 on the battlefield. Company C, meanwhile, claimed five panzers for the loss of three TDs.31

  By day’s end, the defenders had grudgingly backpedaled about one mile, but the Germans had failed to break through.32

  Germany’s Tank Destroyers

  The fighting at Anzio took place at roughly the same time that the German armed forces began to field a class of armored vehicles specifically designed as tank killers. These were turretless, well-armored, self-propelled guns carrying cannon capable of dealing with the heaviest Allied (including Soviet) armor. Indeed, unlike the American designs, they were developed with the all too common slugging match in mind—not the rarely seen speedy response to an armored thrust.

  The German Panzerjäger, or tank hunters, were an evolutionary product of assault guns designed to provide the infantry with close-in fire support that had seen service as early as the invasion of France. Indeed, when the Sturmgeschütz (StuG) III—the most widely produced assault gun—was given a powerful 75mm cannon and thicker armor in early 1942, the vehicle was initially used solely in an antitank roll on the Eastern Front. Official German sources credited the StuG III with twenty thousand Allied tank kills on all fronts.33

  The Germans had built some jerry-rigged tank destroyers mounting AT guns in lightly armored superstructures on obsolete or foreign-made tank chassis. But in January 1944, the first Jagdpanzer IV vehicles entered service with combat units. This vehicle carried a long-barreled 75mm gun in an armored superstructure on the Mark IV chassis and had 80mm (three-plus inches) of well-sloped frontal armor. In February, series production of the Jagdpanzer V (Jagdpanther or Hunting Panther) began. The Jagdpanther carried the 88mm gun on a Panther chassis with sloped front armor 80mm thick.34

  Other tank killers were produced, from the rare, giant Ferdinand to the widespread, diminutive, and deadly Hetzer. Unfortunately, American AARs often lumped the panzerjägers, assault guns, and SP artillery together under the “SP” heading. TD battalion kill statistics also broke out SP guns from the tanks, although the latter could be even more dangerous than actual tanks.

  The German tank-killer units in practice operated more or less the same as their American counterparts, with platoons or companies parceled out in support of infantry or armored line units. A StuG III crew, for example, would typically take part in the pre-assault artillery barrage, join the main body in the attack, fire on strongpoints such as bunkers, and switch to the tank-destroyer role if enemy tanks appeared.35 As in the U.S. Army, the tank hunters were not organized as part of the armored force (the assault gun crews were artillerymen), although they increasingly took on the role of tanks. After 31 March 1943, however, panzerjäger battalions not attached to the infantry were considered part of the Panzertruppe.36

  * * *

  The forward defenses buckled further on 17 February under the pressure exerted by three tank-supported infantry divisions. American troops gave ground almost to the line that Lucas had declared to be his final position. Further retreat, he said, would mean the destruction of the beachhead.

  Realizing his peril, Lucas threw fresh armor into the fray. A battalion of the 6th Armored Infantry Regiment, vanguard of the 1st Armored Division, moved into the line to buttress the doughs of the 45th Infantry Division, and tanks advanced to help the slowly withdrawing 2/157th Infantry.37

  The artillery barrage supporting the German attacks against the 45th Infantry Division during the day also hit the positions of Company A, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion. One man was killed and another was wounded.

  Company I of the 157th Infantry Regiment dug a semi-circular arc of foxholes in front of the overpass and at dusk repulsed the first of the infantry attacks that would crash into the position over the next several days. At approximately 1730 hours, the 1st Armored Division ordered th
e TDs of A/701st to take up firing positions at the overpass to support the doughs. The M10s arrived by 2300 hours, and the crews dug their vehicles in.

  Lieutenant John Hudson deployed his 2d Platoon on the left in what was technically the British zone but contained many empty foxholes. The former infantry officer recalled from his training at Ft. Benning that a commander should never use a natural line—in this case the Albano–Anzio road—as the boundary between tactical units because neither outfit will view the feature as its problem. He sited his four M10s so that they could use the earthen ramp of the overpass as an ersatz revetment.

  * * *

  On 18 February, renewed attacks by fresh formations—the 29th Panzergrenadier and 26th Panzer divisions—broke through the 179th Infantry Regiment’s line.38 Two hull-down M10s from 2d Platoon, B/645th Tank Destroyer Battalion, engaged a dozen panzers pushing down the highway toward the overpass. Boggy ground made off-road maneuver impossible for the TDs, but it also forced the German tanks to stick to the roads. Sergeant Tousignant reported: “Three Mark VIs [were advancing], interval between them of approximately one hundred yards. We opened fire on first tank, knocked [it] out while broadside in road. Opened fire on second tank, which pulled in behind house out of view. Third tank came down road. Fired on him, knocking him out broadside in road, blocking road. In the meantime, second tank behind house turned around, started back north toward their lines, got out in the open, and we knocked [it] out.”39

  Return fire disabled the second M10, however.

  As the Germans sought to exploit the hole in the American line, the massed fire of two hundred Allied guns fell on advancing panzers and infantry. The attack disintegrated, and artillery wrecked four more German thrusts over the next hour.40