Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  TD platoon commander Lt Turney Leonard earned a Medal of Honor for his part in the action, which his citation described in these terms: “During the fierce three-day engagement, [Leonard] repeatedly braved overwhelming enemy fire in advance of his platoon to direct the fire of his tank destroyer from exposed, dismounted positions. He went on lone reconnaissance missions to discover what opposition his men faced, and on one occasion, when fired upon by a hostile machine gun, advanced alone and eliminated the enemy emplacement with a hand grenade. When a strong German attack threatened to overrun friendly positions, he moved through withering artillery, mortar, and small arms fire, reorganized confused infantry units whose leaders had become casualties, and exhorted them to hold firm. Although wounded early in battle, he continued to direct fire from his advanced position until he was disabled by a high-explosive shell which shattered his arm, forcing him to withdraw. He was last seen at a medical aid station which was subsequently captured by the enemy. By his superb courage, inspiring leadership, and indomitable fighting spirit, 1st Lt Leonard enabled our forces to hold off the enemy attack and was personally responsible for the direction of fire which destroyed six German tanks.”

  The defenses at Kommerscheidt collapsed on 7 November. The 28th Infantry Division’s offensive ended in failure at the cost of six thousand casualties, thirty-one Sherman tanks, and sixteen M10 TDs. The division and its attached units moved to the quiet Ardennes sector to recover.47

  * * *

  Company C, 628th Tank Destroyer Battalion accompanied CCR/5th Armored Division into the gloomy forest in early December to support the doughs of the 4th Infantry Division, who had replaced the men of the 28th Infantry Division. The 628th recalled this as “by far the most intense period of combat experienced by any unit of this battalion.” Artillery fire confined the men to their armored vehicles for long periods, but the open turrets on the M36 still left them vulnerable to air bursts and shrapnel. After a shell caught two crews in one turret—the second had taken refuge after the M36 hit one of the ubiquitous mines—the battalion resolved to build armored covers for all its TDs (accomplished by January). At one point, only a single Company C M36 was operational because of combat losses in vehicles and crewmen.48

  On 13 December, the newly committed 83d Infantry Division finally emerged on the far side of the Hürtgen Forest. But the Germans still held Schmidt and the Roer River dams.49

  * * *

  The Ninth Army had drawn the assignment of driving to the Roer River from north of Aachen in conjunction with First Army’s VII Corps. The terrain was generally flat, and villages across the plains provided strongpoints that the Germans typically reinforced with trench lines. The terrain offered the German tank killers long fields of fire that gave maximum advantage to their excellent optics and high-velocity antitank weapons. The frequent rains restricted armor on both sides to the roads, which gave even greater advantage to the defender.

  The Ninth Army’s offensive began at 1245 hours on 16 November. The Roer River lay at its farthest point twelve miles east of American lines.50 Nineteenth Corps, supported on the left by gradual commitment of XIII Corps, made good initial progress, but German resistance built and forward progress slowed.51

  The 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion was operating as usual with the 2d Armored Division—which was the northernmost element in XIX Corps—while the newly arrived the 771st Tank Destroyer Battalion had been attached to the neighboring 102d Infantry Division. The former battalion was just converting to the M36.

  The 2d Armored Division captured the town of Puffendorf within hours of jump-off on 16 November. The Germans viewed this effort as the most pressing threat, and von Rundstedt authorized the use of the reserve 9th Panzer and 15th Panzergrenadier divisions to contain the menace. The former, accompanied by a Tiger tank battalion, struck back on 17 November.52 The panzers included the new Mark VI Royal Tiger—a 70-ton monster with 150mm (six inches) of sloped frontal armor and an 88mm gun with an even higher muzzle velocity than that found on the regular Tiger.53

  Combat Command B’s Task Force 1 was just forming up for the day’s attack when about twenty panzers, supported by infantry and artillery, burst through heavy morning mist into its positions. A tank battle ensued which the Americans lost decisively. 9th Panzer Division attacks struck other CCB task forces during the morning. The M36s (and a few remaining M10s) from the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion engaged the attackers and KO’d six panzers during the day. The fighting cost the 2d Armored Division eighteen medium and seven light tanks destroyed and about the same number damaged.54

  The Germans and Americans generally took a defensive posture the next day, but the 2d Armored and 29th Infantry divisions captured the town of Setterich, which provided enough room to commit CCA. On 20 November, the 9th Panzer Division retaliated with a force of between sixty and eighty Tigers and Panthers. LtCol John Beall, CO of the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion, threw an old North Africa German trick back at the enemy. A few American tanks approached the Germans and then fled, which lured the Germans within range of his new 90mm guns.55

  The Jerries had their own tricks, however. The 702d’s AAR for 17–21 November recorded: “The enemy used the heavy armor of his Mark VI tanks to full advantage. In several instances, the enemy maneuvered his heavily armored tanks into position between three thousand and thirty-five hundred yards from our TDs and tanks and opened fire. At this distance, our TDs could not penetrate the front of the Mark VI and the enemy evidently knew this for he [kept] only his heavily armored front exposed. At this distance, our 90mm gun would ricochet off the Mark VI, and usually the high-velocity gun of the Mark VI would penetrate and knock out our vehicles.”

  The 9th Panzer Division attack also struck the positions of the 102d Infantry Division’s 405th and 406th RCTs on 19 and 20 November, and the crews from the 771st Tank Destroyer Battalion experienced a major tank battle as their first real action. Shortly after dawn on the first day, the German thrust penetrated the American lines. Company C’s Lt George Killmer ran from vehicle to vehicle in the confusion and brought his guns to bear against four Mark IVs and four Panthers. When wounded crewmen evacuated one M10, Sgt Walter Nedza recruited two riflemen to help him serve the gun. The three climbed into the turret under fire and dispatched a Mark V. The rest of the company eliminated the remaining seven panzers and lost only one M10 in the fire fight. A few hours later, the company’s gunners KO’d three more Panthers.

  The action on 20 November cost Company C more dearly. The TDs in the course of three engagements accounted for two Royal Tigers, but the massive panzers knocked out six M10s. Several times, the crews watched in frustration as their 3-inch rounds bounced off the Tigers, thick hides. Company A, meanwhile, fired on Royal Tigers about noon and stopped two of them. The battle against the panzers cost the battalion five men killed and twenty-two wounded.56

  By 21 November, the 2d Armored Division was again making slow forward progress, although German tanks, often dug in, remained a major problem. The 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion gunners had destroyed a total of twenty-four panzers in the course of the 9th Panzer Division’s attack. The battalion lost three M36s in exchange.57

  Ninth Army did not clear the west bank of the Roer River until 9 December. Army headquarters in late November sought permission from 12 Army Group to convert two of its four towed battalions to M10s on an emergency basis because “self-propelled tank destroyers of all types are urgently needed in combat.”58 The tough fighting cost ten thousand American battle casualties.59

  Cannons at Climbach

  The M20 scout car advanced cautiously toward yet another picturesque but probably deadly French village on the margins of the Siegfried Line. It was 14 December 1944, and a task force under command of LtCol John Blackshear had as its objective the town of Climbach, France, and a German armored concentration reported to be there. The task force consisted of one company from the 411th Infantry Regiment, 103d Infantry Division; a heavy weapons platoon with machine guns and mortars
; one platoon of tanks from the 14th Armored Division; and 3d Platoon, Company C, 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion (towed).60

  Company C’s Lt Charles Thomas, commanding the TD detachment, was riding in the lead scout car, followed by a section of his 3-inch guns. As the vehicles reached some high ground three hundred yards east of Climbach, a storm of fire erupted from German tanks and antitank guns about seven hundred yards away. Thomas’s M20 was hit, and although severely wounded, the lieutenant motioned the column to halt and helped evacuate his crew from the wrecked vehicle. He suffered additional wounds to his chest, legs, and left arm. Thomas nevertheless directed the deployment of his two guns so that they could engage the Germans, and only then turned command over to platoon leader Lt George Mitchell. The guns unlimbered in an open field affording no protection. This was the only place from which they could fire on the German positions.

  The bombardment by the 3-inch guns drove the panzers to pull back and seek defilade positions. But small-arms, mortar, and artillery fire began to strike the American gun positions. Men dropped, killed or wounded, and one gun was quickly knocked out. Mitchell ordered his other two guns forward, but he fell wounded. Despite the loss of their commanders, the crews of the two guns manhandled their weapons into position. The American tanks had become mired and could not advance to help them, and the infantry remained behind the gun positions.

  The Germans now mounted an attack using a few tanks and some infantry. Skeleton crews manned the guns by now. Private First Class Whit Knight manned one gun alone. He sighted, loaded, and fired his weapon at the attacking Germans as explosions heated the air around him. Realizing that his gun would not stop the infantry, Knight leaped to a machine gun on a burning halftrack and opened fire. Nearby, other men grabbed small arms and machine guns to fend off the infantry assault. Private First Class Leon Tobin and Cpl Peter Simmons—the only survivors of their crew—continued to pour fire into the attackers until both were struck by bullets. As the Germans fell back, the few remaining tank killers returned to their last serviceable gun.

  The American doughs finally pushed forward in a two-pronged assault on Climbach, and American artillery began to seek out the German tanks. The last TD supported the advance and knocked out at least one more machine gun nest for the riflemen.

  The action illustrated the unsuitability of towed tank destroyers for mobile operations against a prepared enemy, no matter how determined the tank killers. The engagement had cost the TD company dearly: four enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded, and two officers and seventeen enlisted men were wounded. These heroic soldiers were members of one of the three TD battalions with black enlisted personnel and mostly white officers to see action in Europe with the then-segregated Army. (The other two were the 827th in the ETO and the 679th in Italy.) Lieutenant Thomas was awarded the Medal of Honor many years later, one of seven black recipients from World War II.

  * * *

  While German panzers had appeared to challenge America’s tank killers now and again during the fighting along the border, they had rarely done so in any substantial numbers. Granted, the Anglo-American strategic air campaign was reducing panzer production, but Germany in November and December delivered 2,299 tanks and assault guns (new or repaired) to the Western Front. Indeed, during the same period, only 921 went to the Eastern Front.61

  Where were all the panzers?

  Chapter 9

  The Battle of the Bulge

  “The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster.”

  — General Dwight Eisenhower to his American army commanders, 19 December 1944

  On 19 August, Hitler—who evidently understood that Germany’s armies in the West would have to fall back to the West Wall—had told a group of intimates that he planned to launch a major counteroffensive in early November, when bad weather would hobble the Allied air forces. The Fhrer calculated that a devastating victory would break the Western Alliance and permit him to strike a separate peace, so he could deal with the Soviet Union. By mid-September, Hitler had already settled on the Ardennes for his bold strike, the seemingly impassable forested and broken plateau where Germany had successfully attacked in 1914 and 1940. He would dole out just enough men and equipment to keep the border defenses from crumbling while gathering his resources in utmost secrecy.1

  Delays slowed the project, but by early December, Hitler had assembled twenty-eight divisions for his offensive—Operation Wacht Am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine)—and another six for a supporting offensive—Operation Nordwind (Northwind)—in Alsace. This was the largest reserve Germany had been able to accumulate in two years, albeit much weaker than the strike force available when German troops had slashed through the same area in 1940.2 Moreover, troops below the level of officers and NCOs were often new to battle.

  The U.S. 12th Army Group intelligence assessment for 12 December asserted: “It is now certain that attrition is steadily sapping the strength of German forces on the Western Front, and the crust of defense is thinner, more brittle, and more vulnerable than it appears on our G-2 maps or to the troops in the line.” Three days later, the British 21st Army Group appreciation observed: “The enemy is at present fighting a defensive campaign on all fronts; his situation is such that he cannot stage major offensive operations. Furthermore, at all costs he has to prevent the war from entering a mobile phase; he has not the transport or the petrol that would be necessary for mobile operations, nor could his tanks compete with ours in the mobile battle.”3

  Bradley understood that a German attack in his thinly held Ardennes sector was a possibility, but believed the risk was acceptable. He had placed no major supply dumps in the area, and he judged he could hit any attack from the flanks and stop it before the Meuse River.4 The consensus view in the Allied camp was that the Fifth and Sixth Panzer armies (the latter controlling the SS armored formations withdrawn from the fighting beginning in late September) formed a mobile reserve to counterattack any American drive to the Rhine across the Roer River.5

  Those armies had far different orders than the Allies imagined. Hitler’s plan, delivered to Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt complete to the last detail with “NOT TO BE ALTERED” scrawled across it in the Führer’s own handwriting, called for a three-pronged offensive along a 75-mile front between Monschau and Echternach.6 In the north, the Sixth Panzer Army was to strike to and across the Meuse River and then northwest for Antwerp. In the center, the Fifth Panzer Army was to attack through Namur and Dinant toward Brussels. The armored divisions in the first echelon had nearly a thousand tanks and assault guns, while the armored and mechanized reserve possessed another four hundred fifty.7 The German Seventh Army was to reel out a line of infantry divisions to protect the southern flank of the operation. A “Trojan Horse” unit under special operations veteran SS Hauptsturmführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Otto Skorzeny, using captured American vehicles and uniforms, was to ease the way to the Meuse once the initial breakthrough was achieved.

  Allied forces in November and early December gathered a steady trickle of information suggesting that a German buildup was under way in the Eifel, just behind the Ardennes front. Both sides had deployed into this thus-far quiet sector inexperienced divisions for a low-pressure first taste of war or battered ones for rebuilding. The American divisions, north to south, were the 99th Infantry (green), 106th Infantry (green), 28th Infantry (rebuilding), 9th Armored (green), and 4th Infantry (exhausted).

  Towed Guns Tested

  Most of the tank destroyer battalions along the front line when the German offensive began were towed outfits deployed, as usual, with forward infantry regiments.

  The 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion in early December was located in the Honsfeld-Büllingen-Krinkelt area with the 99th Infantry Division. Its towed 3-inch guns almost daily fired interdiction and harassing missions against unobserved targets in the thick forests behind German lines.

  The night of 15–16 December, Sgt James Gallagher heard the
rumble of approaching tanks near Hoffen and led a reconnaissance section forward to investigate. A German patrol appeared suddenly out of the dark and ordered the Americans to surrender. The men complied, and they were led further east. The next thing they knew, huge panzers became visible amidst the trees. They were probably from the 1st or 12th SS Panzer division, the lead armored formations of the Sixth Panzer Army, which had been dubbed the main effort for the entire offensive.

  Gallagher and the other men were questioned and then shunted aside. Dawn was not far off when Gallagher realized that he was not being watched closely. He slipped away into the woods and found his way back to report the Germans were coming. But soon, everyone knew that.8

  * * *

  Near the center of the Ardennes sector, the men of the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion had only just arrived at the front on 9 December, when they were subordinated to the untested 106th Infantry Division and its attached 14th Cavalry Group. All companies reported intense artillery and mortar fire beginning at 0400 hours on 16 December, and all wire communications to them were quickly cut. Soon, German infantry had pressed so close that gun crews were fighting for their lives with small arms and hand grenades. Gunner Private First Class Rosenthal destroyed five tanks during the day, but by evening almost all battalion elements—some on foot—were in retreat along with the infantry and cavalry.9 By early the next morning, the Germans surrounded the two forward infantry regiments.

  Just to the south, the towed guns of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion were deployed with the regiments of the 28th Infantry Division when the German offensive hit. Most of the armor controlled by the German Seventh Army (which consisted largely of infantry divisions) attacked in the division’s sector, as did much of the Fifth Panzer Army.10 The 630th moved its 3-inchers into previously prepared positions when tank-infantry formations struck the forward lines. But German infantry pushed forward rapidly, and one gun section accompanied by a recon platoon stumbled into a fire fight before it could even reach its assigned spot. By dusk, the 28th Infantry Division was just managing to hold on to some strongpoints at road junctions while the German flood flowed around them. That night, two TD guns were overrun at Hupperdange.11