Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  Company A/705th was at Ortheuville helping defend a roadblock. The crews drove off the first German force to appear and KO’d a Mark III and several halftracks during the exchange. Artillery fire soon exploded around the M18s, and this time a large force of tank-supported infantry appeared. The outnumbered Americans fell back toward Bastogne.69

  * * *

  The Germans probed the main line at Bastogne on 21 December, by which time they had enveloped the town. The TDs shifted firing positions as needed by the paratroopers, although the 705th’s AAR suggests that the coordination did not gel until late in the day. Still, that battalion’s M18s knocked out four panzers and three halftracks during the fighting.70

  On 22 December, the Germans launched a concerted effort to take Bastogne, this time from the west.71 This would be the day on which BrigGen Anthony McAuliffe, acting CG of the 101st Airborne Division and all other troops in the pocket, issued his famous reply to a surrender ultimatum: “Nuts!” The 705th committed the men of Reconnaissance Company to the foxhole line to fight beside the paratroopers for the remainder of the siege. The recon platoon from the 609th also manned the front line, and the 101st Airborne Division placed 2d Platoon, A/705th, in mobile reserve. By 1000, the platoon had already had to deploy once to the outlying village of Monty, where it destroyed a panzer and helped convince the enemy to withdraw.72

  The skies finally cleared on 23 December. Planes dropped supplies to the defenders of Bastogne and vast quantities of explosive ordnance on the enemy.73 The defenders grimly held on and hoped that relief on the ground would follow soon.

  By Christmas Eve, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion had worked out a standard procedure for supporting the paratroopers (who had little prior training or experience working with armor of any type). Guns worked by platoons. One section took up positions in or within a few yards of the MLR, while the second section stood back one to two hundred yards to provide supporting fire. The Germans, for their part, were by now typically attacking in small battle groups of four or five panzers supported by fifty to a hundred infantrymen following an artillery preparation.74

  The defense, meanwhile, was reorganized into combined arms teams built around the four regiments of the 101st Airborne Division. Roadblocks were established on all routes into Bastogne, each supported by two M18s from C/609th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Four M18s and forty men from the 705th formed part of a small new central reserve force.75

  At 0400 hours on Christmas morning, tanks and panzergrenadiers struck the defenses after a mortar preparation. The panzers preceded the infantry by about two hundred yards, and a few succeeded in making a potentially disastrous penetration. The 705th’s AAR describes how the defenders exploited the situation: “The infantry of the 101st Airborne Division permitted the tanks to pass through them and then effectively stopped the following enemy infantry. In some instances, our guns permitted the tanks to pass them and were enabled to place effective fire on their flanks and rear. In places, the enemy armor was able to penetrate the MLR but denuded of their own infantry were excellent targets for the antitank defenses of all arms of the division as well as our own guns. In several instances, the tank destroyers were able to effectively assist friendly infantry by HE and .50-caliber machine-gun fire on the enemy infantry.”76

  1st Platoon, Company B, was able to KO seven of ten panzers that penetrated the MLR between Champs and Hemroulle at about 0300 hours. Other platoons claimed their prizes, too, and by day’s end the crews had destroyed fifteen panzers, two AT guns, and an armored car.77

  Everyone was learning. Colonel W. Roberts, CCB/10th Armored Division, wrote shortly after the battle: “The TDs taught me and my tanks a lesson that is being straightened out right now in this command. Properly employed in the defense, some tanks must be up with the infantry (I do not say what proportion) and some in reserve in the “socker” role. Those with the infantry must act in the TD role 98 percent of the time. The TDs know how to do it. Tankers are not as well trained, and they suffered. My eight TDs lost only three while getting twenty-two sure kills. My tanks did not approach that proportion.”78

  * * *

  Far to the east, in Berlin, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian met with Hitler on Christmas Day and urged him to suspend the offensive because it had failed. Guderian was already thinking privately about whom he would prefer occupying Berlin and wanted to shift the armored reserves to the Eastern Front. Hitler refused.79

  The German attack resumed on 26 December, but with less vigor. The TDs used the same successful tactics to handle the armor. The Germans escaped the day’s encounter with the guns of the 705th short four panzers.80

  During the period 19–26 December, the 705th accounted for thirty-nine German tanks, three halftracks, and assorted other vehicles and weapons. The battalion suffered casualties of twenty men killed, thirty-five wounded, and twelve missing. Five M18s were destroyed as well.81

  The men of C/609th KO’d fifteen enemy Mark V tanks and one Mark VI tank as well as three SP guns. Losses amounted to thirteen men and eight vehicles, including two M-18s destroyed by AT fire. The other losses were principally the result of nightly enemy bombing.82

  Armored Crush

  Anticipating orders from SHAEF, Patton on 18 December began to turn the weight of his Third Army more than 90 degrees so as to rip into the southern flank of the Bulge. Third Corps, including the 4th Armored and 80th and 26th Infantry divisions—each with an SP tank destroyer battalion attached—attacked on 22 December to relieve Bastogne, while Devers’s Sixth Army Group began to take over most of Third Army’s area of responsibility. Patton’s spearhead dashed one hundred twenty-five miles through a blizzard to accomplish this feat, and through 23 December, 133,178 motor vehicles traversed a total of 1,654,042 miles. German commanders who calculated that Patton would never be able to react so quickly were wrong.83 On the other hand, German intelligence easily detected the Third Army shift, and by the time Third Army’s spearhead arrived, the Germans had deployed strong blocking forces on all approaches.84

  Captain Thomas Evans, now S-2 of the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion, recalled, “We moved from around Sarreguemines, where we were engaged, and came back and got into Longwy, which was maybe twenty miles from Bastogne. It was about eighteen or twenty degrees below zero. There were maybe eight or ten inches of snow on the ground. And cold! It took us all night to move from Sarreguemines. They had MPs stopped every twenty miles. They had these big cans and logs burning so we could get out and warm our hands up. But we were only allowed to stay for two minutes.”85

  The 4th Armored Division was battle weary. It was short on trained men and material, and most of its tanks were worn out.86 The 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion was just as tired after fighting along the Siegfried Line. Patton instructed the division—which would advance along and parallel to the road from Arlon—to attack with tanks, TDs, artillery, and armored engineers in the van, trailed by the armored infantry. The command was to use wide-envelopment tactics against any strongpoints.87

  The division jumped of at 0600 hours on 22 December. It bridged the Sure River the next day after meeting light initial resistance, and commanders were optimistic that they would reach Bastogne in short order. Early in the afternoon on 24 December, a message from Patton relayed by VIII Corps arrived in Bastogne: “Xmas Eve present coming up. Hold on.” But the 4th Armored Division had run into a stiff German defense supported by antitank and assault guns around Chaumont, Warnach, and Bigonville.88

  There would be no armored dash into Bastogne. Instead, the armor and infantry began the painful process of ejecting the Germans—mostly elite troopers from the 5th Parachute Division—from their path. Captain Thomas Evans spent Christmas day with his old Company C comrades, in the bitter cold, pinned down by German artillery fire.89

  The official U.S. Army history declares the siege of Bastogne ended as of 1645 hours on 26 December, when the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion reportedly spotted three light tanks, thought to be friendly.90 They were
actually Shermans from CCR’s 37th Tank Battalion. Eleven M18s from B/704th Tank Destroyer Battalion soon followed the tankers into Bastogne. Their first kill was a captured Sherman manned by German troops.91

  * * *

  North of the German salient, VII Corps readied itself to counterattack on orders from Field Marshall Montgomery, but it became embroiled in the defensive battle long before Monty was ready to move. The corps included the 2d and 3d Armored and two infantry divisions. Early on 21 December, “Hell on Wheels” began its march from the Roer front toward the German spearhead. The 2d Armored ran under radio silence, and its recon elements had orders to make sure that no one was captured.92

  The 2d Panzer Division, low on fuel and badly strung out, had almost reached the Meuse River near Dinant. The 2d Armored Division’s reconnaissance patrols established contact on 23 December. After going round and round with higher command in order to get permission to attack, MajGen Ernest Harmon sent his CCA to bore into the German positions at 0630 on Christmas Eve. A roadblock supported by a Panther with a very skilled gunner barred the path of CCA’s Task Force A. One of the M36s recently acquired by the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion crawled up the face of a defile and placed three rounds through the side of the Panther’s turret.93

  Thus began a three-day engagement during which the 2d Armored Division annihilated its opposite number, and bits of Panzer Lehr Division to boot. At 0930 hours on Christmas day, CCB descended on the 2d Panzer Division’s main concentration at Celles. The Germans lacked enough fuel to maneuver, and the panzers often fought as strongpoints where they stood. The battle was a combined-arms extravaganza as American tanks, TDs, artillery, and fighter-bombers (including some British Typhoons) combined to destroy more than eighty German tanks and sixteen other armored vehicles. The crews of the 702d fought no large engagements, but its tank kills here and there added up to a tenth of the total.

  On 26 December, Bradley—aware of the 2d Armored Division’s smashing victory—told SHAEF that he believed Hitler’s offensive had reached its high water mark.94 Indeed, the tide was already on its way back out.

  The Smaller Bulge

  The veterans of the North Africa desert in the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion were hunkered down near Strasbourg. The outfit’s informal history recorded, “Christmas week 1944 was cold, miserable, and anything but joyous. The destroyers were all over the division area, firing at the Kraut, blocking roads, and catching plenty of hell. The news from the north was terrible. There was constant talk of a coming Kraut push. Recon was up in the hills with the French Ghoums [North Africans]. Morale was ‘excellent’ in the morning reports, but nowhere else!”95

  American and French troops in the now thinly stretched Sixth Army Group sector along the upper Rhine were glumly ushering in the new year amidst cold and snow when Hitler’s secondary offensive— Operation Nordwind—struck out of the midnight darkness. The German First Army executed the main attack, driving south through Bitche and the Wissembourg Gap. The Germans threw into the fight seven battle-worn divisions and one SS mountain division fresh from Finland. Their mission—straight from the Führer’s mouth—was to destroy as many American formations as possible.96

  Allied intelligence (including Ultra) provided forewarning of the attack, and Eisenhower ordered Sixth Army Group CG LtGen Jacob Devers to give ground in order to prevent a rip in his lines—but to fall back no further than the Vosges Mountains under any circumstances. Indeed, Ike was willing to abandon Strasbourg if need be, but threats of outright insubordination from the French persuaded him to abandon the idea. Seventh Army’s CG, LtGen Alexander Patch, in turn opted to shorten his lines by withdrawing to a new MLR before the mountains, although not until several of his divisions had been badly bloodied in the first week of fighting. The American line eventually stabilized on the Moder River, which flowed from west to east into the Rhine. The French, meanwhile, fought fiercely to contain the German Nineteenth Army, which still held a substantial area west of the Rhine around the city of Colmar and which launched a drive to capture Strasbourg from the south.

  The weather was dreadful. Blizzards and fog often blinded the combatants, and roads iced into slick sheets that could send tracked vehicles sliding into ditches and snow banks. Sergeant Tom Sherman in the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion watched one M10 whip by down a hillside road at an impressive rate of speed. The captain standing beside him asked in surprise, “What’s their hurry?” Evidently only Sherman had noticed that the M10 had been sliding backwards.97

  Between the conditions and the limited armor available to the Germans, the battle became primarily an infantry struggle.

  The 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s experience was typical. The outfit was with the 79th Infantry Division on the left wing of VI Corps. The battalion lost nineteen of its M10s during the fighting and reluctantly re-equipped partially with M18s because no replacement M10s were available. Despite the fact that the once-proud 21st Panzer Division was active in the sector beginning 6 January, tanks appeared only sporadically and in small numbers, and targets were mainly infantry and halftracks. All but a few M10s were lost to German infantry assaults or because they became immobilized on the roads.

  The 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion headquarters briefly filled the role once imagined for the tank destroyer brigades and coordinated antitank defenses in its sector. On 7 January, the M18s of the 827th Tank Destroyer Battalion (another nearly all-Black unit) arrived and was subordinated to the 813th’s CO, Maj George McCutchen.98

  Once Seventh Army had withdrawn to its Moder River line, the tank killers of the 636th had one of the few sizeable run-ins with panzers experienced by any TD outfit had during the fighting. Company C held positions near Hanhoffen on 21 January, as recounted by the 36th Infantry Division’s newspaper:

  The warning net alerted Company C three hours before the German tanks ground into range. The 3d Platoon, commanded by 2dLt Lee Kiscadden, was emplaced along a heavy thicket with a clear field of fire in three directions. Two guns were there, about twenty yards behind the infantry. Six enemy tanks slid out of a tree line about two thousand yards to the east. The T-Patch [36th Infantry Division] TD men moved forward to the edge of the woods and sat there waiting.

  A driver, Cpl Lem J. Luke, marked the enemy’s progress. “Yonder they go, yonder they go,” he repeated. The enemy tanks kept coming. They crossed a small bridge and stopped.

  [Battalion CO LtCol Charles] Wilber was standing next to Lieutenant Kiscadden. “When are you going to shoot?” he asked impatiently. Lieutenant Kiscadden was standing next to the destroyer commanded by Sgt Rufus Brantley. He called to gunner Cpl Wiley Johnston, “When you’re ready!”

  The enemy tanks were sitting ducks, halted just across the small bridge about twelve hundred yards away. It was Sergeant Brantley’s first combat as a tank commander—the day before he had been a medico and private first class. He spotted what he later described as the “biggest damn tank on earth.” Two rounds smashed into the tank, two columns of orange fire and black smoke roared into the gray snowy sky. His monster was two Mark IVs sitting hull to hull. They both were destroyed.

  Sergeant William Rutledge spotted two other tanks at the same time. Short a loader, he had to observe fire and handle the gun by himself. Two Tiger tanks had forced their way past the infantry defense line and were two thousand yards across the plain, going towards the rear. Rutledge poured three rounds into one, shifted his fire, and hit the second. The second tank withdrew; the first one was crippled. Another round disabled it.

  The 3d Platoon had accounted for three tanks in less than two minutes. The left flank of the open field was secure.99

  Second Platoon, meanwhile, spotted a dozen mixed medium and heavy tanks and accounted for another four panzers. The tanks were barely visible across the snow and against a grey sky. One Panther met its doom when it became silhouetted by an exploding smoke round. The carnage persuaded the crewmen in the surviving eight panzers to withdraw.

  Digging the des
troyers in along the Moder River line was a major undertaking. Explosives had to be used to break through the deep frozen layer on top. Bulldozers were then used to scoop out pits, but the subsoil was so mucky that they often became stuck and had to be dragged free by tank-recovery vehicles. Finally, log floors were installed to prevent the TDs from sinking. Frequent air strikes by German jet fighter-bombers added to the strain.100

  The fighting was bitter and casualties were high on both sides, but Operation Nordwind blew itself out by the end of January.

  * * *

  Back in the Ardennes, First Army on 3 January 1945 began a full-scale attack on the northern flank of the Bulge through deep snow, cold, wind, and fog. In less than two weeks, First and Third armies fought through fierce resistance to link up at Houffalize, about halfway up the length of the salient. The next day—17 January—Bradley regained command of First Army. By the end of the month, Hitler had sent the Sixth Panzer Army to deal with a crisis on the Eastern Front, and American troops had completely eliminated the Bulge.101

  Lessons Learned

  The tank destroyers in First and Third armies were credited with knocking out more than five hundred panzers during the Battle of the Bulge.102 That number stands as a summation of the efforts of thousands of TD men who fought with skill and courage under some of the most trying conditions of the war. They did what they were asked to do—kill tanks—and much else besides. Far beyond the statistics, the irreplaceable role played by those men in crucial battles at Krinkelt, St. Vith, and Bastogne—as well many secondary engagements that sealed what Churchill called America’s greatest victory—bears witness to the Tank Destroyer Force’s contribution to American arms.