by Harry Yeide
824th Tank Destroyer Battalion55
Activated on 10 August 1942 at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. Reorganized as a towed battalion in May 1943. Arrived at Marseilles, France, on 29 October 1944. Deployed near Sarrebourg on 27 November. Fought around Bitche and against Siegfried Line in December. Battled German Nordwind offensive in January 1945. Converted to M18s in March and crossed the Rhine on the last day of the month. Joined the stiff fight at Heilbronn on 8 April and then advanced to the Austrian border by month’s end. Cleared the Bavarian mountains and took Innsbruck in early May. Attached to: 45th, 100th, 103d Infantry divisions; 106th Cavalry Group.
825th Tank Destroyer Battalion56
Activated on 10 August 1942 at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. Reorganized as a towed battalion in July 1943. Assigned to Communications Zone and 12th Army Group security duties between August and December 1944. On 17 December, the battalion entered combat near Malmedy, Belgium. Returned to security duties on 16 January 1945. Attached to: 30th Infantry Division.
827th Tank Destroyer Battalion57
Activated on 20 April 1942 at Camp Forrest, Tennessee. One of several battalions with black enlisted personnel and largely white officers. Reorganized as a towed battalion in June 1943. Arrived in Seventh Army’s sector east of the Vosges at the height of the German Nordwind offensive in January 1945, equipped with M18s. Fought to eliminate the Colmar Pocket in late January and early February. Transferred to Communications Zone for security duties in March and subsequently undertook other rear-area functions. Attached to: 12th Armored Division; 79th Infantry Division.
893d Tank Destroyer Battalion58
93d Infantry Division Antitank Battalion redesignated on 15 December 1941 at Fort Benning, Georgia. Arrived at Liverpool, England, on 20 January 1944. Landed at Omaha beachhead on 1 July equipped with M10s. Committed to battle in the vicinity of St. Jean de Daye. Advanced to Paris by 25 August and thence to the Siegfried Line in the Schnee Eifel. Fought in the Hürtgen Forest in November, supporting the 28th Infantry Division’s disastrous assault on Schmidt, and remained there when the division was replaced. Held defensive positions in January 1945. Supported 78th Infantry Division capture of the Roer River dams in February 1945, then participated an offensive across the Roer toward the Rhine River. Crossed the Rhine at Remagen on 7 March and supported attack northward to Sieg River and subsequent operations against the Ruhr Pocket in April. Attached to: 2d, 4th, 8th, 28th, 78th, 80th, 90th Infantry divisions; 14th, 102d Cavalry groups.
894th Tank Destroyer Battalion59
The 94th Antitank Battalion was redesignated the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion on 15 December 1941. Committed to battle 20 February 1943 at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia. Supported capture of Bizerte. Landed in Italy in late October 1943, located in vicinity of Pignataro in the Migniano sector as of December. Transferred to Anzio beachhead on 25 January 1944, where battalion supported mainly British troops. Entered Rome in June. Crossed Arno River at Pisa in September. Mired at Porretta Terme late 1944–early 1945. Entered Genoa on 27 April. Attached to: 1st Armored Division; 34th, 45th, 85th, and 92d Infantry divisions; 10th Mountain Division; British 1st and 5th Infantry divisions; French Expeditionary Corps; Brazilian Expeditionary Force.
899th Tank Destroyer Battalion60
The 99th Antitank Battalion was redesignated the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion on 15 December 1941. Arrived Casablanca 26 January 1943, where issued new M10s. Deployed to Gafsa-El Guettar sector, Tunisia, on 16 March 1943. Established first American contact with British Eighth Army on 7 April 1943. Arrived Naples area, Italy, on 10 November 1943. Almost immediately shifted to United Kingdom. Liaison personnel accompanied second glider lift of 82d Airborne Division during invasion of Normandy. Battalion proper landed at Utah Beach on D-Day. Helped capture Cherbourg late June. Supported Cobra breakout late July, advance through Mayenne. Entered Belgium 2 September, backed 9th Infantry Division operations in vicinity of Monschau and Hofen, Germany. Fought in Rötgen/Hürtgen Forest region in October. Elements deployed in first days of Battle of the Bulge to stop German advance, others remained in VII Corps area. Supported attack to capture Roer River dams in February 1945. Largely converted to M36s that same month. Crossed Roer River 28 February. Advanced to Rhine near Bad Godesberg, and first elements crossed to Remagen bridgehead on 8 March. Joined attack on Ruhr Pocket in April, then moved east into Harz Mountains. Moved to Mulde River for link-up with Soviet forces, achieved 27 April. Began occupation duty in Bernburg 3 May 1945. Attached to: 82d Airborne Division; 1st Armored Division; 1st, 4th, 9th Infantry divisions.
Note: Some small additions have been made on the basis of attachments as reported by divisions as compiled at the Center for Military History Online, http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/documents.
Glossary
AA Antiaircraft
AAR After-action report
AP Armor-piercing
AT Antitank
BrigGen Brigadier General
Capt Captain
CG Commanding General
CO Commanding officer
Col Colonel
Cpl Corporal ETO European Theater of Operations
ETOUSA European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army
Gen General
HE High-explosive
HVAP Hyper-velocity armor-piercing
Jeep 1/4-ton truck
KIA Killed in action
KO Knock out, destroy
Lt Lieutenant
LtCol Lieutenant Colonel
LtGen Lieutenant General
M3 TD armed with 75mm gun mounted on a halftrack, or Lee medium tank, or early Stuart light tank
M4 Sherman medium tank
M5 Stuart light tank
M6 TD with a 37mm gun mounted on a weapon carrier
M8 Six-wheeled armored car, armed with 37mm gun
M10 TD with a 3-inch gun mounted on a tracked chassis
M18 TD with a 76mm gun mounted on a tracked chassis
M20 Six-wheeled utility armored car
M36 TD with a 90mm gun mounted on a tracked chassis
Maj Major
MajGen Major General
MG Machine gun
MIA Missing in action
MLR Main line of resistance
OP Observation Post
Pfc Private First Class
Pvt Private
RCT Regimental Combat Team, an infantry regiment with attachments
S-2 Intelligence staff
S-3 Operations staff
Sgt Sergeant
SSgt Staff Sergeant
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
SP Self-propelled
TD Tank destroyer
TF Task Force
WIA Wounded in action
A Galley of Photographs
A prototype M3 (T12) fires during training in August 1941 at Ft. Meade, Maryland, the first home of the Tank Destroyer Force. NA
An early M3 tank destroyer at Camp Hood, Texas, in summer 1942. NA
The M3 gun crew (left to right): gunner, loader, commander. NA
The woefully inadequate M6 tank destroyer. NA
A sign at the entrance to the tank destroyer section of Camp Hood, Texas, displays the black panther crushing a tank in its jaws that served as the TD symbol. Camp Hood became the home of the Tank Destroyer Force in September 1942. NA
TD crews were commando-trained to seek out enemy tanks after the loss of their own vehicle and destroy them with Molotov cocktails and sticky bombs. In practice, they did not do so. NA
Tank destroyers fire at a November 1942 Army war show in Texas. Many miles away, the first TDs were going to war. NA
An M3 finds a hull-down position in the Tunisian desert. But the long flat vista behind the wadi illustrates why this was often difficult to do. Patton Armor Museum
A reconnaissance team from the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion begins a mission at Kasserine Pass in February 1943. NA
A reconnaissance team from the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion (right) passe
s a wrecked M3 “Purple Heart box” in Kasserine Pass in February 1943. Several destroyed tanks are visible in the middle distance. NA
Captain Michael Paulick (front left) from Reconnaissance Company, 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, examines a map at El Guettar on 23 March 1943. The recon peep behind Paulick carries the pedestal-mounted .30-caliber machine gun. The M3 TD in the background is in one of the defilade positions from which the Americans pounded the 10th Panzer Division. NA
View from American lines of the 10th Panzer Division attacking the 1st Infantry Division at El Guettar. NA
One of the first M10s committed to battle. This one near Maknassy, Tunisia, in early April 1943 belongs to the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion. NA
The towed 3-inch gun undergoing testing at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The Signal Corps caption observes, “Army Ordnance Department tests have proved the 3-inch antitank gun as superior to the German 88mm antitank gun as an antitank weapon.” Ordnance was wrong. NA
Staff Sergeant Raymond G. Murphy and the crew of the “Jinx,” who were awarded silver stars for their 25-minute spree of destruction against the German counterattack at Salerno. L to R: Murphy, Sgt. Edwin Yost, T/5 Alvin Johnson, PFC Joseph O’Bryan, and Pvts. Clyde and Clasoe Tokes, twins from Oklahoma. NA
Number-3 gun (M10), 2d Platoon, Company A, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, shells the enemy in the Mignano sector, Italy, in December 1943. NA
An M10 from the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion moves up at Anzio Beachhead, 29 February 1944. Note the extra ammunition stacked on the rear deck. NA
An M10 engages a German machine gun nest on the outskirts of Rome on 4 June 1944. NA
BM10s approach the historic Coliseum as the Americans liberate Rome. NA
German prisoners pass a camouflaged M10 in the Normandy bocage in July 1944. The terrain forced the self-propelled TDs to operate as tanks or artillery because they rarely had long fields of fire. NA
An M10 blasts retreating Germans at St. Lô on 20 July 1944. NA
A 3-inch gun crew uses building parts for camouflage during street fighting in France, in August 1944. NA
One of the Panthers dispatched by the 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion during the battle in Meximieux, France, on 1 September 1944. The panzer ran into a building after being hit. NA
Back in Brittany, an M18 crew in the streets of Brest, September 1944. NA
Black crewmen from the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion fire their 3-inch gun in England before heading to the Continent, September 1944. NA
The battle for the border begins. An M10 fires on enemy positions at Riesdorf, Germany, on 14 September 1944. NA
The TDs engage in fierce fighting inside Aachen on 15 October. The image graphically illustrates the vulnerability of crews in open turrets to fire from upper stories during urban warfare. The wartime censor’s pen has obscured the unit designator on the M10. NA
An M36 from the 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion in the streets of Metz in November 1944. NA
The crewmen of an 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion 3-inch gun reposition their weapon in Hofen. The battalion lost seventeen guns in the first day of fighting. NA
A Royal Tiger knocked out in Stavelot, Belgium. It appears to be the one nailed by the men of the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion—who had been assigned to security duties—in their only combat action of the war. NA
The crew of this camouflaged 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion M36 destroyed five panzers during a German counterattack at Oberwampach, Luxembourg, in January 1945. NA
First Army troops clear Cologne on the Rhine River, 6 March, 1945. NA
Notes
Chapter 1: Seek, Strike, and Destroy
1. Dr. Christopher R. Gabel, Seek, Strike, and Destroy: U.S. Army Tank Destroyer Doctrine in World War II (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1985), 5. (Hereinafter Gabel.)
2. Kent Roberts Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer, and Bell I. Wiley, United States Army in World War II, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1947), 74. (Hereinafter Greenfield, et al.)
3. Gabel, 5-7.
4. Greenfield, et al, 74.
5. Christopher J. Anderson, Hell on Wheels, The Men of the U.S. Armored Forces, 1918 to the Present (London: Greenhill Books and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1999), 6. (Hereinafter Christopher Anderson.)
6. Gabel, 8-9.
7. Greenfield, et al, 75.
8. Brigadier General Lesley J. McNair to Adjutant General, AG 320.2 (7-3-40) M-C, 29 July 1940, McNair Files, Box 8, RG 337, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), quoted in David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers, Innovation in the U.S. Army 1917-1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 150. (Hereinafter Johnson.)
9. Greenfield, et al, 75.
10. Gabel, 14.
11. Greenfield, et al, 76.
12. Gabel, 12-13.
13. Robert Capistrano and Dave Kaufman, “Tank Destroyer Forces,” http://www.naples.net/clubs/asmic/TD-Forces.htm, 1998. (Hereinafter Capistrano and Kaufman.)
14. Johnson, 148.
15. History of the 628th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
16. Greenfield, et al, 79.
17. Gabel, 14.
18. Greenfield, et al, 74.
19. Ibid., 81-82.
20. Bertrand J. Oliver, History, 602d Tank Destroyer Battalion, March 1941 to November 1945 (Lansing, Michigan: 602d Tank Destroyer Battalion Association, Inc., 1990), 1. (Hereinafter Oliver.)
21. Lonnie Gill, Tank Destroyer Forces, WWII (Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing Company, 1992), 11. (Hereinafter Gill.)
22. Gabel, 14-15.
23. Ibid., 17.
24. Edward L. Josowitz, An Informal History of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion (Salzburg: Pustet, 1945), 4. (Hereinafter Josowitz.)
25. Johnson, 148-149. Greenfield, et al, 81. Gabel, 15 ff.
26. Gabel, 17.
27. Capistrano and Kaufman.
28. Gabel, 18 ff. “The Tank Killers,” Fortune, November 1942, 116. (Hereinafter “The Tank Killers”.)
29. Greenfield, et al, 396 ff.
30. Ibid., 403-404.
31. “The Tank Killers,” 117.
32. Gabel, 22 ff.
33. “The Tank Killers,” 116.
34. Gabel, 22 ff.
35. Ibid.
36. “Tank Destroyers: They Are the Army’s Answer to the Tank Menace,” Life, 26 October 1942, 87.
37. “The Tank Killers,” 181.
38. Study of Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of Tank Destroyer Units (U.S. Army, US Forces in the European Theater, the General Board, 1946), 10. (Hereinafter Study of Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of Tank Destroyer Units.)
39. “The Tank Killers,” 118.
40. Study of Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of Tank Destroyer Units, 9.
41. Gabel, 20. Gill, 14.
42. Gabel, 27.
43. “The Tank Killers,” 116-118.
44. John Weeks, Men Against Tanks, A History of Anti-Tank Warfare (New York, New York: Mason/Charter Publishers, Inc., 1975), 96-97.
45. Harry D. Dunnagan, A War to Win, Company “B” – 813th Tank Destroyers (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Royall Dutton Books, 1992), 79. (Hereinafter Dunnagan.)
46. The American Arsenal (London: Greenhill Books, 2001), 44. The Greenhill volume is essentially a reprint of the U.S. Army’s Catalog of Standard Ordnance Items of 1944. (Hereinafter The American Arsenal.)
47. Diary, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion.
48. Jim Mesko, U.S. Tank Destroyers in Action (Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc., 1998), 8. (Hereinafter Mesko.)
49. The American Arsenal, 45.
50. “The Tank Killers,” 118.
51. The American Arsenal, 51.
52. Telephone interview with John Hudson, May 2002. Gill, 17.
53. Mesko, 13.
54. Study of Organization, Equipment
, and Tactical Employment of Tank Destroyer Units, 9.
55. The Story of the 1st Armored Division (1st Armored Division, 1945), 60.
56. Gabel, 29.
57. Ibid., 29-30. “The Tank Killers, “ 181.
58. An Informal History of the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Salzburg, Austria: Anton Pustet, 1945?, 13. (Hereinafter An Informal History of the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion.)
59. Ibid., 10.
60. History of the 628th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
61. Diary, 701st Tank Battalion.
62. Gill, 13.
63. Thomas M. Sherman, Seek, Strike, Destroy! The History of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion (Published by author: 1986), 6. (Hereinafter Sherman.)
64. “The Tank Killers, “ 181. Gill, 13.
65. Greenfield, et al, 416-417.
Chapter 2: North Africa: Seeing the Elephant
1. Unless otherwise noted, the material on the activities of the 601st and 701st Tank Destroyer battalions in North Africa is drawn from the operational records of those units.
2. Loading records incorporating unit subordination, records of the 1st Infantry Division.
3. The unit diary records the date as 7 November, when the convoy was actually sailing past Oran in a maneuver to deceive anyone tracking the ships as to their final destination.