The division was bolstered with a number of units of dubious utility. The disgraced Fallschfirmjäger Regiment 6 was tactically attached to the 17th SS on 20 June, which had previously been part of von Choltitz LXXXIV Corps based south of Carentan. Two battalions of Soviet deserters, Ostbataillon 439 and 635, also came under its direction along with the remnants of 7th Army’s Sturm-Bataillon AOK and Pionier-Bataillon Angers. The division was also assigned Fallschfirm Pioneer Bataillon 5 from the wholly inadequate 5th Parachute Division in mid July. The battalion was of little value as it lacked small arms; in late May it had just twenty-eight riles.
The presence of the 17th SS in the Carentan area helped persuade the Americans that they should first clear the Cotentin Peninsula and capture Cherbourg before making further efforts to strike southward. In the face of the US 4th, 9th and 79th Divisions the German garrison did not surrender until 26 June.
At the end of June the division’s six infantry battalions were still alright, but the reconnaissance battalion had been considerably weakened. By this stage the 17th SS had lost nearly 900 casualties. Similarly, the panzer regiment only had eighteen combat-ready assault guns, supported by thirty-two 7.5cm anti-tank guns, including the self-propelled weapons and four powerful 8.8cm Pak 43s. During early July the 5th and 7th Kompanies from SS-Panzer Regiment 2 were attached to the 17th SS along the Périers-Carentan road. However, by the middle of the month it had lost another eight Sturmgeschütz and Kampfgruppe Fick was formed using SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 37 and SS-Pioneer Abteilung 17 under SS-Obersturmbannführer Jacob Fick.
Other units facing the Americans were suffering much higher rates of attrition. Deployed to the east of St Lô, the 3rd Parachute Division, consisting of three regiments with little heavy equipment of note apart from nine 7.5cm Pak 40 anti-tank guns and twelve 10.5cm field guns, had suffered 4,064 casualties by12 July. Likewise, the 352nd Infantry had been through the grinder and lost 7,886 casualties. All of the infantry formations west of St Lô fighting alongside the 17th SS were in similar dire straits.
This meant that the principal forces that would have to withstand and deflect the American’s break-out offensive, Operation Cobra, were the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and Panzer Lehr Panzer Division. West of the Vire, the sector facing the American XIX Corps, was part of the 20 mile (32km) front held by the 17th SS. Its right wing consisted of Kampgruppe Heintz, employing units from the battered 275th and 352nd Infantry Divisions.
Cobra strikes
Just before the Americans attacked with overwhelming force, employing four infantry and two armoured divisions, the 17th SS reported to LXXXIV Corps that it could field just two weak infantry battalions with another five combat ineffective, ten assault guns, ten heavy anti-tank guns and five light artillery batteries. Mobility was poor and its heavy artillery was assigned to Panzer Lehr.
When the American blow fell, Sergeant Helmut Günther of the 17th SS reconnaissance battalion was caught up in the chaos following Cobra. He heard the neighbouring paratroop unit under attack on 23/24 July. Although not in the path of the assault he and his men were ordered to withdraw as the front collapsed. Günther recalls:
We were marching, marching back all the time. One morning we were ordered to keep a road open, but we found that the Americans had already blocked it. The roads were crowded with American vehicles, and all that we could do was take to the fields on foot. On the fourth day, by sheer coincidence we ran into some of our own unit’s vehicles, and kept going by road. But we were losing stragglers all the time - some of us later had letters from them from America. Once when we were moving to take up position an army staff car stopped besides us. I saluted. The Officer in it asked me where we were going. ‘Have you gone crazy?’ he said. ‘The Americans are there already.’ Then he drove on. In a ditch in a wood we met ten exhausted paratroopers who asked us for water. I suggested that they come with us, but they were reluctant. We moved off, and a while later heard shooting. One paratrooper caught up with us, and told us that all the rest were dead. They had tried to surrender, but it was too difficult.
With the American armour hot on their heels, Günther soon discovered that there was not even time to eat:
We found a pig in a farm, killed it and cooked it. We took sheets from the farmhouse and laid them out on the table and prepared to eat. Suddenly a Luftwaffe man burst in shouting: ‘The Americans are right behind me.’ We grabbed the corners of the sheet with everything inside it, threw it in the back of a field car, and pulled out just as the first Sherman came in sight. Eventually we met up with out battalion headquarters, who were expecting the enemy at any moment. From then on, I could not distinguish the days. I had seen the first retreat from Moscow, which was terrible enough, but at least units were still intact. Here, we had become a cluster of individuals. We were not a battle-worthy company any longer. All we had going for us was that we knew each other very well.
The 17th SS, driven south, were partly caught in the Coutances pocket, the division then fought closely with the 2nd SS, forming a joint battlegroup to break out from the Roncey pocket to the southeast. At Roncey survivors joined a huge, stationary, three-abreast column of vehicles on 29 July. To the south lay the American 2nd Armored Division barring their way; suddenly American fighter-bombers swooped in and wrecked a 2 mile (3km) stretch of vehicles. The strafing and the bombing continued for six hours. Eleven vehicles from the 17th SS assault gun battalion, escaping westwards from St Denis-le-Gast, bumped into American artillery and tank destroyers near La Chapelle during the night. All the vehicles were lost along with ninety men killed and 200 captured.
Survivors of the 17th SS, 2nd SS and the 6th Parachute Regiment continued to flee south along with the 91st Air landing Division. By the end of July the LXXXIV and II Parachute Corps and their divisions facing the Americans had been destroyed and 20,000 German troops captured. Although many of the 17th SS escaped, they left much of their equipment littering the Normandy countryside.
The division’s condition was such that by August it was withdrawn for refitting, although elements served with the 2nd SS during the Mortain counterattack and later with 10th SS. Kampfgruppe Fick was expanded to include all the remaining battle-worthy elements of the division, but on 6 August C-in-C West ordered the 17th SS to be subordinated to the 2nd SS.
In early August about 5,000 men of the 708th Infantry Division were finally sent north to help contain the Americans and support the 17th SS, though by this stage the Americans had already broken out. Lacking mobility and equipped with old French and Russian artillery, the division was being sent to its doom and would be of little value to the SS-Panzergrenadiers. In the event, the division ended up scattered over a 26 mile (40km) area, with much of its artillery remaining in 1st Army’s area.
Final days
SS-Panzerjäger Abteilung 17 finally received some of its thirty-one Jagdpanzer IVs from Germany in early August. Only III Kompanie of the battalion with the self-propelled guns had originally moved to the front with the assault guns. Now equipped with the Jagdpanzers and twelve Flakpanzers, it headed north, reaching Chateau Gontier with instructions to move westwards between Laval and Rennes.
The battalion finally went into action against the Americans on the 5th in the Laval area, where there were also elements of the 708th Infantry Division. On 6/7 August, the SS-Panzer Abteilung 17 commander, SS-Sturmbannführer Kepplinger, was killed near Laval by the French resistance. The fighting did not last long and it retreated toward Sablé-sur-Sarthe, where there were other elements of the 708th, which lost 4,000 men, mainly as prisoners. American forces had already bypassed Laval and by 9 August elements of the US 5th Armoured Division was south of Le Mans. The battalion was forced to fight its way eastward, suffering heavy casualties as it went.
Kampfgruppe Fick, joined a week later by Kampfgruppen Braune and Günther, drawing on men from SS-Panzeraufklärungs Abteilung 17 and a Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD – Reich Labour Service) flak battalion, headed for the Saar and Metz. It
was felt that these separate units would be less vulnerable than if the division tried to withdraw as a coherent whole. Therefore, because large parts of the division had already been withdrawn, it avoided the Falaise pocket, escaping to fight another day.
Chapter 7
The Tigers are coming! – The 503, 101 SS and 102 SS Heavy Panzer Battalions
The most potent panzers in Normandy were the fifty-seven ton Tiger I and sixty-eight ton Tiger II; fortunately for the Allies they were few in number. The popular perception in many Allied tankers’ minds though was that all panzers were dreaded Tigers, leading to an inferiority complex.
In mid-June 1944, Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503, equipped with Tiger Is and IIs under Hauptmann Rolf Fromme, was assigned to Panzergruppe West. This was good news as the battalion was considered the most experienced Tiger tank unit in the whole German Army. The 503 were formed to assist Rommel in North Africa, but, with the end in sight in Tunisia, were sent to Russia. It had fought on the Eastern Front in the winter of 1942–43, seeing action at the Battle of Kursk. The battalion, operating Tiger IIs, was then transferred to Panzergruppe West, fighting round Caen and helping to stem the tide of Operation Goodwood. Although depleted, the battalion escaped the Falaise pocket.
Two other SS heavy tank battalions equipped with Tiger Is also served in Normandy. Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 101 thwarted the British 7th Armoured Division at Villers-Bocage, though notably most of its tanks were lost in the Falaise pocket. Its sister unit, SS-Panzer Abteilung 102, went into action on 9 July at Point 112, supporting the 10th SS and 12th SS Panzer Divisions. By 20 August the battalion had claimed 227 Allied tanks, but again was lost in the chaos of Falaise.
Combat experience
Schwere (Heavy) Panzer Abetilung 503 came into being in May 1942, drawing on men from Panzer Regiments 5 and 6. There were insufficient Tiger tanks so it had to be brought up to strength with Panzer III Ausf Ns. Although destined to serve Erwin Rommel in North Africa, the cancellation of the Porsche-designed Tiger in favour of the Henschel model delayed the battalion’s deployment. Instead, in December it found itself destined for the Eastern Front and Field Marshal von Manstein’s Army Group South.
The Tigers of this battalion soon gained a truly fearsome reputation. Its full complement of tanks did not arrive until April 1943, but during the third battle of Kharkov the battalion helped destroy the main Soviet attacking force, Mobile Group Popov. Abteilung 503 then took part in Operation Citadel in July, designed to crush the Kursk salient, during which it lost only eight tanks. In return it single-handedly claimed an incredible total of 501 Russian tanks, 388 anti-tank guns, seventy-nine artillery pieces and eight aircraft.
Abteilung 503 then became part of a heavy kampfgruppe including armour from the 6th Panzer Division under Oberst Dr Franz Bake. While covering the withdrawal of 6th Panzer on 20 July 1943, Bake, with six Tigers, caught the Soviets by surprise and knocked out twenty-three T-34s. Three days later his battle group claimed another thirty-three Soviet tanks.
The 503 were reassigned to assist the 19th Panzer Division, but in January 1944 thirty-four Tigers of the battalion found themselves part of Heavy Panzer Regiment Bake. Bake’s panzers endured seven Soviet counterattacks, claiming 286 Russian tanks and assault guns.
During 4–8 February 1944, eleven Tigers and fourteen Panthers attempted to breakthrough to the German troops trapped in the Cherkassy Pocket, northeast of Uman. A second attack from the Rubany-Most area was more successful, knocking out eighty Russian tanks and assault guns. The rate of attrition against the Soviets was such that by 13 February Bake only had four Panthers left. At this point command of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503 was assumed by Hauptmann Fromme, who was then to lead the battalion in Normandy. By mid-February, Bake’s Tigers had helped 35,000 German troops escape the Cherkassy Pocket. Having lost all the Tiger tanks of Abteilung 503, on 6 March 1944 Panzergruppe Bake was created with the newly-arrived Schwere Panzer Abteilung 509.
The exhausted panzertruppen of the 503 were withdrawn to Lemberg on the Polish border and then on to Ohrdruf, Thuringia, in the spring of 1944 for refitting, along with almost a hundred Red Army ‘volunteers’. By the summer it still had no tanks, but between 11 and 17 June the battalion received a shipment of thirty-three new Tiger Is and twelve Tiger IIs; the latter monsters had only recently come into service and were used to equip I Kompanie.
SS-Sturmbannführer von Westerhagen assumed command of the Schwere SS–Panzer Abteilung 101 when it was formed in July 1943 around a cadre from the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. It was placed under the direction of I SS Panzer Corps and the battalion was then attached to its founding unit and sent to Italy in August 1943. Two companies were sent to Russia, where they remained until April 1944.
The 101 was then assigned to the I SS Panzer Corps, consisting of the 1st SS and 12th SS Panzer Divisions. Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102, formed in October 1943, was attached to II SS Panzer Corps. It was also sent to Normandy, where it fought the Allies under the leadership of SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss.
Villers-Bocage
At the time of the invasion, Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 101 was stationed in the Beauvais area with Corps HQ at Septeuil west of Paris; the latter moved to Baron-sur-Odon between Villers-Bocage and Caen on 9 June. The battalion reached Normandy on the 12th and II Kompanie, minus four tanks left with the workshop company under Obersturmführer Stamm, found welcome cover from Allied air attack in a small wood northeast of Villers–Bocage. I Kompanie under SS-Hauptsturmführer.Mobius was deployed to their right; it is unclear just how involved Mobius’ tanks were in the coming battle. The battalion had a theoretical strength of forty-five Tigers, but in fact numbered thirty-seven; less than half these were available at Villers-Bocage and by 1 July only eleven were fully serviceable.
The failure of Operation Perch on 13 June 1944, of all the setbacks the Allies suffered during the Normandy campaign, has to rank as one of the worst. In the space of just five minutes a mere handful of the dreaded Tigers destroyed the brigade spearhead of the 7th Armoured Division, saved the Panzer Lehr Division from encirclement, prevented the German line from being rolled up and stopped the Allies from breaking out to the southwest of Caen. In short, this engagement could have speeded the conclusion of the Normandy campaign; instead bad planning and bad luck resulted in a major setback for the British Army.
Sited at the head of the Seulles valley, Villers-Bocage dominated the approaches to Mont Pinçon, ten miles (16km) to the south, the Odon valley and Caen in the east. The road network for the whole region stemmed from the village, making it of strategic importance to both sides; anyone controlling Villers-Bocage controlled the roads.
What the British did not know was that the 2nd Panzer Division had been alerted to move from Amiens to Normandy to establish blocking positions in this sector, and that elements of Abteilung 101, I SS Panzer Corps reserve, under SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann, had occupied Point 213. The British were outclassed from the start. The Cromwell, which had replaced 7th Armoured Division’s Sherman tanks when they left Italy, was too lightly armoured and armed. In stark contrast, the Tiger tank could expect to remain unharmed by the majority of Allied tanks except at point blank range. In addition, the late arrival of 7th Armoured Division’s second armoured brigade, due to bad weather, meant the division lacked 150 tanks and supporting infantry when it went into action.
To make matters worse, Wittmann was an established tank ace. In July1941, in the Balkans as an SS-Unterscharführer, he had been awarded the Iron Cross II Class while commanding an assault gun in the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Division, and in September had gained the Iron Cross I Class on the Eastern Front. By December 1942 he had became an SS-Unterscharführer and the following year was given command of a Tiger I in 13 Kompanie of the Leibstandarte‘s SS-Panzer Regiment. When he reached SS-Obersturmführer, on 20 January 1944, his kills stood at 117 vehicles. In April he took command of 2 Kompanie in the Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilun
g 101.
On the 13th the Germans had planned to carryout maintenance, until the British armoured column was spotted outside Villers-Bocage. Wittmann decided to reconnoitre to the northwest to see if the rumour that the British 7th Armoured Division had pushed into the left flank of Panzer Lehr was in fact true. With four, possibly five, Tigers and one Panzer IV from Panzer Lehr, he fanned out and advanced on Villers-Bocage. Upon seeing the British armoured column moving east towards Point 213 Wittmann realised the vital road junction must be secured at once.
In the meantime, the British had halted on the hill past the junction with the Tilly road. At 0905 hours the lead elements had reached the base of Point 213. The main column of vehicles had stopped several hundred yards away on the hedge-lined highway, while most of the tanks, including four Cromwells and one Firefly, spread out to the north.
Wittmann’s gunlayer, SS-Oberscharführer Balthasar Woll, who had served him in Russia, and whose own tank was now under repair, grumbled: ‘They’re acting as if they’ve won the war already.’ To which Wittmann replied: ‘We’re going to prove them wrong.’
Two or three of the Tigers drove parallel to the British column, but Wittmann to the north decided to circle round and attack without waiting for the others. Heading from the east he rammed aside a Cromwell blocking his way and drove into the town’s high street, Rue Clemenceau. In the town square, the British tank crews had dismounted and were alarmed by the sight of a lumbering Tiger tank. Any six-pounder anti-tank guns that had been deployed were useless as their shells just bounced off the panzer’s armour. The latter knocked out four British tanks.
Wittmann descended the slope down towards the Seulles River valley, past some bombed-out houses. At the road junction he bumped into British tanks parked on the Caumont road. A Sherman Firefly had heard all the firing and was confronted by a scout car and its frantically-waving driver. It drove round a corner to find Wittmann’s Tiger 200 yards away, firing down a side street. The Firefly quickly poured four 17-pounder rounds into the Tiger which began to burn, but its turret rotated and a shell brought half a building down on the British tank. When it emerged the Tiger had vanished.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 12