Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

by Belton Y. Cooper

  The morning of November 16 was overcast with patchy ground cover. The initial attack started at 1115 with the assault of thirteen hundred heavy bombers and six hundred fighters against Eschweiler and Langerwehe. This was followed by seven hundred medium bombers and a thousand heavy bombers attacking targets farther to the east.

  From the revetment at the pillbox on hill 287, I could see a group of P47 dive-bombers attacking German fortifications at the base of a concrete observation tower approximately a mile and a half across the valley. The German antiaircraft fire was extremely intense, and I could see the tracers weaving like giant luminescent snakes. When a dive-bomber makes its pass, it must fly in a straight line before releasing its bombs. The planes are extremely vulnerable at this point, and one of the planes was struck just as it turned down into a dive. Although it was on fire, the pilot continued on his dive path until he had released his bombs and fired his machine guns. He pulled out of the dive at the last minute and headed back westward streaming smoke and flames. I never saw a parachute and was not sure whether he made it back or not. Everyone who witnessed the incident realized that it took a lot of guts to fly into a solid wall of flak the way that young pilot did.

  Simultaneously with the heavy air strike, the ninety battalions of field artillery opened up, concentrating particularly on the villages. Combat Command B assembled just south and west of hill 287. As the task forces proceeded over the crest of the hill and passed through our infantry lines, they were exposed to the full effect of the German minefields.

  Each task force had one flail tank. As the flail tanks crested the hill, they passed through our infantry line directly into the minefields. Although the tanks had to contend not only with mines but with an extremely soggy field, they made an initial good showing. The flying chains detonated several mines, and the explosions created additional craters. But finally, due to the combination of the muddy fields and the fact that the horsepower needed to turn the flail took too much power away from the tracks, both flail tanks became mired in the mud. They made excellent targets and were soon knocked out.

  The second tank in each column had no choice but to go around the flail tanks and continue the attack. A tragic domino effect followed. The first tank proceeded around the flail tank and made its own way for several yards before striking a mine and becoming disabled. The next tank bypassed the first tank and tried to go its own way for several yards, then it struck a mine and became disabled.

  This process continued until eventually one tank got through the minefield and proceeded with the attack. The next tank behind it tried to follow the same path, and sometimes it would get through the minefield successfully. However, by the time the third tank tried to come through in the same tracks, the soft ground would mire the tank so deeply that it would stick, in spite of the “duck feet” we had bolted on the track connectors. All the stuck tanks became sitting ducks for the murderous German antitank fire. The Germans continued to fire at the tanks until they set them on fire. When the crew tried to bail out, they immediately came under concentrated automatic weapons fire.

  These brave tankers knew that the tanks would be at an extreme disadvantage in the muddy minefields, but they pressed on with the attack. This was one of the most courageous tank attacks of the entire war. It started with sixty-four medium tanks, and we lost forty-eight of them in twenty-six minutes. A proportional number of soldiers died in this terrible fight.

  By nightfall, Task Force 1 had reached the vicinity of Hastenrath after taking tremendous losses. One column started out with nineteen tanks, including a flail, and ended up with four by the end of the day. The other fifteen were lost in the minefield. The surviving tanks were further exposed because the infantry had a difficult time coming forward to support them. The minefields were also heavily infested with antipersonnel mines. These were deadly to the infantry, who were under extremely heavy small-arms, mortar, and artillery fire.

  In the fighting around Hastenrath and Scherpenseel, the tankers, without adequate infantry support, performed almost superhuman acts of heroism to hold on throughout the night. It was reported that one of the tankers, in his tank on a road junction, was the only surviving member of his crew but was determined to hold his position at all costs. A German infantry unit approached, apparently not spotting the tank in the darkness. The lone tanker had previously sighted his 76mm tank gun down the middle of the road. He depressed the mechanism slightly and loaded a 76mm HE. As the Germans advanced in parallel columns along each side of the road, he fired. The HE shell hit the ground about 150 feet in front of the tank and ricocheted to a height of about 3 feet before it exploded.

  The shock took the Germans completely by surprise. The American tanker continued to fire all the HE he had as rapidly as possible, swinging the turret around to spray the German infantry, who were trying to escape into the fields on both sides of the highway. Loading and firing the gun by himself was extremely difficult, because he had to cross to the other side of the gun to load and then come back to the gunner’s position to fire.

  After exhausting his HE and .30-caliber ammunition, he opened the turret and swung the .50 caliber around on the ring mount and opened fire again. He continued firing until all of his .50-caliber ammunition was exhausted, then he grabbed a .45 submachine gun from the fighting compartment and opened fire with this. After using all the ammunition from his Thompson and his pistol, he dropped back in the turret and closed the hatch.

  He opened his box of hand grenades and grabbed one. When he heard German infantry climb onto the back of the tank, he pulled the pin, cracked the turret hatch slightly, and threw the grenade. It killed all the Germans on the back of the tank and those around it on the ground. He continued to do this until all of his hand grenades were gone; then he closed the hatch and secured it.

  By this time, the German infantry unit apparently decided to bypass the tank. From the vicious rate of firing, they must have assumed that they had run up on an entire reinforced roadblock. When our infantry arrived the next day, they found the brave young tanker still alive in his tank. The entire surrounding area was littered with German dead and wounded. This, to me, was one of the most courageous acts of individual heroism in World War II.

  By the next morning, the engineers had cleared some of the mines on the forward slopes of hill 287. They put up taped markers so the T2 recovery crews could come forward. As we went through the path to examine each tank, we had to be extremely careful. Although the major fighting had ceased in this area, we were still subjected to periodic small-arms and mortar fire. The recovery crews would take cover behind the tanks when the firing started; as soon as it lifted, they would resume trying to hook up the tanks and get them out.

  In addition to the sporadic fire, there was still the danger of mines. In some cases there were unexploded Teller mines under some of the knocked-out tanks. Assuming that there might be mines under all the tanks, the recovery crews hooked a long cable from the T2, which was parked about a hundred feet away, then slowly pulled the tank by its winch. If a mine under a tank exploded, the tank would be further damaged but the maintenance crews would be relatively safe inside their T2 vehicle.

  The maintenance crews, who had to expose themselves many times in situations such as this, took every reasonable precaution. They first went for the tanks that were merely stuck in the mud, because they had their tracks intact and were easier to pull out. If a tank struck a mine and broke a track, generally one or more bogey wheels were damaged and temporary repairs were made.

  While we worked on the tanks, a line of infantry crested hill 287 and headed down through the minefield. Their rifles were fixed with bayonets and they were ready for action. This turned out to be the second mop-up wave of the 104th Infantry Division. The first wave had gone through earlier and was engaged in bitter fighting in the Hastenrath area working with our Task Force 1. Lieutenant Colonel Mills, the Task Force 1 commander, had been killed on November 18 in this action and was replaced by Colonel Welborn
. We were delighted to see soldiers from the 104th Division, because we knew that it was a crack division commanded by Gen. Terry Allen. He had previously commanded the 1st Infantry Division, which was also in this operation and had a reputation as one of the best divisions in the army.

  As the infantrymen passed through us, they executed considerable skill in fanning out on the flanks of the slag pile and the woods on our left. As soon as they entered this area, they had to dislodge the Germans with a lot of bitter hand-to-hand fighting. They cleaned up the area with dispatch and took out a number of prisoners. Firing into our area immediately tapered off, and we were considerably relieved.

  Sooner or later you develop an almost super sixth sense. You know that an artillery or mortar shell is coming toward you before you hear the whining and before the wrack wrack sound when the shell strikes the ground in an exploding crescendo. I have often tried to analyze this sixth sense. I believe it has something to do with the high-angle trajectories of the mortars and howitzers. The sound from the gun barrel travels in a straight line faster than the projectile, which reaches you an instant later. I believe that one intuitively learns to recognize the difference between the sound of the muzzle blast when the projectile is aimed directly toward you and when it is aimed at an angle away from you. I’m not sure if this is correct, but I know that understanding this enormously increases one’s chances of becoming a survivor.

  Captain Bew White, motor officer of the 391st Field Artillery Battalion and second-ranking maintenance officer in CCB below Maj. Dick Johnson, came down with his recovery vehicle headed toward the Hastenrath area. He told me they had lost one of their forward observer tanks and he was going down to see about it. I told him that the VCP was being set up at Mausbach on the highway. Lieutenant Colonel Garton, commanding officer of the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion, was also in command of the artillery group supporting CCB in this operation. As White’s commanding officer, Garton would raise hell until he got back his forward observer tank. In an operation of this type, the artillery has its own forward observer tanks that go with the task force to pinpoint the artillery fire.

  The loss of a forward observer tank meant that we also lost a tremendous amount of concentrated artillery fire; thus, replacement was vital. German tankers, even buttoned up in their Panther and Tiger tanks, were extremely leery of the 105mm howitzer. A direct hit on the frontal or side armor by a 105mm would have little effect on a German tank, but a plunging hit on the top of the tank, where in some cases the armor was only a quarter of an inch thick, would be disastrous. In a situation like that at Hastenrath, with the tanks beyond the infantry support, the forward observer could call for overhead airbursts directly on their position. The tankers buttoned up inside would be relatively safe, but the fire would be devastating to any German infantry trying to close in on the tanks with bazookas.

  By the middle of the day, the Mausbach VCP was rapidly filling with shot-up tanks. The T2 recovery crews did a superhuman job extracting these broken and battered tanks from the minefield. In some cases, the tanks were so completely mired, up to the middle and tops of the bogey wheels, that the tanks acted like huge suction cups. It was necessary to dig small slit trenches under the back and sides of the tanks to let air underneath and break the vacuum. Although each T2 recovery vehicle had a powerful fifty-ton winch on the back, and using a single pulley made it possible to get a hundred-ton drawbar pull, sometimes it took two T2s hooked together to get a tank unstuck.

  When I went back to maintenance battalion headquarters, I reported to Major Arrington that we had lost forty-eight tanks in twenty-six minutes in the minefield. We had recovered all but eight, which were badly burned and still in the minefield. He asked me how many I thought we could repair, and I told him I didn’t know but we had a lot of work to do. He said he was going to dispatch a detachment from B Company to assist Captain Grindatti from C Company with this extra work. Arrington immediately called Captain Sembera and instructed him to get more tanks on the way, because he did not know how many we would need.

  Captain Tommy Sembera went back to army ordnance with the “W” numbers of all the tanks burned in the minefield, plus the numbers of others that had already been cannibalized. This should have been enough to get replacements started. Tommy, however, had one major disadvantage in dealing with the people in army ordnance. He was the only armored division ordnance property officer who was a captain. The table of organization for an armored division called for the ordnance property officer to be a lieutenant colonel. In another one of his screw-ups, Colonel Cowhey had deviously given this position to one of his personal friends and had Tommy actually perform the duties. Although Tommy had been the ordnance property officer for at least two years back in the States and in England and had done an excellent job, he had remained a captain because no other vacancy was available. Because the 3d Armored Division had sustained the highest tank losses of any other armored division to date, he was forced to compete with other officers of higher rank for new tanks. It was only due to the fact that Tommy had an excellent record and had done a superior job of liaison with army ordnance that he was able to perform his duties effectively. He apparently had established a high degree of credibility with the First Army ordnance people, because he was usually able to get us the tanks we required.

  Once all the damaged vehicles were brought to the VCP, the maintenance people worked around the clock. Of the forty-eight tanks initially knocked out, we were able to repair all but thirteen. This was done in three days, faster than the G1 could bring up the necessary replacement personnel. This was a perfect example of the tremendous effect that a well-coordinated maintenance operation could have on an armored division’s combat effectiveness.

  As the infantry came up and consolidated positions around Werth, Hastenrath, and Scherpenseel, CCA was committed with elements of the 1st Infantry Division toward Langerwehe, a heavily fortified objective north and east of Eschweiler. Here again the tanks were unable to negotiate the extremely muddy fields. In one task force, twelve out of thirteen tanks became stuck in the mud. Had it not been for the support of the infantry, the task force would have suffered many more losses. The infantry pushed on through the stalled tanks and advanced forward without the direct fire support of the tank guns. Although the infantry had excellent artillery support, they undoubtedly suffered much higher casualties without the tanks. After heavy fighting, Langerwehe fell and CCA returned to division control.

  Next, CCR was committed with elements of the 9th Infantry Division. The objective was to straighten out the line and bring it up to Düren on the Roer River. The line of advance was from Langerwehe through Obergeich and Geich to Echtz.

  The tanks again encountered the terrible combination of mud and minefields. This slowed them considerably, and they were unable to give the infantry adequate support. At one point, one of the task forces encountered six antitank guns dug in on one flank supported by three mobile German tanks. Although CCR theoretically had many more tank guns available, the higher velocity of the German antitank guns plus the superior guns, armor, and maneuverability of the German tanks put them at a decided disadvantage.

  The capture of Hoven allowed VII Corps to complete this particular phase of the operation and bring the line up to the west bank of the Roer River. By December 15, the entire 3d Armored Division had been pulled out of the line and put back in a rear area for a well-deserved rest and maintenance period.

  The Failure of the November Offensive

  Although the American First and Ninth Armies had penetrated the Siegfried line, the assault that began on November 16 had been a grave failure. The Ninth Army to the north had the mission of making the main effort in an attempt to break through the last vestiges of the Siegfried line, cross the Roer River, and fan out onto the Cologne Plain. VII Corps was to protect the Ninth Army’s right flank and capture Cologne, the largest industrial city in the Rhineland and an important rail and road communication center. The final objective was to s
ecure bridgeheads on the Rhine River and attempt to trap the main elements of the German army on the west bank.

  The operation failed for a number of reasons. The American armies had advanced extremely rapidly after the Saint-Lô breakthrough. The Germans had done an excellent job of demolishing the docks and harbors along the English Channel. The only usable port at that time was Cherbourg, and the distance by truck was almost six hundred miles through France and Belgium and into Germany. To make things worse, the chalklike ground of western and northwestern France became saturated after two months of almost continuous rain. This was particularly true around Reims, one of the main central supply hubs of the entire western front. The ground and roadbeds would no longer support heavy traffic, and under the constant pounding of tanks, trucks, and other vehicles the roadbed in many areas completely collapsed.

  To offset these problems, the army organized what later became known as the Red Ball Express. The communication zone (COMZ) troops had thousands of two-and-a-half-ton GMC trucks running bumper to bumper twenty-four hours a day. Because the air force completely dominated the skies with the new Black Widow night fighter, contrary to all training the trucks ran with their headlights on as fast as they could go.

  The army had long since lost confidence in the use of GHQ tank battalions working with infantry to achieve a major breakthrough, so they had used the armored divisions to perform this function. This was completely contrary to Armored Force Doctrine, and it dissipated the armored divisions’ strength.

  With no heavy assault tank with wide tracks to negotiate the muddy fields, the attack on November 16 resulted in disastrous losses. In addition to CCB’s loss of forty-eight out of sixty-four tanks in twenty-six minutes, two combat commands from the 2d Armored Division lost approximately a hundred tanks under the same conditions in the Jülich area as they approached the Roer River. These losses were unacceptable, and the two divisions could not maintain their combat effectiveness under such conditions.