Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  In September, Third Army faced Second Army in Louisiana in the largest field exercises in the nation’s history. Two types of makeshift proto-tank destroyers were employed. The first consisted of a 3/4-ton truck with a railroad tie secured across the bed; a 37mm gun with its wheels removed was fixed to the tie and its split tail wired to the corners of the truck bed.20 The second mounted a 75mm gun on a 1-1/2-ton truck.21 Antitank guns—although mostly from the infantry’s organic defenses—stymied Second Army’s I Armored Corps at almost every turn, to McNair’s obvious delight. The rules, however, now gave antitank weapons a tremendous advantage, and armor’s difficulties derived in large part—as subsequent experience would show—from trying to operate with all-tank formations.22 In other words, the maneuvers gave very little idea how American antitank elements might be expected to perform against Germany’s combined-arms blitzkrieg.

  On 7 October, Marshall approved the War Department’s estimate for antitank battalion needs and suggested the immediate activation of sixty-three battalions. He also decided to rename the units “tank destroyers” for psychological reasons.23

  The final phase of the GHQ maneuvers took place in North and South Carolina in November 1941 and pitted 865 tanks and armored cars from I Armored Corps against First Army’s 764 mobile antitank guns and 3,557 other pieces of artillery. Men from the 1st Provisional Antitank Battalion—later the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion—would remember the maneuvers for the cold and rain on some days and the dust on others, as well as the first-ever issue of C-rations.24 First Army had received the three GHQ antitank groups and organized three more “Tank Attacker” (TA) groups of its own. TA-1 included the 93d Antitank Battalion, which was outfitted with experimental self-propelled guns constructed from 75mm field pieces mounted on halftracks. In addition to the mix fielded by the antitank groups during the Louisiana maneuvers, it also had an antiaircraft element and observation planes. The tank forces suffered tremendous losses during the wargames. The 1st Armored Division was ruled destroyed, and 983 tanks were “knocked out,” 91 percent by antitank guns. In the most startling incident, TA-1’s self-propelled guns on 20 November charged the bivouac of the isolated 69th Armored Regiment and, taking full advantage of the rules, “annihilated” the formation.25

  * * *

  The Armored Force drew solid lessons from its failures and reorganized the armored divisions to provide more infantry for combined-arms operations, and to reduce the proportion of vulnerable light tanks. McNair and his supporters among antitank thinkers, on the other hand, concluded that they had solved the puzzle. On 27 November, the War Department ordered the activation of fifty-three tank destroyer battalions under GHQ control. On 3 December, it removed all existing antitank battalions from their parent arms, redesignated them tank destroyer battalions, and subordinated them to GHQ as well. Battalions originating in infantry divisions received unit numbers in the 600 series, while those from armored divisions and GHQ field artillery units were given designations in the 700s and 800s, respectively.26

  Despite the subordination of the new tank destroyer units to GHQ, the Army initially associated the battalions with their parent divisions as they were activated in December. The 601st through the 609th, for example, were so designated on the basis of co-location with the 1st through the 9th Infantry divisions of the Regular Army. Those attached to the mobilized National Guard divisions were numbered 626th through 645th. These associations did not last long in most cases.27

  The 27 November War Department directive also established a Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center at Fort Meade, Maryland, to oversee the formulation of doctrine, draft field manuals, determine the organization of the separate battalions, and organize a common training program. Lieutenant Colonel Bruce of the Planning Branch assumed command, a job that would bring him two stars in nine short months.28 With the reorganization of the War Department in March 1942, McNair became the commanding general of Army Ground Forces (AGF). Bruce’s center became a separate Tank Destroyer Command, based at Camp Hood, Texas, joining armor, antiaircraft, and airborne as quasi-arms of the Army. Many officers nevertheless questioned whether tank destroyers merited such separate status, and the Armored Force lobbied to take control over training. In July, McNair acknowledged that the Tank Destroyer Command actually lacked command authority similar to that of the Armored Force, and he in August redesignated Bruce’s operation a center again.29

  At this time, there were roughly seventy tank destroyer battalions scattered around the country, all looking to the center to end widespread confusion over organization, tactics, and training. To meet this need, the center’s powers to ensure uniform standards in all tank destroyer units and its physical training facilities expanded substantially in late 1942.30

  Crafting a Tank Destroyer Doctrine

  The Tank Destroyer Center/Command formulated a doctrine that embodied the lessons that the drafters thought they had learned in 1941. The doctrine also seemed to embody the character of center commander Bruce. “A.D.” Bruce had graduated from Texas A&M in 1916 and shipped overseas as a provisional lieutenant. He rose to command a machine gun battalion in the 2d Infantry Division and fought in every one of its major engagements. Bruce’s fighting style speaks for itself: He returned with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre with two palms and a star, and two or three other decorations. Bruce was a tall, rugged man who punctuated his conversation with energetic gestures. When he spoke of striking a blow, he would slam his fist into the palm of his other hand with a force that jarred the office. Bruce was impatient with bureaucracy and traditionalism.31

  The tank destroyers would rely on mass, mobility, firepower, and aggressiveness to accomplish their mission. Indeed, the training notes written by the 93d Antitank (redesignated 893d Tank Destroyer) Battalion—which had executed TA-1’s fabled destruction of the 69th Armored Regiment during the Carolina maneuvers—became the interim guidance for new tank destroyer battalions while an official doctrine was under development.32

  In a 1942 interview, Bruce described his vision. “The autocrat of the ground battle in this war has been the tank. With the tank destroyer we think we have its number. The destroyer’s gun and mount don’t have the tank’s armor, but its crew commands greater speed, visibility, and maneuverability, and at least equal firepower. It can pick the time and place to deliver its punch and then hightail it to a new position to strike again. One good tank destroyer can be produced for materially less than the cost of a tank, and in far less time and with less critical materials. And by using tank destroyers to stop enemy tanks, you leave your own tanks free to dash through and spread hell among the enemy.”33

  The new doctrine was formalized in FM 18-5, Tank Destroyer Field Manual: Organization and Tactics of Tank Destroyer Units, distributed to formations as a draft in March 1942 and published in June. The manual proclaimed that the destruction of hostile tanks was the sole mission of the unit. It described the likely foe as a large and fast mass of tanks—most of them light—operating more or less independently of infantry and artillery. The prescription offered was:

  Tank destroyer units are employed offensively in large numbers, by rapid maneuver, and by surprise…. Offensive action allows the entire strength of a tank destroyer unit to be engaged against the enemy. For individual tank destroyers, offensive action consists of vigorous reconnaissance to locate hostile tanks and movement to advantageous positions from which to attack the enemy by fire. Tank destroyers avoid “slugging matches” with tanks, but compensate for their light armor and difficulty of concealment by exploiting their mobility and superior observation….

  The characteristics of tank destroyer units are mobility and a high degree of armor-piercing firepower, combined with light armor protection; strong defensive capacity against attacks of combat aviation; and flexibility of action permitted by generous endowment of means of communication.34

  FM 18-5 indicated that tank destroyer battalions would operate as mobile
reserves and not as part of the front-line defense. The tactics prescribed presumed that large tank destroyer forces would swarm to the point of an attack and maneuver to strike at the enemy’s flanks—from ambush if at all possible. Reconnaissance would be key both to finding the enemy and to identifying primary and alternate firing positions. Individual tank destroyers (TDs) would fire several rounds and then displace to another position before firing again. The manual suggested that this activity would take place semi-independently of other combat elements but suggested vaguely that units should call for help if confronted by enemy infantry.35

  Put another way, a tank destroyer officer described the doctrine this way: “The idea is that if [boxing great] Joe Lewis is sitting in the corner with his back turned, you hit him behind the ear with brass knuckles. Then you get the hell out before all Harlem breaks loose.”36

  Bruce selected as the motto for the new force: “Seek, Strike, Destroy.”37

  * * *

  With 20-20 hindsight, many observers have sharply criticized this doctrine. Indeed, combat would reveal major shortcomings. The doctrine utterly missed the realities of combined-arms warfare. It suggested no role for TDs during advances by friendly forces. And it presumed German use of tanks on a large scale that proved very much the exception rather than the rule. Several factors are worth keeping in mind, however, as one follows the story:

  • The U.S. Army had never fought a mechanized war before. It was starting from scratch in almost every regard. One of the few “facts” available to the drafters was that on all fields of battle to date, neither tanks nor static antitank defenses had stopped the German war machine.

  • Tank destroyer thinkers were not, for once, trying to refight the last war. The program would nevertheless become mired in a cycle of re-fighting the last campaign as critics weighed in.

  • The psychological environment was one of fending off further German advances, for the Nazi high-water mark had yet to come. Thinking naturally gravitated to the seemingly most pressing problem; failure to solve it might make worrying about tank busting under other circumstances an academic exercise.

  Moreover, tank killers and their comrades in the units with which they would fight were a pragmatic lot, and the problems embedded in the official TD doctrine do not appear to have had much effect on the war effort. The doctrine would gradually shift to reflect battlefield lessons, but these twists were of little direct concern to the battalions in battle. In the words of the Army’s post-war General Board report on tank destroyers: “Suffice it to say that the self-propelled tank destroyer proved to be a most versatile weapon on the battlefield, and although its use did not follow pre-combat doctrines, it did fill a need and became a very highly respected part of the successful infantry-armor-artillery team.”38

  Building an Organization

  Bruce concluded that self-propelled (SP) battalions were the best way to implement the new doctrine. The Louisiana and Tennessee maneuvers had suggested that it would be impossible to save emplaced towed guns if the infantry was forced to retreat. American observers in Africa had reported that emplaced British antitank guns often survived only long enough to fire four to eight rounds.39 The SP formation became standard on 5 June 1942.40

  The standardized tank destroyer battalion initially comprised 35 officers and 807 enlisted men organized into:

  • A headquarters company with communications, transportation, and motor-maintenance platoons included.

  • A reconnaissance company consisting of three reconnaissance platoons and a pioneer (engineer) platoon.

  • Three tank destroyer companies, each consisting of two 75mm gun platoons and one 37mm platoon, a two-gun antiaircraft section, and a twelve-man security section.41 The TD platoons inherited the four-gun configuration of their forebears, the field artillery batteries, rather than the five-vehicle formation standard in Western armored units.

  Interestingly, McNair objected to the choice of SP guns, arguing that they would be too difficult to conceal on the battlefield. He pushed the use of towed antitank guns. Marshall, however, favored pursuing the SP option.42 The Army would swing wildly back and forth on this question once it began to gather battle experience.

  The Army wanted TDs that would be fast and light, and not only to permit them to maneuver rapidly from one firing position to another. The light vehicles also would be able to cross bridges, ford streams, and skim through swamps that tanks could not manage. There were some skeptics. George Patton Jr., for one, argued that the tank destroyer was destined to become nothing but another tank.43

  The new battalions received the ad hoc equipment immediately available while Bruce set about convincing Ordnance to procure modern, fully tracked SP gun carriages for the new force. During the summers of 1940 and 1941, the Army had begun experimenting with improvised self-propelled antitank guns. In late 1941, fifty of the new halftracks were fitted with the venerable 75mm field gun (also mounted in the General Lee and Sherman medium tanks) and shipped to the Philippines in time for the Japanese invasion. With the 75mm mounted, the vehicle was at or above its load-carrying capacity. The gun bore was almost seven feet off the ground, and the gun could safely traverse at most 21 degrees to the side. Swinging the gun any further could lift a track off the ground, and firing under such conditions risked flipping the vehicle.44 This was a far cry from McNair’s vision of a “stable shore gun” with which to fight tanks.

  Standardized as the M3 gun motor carriage, this vehicle was issued to the tank destroyer battalions to equip their heavy platoons. The halftrack had just enough armor—one-quarter inch of face-hardened plate—to ward off small arms fire. A gun shield for the 75mm cannon was five-eighths inches thick and rated enough to stop .30-caliber rounds at two hundred fifty yards. The M3 was completely open on top. TD crews found that it was hard to turn, which could prove a major problem in battle.45 The vehicle could move at 45 miles per hour on level terrain—much faster than even a light tank—but it had less than one foot of ground clearance. There were five men in the crew.46

  The M3s were the good news. The light platoons were first issued Ford “swamp buggies” mounting a 37mm gun. These were replaced in early 1942 by the M6, a 3/4-ton four-wheel-drive Dodge weapons carrier with a 37mm gun mounted on a 360-degree swivel in the bed.47 In practice, the gun was viewed as facing to the rear, because firing it forward would shatter the windshield and injure the driver and front crewman.48 Other than a quarter-inch splash shield on the gun, the four-man crew was completely exposed to enemy fire. The Army said that the vehicle would allow crews to move quickly to points of vantage—the M6 could travel at 55 miles per hour—and pack enough firepower to destroy a light tank.49 In truth, it was well aware that the 37mm gun had proved to be a poor antitank weapon in British hands long before American forces drove the M6 into combat.50

  AGF in May 1942 ordered production of yet another expedient, the M10 motor gun carriage. The M10 was constructed on the proven M4 Sherman tank chassis and had a crew of five. The first model was powered by twin diesel engines, while the M10A1 used a Ford gasoline engine. The vehicle had between one-half inch and two inches of frontal armor and between three-quarters and one inch on the sides, as compared with two inches and one and a half to two inches, respectively, on the early model Sherman tank. Oddly, since doctrine drove the selection of thin armor to retain speed, the vehicle was pre-equipped with bosses for mounting auxiliary armor on the hull. A 3-inch (76mm) converted antiaircraft gun was mounted in an open-topped turret, which also had a .50-caliber antiaircraft machine gun mounted toward the rear.51 A large number of 3-inch guns were available because they were being replaced on submarines with 5-inch models and in antiaircraft units with 90mm guns.52 The turret had a manual traverse mechanism instead of the powered system used on the M4 Sherman.53 The Army designed the M10 to be able to outmaneuver and outshoot the then-standard Sherman and German Mark IV tanks.54 Unlike American tanks, the stock TD lacked coaxial and hull-mounted machine guns.

  Just
as Patton had predicted, the M10 looked much like a tank. The somewhat arbitrary distinction between the two armored vehicles would be reflected in frequent references in tank destroyer battalion records to the vehicles as “tanks,” once the M3 had been replaced. Actual tankers in the 1st Armored Division referred to the TD crews as artillery men, but artillery men in the same division called them tankers.55 Tankers in the 743d Tank Battalion conceptualized the difference by referring in radio chatter to tanks as “cans” and to TDs as “can openers.”

  Bruce opposed the decision to produce the M10 because he wanted to speed development of a custom-designed M18 Hellcat TD. Battalions that used the M10 nonetheless thought highly of it. Unfortunately, the M10 did not become available until September 1942, so the first tank destroyer battalions entered combat in North Africa using the M3.

  Training the Men

  The Tank Destroyer Force gained full control over its own training, a situation that differed considerably from the haphazard arrangements that characterized the Army’s separate tank battalions. A Unit Training Center became the heart of Camp Hood and was subsequently augmented by an Individual Training Center and a Replacement Training Center.56 Battalion records during the war suggest that while units did not always get as many replacements as they needed, the ones they did get were generally properly trained to fight in TDs. Separate tank battalions, in contrast, often had to hastily train replacements who had never seen a tank before.

  Tank killers were trained not only to fight with their guns but also to conduct “dismounted tank hunting.” Crews of disabled TDs were expected to ambush enemy tanks and raid his tank parks using small arms, grenades, mines, and improvised weapons. Bruce sent Maj Gordon Kimbrell to visit the British Commando School and patterned tank-hunting training on the Commando model. The course employed live grazing fire and exploding practice grenades for the first time in the Army during simulated battlefield conditions.57 The men underwent a grueling schedule that included conducting night reconnaissance, crossing deep streams, climbing slippery barbed-wire-covered banks, scaling steep walls, detecting booby traps, street fighting, and mastering demolitions.58 The training in urban warfare would prove particularly important in Europe, where crews in separate tank battalions would face a steep learning curve because they had received no such instruction.