Tank Killers
Page 16
Later that day, SSgt Herschel Briles, from the 3d Platoon of Company C, dismounted to lead his M10 down the road in search of the enemy. Shortly after daybreak, he and his crew had destroyed a heavily camouflaged Panther. Now Briles carefully reconnoitered past the wreck. A second Panther appeared on the road just in front of the sergeant. Briles yelled for his gunner to fire as he dropped flat. The 3-inch gun barked, but the Panther’s turret rotated toward the M10. The gunner corrected his aim, and the gun spoke again in awful harmony with the long-barreled 75mm on the Panther. Both shots killed. (One post-war account describes a more extended fire fight, but contemporary records portray the action as indicated here.)
Briles counted the men bailing out of his M10, and the total was one short. The sergeant raced back and leapt to the deck. Ammo was beginning to explode inside the turret, but Briles grabbed a fire extinguisher and managed to put out the flames. The last crewman, alas, was dead.35
Panzer Lehr conceded failure before dusk and coiled back. It had lost one Mark IV and twelve Panthers to the guns of the 899th, and more to fighter-bombers that joined the fray during the day.36 The forward deployment of the tank destroyers with the infantry had worked, and the team had smashed the only major armored attack against the Americans during the beachhead fighting.
* * *
The attachment of tank destroyer companies and platoons directly to infantry regiments and battalions raised two major challenges for TD officers. The first was that TD outfits were neither trained nor organized to establish close and continuing liaison with the infantry units beside which they now fought in close quarters. Nor did the two arms share radio gear that could communicate with one another. In some units, the company administrative officer became the liaison contact with the infantry regiment, and a recon platoon was attached with the commander to take on the administrative duties. In other units, the battalion staff sent additional personnel down to the line companies to take on the regimental liaison duties. The TD platoon commander often set up shop at the infantry battalion CP and controlled his vehicles by radio. This left the burden of tactical command on the scene to the platoon sergeant.37
The second problem was that the attachment of TD companies and platoons to infantry regiments on a continuing basis effectively ended the TD battalion headquarters’ control over them. The battalion staff soon exercised no more than a supply function, and in some cases it was unable to do even that. Once battle commenced, even company commanders lost most of their influence over the employment of their line platoons.38
* * *
Lieutenant Wilfred Ford commanded 2d Platoon of B/899th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which from 14 to 18 July supported the doughs of the 2/60th Infantry Regiment in the 9th Infantry Division’s drive from Les Champs de Losque to cut the St. Lô–Periers road. The German infantry in this sector had armor support, too, and the panzers were extremely well camouflaged amidst the hedgerows and orchards. Company B, meanwhile, had only eight M10s still serviceable.
Early on 14 July German infantry penetrated Company B positions and attacked with grenades and small arms. Crews resorted to .50-calibers, carbines, and grenades to beat the raid off. After the shooting stopped, seventeen German bodies lay around 1st Platoon’s positions alone.
When the doughs started forward in the morning light, one of Ford’s M10s was hit and burned. In the bocage, it was practically impossible to tell where the fire originated.
Ford tackled the problem by personally accompanying the infantry forward on reconnaissance to spot not only the German positions but also concealed routes of approach and firing points for his M10s. He also hit upon the idea of asking the infantry to cover the sound of his vehicles’ forward movement with noisy firing demonstrations.
Second Platoon got its first kill—a tank believed to have been a Mark V—at 1345 on 15 July with three rounds fired at only one hundred yards. The Panther burned. A short while later, the platoon had a second M10 damaged when a shell burst perforated the radiator of one motor.
The next day, Ford’s TDs again moved out to provide direct-fire support to the doughs. Two panzers had been spotted, and the M10s crept forward and opened fire. One Mark IV began to smoke, and the other withdrew.
For all the reconnaissance and planning by the young lieutenant, the needs of the infantry commander took over once the shooting started. Several hours after the first engagement, Sergeant Ward pulled his M10 into a field. To his left, he could see three Sherman tanks working with the doughs. The infantry battalion commander ordered Ward to pull even with his forward line. As the M10 crossed the open area to the next hedgerow, a 75mm round penetrated the thin armor and set the vehicle on fire. Crewmen sprinted to safety in a ditch.
The infantry commander ordered another one of Ford’s TDs to fire on some houses. Sergeant Shicks pulled up but first shot five or six rounds into the next hedgerow to flush out the suspected antitank gun. Shicks’s gun jammed. About this time, another lieutenant arrived to relieve Ford, who was ordered to move over and take charge of 1st Platoon. The other lieutenant mounted Sergeant Lum’s M10, which swung past Shicks and advanced. Ten minutes later, the M10 was hit by a round that severely wounded the lieutenant and Sergeant Lums, and killed or wounded most of the crew. Ford’s transfer was off, and thanks to the arrival of a replacement M10, the platoon still had something with which to fight.
The 2d Platoon’s gunners destroyed two tanks, two SP guns, and one halftrack-mounted 75mm gun between 14 and 18 July, despite the trying conditions.
One German Panzer Lehr tanker captured by nearby Company C told interrogators that the he and his comrades were not all that worried by bombing, but they did not like the TDs (even though four 3-inch rounds had bounced off his Panther before it was KO’d!).39
The Problem with Towed Guns
Despite having their guns deployed with the front-line infantry, the towed battalions did almost no tank killing and expended most of their ammunition in indirect fire. While working with the 1st Infantry Division, for example, the 3-inch gun crews from the 635th during all of June saw precisely one German tank—which had evidently suffered mechanical failure—and they encountered none in July. The battalion could only claim to have killed at least six enemy soldiers during exchanges of machine-gun fire.40 The 801st, which landed on 13 June and supported the 4th Infantry Division, knocked out a single panzer (using a bazooka) in mid-July.41 Despite many false alarms, the 802d did not see any panzers during its first month of fighting in July.42
The difficulty in actually bringing the towed guns into play is also reflected in the extremely low casualties suffered by the battalions. The 635th in June lost six men killed and ten wounded, and another three and ten, respectively, in July.43 The 801st lost only one man seriously wounded in June and a handful more to mortar fire in July.44 Other battalions suffered somewhat higher levels of casualties, but none approached the losses in the self-propelled—much less the tank— battalions.
The towed commands learned quickly that they had to dig in—and sandbag their positions, if possible—because of German artillery and mortar fire. This tended to make gun positions quasi-permanent. Because the barrels were so close to the ground, the crews usually had to cut their own roads to firing positions and then cut down one or more hedgerows in front of them to create a field of fire. All this left the guns more vulnerable to observation and made extraction for quick redeployment against armored threats from a new direction exceedingly difficult.
The towed units also discovered that they could not fight effectively on the move. Driving was painfully slow for the M3 halftrack prime movers and guns down the narrow dirt roads of the bocage. Experiments carried out by the 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion suggested that towed guns moving into even reconnoitered but unprepared positions would not have enough time to get off the road to a place with a proper field of fire quickly enough to combat a tank attack. This meant guns would have to deploy in the road itself—a recipe for disaster.45
The in
vasion had hardly begun when infantry division commanders realized the drawbacks to towed TD units and demanded SP battalions. To the extent that a surplus of SP battalions was available beyond the needs of the armored divisions, they were assigned to the infantry. The Army also raised the priority for SP battalions in the shipping schedules.46
The towed battalions had a somewhat easier time establishing radio links with the infantry because mobility was not an issue. Each gun company in the 802d Tank Destroyer Battalion, for example, was ordered on 12 July to send one SCR-608 radio to their supported infantry regiment’s CP, while Battalion supplied one to 83d Infantry Division headquarters.47
A Sudden Feeling of Impotence
Early encounters with Panther tanks in the bocage demonstrated the alarming fact that the 3-inch/76mm gun could not penetrate the panzer’s frontal armor except at near point-blank ranges or the occasional lucky shot. (Later clashes with Tigers would produce the same results.) Ike lamented, “You mean our 76 won’t knock these Panthers out? I thought it was going to be the wonder gun of the war. Why is it I’m always the last to hear about this stuff? Ordnance told me this 76 would take care of anything the Germans had. Now I find you can’t knock out a damn thing with it.”48
On 6 July, the American European command cabled Army Ground Forces and requested that all M10 battalions be converted to the M36 and that no more M10 battalions be shipped to the ETO.49 By mid-July, TD officers were discussing whether they could integrate 90mm antiaircraft guns into their operations.50
The tank destroyer crews had faced Tigers and Panthers in Italy and come away supremely confident in their ability to defeat the enemy. Now there was a widespread feeling of inadequacy regarding the very same equipment. What had changed?
The irony was that important aspects of the tank destroyer doctrine had worked in North Africa and Italy—imperfectly, as most plans will in the real world, but they had worked! The only times that American troops had encountered panzers in large numbers, the Germans had been attacking. Yes, reality had thrown a curve ball by confronting the tank killers with combined-arms attacks, but in every case in which a tank destroyer battalion had been able to respond more or less as a whole, the tank killers had beaten the Panzertruppe. El Guettar, Salerno, Anzio, and even Le Desert in Normandy had worked out more or less as General Bruce and his brain trust had foreseen. The massed fire of many TDs from various angles had been so effective that even when the crews had watched rounds bounce of the thick armor on the front of the Marks V and VI, other shots had struck home. Indeed, the TDs had usually dished out lopsided losses to the enemy. Only at Kasserine Pass, where TD units were committed piecemeal, had the tank destroyers failed.
Tank destroyers working together could beat the heavy German armor when playing defense, with all the advantages that accrue to the defender.
The problem, again, was that the doctrine was incomplete. While offensive in spirit, it was defensive in nature and offered no real plan for TD crews participating in attacks against small panzer elements spread out among dug-in infantry. The fighting in North Africa and Italy had hinted at this problem, but the best German armor had been scarce in the former, and mountainous conditions in the latter had usually precluded the use of large numbers of TDs at any one time.
Now, the Germans would enjoy the advantages of the defender against American armor in most situations. The question was, would they come out and attack en masse again and allow the Tank Destroyer Force to return to its game plan?
Chapter 7
Armored Thunder
“As of August 14, the Third Army had advanced farther and faster than any army in history.”
— George Patton Jr. War As I Knew It
On 25 July 1944, as LtGen Courtney Hodges’s First Army launched Operation Cobra, LtGen George Patton’s Third Army waited impatiently to the rear to become operational and exploit the hoped-for breakthrough. The beachhead fighting had mostly involved the TD outfits attached to the infantry divisions. Now armored divisions made ready to roll, and it was time to test the TDs in blitzkrieg, American-style.
Lieutenant General Omar Bradley had conceived Cobra as a way to end the bloody hedgerow war with a major breakthrough on a narrow front west of St. Lô. He planned a massive air attack by strategic bombers and fighter-bombers to crack the German line. As eventually formulated by VII Corps, three infantry divisions—the 30th, 9th, and 4th—were to punch a hole in the defenses. The 2d and 3d Armored divisions and 1st Infantry Division (Motorized) were to provide the initial exploitation forces. Eighth Corps—which would attack under First Army control and go to Patton when Third Army stood up—had the 4th and 6th Armored divisions ready, as well as the 8th and 79th Infantry divisions. Behind them, three more Third Army corps were building up.1
The portents had not been favorable. Bad weather forced cancellation of the planned kickoff on 24 July, but the word did not reach most of the Eighth Air Force strategic bombers in time. Most were unable to identify their targets and did not bomb, but one flight dropped its bombs on positions of the 30th Infantry Division when the lead bombardier—who was struggling with a sticky release—inadvertently loosed his load and caused fifteen other B-17s to follow suit. Twenty-five American soldiers died, and one hundred thirty-one were wounded. A Ninth Air Force B-24 accidentally bombed an American airfield at Chippelle, France, and destroyed two medium bombers and the crews. And one P-47 Thunderbolt struck an ammo dump that, regrettably, belonged to the Allies.2
The omens did not dramatically improve in the early hours of 25 July. More than five hundred fifty fighter-bombers from the IX Tactical Air Command (TAC) dropped more than two hundred tons of bombs and a large amount of napalm. Fifteen hundred B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers from the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped more than thirty-three hundred tons of bombs, while some three hundred eighty B-26 medium bombers unloaded more than six hundred fifty tons of high explosive and fragmentation bombs. Some seventy-five of the bombers dropped their loads within American lines, and short bombs killed one hundred eleven American soldiers. Among them was LtGen Leslie McNair, godfather to the Tank Destroyer Force, who had come to observe the breakout.
But the unfortunate Panzer Lehr Division, which had replaced some of its armor lost to the guns of the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion two weeks earlier, absorbed most of the carpet bombing. The war of attrition in the bocage had been hell on the American GI, but it had hurt the Germans badly, too. In all of Normandy (including the British sector), the Germans between 6 June and 9 July lost two thousand officers and eighty-five thousand men and received only five thousand replacements. They had also lost one hundred fifty Mark IVs, eighty-five Panthers, fifteen Tigers, one hundred sixty-seven 75mm assault guns and antitank guns, and almost thirty 88mm guns.3 They were running out of men, and the collapsing Eastern Front demanded every available replacement.4 A mere five thousand men held the line in front of the six divisions of VII Corps, and they were backed by no more than twenty-five thousand others in the area, counting reserve, supply, and headquarters personnel.5
Panzer Lehr was virtually annihilated by the air strikes. Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein estimated that 70 percent of his men were killed, wounded, or stunned.6
Where German troops survived the destruction, however, they fought on bravely, and VII Corps’ initial advance was slow. The VII Corps commanding general, MajGen J. Lawton Collins, decided on 26 July to commit his armor and the 1st Infantry Division in the expectation that the extra weight would crack the German defenses.
Combat Command A/2d Armored Division crossed its line of departure at 0945 hours. By 1035, the tankers were through the German defenses. Accompanied by the M10s of the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion (less Company B), CCA was off to wreak havoc in the German rear.7 The TDs were held in reserve in the columns and had no initial contact with the enemy.8
By 27 July, the breakthrough had become unstoppable. The 3d Armored Division and attached 703d Tank Destroyer Battalion attacked at 0530 hours.9 Combat Comman
d B/2d Armored Division—supported by Company B, 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion—attacked that same day and, because of delays elsewhere, became the corps spearhead. On the fly, the combat command received orders to hook to the coast and cut off the retreat of German forces still holding out to the north. By the next afternoon, the command had established a long, thinly held line of roadblocks that barred the path to the trapped Germans.10
The Germans tried to break free, and a series of violent and isolated battles flamed along CCB’s cordon. About 0900 on 29 July, fifteen panzers and several hundred paratroopers attacked the 78th Field Artillery Battalion—supported by four destroyers from Company B of the 702d—at a crossroads near La Penetiere. The assault collapsed a company-sized infantry screen. The M10s, two artillery batteries, and the antiaircraft section unleashed a fusillade of direct fire, while the third battery provided indirect fire support. Until reinforcements arrived thirty minutes later, these guns were all that prevented a German penetration. The attackers withdrew, leaving nine panzers and one hundred twenty-six men behind.11
* * *
The M10s of several TD battalions—including the 644th, 818th, and 893d—sported newly installed “Culin hedgerow devices.”12 Designed by Sergeant Curtis G. Culin of the 102d Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, the contraption (the 3d Armored Group referred to them as “Rube Goldbergs”) was made from steel girders from German beach defenses. It amounted to a set of steel teeth protruding from the nose of the tank and could be mounted on tanks or TDs. The teeth allowed the vehicle to grip and plow through a hedgerow with hardly any loss of speed. A similar device that looked more like a blade was referred to as the “green dozer.” Vehicles outfitted with the Culin device were called “Rhinos.” Tank and TD battalions hurriedly installed the devices during the second half of July in preparation for Operation Cobra, and by the time Cobra began, 60 percent of the tanks involved had been fitted with Culin devices.13 The invention gave American armor a decisive edge in mobility over German panzers during the final phase of the Normandy campaign. In fact, the use of the Rhino in combat was barred until the launch of Cobra in order to maintain tactical surprise.14