Tank Killers

by Harry Yeide

  Colonel John Seitz, commanding the 26th Infantry Regiment, described the approach in a lessons-learned report: “We proceeded without undue hurry, realizing that street fighting requires great physical exertion and considerable time if buildings are to be thoroughly searched and cleared. Our policy of searching every room and closet in every building, blowing every sewer, and mopping up each sector paid dividends in later security…. We placed tanks, TDs, and SP guns in position just before daylight or at dusk. We would have the engineers and [TD] pioneer-platoon men blow holes in the near walls of buildings. Then we would run the vehicles into the buildings and provide apertures for the gun barrels by blowing smaller holes in the far walls.”19

  The tank destroyers expended tremendous amounts of ammunition—one platoon, for example, fired two hundred fourteen rounds of HE and thirty-six rounds of AP at strongpoints in one thirty-six-hour period. The TDs encountered German armor only once during the push to the center of Aachen, when two panzers thought to be Tigers supported by infantry attacked 3d Battalion’s Company K near the Kurhaus on 15 October. One Tiger penetrated to some woods within two hundred yards of the battalion CP, where two 3d Platoon M10s engaged it by firing at its muzzle flash. Corporal Wenzlo Simmons, who was acting as gunner because his commander was absent with a toothache, was credited with making a kill. During the drive to Aachen’s center, only two men were killed and five men wounded, and two TDs were lost.20

  By 21 October, American troops had reached the German CP and were using 155mm guns to bash holes through the thick walls of medieval buildings that were impervious to TD and tank fire. The first time an SP 155mm was used, an M10 fired sixteen rounds at a wall to create a hole through which the gun could fire. The German commander surrendered, commenting, “When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up.”21

  No Fire-and-Maneuver Here

  The muck along the West Wall played havoc with towed 3-inch guns during the autumn (even SP guns were often road-bound). Some battalions called for replacing the M3 halftrack prime movers with fully tracked vehicles, such as modified M5 light tanks. There was also a call for wider tires for the 3-inch gun carriage. The 635th noted in its AAR for October, “Speed is not as essential as getting in and out of the positions tactics demand.”22 But commanders also realized that this meant that the towed guns had to be in place already to stop an armored attack, because they could not be repositioned speedily enough to deal with unexpected threats.23

  The lack of natural cover and concealment in front of many West Wall defenses meant that towed guns had to move into well protected, previously prepared positions to survive intense artillery and mortar fire. The prime movers and other vehicles also needed to be dug in and sandbagged—a single piece of shrapnel in the gas tank of a halftrack would usually set it alight. The change of terrain had in no measure changed this lesson from the thick bocage.24

  * * *

  Far to the south, the U.S. Seventh Army was fighting through the rough, forested terrain before the Vosges Mountains. The thick woods cut down fields of fire so much that the TDs were often of little use beyond providing a boost for infantry morale. And even that was debatable: The Germans usually reacted with artillery fire to the sound of TD engines, thus putting the doughs at greater risk. German armor, when it was encountered, was usually pre-placed in woods and more vulnerable to bazooka attack by the infantry than to TD gunnery.

  The 773d and 813th Tank Destroyer battalions became embroiled in fighting to clear the Foret de Parroy and Foret de Haguenau east of Luneville with the doughs of the 79th Infantry Division. The fighting in the forests offered a heavy dose of the danger TD crews faced in their open turrets from artillery shells exploding amongst the treetops. On 7 October, the 779th began to install steel covers on the tops of its M10 turrets to protect its crews from airbursts. For good measure, the outfit moved all .50-caliber machine gun mounts to the turret fronts.25

  The 813th did not cover its turrets until early 1945. Corporal Harry Dunnagan of the 813th recalled one incident. “We had one man stranding up in the turret on guard. The rest of us were lying down in the tank sleeping. Shortly after dark, a loud explosion shook me awake. That was a [tree-burst] directly over the open turret, and it was on its mark. Fortunately, I was not hit. As I looked up, the man in the turret, Clancy A. Jordan, was sinking down, saying “Mother” and other words I couldn’t understand. I reached for him and tried to see if I could give him some [morphine]. There was no time; by the time he reached the floor, he was dead. I put my hand on our sergeant, George M. Richey, to try to wake him; he was silent. He was dead. The lieutenant’s legs were chopped up.”26

  Dunnagan was promoted to sergeant and took over the M10. The very next day, Dunnagan’s destroyer advanced with the infantry. Both sides were using artillery, and the other gun in the section was hit, and its crew bailed out when the .50-caliber ammo caught fire. Dunnagan’s replacement gunner blindly fired HE into the trees wherever the infantry said there were Germans. Before the day was out, the new gunner was wounded by shrapnel from a 20mm shell that struck a tree limb overhead.27

  The weather deteriorated steadily as snow and ice alternated with rain and mud. That meant that the TDs could not advance until engineers cleared the roads of mines, and that as a consequence the infantry had usually reached its objective before the destroyers could move up.

  The M10s frequently served as artillery pieces, although the steep slopes meant that often the flat-trajectory 3-inch guns could not hit desired targets. Recon established listening posts from which they directed artillery fire and provided antitank defense warning. And men learned to fire the bazooka.28

  * * *

  Even where TDs could fight, the heavy combat all along the front resulted in serious artillery ammunition shortages by October. Once again, TD battalions showed they could step into the breach. Between 16 and 26 October, for example, M18s from the 602d Tank Destroyer Battalion conducted one hundred thirty-eight indirect fire missions under the control of XII Corps Artillery in support of the 26th and 35th Infantry and 4th Armored divisions.29

  * * *

  With tank destroyers operating almost entirely like tanks when performing direct-fire missions, a simple improvement made to infantry-support tanks as early as the bocage fighting finally came to some TDs. On 1 November, the 9th Infantry Division informed the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion that field telephones would be installed on its M10s once installation on the attached tanks was completed. The division thought there would be enough phones to cover the entire battalion. This simple expedient permitted a rifleman to talk to the commander in the turret while crouching—with at least some cover—at the rear of the vehicle. In view of the continued lack of radio links between the doughs and most TD outfits, this fix permitted some relatively safe communication while under fire.30

  The 3d Infantry Division demonstrated that more could have been done on the communications front more broadly. By October, the division had introduced a common radio frequency for use by the doughs, the tank killers from the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the tankers of the 756th Tank Battalion—a fix that produced a high degree of cooperation among the arms.31

  A Grim Struggle

  November was like October for the TDers, only more so: more bloody attacks against well-dug-in defenders, and more bloody bad weather. Casualties had been so heavy in front-line infantry units in October they were suffering severe shortages of riflemen. The worsening weather was cutting dramatically into the number of close-support missions the Air Corps could fly to ease the job faced by the infantry and armored divisions—and their supporting tank destroyers. However, by the end of the first week of the month, the transportation system was finally delivering most of the supplies needed by the front-line troops.32

  * * *

  The under-publicized Seventh Army—dubbed “America’s forgotten army” by military historian Charles Whiting—set the pace for the entire Western Front in November. Major G
eneral Alexander “Sandy” Patch on 29 September had gained control of XV Corps after his men had linked with Third Army, and the Normandy veterans settled in beside the Italian veterans of VI Corps. The divisions had burned themselves out trying to break through the German Vosges Mountain defenses in October, but November brought three fresh formations—the 100th and 103d Infantry and 14th Armored divisions—into the line.

  Seventh Army and the First French Army to its right (together comprising the 6th Army Group) had one slight advantage over the troops farther north: The terrain was awful, the weather conditions terrible, and the defenders tenacious, but the men had not yet confronted the West Wall. Moreover, the German forces facing them—in the estimation of the German Nineteenth Army commanding general—were incapable of stopping another concerted offensive.33

  A blanket of wet snow covered the XV Corps front the morning of 13 November after heavy rains had given way to blizzards in the preceding days. Streams and rivers were swollen and many bridges were under water. Nonetheless, the 44th and 79th Infantry divisions jumped off as scheduled toward Strasbourg, some fifty miles ahead on the Rhine. On 15 November, the German line in front of the 79th Infantry Division all but collapsed after doughs from the 315th Infantry Regiment—supported by tanks and by TDs from the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion—hit the German reserves just as they were assembling for a counterattack. Company A’s M10s nailed six SP guns, while Shermans from the 749th Tank Battalion destroyed most of rest of the 708th Volksgrenadier Division’s assault guns. By 18 November, the 553d Volksgrenadier Division’s defenses were unraveling under the steady pressure from the 44th Infantry Division.34

  The French 2d Armored Division—formerly a First Army command—began to ease into the line on 16 November and was ready to strike when a hole opened two days later. Armored task forces enveloped the Saverne Gap in the Vosges Mountains. After only five days of fast moving against little resistance, the French tanks rolled east across the Alsatian plains and entered Strasbourg at 1030 hours on 23 November.35 Recon men from the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion operated with the French division during the final dash. Company C, 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion, meanwhile, worked with the 106th Cavalry Group, which screened the French north flank.36

  The 3d Infantry Division and the rest of VI Corps pushed through the High Vosges and joined XV Corps on the Rhine River. The M10s from the 601st acted as assault guns during the 3d Infantry Division’s breakthrough and fired on strongpoints. No German armor was encountered. A platoon of Recon Company led the advance into Strasbourg to relieve the French on 27 November.37

  * * *

  The 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion also battled through the Vosges with the 36th Infantry Division. One night, Sgt Tom Sherman had to drive a new lieutenant forward to one of the gun platoons. Crawling up a winding mountain trail with no lights, Sherman just made out a hand waving him to a stop. The sergeant recognized one of the outfit’s old campaigners, a veteran of every fight since Salerno. The soldier motioned Sherman and the lieutenant to silence. “See those lights over there?” he whispered in a voice tight with fear. “That’s a German tank.”

  “Why don’t you go get it?” queried the lieutenant quietly.

  “I don’t want it,” replied the soldier.38

  * * *

  Not far to the north, Patton’s dashing Third Army spent most of November deep in mud as it prosecuted the almost medieval reduction of the fortifications at and around Metz. The tank destroyers played the role of modern-day siege engines. Twentieth Corps had the mission to capture the city and three infantry (the 5th, 90th, and 95th) and one armored (the 10th) divisions—supported by seven tank destroyer battalions—with which to do so.39

  The first assaults on the nearly impervious fortresses had begun as early as 27 September, when the 818th Tank Destroyer Battalion participated in a costly and ultimately unsuccessful 5th Infantry Division bid to take Fort Driant, one of the outer defenses around Metz. The TD fire proved completely ineffective against the works—but no great shame, because heavy artillery and air strikes failed as well.40

  By November, XX Corps planners had decided to invest the fortifications the corps could not storm and to isolate and capture Metz itself. The entire Third Army launched an offensive on 8 November in weather so atrocious that the attack caught the Germans by surprise. The TDs provided direct fire support to the attacking doughs when they could, but between the rushing Moselle River and the mud, the vehicles often had trouble reaching the forward positions. Two platoons from B/773d Tank Destroyer Battalion helped beat off a vigorous German tank-infantry counterattack launched against the 90th Infantry Division’s 358th Infantry Regiment at Distroff on 15 November. Two gun sections of Company B were overrun. When the TDers withdrew, one M10 overturned, and three crewmen were wounded by enemy fire. The German attack carried into Distroff, where the remaining M10s engaged several German SP guns, with both sides losing one vehicle. The street fighting was so close and the issue in such doubt that the American commander called artillery down on his own positions. The panzergrenadiers eventually pulled back.41

  Patton’s pincers clamped shut around Metz on 18 November. Two days later, elements of the 5th and 95th Infantry divisions (with the towed 774th and 607th Tank Destroyer battalions attached, respectively) had fought their way into the city. Resistance ceased two days after that.42

  Elsewhere in the Third Army’s sector, ground conditions were so poor that even when the 4th Armored Division and 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion clashed with the Panzer Lehr Division near Baerendorf in mid-November, both sides, road-bound armor could only act as artillery support for the armored infantry and panzergrenadiers.43

  The Fifth Panzer Army mysteriously slipped away from the front by 20 November, but the German infantry holding the West Wall defenses remained to trouble the tank killers.44 Where the doughs tried to clear the pillboxes, the tank destroyers provided fire support.

  Much of the Siegfried Line around Saarlautern incorporated the local towns, which forced the TD crews to remember everything they had been taught about street fighting. The 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion—which had been re-equipped with M36s during the battle for Metz—supported the doughs of the 379th Infantry Regiment, 95th Infantry Division, in the capture of Saarlautern. The assault across the Saar River began the night of 2–3 December, and early the next morning, Lt Richard Reynolds led his TD platoon across a captured bridge still wired for demolition. (The 607th’s informal history attributes the action at the bridge to Lt Calvin Stone, but the official U.S. Army history cites a DSC award in attributing command to Reynolds.) The Germans counterattacked with tanks and infantry supported by heavy artillery fire. Reynold’s M36s helped repulse wave after wave of assaults—including a night-time attempt to run tanks loaded with explosives onto the bridge that the TD crews stopped only two hundred yards short—and destroyed four panzers for the loss of one destroyer.

  Two M36s from Company C, meanwhile, supported the infantry attack on southern Saarlautern and Linsdorf. The TDs were advancing carefully up a street to eliminate a roadblock when a window shutter opened and a German bazooka crew fired at the lead vehicle. The round struck the turret, but a bedroll and a turret lifting ring detonated the warhead and saved the destroyer. The covering M36 pounded the adjacent houses, and thirty-five German soldiers emerged to surrender.

  The grinding advance continued toward the suburb of Fraulautern, with the TDs engaging pillboxes and other strongpoints in support of the infantry. Each advance was met by heavy artillery and mortar fire. Eighteen hundred rounds struck the 607th’s positions at Fraulautern in a single day. During the battle for the town, Pvt Eugene Esposito from Company C had to take charge of his M36 when his commander was killed by machine-gun fire. Esposito destroyed the MG and its crew. He then ordered his vehicle forward and spotted a bazooka crew hiding behind a stone wall, and he dispatched them as well. He next spotted a flamethrower team creeping toward him along the wall. This time, his 90mm fire dropped t
he wall on top of the Germans. And the fighting went on.45

  * * *

  To Patton’s north, Hodges’s First Army received the nod to undertake the main effort for the American 12th Army Group when Eisenhower, Monty, and Bradley conferred on 18 October. Hodges decided he had to try again to clear the Hürtgen Forest before he could push on to the Rhine River. General Omar Bradley years later conceded, “What followed … was some of the most brutal and difficult fighting of the war. The battle … was sheer butchery on both sides.”46

  The Hürtgen was a dense fir forest covering a broken land of gorges and sharp ridges. The Germans had embedded a seemingly endless series of camouflaged defensive positions through the forest. A few narrow trails and fire breaks offered TDs and tanks the only routes for maneuvering forward, and these were often mined and covered by AT guns. Indeed, armor could offer help to the doughs only occasionally.

  On 2 November, V Corps, 28th Infantry Division, which had recently replaced the exhausted 9th Infantry Division, kicked off an attack aimed at seizing control of the Monchau-Schmidt area. The 112th Infantry Regiment advanced up the narrow Kall Trail and took Schmidt by the next day. American commanders had failed to reckon with the fact that the Germans would view the operation as being aimed at the nearby Roer River dams, and the men were therefore surprised when a vigorous tank-supported counterattack exploded out of the trees. The doughs were driven out of Schmidt and fell back to a village called Kommerscheidt.

  Three Shermans from the 707th Tank Battalion executed a daring advance up the Kall Trail on 4 November to support the doughs in Kommerscheidt, but the M4s were hard-pressed by the German panzers. The next day, six more Shermans and nine TDs from C/893d Tank Destroyer Battalion traversed the treacherous trail to bolster the defenses, but to no avail.