The column was on a narrow road that circled north around a small hill in the middle of town. As we started down the road, we were in a defiladed position between two hedgerows. All hell broke loose. I did not know it at the time, but just as we were beginning to cross the bridge, the Germans had launched a counterattack north and south of the town. As the column moved in a slow start-and-stop fashion down the road between the hedgerows, we found ourselves between the American and German units. The Germans were in the hedgerows to the north, the Americans in the hedgerows to the south.
Fortunately, the hedgerows were high, and most of the firing went over our heads. The column slowly snaked up the road toward the top of the hill. Suddenly, a German artillery shell came screaming across the top of the tank and exploded against a tree on the far side of the hedgerow. Although the top hatch was open, the tank commander had his head inside the turret and missed the blast.
Although it was dark on this back road at night, many of the buildings nearby were on fire, and the flames flickered just enough to give us light from time to time. We did not dare use our blackout lights, so we had to be careful not to run up on the vehicle in front of us. This was not a problem for me; the tank we were following was so high and made so much noise that I didn’t have much trouble keeping behind it. However, I had to be careful not to be rammed by Lieutenant Foster, the liaison officer from the 23d Armored Engineers, who was in the Jeep behind ours.
As we reached the top of the hill, an MP directed us into a field to the left that turned out to be the CCB headquarters bivouac area. It’s unclear why the billeting officer chose this area; it was on a forward slope of a hill under direct German fire, and it was an orchard. Incoming artillery would strike a tree branch and detonate, with a devastating effect to those on the ground.
My driver, Smith, pulled our Jeep as close as possible to the edge of the field, then we got out and started digging a foxhole. The earth was hard chert and extremely difficult to penetrate. We dug as fast as we could with our pick, our trench shovel, and even our helmets. Every time a round of artillery came in, we would stick our heads in the hole. We must have looked like a couple of ostriches with our heads in the sand and our butts completely aboveground.
We found out later that the Germans had managed to hoist a 75mm PAK41 antitank gun into the church steeple about a quarter mile from us. Because the top of the steeple was just about the height of the hill, they could fire directly into our area. Had it not been for the cover of darkness, the entire CCB headquarters could have been wiped out.
After about two hours of hard work, Smith and I were able to dig a two-man foxhole approximately six feet by three feet by twelve to fourteen inches deep—big enough to protect our heads and our butts. Close to daybreak, one of our tanks located the antitank gun in the steeple and knocked it out with one shot. This decreased the incoming fire considerably.
At daybreak, CCB moved out and launched a two-pronged attack. As it headed south, we found that our area was relieved considerably from artillery fire. We emerged from our foxhole and looked around to get the lay of the land. At the base of the hedgerow near us were two dead 30th Division infantrymen who apparently had been killed the night before. We called the medics, who in turn called the graves registration people to take away the bodies.
I set out to find Maj. Dick Johnson, who commanded the maintenance company for the 33d Armored Regiment. As the combat command’s senior maintenance officer, he was primarily responsible for the immediate recovery and evacuation of our vehicles. It was my job to coordinate the ordnance activities with him. The major was sturdily built, had a good sense of humor, and was well respected by his men for handling his job in a competent manner. As I walked around the bivouac area and called his name, I heard his voice come out from under a light tank: “Cooper, where are you?”
I looked under the tank, and there was the major in his sleeping bag next to the tank crew.
“What the hell are you doing under there, Major?”
“Crawled under here to get rid of those damned airbursts last night. What do you think I’m doing here?”
As I looked under the tank, I noticed a hundred pounds of TNT strapped to the glacis plate; it would be used to blow a breach in the hedgerows.
“Do you realize there’s a hedgerow breaching charge strapped to the front of this tank?” I asked.
“If this thing had been ticked off by an airburst, we would have all been blown to kingdom come,” the major said as he crawled out from under the tank. “Damn, if I’d known this thing was here, I wouldn’t have gotten near it.”
We established our first vehicle collecting point (VCP) on the south side of the hill, on the main road coming through Airel toward the Saint Jean de Daye highway. The 33d Maintenance T2 recovery crews started bringing the first vehicles from the initial combat around 0900. The first casualty was an M4 medium tank with the body of one of the crew still inside. According to surviving crew members, they were hit on the highway. The German gun crew apparently held their fire until the tank was no more than fifty yards away, then let go with two rounds from a 75mm PAK41 ground-mount antitank gun. Because of its extremely low silhouette, the gun could not be seen until a tank was upon it. The first round severed the main drive shaft of the M4, incapacitating the tank. The second round struck the top of the turret with a glancing blow right over the tank gunner’s head, killing him.
I got on top of the turret to examine the damage but deliberately didn’t look at the body that was still inside. The second round had struck the tank turret at the top of the long radius where the armor varied in thickness between two and a half to three and a half inches and the angle of incidence of the shell to the armor could have been no greater than fifteen degrees. In our ordnance training we had been told that thirty-eight degrees was the critical angle, below which a shell would normally ricochet. This was particularly true for an American shell from an M2 low-velocity tank gun.
Upon examining the front of the tank, I found that the first shot had struck the final drive, which was a large, heavy-duty armored casting that contained the transmission and the differential, which drove the tank tracks. The projectile had struck the tip of the final drive casting in line with the radius of the casting at its thickest point, which was about four and a half inches. The projectile penetrated the armor, passed through about a foot of fifty-weight oil, severed a five-and-a-half -inch steel driveshaft, then passed through another eight to ten inches of oil and a one-inch armored back plate before entering the driver’s compartment. By this time the shell had spent itself and nested between the driver’s feet under his seat. Because it was an armor-piercing shot, no explosion took place. Even though the second round had ricocheted off the turret, its velocity was sufficient to penetrate the armor in a gash approximately three inches wide and ten inches long. The blast inside the tank killed the gunner; the shot had gone right through his periscope. I realized that we could not repair it in the field, because the mounting had to be machined. We had to evacuate the tank to the ordnance company.
Tragic Inferiority of the M4 Sherman Tank
By this time, a number of tanks had entered the VCP with all manner of damage. Those evacuated from the column on the Saint Jean de Daye–Saint-Lô highway were mostly damaged by tank and antitank fire, whereas those coming from the Airel–Pont Hébert highway were mostly knocked out by panzerfausts. The German panzerfaust could penetrate our tanks with impunity, even through the extra armor we’d put in front of the driver and on the ammunition boxes on the side. These panzerfausts were obviously more powerful than our American bazookas.
As the tanks and other armored vehicles were brought into the VCP with broken and twisted bodies still inside, the horror of war began to settle into my being. When a tanker inside a tank received the full effect of a penetration, sometimes the body, particularly the head, exploded and scattered blood, gore, and brains throughout the entire compartment. It was a horrible sight. The maintenance crews had t
o get inside and clean up the remains. They tried to keep the body parts together in a shelter half and turn them over to graves registration people. With strong detergent, disinfectant, and water, they cleaned the interior of the tank as best they could so men could get inside and repair it.
Often when a tank was penetrated, the shower of fragments would sever the electrical cables. Even though the cables were protected by armored covers, the fragments would cause a short and could set the tank on fire. If the tank crew pulled the fire extinguisher switch before evacuating, the fire would be snuffed out and the interior of the tank would burn only partially. If the crew was unable to do this, the tank would burn up completely, and the tremendous heat would soften the armor and make the tank impossible to repair.
After the repairs were completed, the tank’s fighting compartment would be completely painted. In spite of this, the faint stench of death sometimes seeped through. A new crew might hesitate to take a tank assigned to them because they were superstitious about tanks in which their buddies had been killed.
Seeing our mounting tank losses made me realize that our armored forces had been victims of a great deceit, and we in ordnance had been part of that deceit. During my summer at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1939, we were told that our total annual research and development budget for tanks was only $85,000. I had felt that the tremendous engineering and manufacturing capability of the United States had more than made up for this deficiency in the intervening five years. However, the isolationist Congress during the interwar period had completely decimated the army’s technical capability, particularly that of the armored forces. The few imaginative and innovative ordnance engineers who came up with new ideas were quickly discouraged due to budgetary restraints.
A brilliant young tank designer named J. Walter Christy had come up with an entirely new concept in hull and suspension design in the early thirties. The idea involved an ingenious torsion bar suspension system for the bogey wheels that supported the tracks. This suspension system had a greater amplitude of deflection, and thus provided a much easier ride over rough terrain, than did the helicoil system used on our M4 tanks. In addition, the tracks could be quickly removed, and the tanks could travel on the highway as wheeled vehicles at speeds up to sixty miles per hour. It was a radical concept at the time, and the ordnance engineers at Aberdeen were greatly restricted by their less innovative superiors, who did not choose to rock the boat.
Discouraged by lack of American interest, Christy took his invention to Russia, where engineers recognized the tremendous advantages of the system and adopted it. Many German tanks in World War II also used this system to great advantage. In addition to the high deflection of the Christy system, the bogey wheels could be overlapped, which allowed use of a wider track. The resulting greater track bearing area and lower ground bearing pressure per square inch allowed German tanks to negotiate muddy terrain with much greater ease than could American tanks. This shortcoming proved disastrous in several battles. Not until the war was almost over did we realize our error and start using Christy suspension on the new M24 and M26 and all other new tanks to follow.
In spite of the flaws of the M4, we were told that it was a good tank, comparable to the German tanks we would be meeting in northern Europe. Back in the States and also in England, we had received numerous ordnance evaluation reports on German equipment, most dealing with the German PzKw IV, which we usually called the Mark IV. The original Mark IV had a short-barreled gun similar to the 75mm M2 on our M4s; its muzzle velocity was fifteen hundred feet per second. These had been replaced on the PzKw IV by a 75mm KwK41 gun with a much higher muzzle velocity (three thousand feet per second). The Mark IV was a smaller, low-profile tank that weighed only twenty-two tons compared to our M4’s thirty-seven and a half tons. It had four inches of armor on the vertical part of its glacis plate and a wider track than the M4, which enabled it to negotiate soft ground more easily than the M4 could.
In the meantime, we began to receive M4A1 medium tanks with a long-barreled 76mm gun with a muzzle velocity of 2,650 feet per second. Considering that the penetrating capacity of the projectile varies as the square of the muzzle velocity, even the Mark IV outgunned both our M4 and M4A1. When we ran into the German PzKw V Panther, a fifty-two-ton tank with three and a half inches of armor on a thirty-eight-degree glacis plate, compared to two and a half inches of armor at forty-five degrees on the M4, we were grossly outgunned. The Panther carried the even more powerful 75mm KwK42 gun, with a muzzle velocity of 3,300 feet per second. The myth that our armor was in any way comparable to German armor was completely shattered. We realized that we were fighting against German tanks that were far superior to anything we had to offer. As a result, many young Americans would die on the battlefield.
This situation had been further aggravated by command decisions made earlier. After arriving in England in January 1944, General Eisenhower had ordered some of the division commanders and staff officers to report to Tidworth Downs, the main ordnance depot for armored equipment in the European theater, where all the latest ordnance equipment available at the time was demonstrated. The operation was code-named for an ordnance colonel from Aberdeen Proving Ground who came over to perform the demonstration.
Many general officers from the U.S., British, and Canadian armies had attended plus a number of high-ranking colonels and other field-grade officers. The maintenance battalion of the 3d Armored Division was stationed at Codford Saint Mary, a short distance from Tidworth Downs. Some of our maintenance people who had been detailed to this demonstration to provide maintenance support for the armored weapons systems told us what they had seen. When I visited Tidworth Downs fifty years later, the post historian told me that no records of the demonstration exist other than to note that it took place.
First to be demonstrated were infantry weapons systems, including small arms, machine guns, and mortars. Particularly impressive was the firepower of the M1 Garand rifle in comparison to that of the German Mauser, of World War I vintage. There was some concern that our .30-caliber machine guns, also of World War I vintage, had a much lower cyclic rate of fire than the German machine guns; however, the Germans had no counterpart for our .50-caliber machine gun. Our 60mm and 81mm mortars appeared comparable to the German weapons, and our 4.2-inch chemical mortar was an excellent weapon for laying down white phosphorus smoke shells.
Artillery was demonstrated next. Although it could not be fired due to lack of range, aspects of various pieces were demonstrated, particularly the unlimbering setup and relimbering preparatory to movement. The 105mm howitzer, the 155mm howitzer, the 155mm rifle (Long Tom), the 8-inch howitzer, the 8-inch gun, and the 240mm howitzer were all of modern design, were completely motorized, and had pneumatic tires for high-speed highway transport. This equipment was equal or superior to the German guns, because the Germans still used a great deal of horse-drawn artillery.
Finally, the armored weapon systems were reviewed. First came the armored artillery. The M7, a modified M3 tank carriage with a 105mm howitzer and a .50-caliber ring-mounted machine gun, proved an excellent weapon. The M12, another modified M3 medium tank chassis, carried a 155mm GPF rifle of World War I vintage. Even though this weapon did not have the muzzle velocity of the newer 155mm Long Tom, it proved to be extremely effective. The 991st Field Artillery Battalion, equipped with these M12 gun carriages, was attached to the 3d Armored Division throughout the European operation.
Next came the antitank weapons. The small 37mm antitank gun, already obsolete, was being replaced by the 57mm antitank gun, which was still inferior to the German PAK41. The 90mm gun was a dual-purpose weapon that had been originally developed as an antiaircraft gun. In addition, it could be lowered to a horizontal position and used as an antitank gun. It was similar to the German 88mm; however, it had a lower muzzle velocity than the 88 and therefore was not as effective an antitank weapon.
Then came the tanks. The M5 light tank was demonstrated first. It had an inch and a half of armor
at forty-five degrees on the glacis plate and an inch of armor on the sides. It was equipped with a 37mm antitank gun in the turret, two .30-caliber machine guns, and a .50-caliber ring mount. It had two Cadillac engines driving a hydramatic transmission, which proved to be a good power train that provided considerable mobility and speed.
The M5 was a good, fast light tank, although it was too light to be engaged in firefights with German tanks and was already considered obsolete. It was being replaced by the M24 light tank, which was still in production in the States and would not be received until we were well into Central Europe. Instead, films of this tank were shown. The M24 was between the M5 and the German Mark IV in size, had a wider track system than either of them, weighed approximately twenty tons, and was the first American tank equipped with Christy suspension. It had better armor protection than the M5 and also had a 75mm gun. The muzzle velocity was still too low to be effective against German armor.
Our main battle tank, the M4, was demonstrated next. It had two and a half inches of armor at forty-five degrees on the front glacis plate and an inch and a half to two inches on the side of the hull and on the sponsons. The turret had three to four inches on the front and two inches on the side plus a five-inch mantlet that fitted over the gun tube and raised and lowered with the gun. The tank had two .30-caliber machine guns, one in a ball mount in front of the assistant driver and one in the turret coaxial with the main gun. There was also a .50-caliber machine gun on a ring mount on top of the turret. The tank’s main armament consisted of a short-barreled 75mm M2 gun with a muzzle velocity of 2,050 feet per second. The tank had narrow tracks with a ground bearing pressure of approximately seven pounds per square inch on the ground. Theoretically, this was about the same pressure that a man exerted walking on soft ground; it was felt that if a man could walk across the ground, a tank could also negotiate it. This was almost twice the ground bearing pressure per square inch of the German tanks.
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Page 4
